OK. I read Balko’s hit pieces. Here, here, here (and a side comment attempt at minimizing this article, here, which failed). They were criticisms of Coleman Hughes for supporting this video:
The Fall of Minneapolis, a review of the Derek Chauvin case
We can summarize Balko’s analysis as this:
1. Balko and his buddy willemedia claim that the Maximal Restraint Technique (MRT) was taught as a temporary hold to be used only long enough for police officers to administer a restraint device called a hobble. This is incorrect. The MRT is the use of the restraining device itself. A prior search of older versions of the policy manual will show they actually had two devices capable of being used for the MRT, the hobble and the Wrap. The Wrap was discontinued. It is for this reason that there is a variable that paraphrased, says, a. if a hobble is used… with no b. The reason for this is not because there is an option where the person is not hobbled in the MRT, but because option b. is the wrap. In that situation there were two options, the side recovery position or sitting the person up. But the Wrap was discontinued, and option b. was deleted. Balko follows the same error as the Fall of Minneapolis (TFOM) (and Chauvin’s attorney, if I recall) in claiming that prone restraint with the knee was MRT. Balko even makes this claim later, that they are different, but does not realize this actually invalidates his own arguments, not the majority of those made by the documentary he calls TFOM.
2. MPD policy manual’s discussion of MRT states that it “shall only be used in situations where handcuffed subjects are combative and still pose a threat to themselves, officers or others, or could cause significant damage to property if not properly restrained.” This is correct, but this does not apply to the prone restraint used by Chauvin. Nor is MRT mentioned on the slide that mentions the recovery position that many falsely claim is MRT. Handcuffs are not hobbles, nor MRT because the detainee is in a prone position. Key point, no hobble device is shown on the slide, and that is further evidence, that it is not MRT that is being discussed. MRT can be eventually performed from the prone restraining position, but the prone restraining position is not MRT. Nor does the recovery position show hobbles either.2. MPD policy manual’s discussion of MRT states that it “shall only be used in situations where handcuffed subjects are combative and still pose a threat to themselves, officers or others, or could cause significant damage to property if not properly restrained.” This is correct, but this does not apply to the prone restraint used by Chauvin. Nor is MRT mentioned on the slide that mentions the recovery position that many falsely claim is MRT. Handcuffs are not hobbles, nor MRT because the detainee is in a prone position. Key point, no hobble device is shown on the slide, and that is further evidence, that it is not MRT that is being discussed. MRT can be eventually performed from the prone restraining position, but the prone restraining position is not MRT. Nor does the recovery position show hobbles either.
3. Balko further points to the portion of the manual instructing police to roll suspects into a recovery position “as soon as reasonably possible” when they have been placed in the MRT technique. But as Balko well knows, and he would reference later, the prone restraint position is not MRT. They considered doing MRT but didn’t end up using the technique. so, this analysis fails. Even if MRT had been done, this analysis still fails, I will explain later.
4. Floyd was not visibly struggling against Chauvin once he was taken to the ground. This is provably false as he was still struggling while on the ground and kicked Officer Lane. It is one of the reasons they considered MRT. They eveintually found the hobble but decided not to apply it because the fire truck was supposedly imminent.
5. Chauvin allegedly ignored all of Floyd’s pleas that he couldn’t breathe. Not true. If he had, he wouldn’t have called the EMT. His reaction may have been less urgent because most of those pleas started when he was not on the ground and trying to stop them from putting him in the squad car. Furthermore, it was Floyd who requested to be put on the ground. It is those, either false cries, or possibly drug induced inability to breathe ones, which could have been why Chauvin did not take Floyd’s cries on the floor as critical evidence of breathing distress.
5. Chauvin’s response of “Then stop talking, stop yelling. It takes heck of a lot of oxygen to talk.” As proof of callousness, is then negated by Balko himself, when he states: “Chauvin’s comment echoes a common retort from officers when a suspect pleads that he is unable to breathe — “If you can talk, you can breathe.” This is incorrect.” Balko doesn’t realize that he just provided evidence that this is a common misconception among police and thus an honestly held belief that if you can talk you can breathe. Reasonableness of belief.
6. Balko mentions that Lane suggested putting Chauvin on his side. Again, we have determined that MRT did not occur. But Lane suggests the possibility of excited delirium, so further analysis is required. What is Chauvin’s response? That he has called the EMT. Key point, the fire station was only blocks away. In fact, one of the witnesses mentions this. The fire truck ends up going to the wrong address, and the ambulance ends up arriving first, even though the fire station was much closer. As far as Chauvin knew, the EMT would be arriving at any moment, so it was reasonable to stay put. Especially if they had not found the hobble to put Floyd in the MRT. Remember, the fear mentioned wasn’t positional asphyxia, but excited delirium, which is a risk to both the officers, and to the person being arrested.
5. Smith v Minneapolis. In 2010, a man named David Smith died under similar circumstances. Smith died while lying face-down with an MPD officer’s knee in his back. Like Chauvin, the officer continued to put his weight on Smith even after Smith became unresponsive. Smith’s family settled their lawsuit against the city for $3 million. Part of the settlement was a requirement that MPD provide better training on positional asphyxia and the importance of rolling suspects into a recovery position as soon as possible. While this is true, there is no actual evidence that any extensive training was given to all officers. In fact, an investigation by the Minneapolis Police Conduct Oversight Commission (MPCOC) found scant evidence that positional asphyxia was trained on at all, and that all the focus was on excited delirium. If positional asphyxia was barely trained on, at the individual level, what chance do you think it was trained at the group level? As Balko himself stated, he beleived most medical experts beleived that, at various points over nine-and-a-half minutes, Chauvin and the other officers had multiple knees and elbows pushing down on Floyd’s back, wedged into his ribs, and jammed into the back of his neck. All of that pressure coming from multiple directions collapsing Floyd’s diaphragm into the hard pavement. The handcuffs then further restricted his ability to move into a position that would allow him to expand his chest and ribs. The claim isn’t that Chauvin’s knee killed Floyd, but that the collective pressure of three cops killed Floyd. The evidenc that is missing is on group training on positional asphyxia were each individual might not cause it, but collectivley they could. This does suggest a guilty party, the Minneapolis Police Department, but not Chauvin. In fact, the motive Chauvin and company were thrown under the bus by the upper echelon of the MPD may have been to avert focus on this fact. https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/07/28/mpd-records-suggest-scarce-training-on-dangers-of-improper-restraints
6. Balko makes much ado about the slide photo where the prone restraint position using a knee is seen, not MRT where the officer is shifting his weight backward, and most of his weight is on his heel, and makes a comparison with the photo of Chauvin that was used at trial where he is more upright, and none of his weight is resting on his foot. A few problems with this analysis. One, this slide, as Balko himself has noted was new and was only seen by Lane. So what weight distribution was seen on an image would not apply to Chauvin. Furthermore, that is a frozen moment in time, and we do not know how this would look dynamically. All we know is that it clearly depicts a prone restraining position with a knee near the neck such as the one Chauvin used. Which is evidence that the technique was not an anomaly in the department. Another key point. Chauvin had used this technique before, and we know this because prior complaints had been filed and those cases were reviewed. More importantly, Chauvin was not reprimanded because his technique passed muster. For armchair hindsight people to claim he was supposed to know Floyd would be at risk of dying, when he used the same technique successfully and without health incident before, and which the department reviewed and green lighted, is asinine.
Prior use of technique, approved by supervising SGTs
7. MPD officials testified at the trial that officers were taught that the MRT requires “light to moderate pressure.” This claim is repeated in the video that Balko touts. There are a few problems with this. One. As we said before Chauvin never applied MRT. Two, the manuals say nothing about applying light to moderate pressure while executing the MRT. What the manuals say is that when applying the neck restraint (chokehold) there are two techniques, the conscious restraint and the unconscious restraint. The conscious restraint requires light to moderate pressure when compressing the neck, and the unconscious neck restraint requires as much pressure as is adequate to render the person unconscious. Key points, reviewing, the prior manuals, we can easily determine that neck restraints specifically apply to blood chokes, where the officer wraps his arm around the detainee’s neck and pressures the carotid arteries on both sides of the neck. The leg was added in the last iteration, more than likely because officers were taught to triangle choke using their legs from the ground. What would be instructional is to see the combatives instructional manual used by police. No one has ever referenced this. What is clear though, is that it is not referencing a knee on shoulder and neck restraining technique that cannot focus on compressing the carotid arteries. No matter what the idiot claiming to do MMA claimed that it was a blood choke. You need to pressure both carotids for a blood choke, or as the police calls it, a neck restraint, for it to work. A slight or moderate squeeze will make you woozy, and if you squeeze harder, it will render you unconscious. Furthermore, in the fantastical scenario where a knee on shoulder and neck could qualify as a neck restraint (it doesn’t), the manual literally says that unconscious neck restraints are allowed when a subject is exhibiting active resistance in order to gain control of the subject; and if lesser attempts at control have been or would likely be ineffective. Considering the long struggle the officers had with Floyd, such use would have been arguably reasonable. Enough for reasonable doubt in court.
8. According to the autopsy report, Floyd had bruises and abrasions on his left shoulder and the left side of his forehead, cheek, and mouth. This is the side of his body that Floyd placed himself on the pavement when he asked to be taken to the ground. Floyd also had abrasions on his nose. Yes, people who are resisting arrest while in the prone position usually will have bruising and scrapes.
9. Balko claims that the 2014 MPD manual called for officers to roll suspects over as soon as reasonably possible. And that it did so because four years earlier, Smith died because police officers failed to do so. A few problems with this claim as well. One, that instruction is for the MRT. We have already determined that Chauvin wasn’t applying the MRT. We also established that Chauvin had a reasonable reason to wait. He was waiting for the imminent EMT that went to the wrong address. What about the slide? The slide that Balko correctly determined that only Lane saw, lists, first, that after a violent struggle, sudden cardiac arrest can occur, and then secondly, that to avoid positional asphyxia, the person should be placed in the recovery position. Again, no mention of MRT. This slide could easily be read in two ways. Especially by officers, who are not doctors. And the problem is that both ways are plausible. That once you have a sudden cardiac arrest you should put the person in a recovery position so as to avoid positional asphyxia, or what is more likely, but does not overcome that fact that it could be read the other way, that to avoid sudden cardiac arrest due to positional asphyxia, you should put the person in the recovery position. But officers don’t have the hindsight of Balko to do research on positional asphyxia such that they could overcome years of training, so what they understood and what was actually taught by the trainers is key. And again, this was taught to Lane. No evidence this was taught to Chauvin. Another fun point. We know the slides are not referring to MRT because neither the prone restrain nor the recovery position slides mention it, nor do we see any hobbles in place which are what MRT is.
10. Next, Balko shows a 2003 training video, also from the NYPD, that diagrams how positional asphyxia works. A video that was not from the Minneapolis police, and therefore irrelevant. But pretty sad, considering Eric Garner also died of positional asphyxia and Pantaleo and company got off because the focus incorrectly, just like in the Floyd case, was made on a supposed choke, instead of the much more relevant compression asphyxia they experienced. Obesity, pre-existing conditions and drugs are known to exacerbate positional or compression asphyxia.
11. Balko and Willemedia claim that TFOM did deceptive editing to falsely claim that Blackwell and Arredondo lied on the stand. This is provably false. The prosecutor asked Blackwell — who previously oversaw MPD’s training — if the technique depicted in “Exhibit 17” is an approved MPD technique. Not if it was MRT. It was. And we know it because of the slide about when to put someone in the recovery position that Lane was trained with. It clearly shows the person in the picture using the same technique. More importantly, Chauvin’s technique had been reviewed when internal affairs reviewed prior complaints of use of force where he clearly used the same technique. Chief Arradondo also lies by claiming that the technique was not taught, which is provably false, based on the slide, which is not about MRT. And when he retorts that MRT is only trained for use with a hobble, when discussing what Chauvin was doing. Which was not MRT. This is a strawman. By claiming that MRT is only used to apply a hobble, he is claiming that Chauvin was trying to do the MRT. We know that is not the case. That Lane suggested it, but that they did not do it. And the instructions for doing the MRT would not apply to the restraining position Chauvin was carrying out. In fact, we know they lied because they added the prone position to the latest iteration of their manual because it was not inly a part of MRT. And did not retroactively apply to Chauvin. Why did they lie? We can speculate: Smith required them to have training to avoid positional asphyxia, and the latest investigation by the MPCOC suggest they didn’t have proper training. By making it about improper use of the MRT, they moved the focus away from positional asphyxia. And their failure to properly train Chauvin and Thao, at the very least.
12. “We also know that of all the officers on the scene when Floyd died, only one probably saw the slide during his training: Thomas Lane. He’s the only officer who would have been a cadet when that slide was part of the MPD’s academy training.” . I quote: “That training “was originally created in 2018 for the MPD Academy” and was shown to “Cadets and Recruits . . . while they are participating in the MPD Academy.” Officer Mackenzie indicated, however, that “this presentation” has never “been included in the in-service training” provided “for the purpose of continuing education” for existing officers. As a result, Chauvin would never have seen or been trained using this slide or photograph prior to Floyd’s death.” so the slide could only show that the technique of putting the knee near the neck was not an anomaly, not that Chauvin was aware of the specific wording and instruction on the slide. W also have the image from Chauvin’s training manual that shows that Chauvin was trained on the prone restraint position using the knee to corroborate this.
What else do we know about Thomas Lane? Well, we know that he was the one officer on the scene who seemed to understand how important it is to roll a suspect into the recovery position. If anything, an argument could be made that Lane failed with his more recent training, but considering that the recent investigation by the MPCOC found there was scant evidence of proper training on positional asphyxia, I think he was innocent as well. In fact, he stated that the reason he believed it might be good to roll Floyd over was excited delirium, not positional asphyxia.
13. I quote: “The claim that “Chauvin’s knee blocked Floyd’s airway” is not the “entire narrative.” It isn’t the narrative at all. It never was. Blocking the airways isn’t the only way to asphyxiate someone. And it isn’t what killed George Floyd.” Balko is partially right here. Positional asphyxia was a factor and the knee to the neck was not what killed Floyd. So, Balko even admits what people charged Chauvin with was not what killed Floyd. But what he fails to prove is that Chauvin and the others were properly trained in Positional Asphyxia. More importantly, while a factor, it was not the only factor.
14. Balko argues that under Minnesota law, the state only needed to show that if not for Chauvin’s actions, George Floyd would not have died that day. It doesn’t matter if Floyd was more fragile or susceptible to a heart attack than most men his age. There’s a legal concept sometimes called “eggshell theory,” which states that perpetrators take their victims as they find them. It’s commonly used in tort law, but it applies to criminal law as well. If the prosecution can demonstrate that Chauvin’s use of force against Floyd was illegal, than he can be convicted. But, as Balko himself points out, they have to prove that Chauvin was doing something illegal, and as we have analyzed, there is no evidence he was. Moreover, the eggshell rule applies to innate fragilities, not self-induced fragility. Balko claims Floyd showed no signs of someone in the midst of an overdose. That an opioid overdose makes you lethargic and sluggish. That Floyd was erratic and energetic. He was standing, walking, and talking. But we know Floyd was ingesting drugs that day. He even fell asleep in the car. We also have a pretty good idea that he swallowed more pills to hide evidence. He did once before and ended in the hospital. We know Those pills would take time to take effect, more than likely around 20 minutes when orally ingested, and considering he was already on drugs, when they took effect, they would kick in with a higher level of strength. Furthermore, we know Floyd ingested two drugs, not one. Fentanyl and methamphetamine. Fentanyl and methamphetamine can affect behavior in different and sometimes opposite ways. Fentanyl can cause confusion, drowsiness, and reduced alertness, while methamphetamine can cause euphoria, hyperactivity, and increased alertness. We do not know which he put in his mouth when being arrested. Moreover, both drugs can also cause hallucinations, paranoia, and anxiety in high doses or with chronic use. The interaction of these two drugs can be unpredictable and potentially dangerous, as they may counteract or enhance each other’s effects. For example, methamphetamine may mask the respiratory depression caused by fentanyl, or fentanyl may intensify the serotonin syndrome caused by methamphetamine, leading to seizures. As Balko likes to speculate, on why Floyd claimed he couldn’t breathe, claiming it was induced by his claim of claustrophobia, which makes no sense, as Floyd was acting erratic even before there was an attempt to place him in the car, and who had been in cars and prior arrests without claustrophobia, a man who had a prior MO of acting erratic and making false claims, in the same way he did with Chauvin and company, to try to get out of arrest. If we are to assume some type of fear crisis, there is one reason readily available. Floyd knew he had ingested a bunch of drugs, and he knew he had ended in the hospital before for doing the same thing. He could plausibly have a credible fear that if he was arrested, he could die in confinement from his hasty drug consumption, unless he admitted he had just ingested more drugs to hide evidence. Maybe that is why he blurted, ‘I’m dead.’ Because the drugs might kill him. HENNEPIN COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER’S OFFICE AUTOPSY REPORT
15. Balko claims that Chauvin’s defenders want it both ways. They want him to benefit from an interpretation of Floyd’s initial complaint that assumes it was the sign of a dangerous health crisis, but then exempt him from culpability for not treating it like one. That doesn’t hold up to water, except when you are an armchair analyzer looking at the events in hindsight. There is no evidence Chauvin would have known of his drug ingestion, only that he seemed to be erratic and showing signs of excited delirium and needed to be restrained. And that is what he was doing while waiting for an EMT, that, as far as he knew, was just around the corner.
