My good friend Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill has come under fire for a recent op-ed he wrote regarding the NFL players who have taken a knee during the national anthem at NFL games to protest police-action shootings and social injustice.
Hill said while he respects the players’ right to take a knee, he also thinks they should step up and protest “Black-on-Black” violence, the victims of which far outnumber Blacks killed by police. Hill has been catching a lot of flack for his statement, which does not surprise me, because he is correct.
Looking at the data, I am more likely to be killed by a 22-year-old Black male than a police officer with 22 years on the force.
So in all the chatter about police-action shootings — which, by the way, Indianapolis has only had one this year as of this summer — I decided to take a look at the data from across the country. With what we’ve seen in the news so far this year, you would think it was open season on unarmed Black men by law enforcement. However, the information I found looking at the Washington Post’s database tended to paint a different picture.
Here’s what I found: Overall …
nThere have been nearly 800 police-action shootings that resulted in fatalities, 14 of which occurred in the state of Indiana.
nMental illness played a role in 25 percent of the incidents.
n173 of the fatalities were fleeing the scene.
n758 of the fatalities were male.
n23 percent (184) were African-American; only 13 were unarmed.
nIn 659 instances, a weapon (gun, knife, car) was involved.
nThere were no body cams in 715 cases.
When it comes to Indiana specifically, here’s a breakdown of those police-action shootings that resulted in fatalities:
-All 14 fatalities were male.
-Nine were white, four were African-American and one was Hispanic.
-Four were ages 18–29, five were 30–44, five were older than 45.
-Three had mental illness issues.
-Eight used a gun as a weapon, four used a vehicle, one was unarmed and one had a weapon that was labeled unknown.
-Out of the nine that fled the scene, seven used a car.
-There were no body cams in any of the incidents.
-Only one of the police-action shootings occurred in Indianapolis.
I also did a check of shootings in the last couple of years. There were 963 nationwide in 2016; Indiana had 14. There were 991 nationwide in 2015, 19 of which occurred in Indiana. And once again, anyone looking for open season on African-Americans will be disappointed.
In 2015, 26 percent of the fatalities were Black nationwide. That number dropped down to 24 percent in 2016. And as far as being Black and unarmed goes, there were only 38 shootings of unarmed Black men reported in 2015 and 17 shootings of unarmed Black men in 2016. And just seven were fleeing the scene.
And in Indiana, there were 14 police-action shootings in 2016 that resulted in fatalities — four were African-American, and only one was unarmed. In 2015, there were 19 police-action shootings that resulted in death. Six of them were African-American, and none were reported unarmed.
Now take all that data and juxtapose it to what we’ve been seeing in Indianapolis so far this year. By my last count, we were at 117 criminal homicides, which puts us on track to tie last year’s record numbers. And Blacks, which tend to make up about 27 percent of the city’s population, continue to be between 70 and 80 percent of the murder victims, and nine out 10 times it was another person of color who sent them on to the next world.
What’s especially disturbing about these numbers is that, in the past, 70 to 80 percent of the victims and suspects had prior criminal records, so I could use my “self-cleaning oven” line and say most of this was just a bad guy shooting a bad guy. Not so much this year. This year, those numbers range from 50 to 60 percent, which means there is something even more profound going on. And the fact that you have parents telling their kids not to cooperate with law enforcement after these murders are taking place probably doesn’t help much either.
So what’s the moral of the story? One Black guy shot by police in Indy and everyone gets worked up; 93 Blacks killed by other Blacks, and not a knee to be found in sight.
Abdul-Hakim Shabazz is an attorney, political commentator and publisher of IndyPolitics.org. You can email comments to him at abdul@indypolitics.org.
