A couple of weeks ago, I had a conversation with a very sweet and well-intentioned lady about racial bias in the American justice system.  Due to some personal experiences she’d had, she wholeheartedly believed that Seattle’s police force was full of “racist pigs,” and that they weren’t worthy of respect.  But although I can–with all of my being–agree with her that police officers without a sense of justice are dangerous, and that a person should be judged according to their deeds and the contents of their heart, the insult levied against our boys in blue was slanderous enough to warrant a rebuttal.

But before proceeding, it must be noted that this woman isn’t the only person on the planet who holds those views.  A common goal of all leftists is the reform of what they see as an incredibly racist judicial system, which preys upon people of color and throws them in jail without probable cause.  [1] Barack Obama himself stated during his campaign that America greatly needed a civilian oversight panel in every city, which would follow our police officers around and threaten to punish them if their actions were seen as racist.

As one can imagine, this kind of action would have a profound impact upon the effectiveness of our police officers, tying up man-hours and legal dollars in cases where the racism in question can oftentimes neither be proven nor quantified.  Because of the potential for disaster and the defamation that has occurred, this prepared defense is absolutely necessary.  To be completely clear, though, this article is NOT an attempt to suggest that racism towards our citizens from the police force is acceptable, or that racism does not exist in the police force.

Before starting, as this can be quite a heated topic, it should be noted that I claim full responsibility for posting this information, but that this posting is not a venture on its own: it follows someone else’s attack on another group of people.  Any time an entire system of justice–and our heroes on the streets–are attacked with claims based on ignorance and stereotyping, those heroes need a defense.  As such, it must be noted that the following is displayed not to attack any groups of people, but rather to defend those who were attacked.  They are people too, we must realize, and although they do not fit entirely into a racial category, they are as worthy of defense as any other person, black, white, male, or female. We all deserve justice, after all.  Not just those traditionally labeled as the underdogs.  

But since going to the police firsthand for stories would discredit this attempt at rationalization, and going to discriminated groups would err in the opposite direction, we must look to a third group whom we should have questioned first: the victims themselves.  This information is collected by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in their victimization report, a tally of all the victims and crimes in the USA, and what the victims reported about the crimes committed and what victims perceived of their attackers.  You can see the entire report [2] here.  So unless you believe that a grand conspiracy of every police station in the United States has organized with our top federal leaders–including our currently black president, who could order an investigation into such matters–you are forced to believe the people who were hurt.  Unless of course you would prefer to label  the victims themselves as racists.

After looking at the report, what first becomes apparent is that the most heinous of crimes listed on page 28–that of rape and/or sexual assault–had 48.5% of all occurrences from black offenders, even though the US black community only comprises [3] 12.5% of our total population (keep this small percentage in mind for the rest of the statistics, as it insists that the rate of criminal behavior is ridiculously high).  This becomes even more terrifying after looking at page 18, and seeing that 48.4% of the women raped by strangers were white, making the small population of blacks responsible for almost half of all the rapes committed against white women on their way to work, on their way to shop, or on their way to school.  

Blacks were then responsible for:

-50% of all completed robberies, with only 46% of those robberies ending without injury.

-43.9% all robbery attempts were made by black people.

-Fortunately, aggravated assault received far less a portion of blacks, but it still remained high at 26.9%, more than double their population size.  The rate of even the least of these crime categories is staggering, to say the least.

With multiple-offender crimes (meaning those where a person is attacked by more than one person, seen on page 35), the number of crimes involving victims only skyrockets.  43.8% of all completed violent acts were committed by blacks, compared with 16.7% by whites. Blacks then went on to claim 58.4% of all successful robberies, with 40% of them ending in violence.  And even though the rates for blacks get smaller on the other multiple-offender cases, single offense categories other than aggravated assault were comprised by more than double their population percentage (some numbers seemed high, but the DOJ mentioned that the stats were based on fewer than 10 cases, so these categories were left out of my article in a spirit of fairness).

Worth noting is that since drug offenses are not counted here, the notion that drug laws are the main reason blacks are going to prison is preposterous.  

So it would seem that if the police have a tendency to arrest more blacks than whites and Hispanics, it is because the victims crying for help are forcing them to.  And I do believe that this is a problem residing somewhere other than skin color, as some of the most Godly and respectable men I’ve met and learned from in my lifetime have been black (not to mention honorable writer-philosophers such as Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams).  My point here is simply this: the justice system cannot be to blame for the crimes that blacks commit any more than a stop light can be blamed for you running a red light; and poverty cannot be blamed for the rape, so the problem must be something else (for my personal opinion, [4] go here).  Just don’t blame our boys in blue.