16. Balko then goes into a long diatribe about the coroner’s report, the autopsy, etc., and how they ‘proved’ he did not die of an overdose. As we have discussed before, that has actually not been proven. The claim that he was a habitual drug addict and that the amount of drugs would not affect him, is unproven. Furthermore, we know he did end up in the hospital before. Add to this, that level of drugs in a resting state is a very different thing than those same drugs while in an agitated state and in a physical struggle. Nor do we know what interactions were going on between the Fentanyl and the methamphetamine, so while either drug may not have been fatal to him, we do not know that the combination couldn’t be lethal. Finally, we have Floyd with comorbidities, arteriosclerotic and hypertensive heart disease, and an enlarged heart that needed more oxygen to function, that also contributed to his risk of a sudden cardiopulmonary arrest. So, we have pre-existing comorbidities, excessive and hasty use of a combination of two dangerous drugs, and a physical struggle, all which could alone lead to cardiopulmonary arrest, but occurring together exponentially increased this risk, and then you have positional asphyxia added to this perfect storm. There is no way to know which of these, alone, or in combination, caused his death. Enough to create reasonable doubt. Finally, a forensic analyst recreated the scenario carefully measuring the positions and time and found that in his recreation no such risk of death occurred. Further accentuating, that except for those other factors, and as Chauvin himself experienced in prior use of the technique, there was no automatic risk of death. No matter how you look at it, based on the evidence, Chauvin’s use of force on Floyd leading to a death was very much an unpredictable occurrence. It was not a “departure from policy.” And Balko’s prevarications do not change that. HENNEPIN COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER’S OFFICE AUTOPSY REPORT
17. Balko states that Hughes is wrong for stating “So while it is not unreasonable to think that Chauvinʼs knee was the cause of Floydʼs labored breathing, itʼs also not unreasonable to think that his labored breathing was caused by other factors—for instance, the stress of the arrest in general, the fentanyl in his system, his preexisting health conditions, or some combination of the three.” He wasn’t. I would have clarified that itʼs also not unreasonable to think that his labored breathing was caused by other factors—for instance, the stress and exertion of the arrest in general, the fentanyl and the methanfetamines in his system, his preexisting health conditions, or some combination of the three. In fat I would say that George Floyd could have definitely died of all three even without Chauvin, but that Chauvin’s actions unknowingly and more than likely than not, excacerbated things.
18. Balko claims that it’s far from clear that the fentanyl levels in Floyd’s system were as toxic as Chauvin’s defenders claim. For this he points to the prosecutor’s expert witness, toxicologist Daniel Isenschmid who testified that Floyd’s fentanyl levels were lower than the average levels of people charged with driving while high on the drugs — none of whom died of an overdose. But, there is a key difference. None of the cases mentioned showed that they were taking methamphetamine and opioids and involved in a high exertion activity at the time of death, resisting arrest. Balko also claims that the prosecution witness stated that Floyd’s opioid levels were about 50 percent lower than the average found in people who did die from an overdose. That is false. What the witness, Mr. Isenschmid stated was that of 19,185 cases where people died of unreported causes, could be gunshot, natural death, whatever, samples of the peripheral blood showed a mean of 16.8 ng of fentanyl and a median of 10 ng. The average is 16.8 ng. 50% less would be 8.4 ng. Moreover, we do not know what percent were from overdoses. The fact remains that Floyd’s 11 ng was higher than the median of 10 ng and over 50% of the people who died in this report had less fentanyl than him. And what other drugs and synergies, or lack of them is not in evidence either.
Reminder. George Floyd had 11 ng of fentanyl and 19 ng of methamphetamine and 2.9 ng of delta-9 THC in the blood and also 86 ng of free morphine in the urine. Free morphine is the active form of the drug. Finding it in autopsy urine suggests use relatively close to death. Morphine, especially free morphine, clears from the blood faster than from urine. It’s not unusual for it to be undetectable in blood from an autopsy, even if it was active at the time of death. Add caffeine as he testd psitive for that as well. Key point, none of these analyses talk about the synergistic effect they might have with each other, let alone the physical exertion of resisting arrest, and the preexisting medical conditions. Only the preexistent medical conditions would be relevant to the eggshell rule, if a felony was proven to have been commited. Floyd chose to take those drugs, he chose to take them together, and he chose to resist arrest. Those actions and how they interacted with each other and the preexisting medical conditions are not covered by the eggshell rule. We already addressed fentanyl and methamphetamines, but what about the others? The combination of THC (found in cannabis) and methamphetamines (stimulants) can lead to unpredictable effects. THC may enhance the psychoactive properties of methamphetamines, potentially increasing anxiety, paranoia, and cardiovascular strain. THC and morphine both have analgesic properties. Combining them could potentially enhance pain relief, but it may also increase sedation and respiratory depression. Researchers suggest that combining THC and caffeine may have significant effects due to the interaction of the adenosine and cannabinoid systems. These substances act differently in the body, and their combined effects are not fully understood. Both Fentanyl and morphine are potent opioids. Combining them can significantly increase the risk of respiratory depression, sedation, and overdose. Fentanyl and caffeine have contrasting effects. Fentanyl depresses the central nervous system, while caffeine is a stimulant. Combining them may lead to unpredictable interactions, affecting alertness and cardiovascular function. Methamphetamines and morphine have opposing effects. Methamphetamines stimulate the central nervous system, while morphine depresses it. Combining them can strain the cardiovascular system and increase the risk of adverse effects. The combination of methamphetamines and caffeine can lead to increased stimulation, anxiety, and cardiovascular strain. Caffeine and methamphetamines are both stimulants. They increase alertness, elevate mood, and suppress feelings of fatigue. When combined, they can make a person appear awake, energetic, and less sleepy. However, the simultaneous use of these stimulants and depressants (phentanyl and morphine) can lead to a paradoxical state. While the person may not appear sleepy, they might exhibit signs of confusion and anxiety. The central nervous system experiences conflicting signals: the stimulants push for increased activity, while the depressants slow down brain function. This can result in a state of mental disarray. A masking effect occurs because the stimulants partially counteract the sedative effects of the depressants. As a result, the person may not exhibit typical signs of drowsiness or sedation. Observers might perceive the person as functioning normally due to the stimulant’s influence. Despite appearing alert, the individual’s body systems are still affected by the depressants. Respiratory depression (shallow breathing) and cardiac arrest remain significant risks. The heart may struggle to maintain a balance between stimulation (from the stimulants) and depression (from the opioids). This delicate balance can suddenly tip toward life-threatening complications. And that is before adding preexisting conditions and high exertion. What the prosecutors did was individually rule out each drug as the cause of death, but never evaluated them together for synergistic effects, nor the effects along with exertion, Methamphetamines (uppers) and caffeine (also an upper) can significantly increase heart rate, blood pressure, and overall stress on the cardiovascular system. Wrestling (resisiting arrest) is physically demanding, and the combination of these stimulants could lead to excessive strain on the heart. Morphine and fentanyl (both opioids) are depressants. They slow down the central nervous system, including respiratory function. Wrestling requires physical exertion and increased oxygen demand. Combining opioids with intense physical activity can suppress breathing and oxygen intake. The simultaneous use of uppers and downers creates a dangerous seesaw effect on the body. The heart may struggle to maintain a balance between stimulation and depression, potentially leading to cardiopulmonary arrest (heart and lung failure). Even a healthy person would be at risk of sudden cardiopulmonary arrest, And Floyd had just healed from Covid, had an enlarged heart and an artery with 75% blockage. Can you start visualizing the biologic roller coaster that Floyd was putting his system through?
Balko then claims that the witness stated that much of the fentanyl found in Floyd’s blood was norfentanyl, a byproduct the body creates after metabolizing the drug. This is actually misleading. Floyd actually had 11ng of fentanyl and 5 ng of norfentanyl. So the majority was the active fentanyl, which was above the median given for the fatality cases. Balko then states that overdoses generally occur shortly after ingestion, well before metabolization. True. But as was stated in the video, presence of norfentanyl was seen in the majority of death cases and the ratio becomes irrelevant if Floyd ingested new pills. Which there is evidence he did. You can hear Isenschmid’s testimony for yourself here. And notice what is missing and what Balko failed to note or just msrepresented.
19. Balko, and the prosecution, relied heavily on Dr. Tobin’s absolutist claims. Tobin made statements that those positions would absolutely kill anyone who was in the same positions. Made a lot of absolute claims and everyone believed him because of his stellar credentials. But I always suspected he was a zealot by the fact that he never checked the autopsy, nor the body cams, to factor it in to his analysis. He just went ahead and claimed that it absolutely was the position he was and that anyone would have died. Only Bruce Champagne, a Forensic Analyst, proved that wasn’t true. For any scientific claim to be valid, no matter how wonderful and complex it sounds, it has to be replicable. Champagne and company should have had to stop the test because he was suffering like Tobin claimed he would. And he didn’t. Furthermore, Tobin made exaggerated claims of Chauvin’s weight. One, his weight was distributed over 2 knees, not one, and his other foot was also on the ground. His weight is 140lbs. Even with full gear we are looking at 170lbs. But he wasn’t wearing full gear. His undervest, for his size and weight would only have been 5 to 7 pounds. But lets stick with 170 lbs. Tobin claimed half Chauvin’s weight was on Floyd.. That is only 85lbs. I would argue three points of contact would distribute the weight to three points so closer to 57 lbs. focusing on one point? Increase it to 60 lbs. So you are looking at roughly 60 lbs in the neck and shoulders. 40 lbs on the other knee in the mid back mid back. Not a lethal amount of weight, under normal circumstances. And this was proven by replicating the positions. It was the combo of the drugs (meth and fentanyl combined), the physical altercation, preexisting conditions and the positional asphyxia, along with medics going to the wrong address and not performing CPR until four minutes after they arrived that killed Floyd. That whole combination, a perfect storm, could not have been predicted by one cop. Now, collectively, all three officers may have caused positional asphyxia, haven’t seen anyone test that. But again, where was the training to ensure multiple cops weren’t creating a situation collectively that their individual action might not create. AN EXPERIMENT: ROLE PLAYING DEREK CHAUVIN AND GEORGE FLOYD
20. Balko claims that George Floyd’s sickle cell anemia couldn’t have played a role and that ‘there’s a dubious theory that black people who carry one of the two genes for sickle cell anemia are especially prone to die when exposed to the sorts of stresses that accompany a struggle with police.’ Note, the citation he provides is from an anti-racist initiative after George Floyd, and not an actual study. The statement mentions that, as reported by The New York Times, in two-thirds of the cases where sickle cell trait was incorrectly misinterpreted as the cause of death, the decedents had been forcefully restrained, beaten, pepper-sprayed, and/or shocked with stun guns. WHat the statement fails to mention is that even in those circumstances where that stressful event occured, the sickle cell trait could have been a major factor in the death, The sudden death of people with sickle cell anemia who are exercising is well documented and not a ‘dubious theory.’ Some people may abuse the diagnosis, but it is still very real. Look at 2021, Summit on Exercise Collapse Associated with Sickle Cell Trait: Finding the “Way Ahead”. Just look at 2023 Cardiac Emergency in the Athlete, where it states: Underlying cardiac abnormalities that can predispose some athletes to sudden cardiac arrest include cardiomyopathies, coronary artery anomalies, and channelopathies, as well as genetic disorders such as sickle cell trait, and Marfan syndrome. Floyd had three of them, cardiomyopathies, coronary artery anomalies and the sickle cell trait. Is Balko saying that a person who has a cardiac arrest while running with sicke cell anemia has died solely because of the running per se? Further reading from 2023, Determinants of ventricular arrhythmias in sickle cell anemia: toward better prevention of sudden cardiac death, and 2024, Hematologic and Endocrine Conditions: Exercise Collapse-Associated with Sickle Cell Trait, Exertional Rhabdomyolysis, Hyperglycemia, and Hypoglycemia,
21. “The Flattening’ This will be a separate blog as there is much to cover that is not directly related to Derek Chauvin and George Floyd. This will be a placemarker for a link to that future blog.
The series ‘Rest in Power’ purports to be a documentary about the life and death of Trayvon Martin (herein Trayvon), an exploration of George Zimmerman (herein George), and the rise of Black Lives Matter movement. On the 10th Anniversary of Trayvon’s death, I will explore the half-truths and outright lies presented in it.
Here is what is undisputed. On the night of February 26, 2012, in Sanford, Florida, George, who was on the way to Target, called the police non-emergency number to report a suspicious person. Within a half hour he fatally shot that person, Trayvon, a 17-year-old African American high school student. George, a 28-year-old man of mixed race, was the neighborhood watch coordinator for his gated community where Trayvon was visiting his father, Tracy Martin (herein Tracy) at the time of the shooting. George shot Trayvon, who was unarmed, during a physical altercation between the two. George, injured during the encounter, claimed self-defense in the confrontation. After being interviewed at the police station, he was released that night.
Visual Recreation Based on Evidence
Unknown to the casual news observer, some key points were established. There was a close eyewitness to the confrontation, John Good. He stated that a Hispanic or White man with a red top was on the bottom and that a Black man with a grey top was on top of him. He also stated that the person on the bottom was getting hit MMA style and was yelling for help. George was wearing a red top and the deceased was wearing a grey top. This statement matched George’s claim of being mounted and assaulted and that he was screaming for help. Unbeknown to him, this was also corroborated by the 911 calls where his screams could be heard.
Corroborating evidence would play a crucial role in this case as there were some challenges in the testimonial evidence. Contrary to popular belief, memory is not a recording and can be affected by exterior influences. Imperfect recall is a challenge with all witnesses, but even more so for people who go through traumatic events, receive head impacts, have ADHD and/or who suffer from PTSD. All which George had and/or experienced. Many timeline inconsistencies in George’s statements of events were used by media speculators to claim he was lying, with little understanding as to how his memory recall could be affected by his ADHD, the trauma of getting attacked, the trauma of killing someone, the head injuries he received, and the PTSD he would experience from the event. For this reason, consistency in statements and corroborating evidence allowed for validation of claims, even with minor inconsistencies.
When the EMT did a quick check on George and, while she only found minor bleeding in the back of the head, she also found paresthesia in his limbs, which is one of the possible symptoms of concussion. The very first police interview of George was carried out that night by Investigator Singleton, where he told her did not know if he had to go to the hospital but that the police had said he did not and that they would take him after the police station at his own expense. George wasn’t sure what to do. Singleton, who was looking at George directly, and not through a photograph, months later, noted that George had a bump on is head that was abnormal, swollen, a contusion of some sort. This fact is important, as many commentators over the years have claimed that George only received minor injuries based on photographs that are two dimensional. The photographs could only indicate that impact had occurred, not the level of damage. This is important because a concussion does not always occur with visible injuries, symptoms may take days to show, and damage may exist even if there are no visible marks or symptoms. In George’s case, we, actually, have corroborating evidence of that impact to the head.
Let’s look at what the officers on the scene reported. Officer Tim Smith said that George was wet and had grass on the back of his jacket and pants, sounded confused, had blood in his face and the back of his head. He stated that he had a headache and that he felt lightheaded. More symptoms of possible concussion. When asked if he had a weapon, George lifted his arms and his jacket lifted enough to show his holster on his right side. He also blurted out twice, in his confused state, that he was yelling, and no one came out to help him. Officer Jonathan Mead reported that when he arrived on the scene, he noticed a broken and bloody face and swelling to the face. More evidence of impact to the head.
A major claim pushed by the ‘Rest in Power’ series is that George received preferential treatment. Much is made from the fact that George left that night, and that he was not charged with a crime. To make an arrest you need probable cause that a crime has been committed. Once the arrest is made, the right to a speedy trial is invoked such that prosecutors have a limited time to collect all evidence. For this reason, prosecutors will not make an arrest until they feel that, more likely than not, the evidence will be there to support the charges. In George’s case, John Good had corroborated George’s account of being the one defending himself making it impossible to arrest without further evidence. The next day, a voice stress test for truth verification was conducted while George was questioned. Under voice stress analysis, George stated that he did not confront Trayvon and that he was in fear for his life when he shot him. George also stated that he did not request medical attention because the officers stated that he would have to pay for it, and he was afraid his insurance would not cover it. He would have had to pay a $5000 dollar copay and then only 50% of what was left would be covered. This explains why he chose not to go to the hospital.
‘Rest in Power’ then ponders why no race question was included in the voice stress questions, but, at the time no probable cause existed for racism to be asked about. Race would only come into question the next day when George’s estranged cousin, Christina Meza (herein Christina with an ‘h’) would make an anonymous call claiming that George was racist. This is important because she was ultimately interviewed days later and could not give any instances or evidence of George’s racism. Interestingly, her only accusation of racism was towards Gladys, George’s mom, claiming she only liked Black people that acted White. Let us go back in time and explore the legitimacy of this claim.
Our story starts in 1951 when Gladys is born, in Callao, Peru, in an impoverished barrio neighborhood that would make the slums of the US look like wealthy neighborhoods. She is born to Jorge Meza and Cristina Tamayo (herein Cristina, without an ‘h’), both Mestizos of Native and African descent (Black). Afro-Peruvians. Two years later, her brother Jorge Jr. (herein Jorge) is born. They were both taught a very strong work ethic. They both faced racism and classism in Peru. And much like many African Americans, who were looked down upon by Whites during Jim Crow, they aimed to prove they were as good as them, by being better, more proper, more educated than them. In the US, many African Americans have strived hard to improve themselves, and yet, many of their peers try to belittle them, by claiming they are acting White. Interestingly, you see a similar phenomenon in poor Whites, where belittling those who try to get an education, act proper, and improve themselves is common (Read John McWhorter’s review of Hillbilly Elegy). Jorge comes to the US at some point in time and joins the US Army, Airborne. There, he befriends his brother at arms, Robert Zimmerman (herein Robert), George’s father. Robert joined the US Army, was assigned to an Airborne division in 1971, and would have a tour of duty in Vietnam and two tours of duty in Korea. By 1974, Robert is assigned to Fort Myer with Jorge. The next year, Jorge introduces Robert to his sister, Gladys, who is visiting, and they fall in love and get married. She, who came from a poor Afro-Peruvian family, would start working in the Catholic Community Outreach programs with the poor in Virginia, predominantly African American. Three years later, Cristina, Gladys’, and Jorge’s mother, retires as a nurse from Peru, and moves to live with Robert and Gladys. She would then work as a caretaker for two African American girls who would spend a lot of their day and eat their lunches at the Zimmerman house. George is raised by both these strong and dedicated Afro Peruvian women. These are the sources of his identity. Afro-Peruvian. Growing, up one of his best friends was Michael Lansdowne. Michael is African American and stated that George was in his house all the time and was considered family. Later interviews would reveal that all his friends growing up were either African American or Hispanic, even the African American girl he took to the prom. Needless to say, George was not raised White nor around a ton of White folk. His mom was as Black as Barack Obama, and George was as White as Obama. George’s mother was strict proper, a strict disciplinarian and did not approve of uncouth behavior as later interviews would reveal that George received many beating as a child, from her. Discipline common in Latin America, and in many heavily Christian African American homes. To say that Gladys was racist, with an accusation lobbed at many Afrodescent people and other minorities who value education is foolish. If you may recall, Michelle Obama was accused of acting White as well. Among many educated Afrodiasporic populations, education and proper behavior is valued and crass behavior is not (Read Our Kind of People).
When the claim of racism wasn’t sticking, George’s cousin alleged child molestation by George. The problem with this claim is that, by her own account, she was 6 and he was 7, and this all happened in the living room, in the presence of all their parents. So, a prepubescent kid, in 3rd grade, supposedly molested another prepubescent kid, all in front of adults and none of them noticed. Coincidentally, this all was happening as he was becoming an altar boy in his church, under the watch of his strict Catholic disciplinarian mother. Considering her earlier lie of racism, these claims should have been held with a grain, heck, a sack full of salt. No one has ever corroborated any of her claims. Her known clashes with George, who used to work for, and was favored by Miguel Meza, her father and George’s uncle, and her multiple attempts to call multiple news outlets to try to sell her story before talking to the police also cast doubt on her credibility. The search for 15 minutes of fame principle.
Either way, George was extensively re-interviewed by Detective Serino, who had just been painted a cherubic image of Trayvon, by his parents, and had no known criminal priors. That extensive interview elucidated nothing that indicated racism, nor precluded the self-defense claim. Serino even deceived George and claimed that a recording of the fight occurred on Trayvon’s phone to see his reaction and George showed relief because he knew the recording would support his claim. Not the reaction of a someone with something to hide.
‘Rest in Power’ next makes the claim that George was not arrested because his father was a retired judge and allegedly had influence on the police. But was he, and did he have that kind of influence? In 1978, Gladys was able to secure a job as a court clerk in Virginia, but it took till 1998 for Robert to secure a job as a magistrate in Virginia, and both would work in the Virginia judicial system till 2006 when they would retire and move to Florida because of Abuela Cristina’s worsening arthritis. Robert never worked in Florida. He was never a judge, but a magistrate who only could see civil cases and misdemeanors, and he only worked the job for eight years. And yet 10 years after retiring from Virginia, he supposedly had some clout with a police force in Florida. There is absolutely no evidence that he knew anyone in the Sanford judicial or police systems. The idea that he had some type of influence is completely unlikely.
‘Rest in Power’ then shows a clip of George in the police department with an unknown female police officer that, out of context seems to undue familiarity with her, to the point he has given a recommendation for her to the chief of police, Bill Lee. What the series doesn’t mention is that the female officer is Officer Dorival, the Neighborhood Watch Coordinator, which explained completely his familiarity with her and that the recommendation he gave, was given via email to Chief Lee was for her work setting up the Neighborhood Watch.
Let’s explore the racist neighborhood watch claim. ‘Rest in Power’ claims that with the market crash of 2007 and foreclosures leading to section 8 tenants, owners thought the neighborhood was going down, so they started the Neighborhood Watch and that the Neighborhood Watch was really the watch of the African American people in the neighborhood. This is speculatory fantasy. The Financial Crisis that led to Foreclosures in Florida is known as the Great Recession and went from December 2007 to June 2009 and foreclosures where already a major aspect of the Retreat when George moved into the Retreat in July of 2009, by renting a townhouse that was being foreclosed on. By the time George moved in, the retreat was roughly 50% White, 30% African American and 20% Hispanic. Like Sanford itself. Nor was the Neighborhood Watch created to address African American people. It would not be until September of 2011, 3 years after Section 8 placed any people in The Retreat, that the Neighborhood Watch would even be considered after a rash of burglaries that had affected many of the neighbors, including the 30% that were African Americans. In June of 2011 a rash of robberies hit the Retreat, Over the year over 400 calls to the police would be made about suspicious people. Only 3 of those suspicious calls would be made by George.
Let us look at George’s calls for 2011. In March, he would call about a loose pit bull. In fact, the year before, George had made over 5 prior calls about loose pit bulls, faring for his family’s and pet’s safety, and, on advice of Mark Osterman, a police officer, the reason he got a gun. In July, George has his first experience with the burglaries at the Retreat when his wife, Shellie’s bicycle was stolen from his front porch. In May, he called about a motion alarm in his house. Then, on August 3rd, 2011, a home invasion occurred at the Retreat where a mother, Olivia Bertalan, and her child had to hide in their closet, as two African American males broke into their house. When they were fleeing, they ran past Shellie Zimmerman, George’s wife. Later that night Shelly would recognize one of them again and tell George. This is George’s first ever call about an African American male related to any possible crime. It is not a suspicious person call as an actual recognition of a perpetrator had been made by Shellie. The police do not arrive in time. Three days later Shellie, again recognizes both perpetrators, and tells George, who calls the police. Again, this was not a suspicious behavior call but an identification of a perpetrator. They would escape again. Three more burglaries are on the record, and George emails Officer Dorival on September 18th, about a presentation she did about a possible Neighborhood Watch. In it, he tells Chief Lee that he did not trust the police, because of the beating of Sherman Ware, a homeless African American man, but that Officer Dorival had given him confidence in the police again. A few days later the Neighborhood Watch was set up with George as it’s police liaison. Neighborhood Watch signs were placed around the neighborhood that specifically stated that loitering was not allowed and would be reported to the police. Instructions were also given to report anything even slightly out of place, and that it was better to report a suspicion and be wrong than not to report. At the end of September, George called about an open garage, and in October called about two African American males loitering outside the Retreat entrance, right under the sign that said that loitering would be reported. That call was not based on suspicion, but on the ‘no loitering sign’ enforcement. Later that month George would call about a pit bull again. In December two more burglaries occurred and one African American male, Jabari Shelley is apprehended, but his fingerprints do not match that of the other known burglaries with African Americans identified as suspects. In December, George calls about a dispute with a White male. That is the extent of George’s calls in 2011. Not one for suspicious African American male behavior. Two calls were because his wife identifying actual perpetrators, and one was because a no loitering rule was being violated, according to Neighborhood Watch rules.
In January 2012, George called about kids playing in the street at risk of getting run over by cars. When asked if they were Black, White, or Hispanic, he answers that they are of various ages and races. But that is cleverly edited out in the ‘Rest in Power’ rendition. Much like the editing of his 2010 call about a 9-year-old African American kid who was walking next to a busy street, not innthe Retreat, alone and at risk of getting run over. I guess being a good Samaritan was a bad thing. ‘Rest in Power’ would make the false claim that since 2011, and the formation of the Neighborhood Watch, George had made 50 calls about suspicious African American people. This was a blatant falsehood. George had a long history of calling the police to report many things, from potholes, to speeding, to open garage doors that did amount to 50 calls going all the way back to 2004. But not one call was about a suspicious African American person from 2004 to 2011. In fact, other than the calls already mentioned, when race was mentioned, five calls where about White males doing suspicious activities, 2 about Hispanic males, and only one, in 2009, was about an African American male trespassing on his property and hurling insults at him, right after he had called the police, yet again about a loose pit bull that was terrorizing his wife and her dogs. Again, not a suspicious person call. On February 2nd, 2012, George would call about an African American male, his first suspicious Black male call, looking into the window of another Neighborhood Watch captain, Frank Taaffe’s house. The suspect would escape before the police could arrive. The next week another burglary occurred, but this time some construction workers nearby saw the perpetrator flee, enter one of the other houses, and directed the cops to that house. The perpetrator, Emmanuelle Burges would be arrested, and his fingerprints would be confirmed in the home invasion of the Bertalan home that Shellie witnessed, as well as the attempted burglary at Frank Taaffe’s House, that George had seen him case. In other words, three of George five prior calls about Black people, were related to Emmanuelle Burgess’ criminal activities and that of another unknown African American male accomplice that was still at large. These valid calls, along with the rest of the 50 calls not related to any descriptions of Black people, over a 7-year period, were used to falsely demonize George as a racist.
Another wild claim that ‘Rest in Power’ tries to push is that George was a wannabe White person. Mark Caputo goes on a wild limb and claims that part of White Christian Male culture is guns so that a gun made him a little bit Whiter. His claim holds little water. When looking at legal gun ownership, about 36% of White Americans have guns, but so do 24% of African Americans and 15% of Hispanics. While White Christian Evangelicals do hold the highest percentage of ownership at 40%, that would also mean 60% of White Evangelicals must not consider themselves White as they do not own guns. And that is only legal gun ownership, as illegal gun ownership has a vastly different demographic. While there is no survey for illegal guns, illegal gun uses, and confiscations show much higher rates of use in African American and Latino communities than White. Therefore, to claim that owning a gun is somehow Christian or White is fallacious.
Next, we have Wes Robinson, of Mixed African American heritage, a former friend of George’s, who was recruited and paid by the producers of ‘Rest in Power’ to make these gems of claims. Wes Robinson claimed George went from having Minority friends to being with Shellie all the time and that is when they went their separate ways. Wes even looks at the camara and states, “You live in this Utopia of White Privilege, and as soon as it gets extended to another culture. Is it really White Privilege anymore? White Family, White Perception, White Privilege. The people he chose to have in his life, I would be ignorant to say he did not change. I do not know what happened, but he should have remembered who the hell he was.” While this prepared speech was entertaining, there were major inconsistencies to his claims. Wes also stated that George had met Mark Osterman, the DHS police officer and he called him his token White friend. Osterman has also confirmed this. A token is an exception, not the rule. Other witnesses repeatedly pointed out that most of George’s friends were Black and Latino. Black Lives Matter supporters always point out that having a token Black friend doesn’t prove you are invested not a racist, and neither does a token White friend, prove you are one.
In fact, most of George’s friends in Florida, as in Virginia, were not White. This was not only confirmed by Wes, in his police interview on May 31, 2012, but also by George’s ex-fiancé, Veronica Zuazo who said George had a ton of Black friends. Not a token friend, not few, but most. He even opened an insurance business with an African American friend. When that failed, he worked cleaning cars with other African American friends. African American friends came to his house constantly. Again, not a token African American friend. Most of his friends. He also mentored two African American kids whose father was serving life in prison, doing ‘His Brother’s Keeper’ even before Obama suggested it years later. The claim that The Retreat was a White Utopia fails in view of the demographics that were similar to Sanford, in general, when George moved in and neither George nor his wife Shellie only had White friends. Ironically, it was Wes, in 2005, who was introducing George to White women, beginning with his high school friend, Samantha Schiebe. The claim by Wes that George was White because he married a White woman, falls flat considering whom Wes himself was introducing from his own life. The ‘Rest in Power’ producers then pay George’s ex mother-in-law to use pictures of George’s family gatherings with Shellie’s family to claim that George hung out predominantly with White people. It is ironic that Wes would claim that he left George because of his White girlfriend, Shellie as Wes was, again, seen with George in September of 2013, when George had an incident with his soon to be ex-wife, along with his very White looking friend, Samantha Schiebe. In fact, it may have been George later dating her, and exposing her attempts at 15 minutes of fame, that may have soured their relationship. If George was becoming White because of a White wife then Wes Robinson was White as well. And by that logic, Kamala Harris and many other African Americans with White spouses are White as well.
Let’s be clear, evidentially, the claim that George identified as White, or that he was racist, at the time of the encounter with Trayvon holds no water. The FBI interviewed scores of people before the trial and found no evidence of racial bias. The Justice Department later conducted a three-year investigation on George and closed their case when they found no evidence of racial bias. But they did find that George was part Afro-Peruvian (Black Peruvian), was raised in a predominantly African American and Latino community, that plenty of his friends were African American (not token friends, but many, that he mentored two African American kids and that he lambasted the Stanford Police Department for their lack of accountability in the beating of a homeless African American man, Sherman Ware.
‘Rest in Power’ next tries to claim that George had violent anger issues. For that, they bring in George’s alleged friend, Hussam ‘Sam’ Alghaze, a Syrian Muslim, which kind of defies the claim that George and Shellie George surrounded themselves with White people. He claims correctly that George and his wife were having heated arguments. But they never mentioned that in all the arguments that Shellie had with her husband, the most George would do is raise his voice and that he would never get physical, as stated by Shellie, herself. Furthermore, investigators found that ththe biggest issues stressing the marriage were debt and credit and had nothing to do with the NW. As pointed earlier, It was Shellie who had George make the first two calls used by ‘Rest in Power’ and George inly made three other calls for the NW, all proven valid. Sam’s statements are also ironic because one of the accusations leveled against George was that he had a racist incident against an Arab at work. The allegation never passed muster when investigated by the employer, and now here we find out that he had a Muslim friend during that time. George’s frustrations that week, that Sam speaks about, are understandable. Not only were there burglaries going on, but his grades were also falling, their finances were in trouble and both his father and grandmother were admitted into the hospital the second week of February. Any person would be highly stressed out.
The next claim that he was violent is based on a 2005 arrest for assault on a police officer does not hold water either. We have Wes Robinson’s own testimony about the case, as well as that of the police officer who states that the first contact occurred when George pushed away the officer’s hands that were on him. In other words, the undercover officer, who failed to identify himself was the initial aggressor. And pushing hands away was the extent of his resistance. In fact, Wes stated that the officer never identified himself when he slammed one of their friends against the wall. Now we know police can abuse their power at times, and even racially profile, at times, but it is entertaining how such a case is ignored when it comes to George. Because no evidence existed for violence, George charges were dropped down to resisting arrest without violence, and eventually dropped all together. Everyone talks about how African Americans are profiled but Wes pointed out that George was also constantly profiled and harassed for being ‘Mexican.’ So, George was only reacting to the officer’s use of force, but because it was George, ‘Rest in Power’ tries to use this police encounter as some type of proof of violent character. Even more damning, when Wes was interviewed during the Trayvon Martin shooting investigation, he stated that he had never seen George engage in any fight, or ever be violent, at all.
Another claim leveled at George was that, in 2005, months after the police incident, he hit his ex-fiancé, Veronica Zuazo. There are few problems with this claim. One, Veronica herself states in her request for a restraining order, that George pushes her out of the way when he is trying to leave her home, with her phone. She never claims that he hit her. She also alleges that her small dog bit him in the face when they were arguing. George counter filing claims that he is trying to leave with his own phone that he loaned her, and she blocked his way and raked his face with her fingernails and only then her moved her aside and left. George had photographic proof of four parallel rake marks on his face that were clearly made by fingernails, and no way possible they were done by any dog bite. No criminal charges were ever filed and both restraining orders were granted.
To add more proof to the pudding, Veronica gave testimony in 2013 that George wasn’t violent, that a lot of his friends were African American, and even was seeing George after his acquittal, which may have led to his divorce with Shellie. Not a good indication that she saw George as violent.
The next claim brought up by ‘Rest in Power’ was that George was a wannabe cop. For this, ‘Rest in Power’,’ brings in ousted Chief Brian Tooley, infamous for covering up the Sherman Ware beating, who claims George was denied an application to be a Stanford police officer because he had a prior for resisting arrest. Of interest is that there is no record of George ever applying to be a Stanford police officer. And, as we know, the resisting arrest charge was dropped. We also know that George did apply and was approved in December of 2008 to attend the Sanford Citizens Law Enforcement Academy which he would attend in January of 2009. George would eventually apply to be a police officer in Virginia in July of 2009 but would be turned down because of his bad credit from his failed insurance company, not for any criminal history. In 2010, George was even approved to do ride alongs with the Stanford Police, with Chief Tooley’s own signature of approval on it, but his experience with the police officers left him disillusioned with policing and he would change his interest to becoming an attorney. This is confirmed by Professor Scott Pleasants under oath where he testifies that in June of 2011, George was pursuing a career as an attorney. His Neighborhood Watch volunteering had nothing to do with him wanting to be a police officer. Officer Dorival even said she tried to recruit George to do a citizen’s patrol program which would even include a patrol car, but that George was not interested in participating. Clearly, he no longer had any desire to be a policeman.
But why would Chief Tooley make such a claim? Well, for that we must visit the year before. See, the year before, in early December, Sherman Ware, a homeless African American man was beaten up by the son of a Sanford police officer, and that man had not been arrested the entire month of December. In January, George wrote a letter protesting police behavior, and specifically Chief Tooley, and would attend a town hall where he clearly stated that Chief Tooley was responsible. When the assailant was finally arrested, Chief Tooley was ousted as well. To say bad blood already existed between Tooley and George, is an understatement. Furthermore, in a subsequent email to Chief Lee, George clearly stated that the treatment of Sherman Ware was one of the principal reasons for his distrust of the Sanford Police Department.
‘Rest in Power’ goes out of its way to try to claim that Trayvon was profiled for his race or his hoodie, but the consistent fact is that since the night of the event George has stated that he grew suspicious of Trayvon because of his proximity to the entrance of a house that had been previously cased, by Emmanuelle Burgess. The house owned by Frank Taaffe. Whether Trayvon was committing anything wrong is irrelevant, as the suspicion was valid because he was out of place, and the Neighborhood Watch instructions specifically stated that anything even slightly out of place should be reported.
The claim has been made that Trayvon was just walking home from the 7-Eleven, that he went to buy Skittles during half time of a basketball game, and that Trayvon was just trying to get home. But Trayvon departed the 7 Eleven at 6:24 PM, way before the basketball game begun, and the walk home should have been just a an 18-to-20-minute walk, and only 12 minutes to cover the half mile to where George encountered him at Frank Taaffe’s house. George spotted Trayvon and called the non-emergency number at 7:09 PM, 45 minutes after Trayvon had departed the 7 Eleven. No one has established what Trayvon was doing for over 30 minutes, nor has anyone established that George’s claim of seeing Trayvon near Frank Taaffe’s house was false. Absolutely no one has shown that Trayvon’s skin color, nor his hoodie, had anything to do with George’s suspicions. At no point in time did George volunteer race or clothing except when asked. In fact, in all his prior calls that related to African American people, he identified them as being Black. In Trayvon’s case, when asked which race, he states that he ‘looks Black,’ and only when Trayvon approached his car, did he confirm that he was Black. So, skin color had nothing to do with the call, and neither did the hoodie, no more than the Leather Bomber Jacket Emmanuelle Burges was wearing when he attempted to burglarize the house.
‘Rest in Power’ tries to allude that George chased down Trayvon and shot him. The facts do not add to that claim. We know where George parked and where the physical encounter first occurred. They are 128 feet apart. An average jogger would have have covered that distance in in less than 20 seconds. From the moment George says that Trayvon is running and exits his car, to the moment he stops, no more wind noise is heard, and he says that ‘he ran,’ 32 seconds have passed. In other words, he has easily reached the crosswalk intersection, the point of encounter proven by where Zimmerman dropped his keys in the altercation, and Trayvon is no longer there, nor visible from there. This moment is confirmed by Rachel Jeantel’s testimony where she says Trayvon ran and lost George.
The physical encounter would occur 3 and a half minutes later at the same place George was standing and that Trayvon had run by and was no longer visible from. And if we go by Jane Surdyka’s testimony of seeing Trayvon’s body from her window, visibility was at least to 90 feet, and there were no bushes to hide.
There is no way the encounter occurred at the intersection unless Trayvon, who had left, returned. We know he did because Rachel Jeantel first said Trayvon made it to the back of his house 370 feet away from the spot of the initial physical encounter, and then that he saw Zimmerman and spoke to him, before punching him, in a place where George twice stated that Trayvon was no longer in sight. Fuethermore, in Jeantel’s first telling, George’s reaction to Martin challenging him with ‘why are you following me?’ Is to respond ‘what are you talking about?’ A person in active pursuit would not respond that way. But someone who waa not pursuing at the moment of confrontation would.
The fact that Jeantel would think Trayvon would throw the first punch, as was stated by her in a later interview, would speak to her perception of Trayvon’s inclination to fight. A perception that would be supported by multiple texts between the number alleged to be hers and that of Trayvon that referenced Trayvon’s multiple fights and the troubles he incurred because of them.
Which leads us to Trayvon’s Character. Jerilyn Merritt claims the State was afraid that if they introduced personality and good achievements, they would counter it with tweets, and texts that would show that Trayvon was not the perfect person. But they smudge the truth in telling what those imperfections were. ‘Rest in Power’ tries to elucidate this character by showing remembering the life and good acts of Trayvon. But they fail to tell the full story. Jahvaris Fulton claims that his stepfather, Tracy Martin coached Trayvon and that when his parents got divorced nothing changed. That is a provably false claim.
Tracy left Sybrina Fulton in 1997 when Jahvaris was 6 years old, and Trayvon was 2 to live with a new woman Alicia Stanley. No mention of her in ‘Rest in Power’. This is the same year Tracy had a daughter, Tanika with Larisa Rosier. No mention of her in ‘Rest in Power’ either. In 1998, Trayvon would move in with Alicia and Tracy and her 14- and 9-year-old daughters, Valencia and Kanisha. No mention of them in ‘Rest in Power’ either. The next year, Tracy Trayvon, while divorcing Sybrina, and living with Alicia, would have a son, Demetrius with Cindy Lopez. No mention of him in ‘Rest in Power’ either. It is the next year, 2000, when Trayvon is living with Alicia that Trayvon starts playing football at Forzano Park, right around the corner from her house. Sybrina and Tracy’s divorce predated Trayvon ever playing football. Nothing could have changed as he never coached Trayvon before their divorce.
Maybe they were talking about Alicia and Tracy’s divorce? But that can’t be it either. Trayvon would live with Alicia for over 15 years. Alicia and Tracy would eventually marry in 2005. In 2006, Tracy and Alicia move to a new house. Trayvon stopped playing football in 2007. In 2009 Tracy, a trucker who traveled a lot for work, starts dating Brandy Green, the same year Trayvon attends the summer program, Experience Aviation, and then starts attending Miami Carol City Senior High School right around the corner from Alicia’s new house. In, 2010 Trayvon volunteers at the summer program, Experience Aviation, and attends Baker Aviation School after class. During this time, Trayvon clearly wants to be involved in the Aviation industry and is an exemplary kid. Then Alicia Trayvon finds out about Brandy Green.
In 2011, Tracy Trayvon moves out of Alicia’s house and Trayvon moves to Sybrina Fulton’s house and transfers to Kropp High school, near Sybrina’s house and drops out of Baker Aviation School. It is 2011 that is relevant for Character in a 2012 event.
Sybrina and Tracy failed to mention the change in home, school, and parental environment that Trayvon experienced. They also neglected to include the entire scope of Trayvon’s subsequent troubles in school; especially the activities pertinent to the night Trayvon encountered George. It wasn’t just about marijuana, or lean or truancy. And it wasn’t just two suspensions. These facts are not important to try to smear Trayvon, but to understand the circumstances and mind set of Trayvon before he encountered George.
So let us explore Trayvon in 2011, after he left the protective care and guidance of Alicia Stanley, the most significant mother figure he had growing up.
First let us look at drug use as ‘Rest in Power’ brings it up. In ‘Rest in Power’ Mychal brings up a video that claims Trayvon was doing Lean and that the Skittles and Watermelon drinks were bought for that purpose. He says this is an attempt at smearing Trayvon as these are not the ingredients of Lean, but enough evidence exists as far as back as 2003 where various African American online forums specifically refer to using skittles and various fruit juices along with OTC drugs to make Lean. So, the claim that it is not possible that he was making lean on February 26th is invalid.
We also know that in June, Trayvon has conversation on Facebook on getting more codeine and doing Lean instead of burning (smoking marijuana), so the claim that Trayvon did not do lean is also inaccurate. He would also text about selling and using drugs in July, September, November, and December of 2011 and lastly, in February of 2012. In fact, ‘Rest in Power’ mentions only one suspension, days before Trayvon died, for drug residue and a smoking pipe.
But let us take Chad Green’s court claims at face value. He said that he asked Trayvon to get him Skittles, so it is possible Trayvon was just getting Skittles and a Watermelon drink for his soon to be stepbrother. Even though Trayvon did do Lean and Marijuana, even sold it, there is no hard proof he did either drug that night.
Next, let’s explore any evidence of violence on the part of Trayvon in 2011. In September, Trayvon is texted by his brother Demetrius asking when he will teach him how to fight. In October, he texts about avid watching of MMA. On November 7th he texts that he has been suspended for fighting. On November 11th he texts about another fight, with rounds, where he made the other person bleed. He also texts that he got mounted on the first round and was not able to do anything. Much like he would later mount George. In December, he texts that he got kicked out of Sybrina’s house for hitting a teacher. More than likely, he was suspended again. On February 12, 2012, he talks about fighting again, and the next day he texts that he got suspended for fighting, again. On February 18, he states again that he is in trouble with his mother for fighting. And two days later his cousin messages him saying he didn’t tell him that he swung on the bus driver. It is possible that this was why he reported getting suspended on February 13th.
Finally, while not fighting, Trayvon was also interested in possible violence of another kind. In January of 2012, he texted a picture holding a firearm, and on three other days in February, he talked about buying a gun. As he was a minor, these would be illegal activities. The reality doesn’t match the claim that Trayvon was just a peaceful kid at the time of his encounter with George. Not withstanding the fact that he seems to have been an exemplary kid in his earlier years before he moved out of Alicia Stanley’s home.
Now let’s look at the ‘Rest in Power’ claim that there is absolutely no evidence that Trayvon would have possibly been involved in a crime of opportunity such as casing or burglarizing a house. The fact is, on October 20, 2011, Trayvon was found with stolen property and a commercial screwdriver, described as a burglary tool, and he was suspended as well. The only reason he did not have a criminal record was because the Miami-Dade Public School System’s, School Superintendent Alberto Carvalho gave his hire, Police Chief Hurley, instructions to reduce the criminal behavior of young black males. The chosen strategy between them, to ensure optical success, was to avoid criminal adjudication in favor of school discipline to punish black student criminal behavior. And the reason this burglary, and Trayvon’s involvement flew under the radar of Detective Serino. And all this happened before getting suspended again on February 23 for drug residue and pipe in bag.
Along with Trayvon’s unaccounted time, Trayvon’s reported familiarity with the neighborhood (neighborhood kids had stated that he had been there on prior occasions and had played football with them on various occasions), and the fact that an improvised slim Jim (burglary tool) would be found near the scene of the shooting a few days later, it would not be completely out of the question to suspect that, indeed Trayvon might have been looking for a crime of opportunity. Again, plausibility, not proof. Furthermore, Jeantel stated that Maetin cut through the adjacent neighborhood to het to the Retreat. That cut through goes directly by Frank Taaffe’s house and window, where George claims to have first seen Trayvon, further corroborating his claims and enough to allow for George’s claim to be reasonably credible that he saw someone near the house of a previously cased house and called the police because of that suspicion.
And further adds veracity to his other claims that he exited his car trying to keep a line of sight, reacting to the dispatch’s inquiry on Trayvon’s direction when running, and that once he lost sight of Trayvon and he was walking back to his car, Trayvon came back and confronted and assaulted him, forcing him to defend himself with lethal force. And for that reason, no arrest was made.
Whatever issues Trayvon developed from the divorce of his father to Alicia Stanley, moving to a new school, etc. Trayvon was no longer the innocent kid that lived with Alicia Trayvon. Barrington Irving and Barrack Obama both said that Trayvon could have been them, but neither of them ever had a record of fighting, striking adults, handling stolen property, etc. All providing evidence that Trayvon was at least capable of being involved in burglaries and was capable of striking George. And this is the evidence that the Prosecution wanted to exclude by avoiding the issue of Character.
So, we know that George did not chase down Trayvon, nor is there any evidence that he was profiling African American males. We also know that George gave a plausible reason for his suspicion. We also know that if Trayvon returned and initiated the confrontation and was on top of George. But ‘Rest in Power’ argues that even George was being assaulted, if it weren’t for Stand Your Ground, George would have been persecuted for shooting an unarmed minor.
First let’s examine traditional self-defense. In all 50 states, a person has the right to defend themselves from reasonable fear of grave bodily injury. Many states require an attempt to retreat before lethal self-defense can be used. Stand Your Ground states do not. In situations where retreat is impossible the point is moot, and all 50 states have similar standards. We have an eyewitness account stating that George was mounted as well as expert testimony that points to the fact that Trayvon was shot while on top of George based on the burn marks and gun residue on the clothing. Therefore, the duty to retreat is moot. As is Stand Your Ground.
Now, let’s be clear, for you to apply lethal force a reasonable belief in an imminent grave harm, not actual grave harm occurring must exist. In other words, George did not have to sustain grave injury to defend himself. A reasonable person who is mounted and has their head slammed into the cement, even if it only produces a small laceration can reasonably believe that more of those could produce grave injury. Any study of concussions can prove that. The laceration would be enough to show that impact occurred. So would a bump in the head.
Many would argue that Trayvon’s age and the fact that he was unarmed would be enough to prove there was no risk of grave injury. In fact, from 2007-2012 there was at least 8 adults who were killed by minors with their bare hands. So, it was reasonable to believe an unarmed minor could kill him. Of course, with the Cherubic pictures of Trayvon at a younger age, many were unaware of Trayvon’s size. But we have both Trayvon’s family stating that their son was 6 feet three in early interviews and vector analysis of the 7-11 video calculated him at 6-foot 2 close enough to confirm those early claims. George is around 5 foot 7. We have images of both George and Trayvon on that night and can place both images next to each other adjusting for height. In fact, the Defense did just that and brought two silhouettes into court.
Again, all that is needed is for reasonable belief that Trayvon be capable and have a credible intent to do imminent grave harm. His capability was proven by his own communications, and his intent was proven by the multiple impacts to George’s head. The claim that George was heavier or that he also knew MMA are both flawed as well. MMA has rounds and a referee that can stop a fight to avoid grave injury. In any given day, one MMA fighter can defeat another, even if the other is usually better, but a referee is there to stop the fight.
When Trayvon mounted George and was pummeling him without incurring any reciprocal damage, he clearly could overcome George and severely injuring him as there was no referee to stop Trayvon from inflicting such grave injury. Furthermore, the eyewitness, gave Trayvon the opportunity to stop the fight, when he said he was calling 911 and to stop. Trayvon chose not to, even when given the opportunity to disengage and retreat. At that time, he chose not to, he could no longer claim he was in fear. He had established dominance. George’s alleged weight and alleged experience became irrelevant. Not that ‘Rest in Power’ did not try desperately to make them relevant.
Even if George had been the initial aggressor, which the evidence clearly shows he was not, when Trayvon did not allow George to retreat, he allowed for another clause in Florida’s self defense law to apply. An initial aggressor cannot claim self defende unless he has exhausted all possible ways to escape without using deadly force. George struggled for over 4 minutes to get out from under Martin as he was being pummeled, and that allowed him to shoot in self defense, regardless if he had been the initial aggressor or not.
‘Rest in Power’ tried to argue through both sides of the mouth that Trayvon wasn’t a threat. First, they argued that George was drastically heavier that Trayvon, he wasn’t. George was roughly 15 pounds heavier than Trayvon, at the time of the shooting. During his arrest, George weighed in, fully clothed, at 194 pounds. Trayvon fully naked and with massive amounts of blood loss, weighed 160 pounds, according to the police report. The subsequent coroner’s report would report a further loss of 2 pounds. Add 2.5 pounds for clothing, 2.5 for shoes, and about 5 to 10 pounds which would be the average blood loss, and Trayvon was a fit 170 to 175 pounds. 6-foot 3 young man before the shooting. And again, the weight difference was irrelevant to actual ability, and ability was established by Trayvon’s capacity to establish a dominant position.
Later, ‘Rest in Power’ tried to argue the opposite, that George got fatter to show that he was a less capable fighter. Wait what? I thought his weight was what should have given him the advantage. You can’t have it both ways. But let me know when DJ Khaled can beat up the likes of Neil Magny or shoot, Jay Z, and then your betting odds (irrelevant to a court case) might be more accurate.
What about ‘Rest in Power’s supposed proof of George’s fighting ability? Also, irrelevant, as Trayvon’s superior ability was already established by his ability to mount and injure George without sustaining any damage. But ‘Rest in Power’ brought it up, so let’s analyze those claims as well. George joined Kokopelli’s in October of 2010 at a whopping 255 pounds. He had no fighting experience at all. He stated that he wanted to lose weight, learn self-defense for a law enforcement career. The owner of Kokopelli’s has stated, and his website also states, that he offers cardio boxing for those who have no fighting experience and where no actual fighting occurs. Both George and the owner have stated that he did both the above referenced cardio boxing, and some basic jiu jitsu around his college schedule.
By December of 2010, George had done a police ride along with the Sanford police and the attack on Sherman Ware had occurred. George protested at the time against this attack and criticized both the Stanford police for his experiences in the ride along and the attack on Ware, an African American homeless man. He clearly stated that he no longer wanted a career as a police officer, and instead, wanted to be an attorney. This was also confirmed by George’s Prof. Pleasants.
While George continued to train to lose weight, the desire for any type of law enforcement training no longer was there. As the owner of Kokopelli’s stated, George never learned to properly throw a punch beyond a punching bag, more importantly, he never learned to take a punch, and the closest thing to a fight he learned about was basic jiu jitsu, which does not allow punches and is done on a mat. But, as George stated, it might have saved his life. Because, while Trayvon was also very aware of MMA techniques and top control, George was able to shimmy enough to get off the cement sidewalk where his head was being slammed. That didn’t change the fact that he was still being pummeled which would be enough for a reasonable belief of possible imminent grave injury. Confirmed both by the eyewitness and George’s repeated screams. That shimmying also exposed his gun in his holster which Trayvon felt and made it a struggle for a gun, that made it a life and death situation.
‘Rest in Power’ makes much ado that Tracy Trayvon and Sybrina Fulton claim that it was Trayvon was the one screaming, but the evidence is against them. On February 26th, John Good, the eyewitness, stated that it was George, the Hispanic with a red top that was screaming. On February 28th, Officer Serino said that Tracy Trayvon stated that the screams were not his son’s. This was confirmed by his fellow officer also in the room. On March 3rd’, a second eyewitness, a 13-year-old African American kid testifies that he saw a man with a red top laying on the ground screaming. That would be George again. On March 15, the tapes are released and Sybrina Fulton who has been forewarned by Tracy, hears the screams, and claims it is her son. Now Tracy is claiming it is their son as well. On March 26th, Austin Brown, the now identified 13-year-old restates that he saw the man with the red top on the bottom screaming and moaning. That would be George again. On March 31st, Jahvaris Fulton would state that he wasn’t sure who was screaming.
‘Rest in Power’ points out that on the same day Jahvaris couldn’t recognize the voice of the screamer, The Tampa Sentinel using George’s voice from the reenactment, and the recorded screams, contact an alleged audio expert Owen who claimed George was not screaming based on his software that he was trying to market. Primeau, another alleged expert claims the voice must be of a young boy. So even though both Trayvon’s father and his brother did not recognize the voice, these two alleged experts became the news.
On May 12, 2012, another alleged expert, Reich again claims the voice is that of a younger man and not George’s. None of these so-called experts had ever heard George scream in fear, nor heard any sample of Trayvon’s voice. At the same time, an FBI audio expert, Ryan stated that the claims of these supposed experts were flawed as the voice and pitch of a person in an excited stage can change drastically. Especially in cases of extreme fear. But they still made the news.
By May 23rd, 2013, we finally started seeing what was in Trayvon’s phone. And it turns out, not only was Trayvon’s phone password protected but it was double encrypted by an app to further hide communications. Once the phone was finally cracked, we got to see Trayvon’s texts describing his criminal drug activities, but more importantly illegal fighting, images of him with an illegal gun, and even video of him refereeing a fight and another where he is recording a fight and we can clearly hear his voice in an excited state.
On June 7th, 2013, these same so-called experts provided by the Sentinel and Washington Post, Reich, and Owen, reiterate their claims in court. But people forget that the very same day, ABC, had a forensic expert test the screams, not only against George’s reenactment screams but to Trayvon’s excited utterances as well. The forensic expert’s conclusion was that the screams were more like George’s voice than Trayvon’s and that more than likely it was George screaming. A conclusion that was completely predictable as eyewitnesses had already said that it was George screaming and these tests were unnecessary. On June 22, the FBI’s foremost expert on Audio identification, Dr. Horosaka Nakasone, shoots down the claims of the Sentinel and Washington Post experts and their testimonies are found not to qualify as expert testimony.
So, we have George, on the night of the shooting, in a state of confusion, blurting that he was screaming, before any evidence of recorded screams came out, we have two eyewitnesses who testify on that night that it was George screaming, two people who knew Trayvon intimately, Tracy and Jahvaris, stating that they could not recognize the voice to be Trayvon’s, and the only voice analysis that ever actually compared all three voices determining that George’s voice resembled the recorded screams more than that of the voice of Trayvon. By all evidentiary analysis, it was George screaming. Any other claim is wishful thinking.
The only reason George was eventually arrested was because of subterfuge on the part of Benjamin Crump. Let’s go back in time. Benjamin Crump and Daryl Parks first wet their feet in the profitability of the race victim game with the case of Martin Lee Anderson, in 2006. All officers and the nurse were acquitted, and it was determined that Anderson died of a sickle cell crisis. One of the reasons, the British Military doesn’t allow people with Sickle Cell Anemia to participate in the military, is the risk of this type of death during heavy exertion.
I am not in favor of boot camps for troubled kids, but it was clearly an accident. The claim that he died from a beating was not proven. And to avoid expensive civil lawsuit litigation the city settled for seven million dollars.
Benjamín Crump had figured out his gold ticket. If he could get charges pressed, he could mount protests and he could get families to sue and settle. He even got then Senator Barrack Obama to participate in the 2005 protests. In 2008, when George was voting for future president Obama, Crump was a financial contributor to his campaign.
Back to the Trayvon/George case. Two days after the shooting, after Tracy Trayvon testified that the screams were not his son’s, he calls attorney Patricia Jones, who connected him with Benjamin Crump. Meanwhile, two African American officers, one who was friendly with Tracy Martin and third one married to an African American, start pressuring Serino to change his mind and to find a way to file charges against George. One of them leaks information to Crump and, on March 7, he would, with the help of Julisson Communications, sell a story to the media of a small cherubic 17-year-old, using pictures when he was 14 from 2008, who wanted to be a pilot and was racially profiled by a white neighborhood watchman. This is the news that Barbara Liston of Reuters explodes over the media and starts the outrage campaign.
The next day the Move On campaign started (I regrettably signed that foolishness and fell for the hoax, hook line and sinker). The following day, Benjamin Crump’s friend, President Obama makes his famous, “If I had a son” declaration on the same day a letter by the NAACP is written to Attorney General Eric Holder to get involved in the case. Two days later the New African American Panthers issue their Dead or Alive posters.
It is not until March 12th that Reuters reveals George’s own African American roots, but the damage is done. The pressure is on by the African American Police officers on Serino, and he caves and writes a Capias for George’s arrest claiming he failed to identify himself. Never mind that there was no reason to identify himself as there was no evidence George confronted Trayvon. Then Crump starts his filing of a civil lawsuit against the Retreat’s Homeowner’s Association, the golden ticket strategy was in full effect.
On June 26th, Detective Serino tired of the pressure to make a false arrest quit his Detective job and went back to being patrolman, it would take till July 12th of 2012 for Serino to admit that the only reason why he wrote the Capias was because he was pressured by the three police officers to do it. In ‘Rest in Power’, they tried to make it sound like Serino gave up on life because he failed to convict George. It was the exact opposite. Serino was despondent because he knew he helped charge an innocent man and permanently vilify him in the court of public opinion. By May 5th of 2013, The HOA settles and pays over 2 million to Trayvon’s family. They folded early, as it is on May 23rd that all the evidence of Trayvon’s fighting and involvement with a burglary would finally come out. Benjamin Crump, who has never actually won any of these big-name cases in court. He still got paid big because of the settlements.
Crump and Company further cement this racial victimism ideology claim by claiming that if the racial roles were reversed and George had been Black and Martin White, he would be convicted. This was patently false and could be proven with two cases, the acquittal of African American Roderick Scott for killing White 17-year-old Christopher Cervini from 20 feet away, claiming the smaller Cervini put him in fear. That was in NY a self-defense state. We can also use the case of African American Adeirean Carey who shot 17-year-old Hispanic Marco Santiago, right in Florida. In both cases the shooter was acquitted even though they shot from a distance, not even with any actual assault or any contact whatsoever occurring before the shooting.
‘Rest in Power’s next claim that the jury was all White also doesn’t hold water nor does it matter as neither Trayvon nor George were White, and furthermore one of the jury members was an African American Puerto Rican.
‘Rest in Power’ then tries to make the claim that the Prosecutors didn’t want to talk about race. It is not that they didn’t want to talk about it. It is that they couldn’t, as no evidence of racism was found. All they could make was a trumped-up claim for profiling based on animosity because of prior robberies, and that didn’t hold water in court as they had no evidence of that either.
Crump even made the claim that they somehow blocked him from testifying as they did not want him on the stand. This is a bogus claim as Crump specifically filed a motion in court to protect himself from testifying as there were several questions on his handling of the evidence of ‘Eugene Diamond’ later claimed to be Rachel Jeantel. A witness who didn’t even surface until 22 days after the shooting, already coached by Trump. A later investigation by Joel Gilbert would point out that Trayvon, actually, had a girlfriend Brittany Eugene Diamond, who was not Rachel Jeantel.
‘Rest in Power’s next tactic is to try to demonize George for things that happened after the fact. Let’s analyze those claims.
Since March 16, 2012, George, and his family started to get death threats. Not only to kill George, but to cut his sister’s throat, kill her mother and grandmother and even his 5-year-old nephew. But their civil rights didn’t matter. On March 30, 2012, Roseann Barr tweeted George’s parent’s address. In December Spike Lee retweets, a wrong address. George went hiding to a trailer in the woods. Then he was arrested and would not be released until acquittal. Even though, four days after he was acquitted, George stopped to save a family in a burning car on July 17th, 2013, he was fully aware there was a price on his head. As he rushed to save the family, another person, an African American, rushed to the rescue as well. When he realized it was George helping him, he said he knew who George was, and told him to leave before a crowd arrived as his life would be in danger.
African American friends, like Mike Lansdowne, Elloise Dilligard, Joe Oliver, and others stood up for George only to be threatened and decided to go into hiding. The mob didn’t want to hear the truth. George still visited his African American mentees even up to December of 2013. But as the rage mob kept on trying to find him, vilifying him on the news constantly, George had to remain in hiding, jobless, in debt, without a doctor, because he couldn’t risk giving his address out on any public record.
Both Shellie Zimmerman, Samantha Scheibe and Zimmerman himself have talked about how this inordinate amount if pressure led to, as Shellie put it, George snapping, and becoming another person. Or as George has states himself, to become the monster he was portrayed as. It took him years to find himself again. Let’s continue.
In February of 2014, he was chased by a mob who recognized him, then, in September of 2014, Apperson recognizes him and threatens him. ‘Rest in Power’ would allege that this was a road rage incident and George was the aggressor, yet there was no reason for George to know Apperson. But Apperson, who, it was shown in court later, was obsessed with George, and could easily recognize him.
On February 15, 2015, the Department of Justice, under AG Holder finally acquits him of any racist hate crimes, yet the rage mob was still looking. Later in May 2015, Apperson attempts to assassinate him. Apperson was proven guilty in court, as George had his window rolled up and his windows were tinted. The bullet hole proved George had his window up and could not have been threatening Apperson, as he claimed.
After four long years of constant hiding, being demonized, not being able to have any semblance of a normal life and forced to seek safe grounds among gun enthusiasts, George either starts believing the cool aid they are selling, or just embraces being the villain. If they are going to hate him anyway, he will give them cause. After all the hate, and an assassination attempt, George is fed up with the vast majority of African Americans and Liberals in general. He starts sounding like many of the racists he was accused of being, and who he was forced to hide behind. But only after four long years of hell. If you think this is proof of George being a racist in 2012, I have a bridge to sell you.
What about the alleged violence that ‘Rest in Power’ presents after acquittal?
Let’s go over it. But first remember that George is dealing with PTSD and his family already had said he had developed a hairline trigger for angry outbursts after the whole ordeal. Add that to untreated ADHD, OCD and you have someone having a hard time coping. But his anger was directed at tantrums and throwing things, never, actually, at hitting anyone. Again, there is not one iota of evidence of Zimmerman being physically violent with someone.
George is accused of pointing a gun at his wife in September of 2013, punching his father-in-law, and destroying her iPad. But those claims do not hold up to scrutiny. ‘Rest in Power’s very own Wes Robinson would testify that no gun was present, and this was corroborated by 5 other witnesses. Even Shellie admitted she never actually saw a gun. Meanwhile, Wes admitted it was he who hit Shellie’s father in the nose with his forearm after he charged at George and Wes tried separating them, So no violence from George there. As for the iPad, we did say George’s PTSD had him destroying objects. Her hitting him with it might not have helped.
What about Samantha Schiebe? On October 28, 2013, around a month before George allegedly threatened her with a shotgun, Schiebe and her mother started shopping around major networks to sell them a news story. They claimed George was suicidal, self-medicating and had put gun in his mouth. Then when George decided to leave her, she claimed to be pregnant. Finally, when he is about to leave, an argument happens and George doesn’t hit her, but locks her out of the house. Someone, possibly George, smashed the glass of a table. Then Schiebe claims George allegedly pointed a gun at her. A claim she later retracted. But her credibility is already suspect. Again, the 15 minutes of fame seeking principle.
Finally, you have Brittany Brunel who says he got angry and threw a bottle of wine at her, but again, no charges pressed, and the bottle was actually thrown against the garage door. Again, a physical reaction consistent with his PTSD, but no evidence or claim that he ever actually hit anyone.
Then came the joke of books ‘Rest in Power’ and Suspicion Nation. And Harvey Weinstein was going to do a series with Jay-Z on the books before he fell from favor. So, in August of 2017, Jay Z took the reins and Jay-Z’s production company hires an investigator to try to dig dirt on George for his upcoming series ‘Rest in Power’ with Paramount pictures. For the next few months George’s’ family would be harassed in efforts to get dirt on George. In December of 2017, George is contacted to give his thoughts on the case but is advised not to because it would be a hatchet job, as it indeed turned out to be. After repeated harassment by the investigator, George decides to fight back and starts to telephonically harass the investigator by calling him over 50 times. No evidence that ,George does anything other than voice mail and text harrasment. George pleads no contest to misdemeanor phone stalking.
And that sums up the false narrative levied against George.
The last part of ‘Rest in Power’ addresses the claim that George somehow was related to White Supremacy and Trump, even though Trump condemned George on multiple occasions and was as wrong about George as Obama was. George was a card-carrying democrat who voted for Obama and fought for minority causes. There was no White Supremacy involved, nor was Trump any succor for George. Then it goes on to claim systemic racism against African Americans is occuring which is false as well. I address most Black Lives Matter and systemic racism claims in my article Black Lives Matter is Problematic.
While I share with other readers a sense of outrage over the verdicts in the Amadou Diallo shooting case, it occurs to me that all the media coverage of this case has obscured an even more egregious example of the excessive use of police force that occurred recently on the opposite end of the country. I am referring here to the case of Michael William Arnold, who on March 27 of 1998 was shot a total of 106 times by a veritable army of law enforcement personnel in Hawthorne, California. Fifty-five of Arnold’s wounds would later be found to be serious enough to have caused his death.
As with the Diallo shooting, the evidence clearly indicates that the victim was unarmed at the time of the shooting. Though found by coroner’s investigators to be clutching an air pistol in his right hand, the chief medical investigator would note that Arnold had been shot multiple times through the head and right arm, as well as three times to the right hand, making it virtually impossible for him to have maintained his grip on a gun. Also, since the gun was undamaged, the bullets striking Arnold’s hand would have had to miss the gun in doing so. As further evidence of a set-up, the medical examiners found gunshot residue on Arnold’s hand, about which a spokesman noted “You can’t get gunshot residue from firing an air gun,” though “if someone who had fired a weapon touched his hands, you could transfer the residue.”
While there are clear parallels between the Diallo and Arnold cases, there is also one very significant difference. In the Diallo shooting, the four officers involved belonged to a special plainclothes division with a reputation for strong-arm tactics. In the Arnold shooting, however, those involved were rank-and-file uniformed officers representing three different police agencies: the California Highway Patrol, the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Office, and the Hawthorne Police Department. The number of wounds inflicted on Arnold also indicates that there were literally dozens of officers involved with the shooting.
The FBI has reported that, on average, only about one in three shots fired by officers in the field find their target. In the Diallo case, for example, with officers firing from fixed positions at close range at a trapped and stationary target, less than half the shots struck their intended target. It can then be surmised that for Mr. Arnold to have been hit 106 times would have required that as many as 300 shots be fired. Even if every officer involved had emptied the clip of their gun, some two dozen officers firing simultaneously would have been required to inflict the number of injuries that Arnold sustained.
It is no doubt precisely because of this key difference in the cases that there have been no charges brought in the Arnold case, no high profile trial, and no mentions by the press. This case has been kept from public awareness precisely because it illuminates far more clearly the extreme levels of police violence permeating American society than does the Diallo case. For had the verdict gone the other way in the Diallo case, the four officers involved would surely have been denounced as rogue elements, as was officer Justin Volpe in the recent Abner Louima case.
But how are we to apply the “bad apple” theory when several dozen officers from three different law enforcement bodies, randomly assembled at an alleged crime scene, decide to riddle a man’s body with 106 bullets? Clearly, sacrificing a few rogue cops would not have sufficed in this case. There is in fact no handy back-up plan to explain away a shooting of this nature. What possible explanation could there be for an army of police to resort to such an incomprehensible level of violence?
This case clearly raises troubling questions about the rising levels of police violence being perpetrated, and of the acceptance of such violence within the law enforcement community. The fact that none of the officers involved appears to have had any qualms with participating in this sordid affair speaks volumes about the degree to which the nation’s police forces have been militarized.
It is to be expected then that the case of Michael Arnold has received no press coverage. The questions raised would be too disturbing, and answers much too difficult to come by. Which is precisely why it is crucial that organizations such as yours give this case at least equal standing to the case of Amadou Diallo.
Timothy Bella claims that the moment that George Zimmerman became unrecognizable to Leanne Benjamin was when the Florida man finally realized that there was a chance he could go to prison for killing Trayvon Martin. But there is another way of looking at this. In a case that was clearly self-defense and where the law took second stage to political motivations, where a person was politically charged because the evidence did not support the charges, and when the prosecution realized they were losing the case, they attempted to prosecute him at the last minute on a lesser charge which the defense had not litigated in court. It was at that moment that George Zimmerman realized that the system of law had completely been lost and that the facts didn’t matter. Up to that moment, Zimmerman had still believed in the system of law.
Even though the concept that an unarmed person could still be deemed deadly, and the right of self-defense was not invalidated if the attack was done with their body as a weapon. This was nothing new, like when Roderick Scott, a Black man fatally shot Christopher Cervini, an unarmed White teenager, in Greece, NY, in April 2009, and was found innocent due to self-defense, but in Zimmerman’s case it was made into a clown court by the media who racialized the case, even though Zimmerman’s own mother was Afro Peruvian. A woman of African and Native American decent. Timothy Bella wonders why a man who was persecuted on false allegations, with death threats, for him and his family, where the entire family had to go into hiding for over a year, might have lost it when the last straw in a politically motivated prosecution occurred.
I should be surprised that George Zimmerman, who was raised all his life by an Afro-Peruvian mother and grandmother. People of African and Native American descent, the most oppressed groups in the Americas; George Zimmerman who was raised by a grandmother that mentored two African American girls, in house at his own house; George Zimmerman whom and African American Virginian testified that was raised as Family by his Black family; George Zimmerman who grew up with most of his friends either Black or Latino; George Zimmerman who chose to take an African American girl to prom; George Zimmerman who chose his African American friend to open his first business; George Zimmerman who was a Democrat who voted for Barrack Obama for president; George Zimmerman who mentored two African American kids whose parent was serving life in prison; George Zimmerman who fought for the rights of an African American homeless man who was attacked by the son of a White police officer; George Zimmerman who called the police so they would make sure a 9 year old Black boy wouldn’t get run over; that George Zimmerman was pissed because he was unjustly accused of being a racist.
George Zimmerman who chose to become a Neighborhood Watch member because his community, that included African American friends, one of which testified in court for him; that George Zimmerman might have been pissed when he was unjustly stereotyped as a racist because he defended himself from provably bigger man
George who had death threats made against him and his family, including threats to rape and kill his two year old niece; might have been pissed that his entire family, including cousins had to move and go into hiding, change jobs, and schools, and finally a politically motivated attempt of prosecution, that, when failing, tried, last minute, to prosecute him on a lesser charge that was not made by the prosecution and that his defense had never litigated against.
Oh, the horror, of him getting pissed and something changing in him when even the president he voted for played into the largest case of scapegoating in the last century. Even saving people from a burning car couldn’t change the false story the media placed on him changing his life forever.
He still deals with death threats, constant fear for him and his family members. He still suffers from PTSD and a major case of paranoia after an assassination attempt occurred. One that was actually proven in court. And they wonder why he has anger issues, and he despises the larger liberal and African American population that demonized him and threw him under the bus.
Bella claims that Zimmerman has stretched his ‘15 minutes of infamy’ into 10 years of reprehensible headlines but let us examine each of those claims.
First, Self Defense from an assailant is nothing to create infamy. But false allegations of racism, misrepresentation of the facts by the media and portraying Martin as a tiny 14-year-old who was trying to become a pilot definitely would create a false belief of infamy. And they have been doing this for years. Every year since they lost their attempt at a political prosecution, the media has brought up his name in any way possible. They began with speeding, remember that one?
Zimmerman’s ex-wife, Shellie claimed that Zimmerman threatened her with a gun, but later admitted she never actually saw a gun. Six other witnesses also said the same, no gun. Later, Zimmerman’s girlfriend, Samantha Schiebe, who was at the first incident and saw how that played out and saw how quickly people assumed Zimmerman’s guilt, called the police, and claimed he threatened her with a gun as well. Of course, what most the media didn’t say was that she had been shopping the news networks to sell her story about her relationship with Zimmerman for weeks before the incident. They also didn’t report that he had broken up with her and got back with her because she falsely claimed she was pregnant. Those are the things the mainstream media obviates while reporting biased news.
The Apperson story follows similar threads. In his trial, it was shown that Apperson had been obsessed with Zimmerman and had instigated the first confrontation when he recognized him. In the second incident he claimed he saw Zimmerman point a gun at him and that he shot in self-defense. The only problem is that the windows were polarized, and the shot went through a closed window. No way he could have seen a pointed gun. Apperson was convicted because of attempted murder. But Zimmerman was supposed to keep on acting normal after multiple death threats, on him and his family, and an now an assassination attempt.
And who was there for him? Not the liberal crowd that supposedly defends minorities, even though he was one, no, the gun rights crowd was there to protect him. And people are surprised he started to sound like them, stopped being a democrat and adopted more conservative views. Why would he stay liberal if the liberals threw him to the wolves?
Let’s keep looking at claims. Another big one brought up, is that Zimmerman sold his gun for $200,000. Never mind that he is $5 million in debt. This is huge hypocrisy when the Fulton Martins have profiteered off their son’s death at the tune of over $5 million with copyrights on Trayvon’s image, different sayings surrounding the case, appearances, on stage, in movies, settlements, and book and tv productions. Both Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton are both multimillionaires now.
Let’s talk about that show, Rest in Power, where they sent private investigators s to harass the family of Zimmerman for information, digging them up out of hiding and trying to get statements. Statements that then would have been used out of context or edited as they were done with others in that farce of a show. This family instigation so frustrated Zimmerman that he harassed one of the PIs over the phone, via email and texts for 9 days. The PI was dumb enough to leave his contact info. Zimmerman has ADD and suffers from PTSD. And because he is forced to hide, he is powerless. So, he used the only tool he had to pay back the PI for the harassment he did to Zimmerman’s family. He plead no contest to misdemeanor phone stalking. Quite different than actual in person stalking, like the investigator did under the guise of research for an ultra-biased and factually false show. What Zimmerman has never done, in all these accusations, is actually struck anyone. Never shot anyone, even in all these alleged confrontations, except Martin. Not one shot. What was the difference? Martin was assaulting him and he couldn’t retreat. He didn’t even shopot back at Apperson. But he is the danger.
Then GZ, a multi-millionaire with high level security cries on a song because Zimmerman told the PI that he would feed Jay Z to the alligators if he harassed his family again. Like Zimmerman had the power to do that. Jay Z, who stabbed his brother and was as large as Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman showed false bravado, empty talk, but the media again made it huge news.
And now the last one alleged. A claim of a frivopous lawsuit thrown out. Not one media report actually looked at the substance of the lawsuit against the Fultons, Crump etc., to check for validity. Or the fact that they never counter sued. Why is that? The suit got dismissed by a liberal judge who dismissed it on technical grounds claiming that Zimmerman had failed to show a claim of fraud, even though the suit was about malicious prosecution. 12 lawyers fought to get the suit dismissed on technicalities but avoided deeply litigating the actual issues claimed to prove them false. The Trayvon Hoax, book and film have made a good chunk of money, yet no one has tried suing the author for libel. It is based on his book that Zimmerman brought his suit. on those allegations. Why is no one investigating the allegations to prove them false. No, they want the claims buried and ridiculed, but no attempt to prove them false in court. Why not? Maybe because they are true. We don’t know.
Regardless, what we do know, and what Bella fails to realize is that Zimmerman hasn’t been convicted of any of these allegations, nor has he ever been proven liable of anything. The reason Zimmerman is still famous is because the victim ideology crowd is still hyper focused on him.
Between the racist comments, the constant claim that race denial is a ‘race card’ and the absurd claims that White victimhood doesn’t exist, you have really grated my last nerve.
Sure, you got teary during The Blind Side and Antoine Fisher; you maybe even gave money to KONY2012 and after Hurricane Katrina; you maybe even donned a hoodie to protest the murder of Trayvon Martin. You even are genuinely concerned about racism and injustice; I don’t doubt that your “best friends” might be Black. None of this matters if you don’t acknowledge that there is a pattern of criminality in many African American communities that has developed out of historic segregation; a systemic culture of distrust in law, order and education. African Americans continue to die at the hands of guns held by security guards and police officers, many innocent because they were stereotyped. Stereotypes that are constantly reinforced by real criminality that is disproportionate to the size of the African American community.
I have heard that “we are all Trayvon Martin” over the last few weeks, yet we are not Trayvon Martin, some of us are George Zimmerman, Christopher Cervini, Daniel Adkins Jr. and many others that have died or been vilified when confronted with Black criminality. Yet you have failed to acknowledge their experiences, nor would you understand their experiences because you are not them, nor could you be. There is no monolithic White America to be ever suspicious or not to be. Your microcosm of White America is not everybody’s. You have not experienced, nor are you qualified to claim what all White America goes through. Many White Americans walk to the store with a lot of fear of being hunted down when they live in communities of high crime, and when looking White adds a higher rate of being targeted. Many White Americans can’t count on justice because they are just not part of the elite, fall through the cracks of the system, and are victims of police brutality, just like other people. No one grieves their loss of life nationally. Christopher Cervini wasn’t Trayvon Martin, Jan Pietrzak wasn’t Trayvon Martin. Daniel Adkins Jr. wasn’t Trayvon Martin. You aren’t Trayvon Martin, and you aren’t George Zimmerman, you are clueless, thinking you understand the lives of many Americans who live lives that are substantially less protected than yours. See White apologists, live in La-La lands where they are economically secure, usually in environments that are protected, and have never experienced racism. Therefore, they assume their experience translates to all of White America. Obviously White Americans do not experience the same types of racism, discrimination etc. that many, not all Blacks face. But on the same token, there are many White Americans who do face burdens and discrimination of their own. Starting with the fact that all White Americans aren’t Germanic Anglo-Saxons, and many are even stereotyped by the Anglo-Saxon/Germanic White majority in this country. Just look up White Hispanics in the prison system and discrimination in the job. See cushy White apologists think they are the only White experience in America where I am sure, with their connections and visibility they do get: presumed innocent until proven innocent. That isn’t the case for many born in other circumstances. And it definitely hasn’t been for George Zimmerman. It wasn’t for Daniel Adkins Jr. and it wasn’t for Christopher Cervini.
I want you to close your eyes for a second, and imagine that your son or daughter, sister or brother, granddaughter or grandson went for a walk and got killed? Skittles and Iced Tea has nothing to do with it. Innocent people are getting murdered daily. Mostly intra-ethnic, with the highest percentage occurring in Black on Black crime, but also Inter-ethnically where Whites are killing Blacks, Blacks are killing Whites, Mestizos and Native Americans are also killing Black and Whites, and are being killed by them. Add some Asian and Pacific Islanders like Samoans and Vietnamese and Laotians, and you see similar events; but mostly Asians are being killed by Blacks. In fact, after Native Americans being killed by Black and Whites, Black on White murders are the highest rate of Inter-ethnic caused mortality in the nation, including cop killings, or excluding them. Now how many of those Whites being killed are Hispanic Mestizos classified as White by the FBI is a different question. Bottom line, while it is horrible that Black people are getting killed because of racism or police brutality which don’t always go hand in hand, more get killed by Black on Black criminality, and that criminality and disproportionately gets people killed in other ethnic groups as well. Furthermore, Whites, White Hispanics, Mestizos, etc. are also victims of Police Brutality. The record for being shot most times was a White man called Michael Arnold who was shot over 100 times. They found him with a BB gun. Many non-Blacks have died without notification to the family. But Trayvon Martin’s family was notified within 24 hours. The evidence was not enough to convict George Zimmerman, nor is it today. He has only been charged because the media did not ignore this case, but instead consistently misreported it and created a circus. Nor is it uncommon to check the body of a deceased, regardless of background for drugs or do a background investigation. Both George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin have been explored in the media. But Trayvon Martin was sanctified by the media while George Zimmerman was demonized, beginning with anachronistic pictures, and Trayvon Martin was only subjected to further scrutiny when lots of the claims of the media didn’t add up, and private parties started exploring Martin’s record with more scrutiny. Neither exploration by the media was right. They should have left the exploration to the professionals and only reported their findings. Instead they worked on leaks, misrepresentations and outright falsehoods.
While you imagine the outcry of seven Black youths gunned down by police and security guards in a matter of months, I would ask you to verify which ones where not involved in any type of criminal activity that would further expose them to the risk of police brutality. See cops at least need the excuse of trying to stop a crime. Criminals don’t need that excuse. Now go explore the media for White and Black victims of crime. Let me know which numbers are higher. Black on Black crime, and Black on White crime occur every day, yet the media is not saturated with it. In fact your whole hypothetical comparisons stink.
No, you can’t. And you don’t have to. Because you live in your White Apologist La-La land.
From Florida to Los Angeles, from Atlanta to Wisconsin, from Chicago to Ohio, Black families are burying the innocent and the future. Doesn’t that make you sad; doesn’t that make your angry? Your silence is telling. You can barely say their names much less acknowledge the epidemic in our midst, because deaths are occurring every day, and not by cops. Stephon Watts was a tragedy, but it wasn’t just random police brutality. The kid suffered from violent autism and the police had been called, by his parents, over 10 times to subdue him. This time he was wielding a kitchen knife and cut one of the cops. Was it excessive? We weren’t there, that is what Internal Affairs investigates, but it wasn’t an isolated incident. Trayvon Martin was also a tragedy. I don’t think he was a bad kid. But the evidence does seem to point to him feeling accosted by Zimmerman’s suspicions and his investigating. The problem is Zimmerman had a right to investigate. All Martin had to do is confront Zimmerman and see what was going on. But instead a fight ensued. A fight the evidence points to Martin as the aggressor. Ramarley Graham, a drug dealer, is another example of police excess, but one that was avoidable. If he hadn’t been doing illegal activities he wouldn’t have invited the risk of Police intervention. It is no secret, messing with the police can get you killed. Be you Black or White. If chances are higher when Black, why expose yourself even more? It’s not that hard staying legal. . Wendell Allen, another person caught in the drug war. He was smoking pot in a house suspected of dealing. Again tragic, but again it was avoidable. Now when you have cases of people who weren’t even involved in the drug trade like the old Black Lady killed because of a mistaken address, then the outrage should be huge. In these cases, you should also be outraged, and White people die in these raids as well, but there is still the caveat, they put themselves in a place of risk. This is no different than a person who decides to do rock climbing, some fall, that risk is known. . Dante Price is definitely a tragedy, he was not involved in any major criminal activity and he was killed by two overzealous White security officers. This should make national news as it stinks of racism. But this is no different than any other hate crime where the victim was Black or White. They all should make national news. When there is an investigation and the killing is unjustified, it should make national news. But first there should be an investigation. Bo Morrison (a person of mixed ancestry, much like Zimmerman) broke into someone’s house and was shot when he surprised the owner. While tragic, he probably would have been shot if he looked White, Hispanic or Asian. In a gun happy country, it’s not the smartest thing to go run and hide from the police in another person’s house. Getting busted for underage drinking isn’t as risky. Rekia Boyd is another tragedy. But one started by a criminal bystander next to her. He pulled out a gun and aimed it at the Detective and the detective defended himself. By law, that person who first pulled out the gun is guilty of Rekia’s murder because he instigated the situation. Let’s see if anyone turns him in. . Kendrec McDade was involved in a robbery, point blank, and the victim called in two armed suspects. He put himself in the position to risk his life. Rock-climbing for money would have been safer.
All have lost their lives like so many others, mostly through the actions of criminals. All except one have died under similarly circumstances, criminal activity.
So I don’t care if you cried during The Help and if the ‘feel good’ movie of the year featuring chicken-frying maids and affluent White women made you feel all racial apologist tingly on the inside. Did you cry at the report of yet another lost Black life when it wasn’t caused by a White person? If so, what have those tears done – have they led you to join a rally, to demand a deep analysis of how to stop disproportionate crime in the Black community? I don’t care if you voted for President Obama; have you demanded dramatic changes to our recruiting process in our education system? Have you stopped making excuses for criminals? Have you taken off your myopia glasses and seen that this environment of hate is going in all directions? It is time for us to check ourselves, to listen and demand a better America starting with ourselves. It is time to stop denying racism and blaming everything on White privilege, distracting and deflecting with “what ifs” and excuses. It is time to demand justice for the Zimmermans, Pietrzaks, Byrds, Newsoms and the Rekias, not because it could have been one of your sons and daughters–it could have, but you are to clueless to realize it–but because it is simply the right thing to do.
Jaime Pretell
Sincerely
Multi-ethnic
An eyeballed ‘member’ of what racialists categorize as “White” America
In March of this year, the Toronto Board of Education began a systemwide survey of its students, its eighth since 1970. It is probably the only school board in Canada to consistently gather statistics in that most politically charged of areas, racial and ethnic performance. In all likelihood, this latest survey won’t tell us anything new or significantly different about the academic performance of the races: It will show, once again, that blacks are more likely to drop out, and otherwise do much worse academically, than whites and Asians.
Here’s what we already know about Toronto’s high school blacks: A 1993 follow-up survey of 1987 Grade 9 students found that 42 per cent of blacks dropped out before they graduated (compared with 31 per cent of whites and 18 per cent of Asians); black students make up only nine per cent of the high school population, yet 34 per cent of the lowest academic levels. Data from the board of education in the neighboring City of York show blacks to be less likely to take advanced-level English and, in particular, math.
Why do blacks perform so poorly when compared with Asians and whites? Why do they drop out in such large numbers? A vast collection of studies, surveys and research papers offer diverse explanations, but in the last few years, one particular view — promoted by a vocal segment of the black intelligentsia and its white liberal allies — has pushed out the others: The school system has “failed” black students by not “meeting their needs.” These academics and activists blame blacks’ academic troubles on a pervasive and systemic racism in the schools; to eliminate these “barriers to achievement,” we hear, we must change the school curriculum and reform or even restructure the school system. This view pervades major studies aimed at influencing public policy: the 1995 Ontario Royal Commission on Learning’s report, and a hallmark 1995 study by OISE professor George Dei.
But is the school system really at fault here? Or are blacks failing for other reasons? I will argue that while racism does indeed exist, and while much can be done to improve the schools and the curriculum, above all, reasons for black educational underachievement can be found in the black community, the black family and the troubling subculture of black youth. School reforms will yield few benefits. Altering self-defeating behaviors will yield far more.
The black community of this essay will be the community in the Greater Toronto Area, where the largest concentration of blacks in Canada resides — over 128,000, or almost 60 per cent of the official number. But I will also look at the experiences of blacks elsewhere, make comparisons and draw analogies.
I should identify myself before I continue: I am black, originally from Nigeria, and I have lived in Canada for 20 years. I am a magazine journalist, and I have written in the past about problems black youths have adjusting to life in Canada. While doing preliminary research for this essay, specialists in education, directly and indirectly, suggested that academics like them, who understand “the complexities,” are best suited to discuss these matters. I have to disagree. The debate on the education of our children touches us all. It is far too important to be left to academics, some of whom, I found out, seem driven more by ideology than the need for good education.
A number of Black Canadian Academics have written extensively about blacks in education and their ideas are often repeated by some activists and parents. The most prominent ones would have to be OISE’s George Dei and Patrick Solomon of York University. These academics take what is known as an “antiracist approach” to the problems in education.
In an essay in the Canadian Journal of Education, PhD student Earl Mansfield and professor John Kehoe of the University of British Columbia describe antiracism as a holdover of the cold war, tracing its development to the “Marxist informed” theories in the United States and Britain in the early 1970s. Predictably, these theories “contend that racism arises from and is a condition for capitalism.” If some blacks see racists under every bed, Marxists see capitalists crawling out from under every rock, and in antiracist theory, racism theorists and Marxists form a natural alliance. And here are the useful ideas engendered by the union: Capitalism needs cheap labor for capital accumulation, which it gets by importing non-white immigrants. This creates antagonism between the immigrants and white workers who see the immigrants as undermining their ability to bargain for higher wages. In this way, capitalism redirects white working class anger away from capitalists to non-white workers — hence racism.
Capitalism, the theory tells us, therefore has a vested interest in both inequality and racism. Now here comes the “Aha!” part: Since the educational system is a component of the capitalist system, it inevitably reproduces this racist inequality. Antiracist education, then, necessarily becomes politicized: It “teaches the structural, economic and social roots of inequality,” and “focuses critical attention on unequal social and power relations that capitalism maintains. . . .”
Now, if you think antiracist education is just another one of those silly, fringe theories that ivory tower academics churn out to make their lives more interesting, think again. In 1992, the Ontario legislature passed Bill 21 which gives the minister of education the authority to require school boards to implement antiracist and ethnocultural equity policies. And document no. 206 on antiracist education, put out by the Toronto Board of Education, tells us that this approach involves a “comprehensive, whole school approach which addresses both structural changes and attitudinal-behavioral changes. . . .”
Antiracist education has taken various forms over the years, but the Toronto board’s document no. 206 identifies some key assumptions and underlying concepts. Here are a few that caught my eye:
Racism is structural and institutional, not just an expression of individual bigotry.
Racism is defined by its effects (rather than by its intent), which result in ethnic minority groups being disadvantaged in many areas of their lives.
Schools are accountable for addressing the academic inequity of opportunities and outcomes for racial minority students.
An antiracist curriculum examines issues of power and equality, and deep-seated problems related to superordination and unequal power distribution.
By holding schools accountable for the grades of racial minority students, minority groups cannot be responsible for their poor performance, leaving little room for individual and group responsibility for success or failure. Antiracist theory seeks to improve the performance of racial groups not through their own efforts, but through the goodwill of the operators of the system, who have the power to change the system to permit poorly performing minorities to do well. This mind-set can reinforce feelings of inferiority among the minorities. And the irony is that these theories are supposed to empower poorly performing racial minorities.
The proponents of reform seem unwilling to accept that the Toronto school system may really not be all that biased, and that North American public schools may generally be meritocratic. According to Professor Laurence Steinberg’s longitudinal study, most students who invest in education do well, and this is true for all races. Blacks who work hard are rewarded with success. The Toronto Board of Education surveys show precisely the same thing. The survey evidence simply does not support the notion of an all-pervasive systemic racism in the schools designed to maintain the dominance of one race over the others. For if such a system exists, how does it allow the Chinese, the Koreans and the Asian Indians to come here and outperform the allegedly dominant race?
Steinberg’s study, which examined student “engagement” in great detail, found that Asians by far outperform whites, who outperform blacks and Latinos. And as might be expected, Asians spend far more hours on their homework than whites, who spend far more hours than blacks and Latinos. Asians cut classes less often, report higher levels of attention during class, and rank school as a higher priority than the other groups do. Blacks and Latinos did far less homework, cut classes more often and considered school a low priority. The Toronto board surveys, though not as detailed, also found the same connection between homework and performance: Asians did the most, while blacks and native people did the least; blacks who put in many hours of homework generally did well. Not surprisingly, both studies failed to find any connection between performance in school and either self-reports of discrimination (Steinberg), or fair and equitable school climate (Toronto board).
These surveys and the failure of school reform efforts indicate that poor black performance does not stem from the school environment. It does stem, in part, from the state of some black families. As the Toronto board’s 1991 survey shows, only 34 per cent of black students live with both parents, compared with 69 per cent of whites and 64 per cent of Asians. The survey notes that those with both parents at home tend to perform better than those living with single or no parents, a relationship that holds across all racial groups. Other recent studies link family breakdown and single parenthood to a host of juvenile problems, including poor school performance. In the April 1993 Atlantic Monthly article “Dan Quayle Was Right,” Barbara Dafoe Whitehead summarized some of the research, showing children in single-parent families to be more likely to drop out of high school, get pregnant as teenagers, abuse drugs and be in trouble with the law. Antiracists either ignore or dismiss the state of black families as a “pathological explanation.” Patricia Daenzer of McMaster University, also found that the majority of dropouts in their samples lived in single-parent families.
Family sociologist David Popenoe writes in Life Without Father that “marriage and the nuclear family — mother, father, and children — are the most universal social institutions in existence. In no society has nonmarital childbirth been the cultural norm.” In the inner cities of the United States, where the greatest social disruptions in North America have occurred, non-marital childbirth has almost become the norm, with more than half of black children born out of wedlock. Evolutionary scientists also tell us that high parental and paternal investment characterize our species: Fathering, they say, must have conferred great evolutionary advantages; having both parents is important in ways we do not completely understand.
In the United States, many researchers believe that the absence of a positive role model in the homes of some students is responsible for the frustration, bitterness and violence they bring to school. The conservative social commentator George Gilder, long before recent studies confirmed his thesis, told us in Sexual Suicide that single-parent families fail to socialize males, and a society can have dire problems when such families are concentrated racially and geographically: “even a small proportion of unsocialized males can make life miserable for thousands of conventional citizens in a modern urban environment. The apparent swashbuckling hedonism of the male counterculture, moreover, exerts a strong appeal to almost every man. Thus unsocialized men can have a disruptive influence — as well as direct violent impact — far beyond their numbers.”
Virtually every study shows that parental involvement can improve performance. Yet within the black community, parental involvement in education is delinquent: Daenzer found that two-thirds of dropouts’ parents never visited the school, nor returned letters sent home from school. This neglect occurs despite a climate in which most black people, including the antiracists, urge parental involvement, and some associations, such as the Organization of Parents of Black Children, exist to help deal with this.
Next to families is the peer group, which is possibly even more important to school success. Steinberg found that “peers shape student achievement patterns in profound ways . . . in many respects, friends are more powerful influences than family members are.” As we would suspect, students who devalue academic achievement tend to hang together. And Steinberg reveals that if a student with, say, B grades, starts hanging out with students with Cs, the B student’s grades will decline over time. The antiracists have rarely directly examined peer culture, although Solomon’s study shows that black students do hang out together.
John Ogbu, who has done some of the most insightful work on peer pressure, finds: “Some black youths obviously become more or less imprisoned in peer orientation and activity that are hostile to academic striving. These youths not only equate school with ‘acting white,’ but make no attempt to ‘act white.’ They refuse to learn, to conform to school rules of behavior and standard practices; these are defined as being within the white American cultural frame of reference.”
Some, such as Cecil Foster, have rejected the peer group thesis outright, suggesting, presumably, that it does not apply to blacks in Canada. I think it does, and I hope to someday see detailed Canadian studies examine black peer group student behavior. Such studies may be impossible today: White researchers fear accusations of racism and black researchers are trapped in antiracist delusions.
More and more people among Toronto’s Blacks are, to put it mildly, fed up with some of these harmful attitudes and are willing to speak publicly about it. One of them is Chris Usih, head of the department of mathematics and computer science at a Scarborough secondary school with a high black population. Usih, who also works with black youth and often addresses community gatherings, believes that there is racism in Canada. But he says that it is not the reason for black underachievement:
“Among the black youth I have worked with, a few things are clear: First, they do not recognize the value of education; second, there is no support system. No one seems to be out there communicating to them the value of education. So school is to them a social activity, a place you go to be with your buddies. Many don’t show up for school, or show up when they feel like it. I once called a parent and said to her, ‘So-and-so hasn’t been in school for a while, are you aware of it?’ The parent replied, ‘Well, my daughter doesn’t want to come to school; what do you want me to do? Push her out of bed?’ And I was tempted to say, ‘Yes, if you have to, you must.’ And these are the parents who come to the school to say, my son is failing because the system is racist. We have some serious problems. For the longest time we have used the excuse of race or racism as the reason why our kids don’t achieve. Frankly, that’s pure garbage. I think it’s high time our community started looking at the real issues.
“Management consultant Stanley Ansong agrees with Usih. Ansong, an MBA from University of Windsor, works for an international business consulting firm. His two daughters have been through the Toronto public secondary schools; one is now a pre-med student, the other, in her final high school year in a gifted program, has never scored below 95 per cent. As a parent, Ansong doesn’t think that racism explains school failure. He also senses a large if still silent group among educated blacks who are simply tired of all the cant and rationalizations. This group, he predicts, will soon form its own organizations to win the hearts and minds of the black community and free it from the enslaving belief in an all-pervasive racism.
“Parenting is very important when we talk about why our children do poorly,” he says. “You’ve got to lay down a successful path early. Even in a racist society, there are choices. Until you recognize this, you cannot set objectives and plan towards a goal. There will always be obstacles in life, and racism is only one of them. All parents, especially black parents, should start early to work out strategies to overcome the obstacles and difficulties that their children will encounter in life. There will always be a thousand reasons to fail. Even if there is only one avenue to success, what we need to do is find it and take it.”
A generation ago, another black expressed a similar sentiment: “We must not let the fact that we are the victims of injustice lull us into abrogating responsibility for our own lives. We must not use our oppression as an excuse for mediocrity and laziness. . . . The Negro will only be free when he reaches down to the inner depths of his own being and signs with the pen and ink of assertive manhood his own emancipation proclamation.
“Someday soon, I am certain, a new movement will be born, inspired by these words of Martin Luther King Jr., to confront the black intelligentsia and stop the damage they do to our youths. I am a self-interested party in all this, for I have two children of my own, ages one and five, and I want more for their generation than blacks have had in mine. This article is being written in the hope that it will advance that day.
Old paper written for my CRT class in Law School, 2001
With the present failure of the educational system to address the needs of Blacks in their pursuit of equality in education, a trend has grown in force; the desire to incorporate Afrocentric curricula into predominantly Black schools and to institute charter schools with this type of curriculum. While Afrocentrism may serve the purpose of enhancing and counterbalancing a deficient Eurocentric system of education, it presents various concerns that need to be explored. To understand an Afrocentric curriculum and its ramifications, we must understand the history that has brought the necessity that this curriculum is trying to address. We must also seek to understand what legal restrictions such a program may encounter and what other alternatives are available.
One of the many battles fought in the U.S. Judicial system, has been the right to equal opportunity through equal education. In 1954, The Supreme Court decided to reverse a prior decision of Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) that favored “separate but equal” standards in favor of a policy of desegregation and integration. Brown v Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). In its decision, the court stated that schools that segregated students solely on the basis of race could not be equal even if all other tangible factors such as facilities and budget were equal. Derrick Bell, Race, Racism and American Law 4th Ed., 165 (2000). In Green v County School Board of New Kent County, 391 U.S. 430 (1968), the Court imposed an affirmative duty to integrate dual-school systems into a unitary system. Bell, supra at 171.
Experience has taught that integration of schools has not led to equality in education among blacks and whites. Through “White Flight,” school districts have become even more segregated than before the Brown decision, therefore leading to the same problems that occurred under Plessy. Sonia R Jarvis, Brown and the Afrocentric Curriculum, 101 Yale L.J. 1285, 1289 (1992). Even where integration has occurred, the imposition of a Eurocentric curriculum that has catered towards white students and not the specific needs of black students has led to lower accomplishments by Black students. Bell, at 222-223. In Unamerican Tail, Munroe further validates this claim by pointing out that a Eurocentric format, contrary to many claims that it is inclusive, was actually an expansion from Anglocentrism to encompass all Europeans in their acceptance of American culture, but in so doing excluded African descendants from any form of self-identification. Maurice E.R. Monroe, Unamerican Tail: Of Segregation and Multicultural Education, 64 Alb. L. Rev. 241, 281-286 (2000).
Because of this reality, the decision of assimilation has been questioned as a solution, and the possibility of an Afrocentric curriculum in public schooling that is already segregated, has been proposed as valid under Brown. Jarvis, at 128. The Brown decision to end the role of segregation was on the basis of the Fourteenth and the Fifth Amendments in an attempt to create an environment conducive to equal educational opportunities and consequently to empower Blacks with their full rights at national citizenship. Id. at 1288. The question is if an Afrocentric curriculum would promote or violate this purpose.
An Afrocentric curriculum teaches basic courses from a perspective that uses Africa and the societal contributions of African Americans as its reference points. Id. at 1294. The belief is that the curriculum would empower the students by improving, self-confidence, self-esteem and consequently educational achievement. Id. Mrs. Jarvis further states that the program would be expected to help correct antisocial behavior and with the correction of the anti-social bias and historical distortions, produce greater understanding between races. Id. High levels of enrollment and graduation at historically black universities (HBUs) are examples of the positive effects that occur when Black students can relate to faculty that presents them a more supportive environment. Id. at 1293.
A few concerns arise when considering any curriculum that might innately segregate other groups from attending the school and /or a charter school that segregates itself from the rest of the ethnic groups. Segregation means that whites and blacks will have separate information networks they can access for jobs and opportunities. Munroe, supra at 249. By lack of exposure to other ethnicities and races, isolation can reinforce stereotypes. Id. at 250. Furthermore, opponents point out that students would be further handicapped for standardized tests and would not learn to compete in a pluralistic society. Jarvis, supra at 1295. Critics state that Afrocentricity is separatist in nature and is too narrow in focus and therefore runs the same risk of distortion and cultural bias existing in the Eurocentric curriculum. Id.
While Afrocentricity has shown a positive role in empowering its students in higher education, it has also shown that it can lead to extremism and separatism. Certain Black Studies departments have had curricula that started expounding black racial superiority theories. Barry Mehler, African American Racism in the Academic Community, The Review of Education 15 # ¾ (Fall 1993) available at http://www.ferris.edu/htmls/othersrv/isar/arcade/afam/academic.htm. Afrocentrism has allowed for the proliferation of many pseudoscientific books and articles that support these superiority theories Id. Their authors tour the Black Studies circuits with great popularity, but are relatively unknown outside Black intelligencia. Id. Critiques by respected mainstream African American, African Studies leaders have encountered responses attacking the criticizer as “selling out”, and not in-depth analysis of the critiques themselves. When Anthony Kwame Appiah, Director of African Studies for Harvard, critiqued extreme Afrocentrism in his dissertation, “Europe Upside Down” (See Sapina Journal, January-June, 1993, Vol. 5, No. 3) he was reviled as traitorous to the African American community by Molefi Asante, One of the main proponents of Afrocentrism. Molefi Asante, A Quick Reading of Rhetorical Jingoism: Anthony Appiah and his Fallacies, available at http://wwwasante.net/articles/Appiah-fallacies.html. Appiah’s main contention was not that Afrocentrism was bad per se, but that it was caught up in a reversal attempt of the Eurocentric racist worldview, not a correction of it. Malinge Njeza, A critical response to Kwame A. Appiah, available at http://www.ricsa.org.za/jtsa/j99/j99njeza.htm. Appiah seeks to defend Africa’s heterogeneity and diversity, from an idealized monoculturalism. Id. By quashing any internal dissent and lambasting the critics instead of responding to the critique, Afrocentric expounders seek to legitimize their claims while avoiding constructive criticism. Okey Chigbo, Black Ideology is the Black Child’s Most Debilitating Burden, available at http://www.nextcity.com/main/town/7reading.htm. Chigbo also points to the fact that to much concentration on pointing the blame actually harms the possibilities of achievement for the Black Youth. Id. He points out that while racism in the academic Community system do exist, part of the causes are being perpetuated in the Black community itself by to much focus on the racism, and not on ways to overcome it. Id. If you teach a Black child that the system is against him, as “Thomas Sowell has written:” How are you going to tell a young black man to work hard, or study hard in order to get ahead, when both the media and many so-called ‘leaders’ are constantly telling him that everything is Rigged against him? Why knock yourself out on a job, or miss the Saturday night party in order to study, if Whitey is just waiting in ambush to pull the rug out from under you any way? Id.
The current Afrocentric extremes are telling Black youth that they are victims of economic and social injustices and that educated and prosperous blacks have ‘sold out.’ Id. While social and economic hardships exist, we cannot risk having Black youth adopting a mentality were they do not believe they cannot succeed within the system at all.
Legally the concept of Afrocentric Curricula may be challenged too. The purpose behind Brown was to eliminate a system that promoted the perception of inequality between Blacks and Whites. Brown, supra. Any promotion of a curriculum that states that there are differences, other than the discrimination itself would counter the purposes of Brown. Higher education has enjoyed a lesser degree of scrutiny because of the right to freedom in choosing a college. Bell, supra at 242. This lower level of scrutiny does not apply to public elementary and high school educations were attendance is a requirement not a choice. If an Afrocentric curriculum is imposed, then it can force other minorities to withdraw or challenge the curriculum, as they feel segregated in much the same way as Blacks feel segregated and challenge the Eurocentric curriculum. Jarvis, supra at 1296. In Garrett, female black students sued to enjoin all male black schools from opening, because they violated equal opportunities to black women. Garrett v Board of Education, 775 F.Supp. 1004 (1991) Here the strictest scrutiny was applied and when there was a dichotomy between genders the school legislation was struck down. Id. at 1007. Similarly, in Grumet, legislation that would have facilitated a creation of a district that would have enabled handicapped, Hasidic Jews to go to a purely Hasidic School, was struck down, because it violated the establishment clause. Grumet v Board of Education, 81 N.Y.2d 518 (1993) What is of key note is that, in its reasoning, the Court stated that regardless of the beneficial purpose, legislation would have a primary purpose of endorsing a religion over another Id. at 531. In a similar fashion, funding of a charter school could be seen as endorsing a racial belief over another. Grumet further states that the case must not be analyzed in a vacuum, but against history and, citing Brown, states that government-sponsored segregation efforts have been unlawful. Id. at 536.
Not because Afrocentrism has had an imperfect track record and there is a question to the legality of an exclusive curriculum based on it, should the concept expire. As Njeza puts it, “what is needed is the correction of the stereotype and misconceptions, not the assassination of the quest.” Njeza supra. In America, Afrocentricity is a powerful political and educational movement that empowers African Americans. It should be coupled with Multiculturalism as a force that drives for change and challenges the status quo of Eurocentricity. Through exposure of the Eurocentric curriculum to Multiculturalism, it is forced to negotiate differences in presentation. By realizing the potential Afrocentricity has, the Eurocentric majority acquires new perspectives of the world, while Afrocentric researchers are exposed to critique of their research therefore culling the rhetoric from the facts. By testing the validity of their claims they strengthen their positions while educating the majority. Ann Macy Roth, Building Bridges to Afrocentrism, available at http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_studies/Articles_Gen/afrocent_roth.html. Exposure of Black youth to other cultures through multiculturalism, can also present them to other cultural values that have enhanced the learning experience of other cultures. As Professor Sylver noted earlier, there was one school down south were students were prepared early to do well on standardized tests and entered Ivy League schools. In a similar situation, mathematician Urie Triesman, frustrated with grades of blacks in his class, started a rigorous coaching program and made them study with whites and Asians imposing harder problems to tackle than in the class. Chigbo supra. Soon the kids were excelling over all kid, black or white, that weren’t in the program. A study done in Australia among Asians and Caucasians showed how cultural factors affected the study habits of the two, and that Asians focused more on studying and therefore performed better. Ranbir Singh Malik, Accounting for the Differential Academic Performance available at http://www.aare.edu.au/98pap/mal9829.htm. Exposure to an environment of empowerment through Afrocentrism, coupled with exposure to the benefits of cultural sharing and networking circles through Multiculturalism will be for the benefit of African Americans in the long run.
I offer this response to Melissa Murray in an effort to highlight why the Black Lives Matter movement is problematic.
Black Lives Matter seeks to highlight the killing of Black Americans (typically men) by alleged vigilantes, law enforcement, and quasi-law enforcement. As County Line Publisher Emeritus Karen Parker points out Black Americans die at the hands of police at 2.5 times the rate of White Americans, not three. While it is not logical that Black Lives Matter should take on every issue for Black folks, it should be focusing on poverty and subsequent crime rates. Why? Because Black Americans have a poverty rate 2.5 times higher than White Americans and that entails a higher crime rate that requires a higher presence of police intervention. We do not have a duty to care for Black lives. We have a duty to care for all lives. Especially if they are overburdened. Black Lives Matter exists because they incorrectly attribute racism or apathy to the Black community, instead of a general problem of apathy toward impoverished and disadvantaged communities of all ancestries.
The mission of Black Lives Matter is supposedly to intervene when violence is inflicted on Black communities by the state and alleged vigilantes. But they do not differentiate between racist-motivated violence and non-racist violence, nor do they separate justified violence from unjustified. They see the deaths of Black men by state actors (including Black actors) or non-Black civilians as racist without looking at the individual facts of the case for merit.
The statement ‘Black Lives Matter’ first arose in 2010 protesting the unjustified killing of Oscar Grant, an African American shot in the back while he was on the ground. The officer allegedly mistook his gun for a taser. This is not a solitary case, and this type of mistake has affected people outside the Black community as well — for example, the shooting of Brian Riling, a White man in 2019.
At this time ‘Black Lives Matter’ meant “Black Lives Matter (as well),” much like the already existing “All Lives Matter (not just entitled ones).” In 2013, you see the saying take a darker turn to mean ‘Black Lives Matter (first).’ Or as they would clarify later, ‘All Lives Don’t Matter if Black Lives Don’t Matter First.’ This darker turn arose because of a racial entitlement movement that has been growing that many have coined ‘Anti-Racism.’
As John McWhorter, a prominent African American scholar has noted, it has taken religious connotations where Whites are innately racist, and Blacks are perpetual victims. In 2012, Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old black youth was shot and killed when coming back from a convenience store because he committed a violent assault on a smaller neighborhood-watch volunteer who had spotted him looking into the window of a previously cased house. The neighborhood had experienced a rash of burglaries and home invasions. The smaller Afro-Peruvian descent volunteer, George Zimmerman, was walking back to his car after “observing and reporting,” according to protocol, when Martin assaulted and mounted Zimmerman, foiling any possibility of escape from a one-sided beating. Martin’s family attorney, Benjamin Crump, falsely claimed, as was proven in court, that Zimmerman was a White vigilante who had racially targeted Martin.
This is not to say that there are not plenty of valid cases of unarmed civilian unjustified killings, just that these types of killings are not unique to Black Americans. Ahmaud Arbery’s shooting by vigilantes is a case in point. But such cases are not unique to Black people. In 2008, an African American man by the name of Roderick Scott saw a 17-year-old White youth, Christopher Cervini, and two 15-year-olds testing car doors. He took it upon himself to confront the teens, at a neighbor’s driveway across the street, by pointing his gun at them. The 15- year-olds fled, and, while disputed, Scott claimed the unarmed, smaller Cervini charged at him. He shot him multiple times from 20 feet away. The state of New York determined it was a justified homicide.
George Floyd is another example. He was suffocated to death by four police officers, much like the case of Eric Garner. Both tragic and unjustified homicides. But no different than the cases of Robert Ethan Saylor, Robert Joseph Minjarez Jr., Troy Goode, Tony Timpa, William Jennette, etc., all White, who died in similar circumstances.
Philando Castile’s death was a tragedy, but one of mistake, not police abuse. Philando was detained because he resembled the APV photo of a recent armed and dangerous robber. As officer Yañez, an indigenous Hispanic man, approached and asked for his ID, Castile informed him that he had a concealed weapon and had a permit. Yañez immediately told him just to not reach for it. Castile, still thinking about his conceal carry permit, which was in his back pocket, on the same side as his weapon, reached for his wallet. At this time, Yañez shouted twice ‘don’t reach for it’ but Castile still moved and Yañez, who was not sure if he was an armed robber or not, shot him. But he shot him after telling him repeatedly not to reach for the weapon. He had no way to know he was reaching for his wallet in the same general direction. Tragic, but neither party was guilty.
Michael Brown was much like Trayvon Martin, an assailant who assaulted the police officer and was proven in a grand jury that he was charging the officer when he was shot dead. In the same week the police homicide of a White man, Dillon Taylor was ignored, when he was shot by a policeman with his headphones on, unarmed. Or we can speak of the more recent case of the White man, Daniel Shaver, who was unarmed, pleading for his life, made to crawl, and was shot to death. That there is a problem with many officers being trigger happy does not change the fact that most these shootings are justified, and the ones that do not span the spectrum of ethno-racial groups who overwhelmingly were in or near impoverished communities.
This has been going on for a long while, with valid cases, like the homicide by police of Michael Arnold, a White man who was shot over 100 times in 1998 and Amadou Diallo, an African American who was shot in similarly horrifying ways the next year.
Emmett Till is a historical tragedy, but one irrelevant to the discussion, as it was before the Civil Rights movement, the enactment of Civil Rights Amendments to the constitution, and occurred before most policemen were even born, during the era of legal discrimination of Jim Crow.
The point is, as Nick Gillespie in Reason’s “John McWhorter: America has Never Been Less Racist,” points out, “The unwillingness of both blacks and whites to acknowledge progress on racial equality is a long-running theme for McWhorter, who in 2000 published ‘Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America,’ which argued that ‘in most cases, [racism] is not an obstacle to people being the best that they can be.’” In “Anti-Racism: Our Flawed New Religion, McWhorter argued that “anti-racism” had become a new secular religion in America, complete with “clergy, creed, and also even a conception of Original Sin.”
Today’s monster of economic inequality and disenfranchisement are the biggest obstacle to help stop the rates of high mortality due to police homicides. Until we address the root causes of that disproportionate criminal element rooted in poverty, disenfranchisement, lack of employment and somehow correct those root causes, high crime rates will continue to drive high police interaction, and no matter how much police departments are accused and persecuted on charges of racism, their numbers of arrests will continue to be higher, because the numbers of victims will demand it. Meanwhile, BLM has made the death toll worse, not better.
I believe the Black Lives Matter (“BLM”) movement arose out of a passionate desire to protect black people from racism and to move our whole society towards healing from a legacy of centuries of brutal oppression. Unfortunately, over the past few years I have grown more and more concerned about the damage that the movement is doing to many low income black communities. I have avidly followed the research on the movement and its impacts, which has led me, inexorably, to the conclusion that the claim at the heart of the movement, that police more readily shoot black people, is false and likely responsible for thousands of black people being murdered in the most disadvantaged communities in the country.
Over the last few years I’ve also seen support for the BLM movement grow within Thomson Reuters. A search of the hub shows dozens of messages and posts supportive of BLM, including an entire series of official TR events supporting BLM and organized in cooperation with BLM organizers. A similar search of Reuters News shows extensive positive and uncritical news coverage of the BLM movement. Unfortunately, in both our internal discussion and external coverage there seems to be a nearly absolute failure to examine the scholarly research, coming out of the most respected institutions in our country, which demonstrates the acute damage that the BLM movement is doing to many black communities, and the possibility that structural and systemic patterns in our society which have historically disenfranchised blacks are propelling the movement’s whirlwind rise.
Thomson Reuters must do better to resist simplistic narratives that are not based in facts and evidence, especially when those narratives are having such a profoundly negative impact on minority or marginalized groups. And, as one of the most important and respected media institutions in the world, Reuters News has a special responsibility to correct widely-repeated falsehoods that are spread as a result of structural and systemic patterns in our society which have historically disenfranchised blacks.
The Falsehood at the Heart of the BLM Movement
The BLM Movement became nationally recognized with street demonstrations following the deaths of a number of black suspects at the hands of police in 2014. Since then, BLM’s highest profile demonstrations have been protesting police related deaths of blacks, and the movement again made international headlines after George Floyd died in police custody in 2020. Wikipedia has a “Timeline of notable events and demonstrations in the United States” regarding the BLM movement, and the vast majority of notable events and demonstrations concern someone being fatally shot by police or otherwise dying while in police custody.
Many have noticed that the rise of BLM has coincided with the rise of ubiquitous smartphone usage, meaning that nearly everyone is carrying around a video recorder at almost all times. This meant that police shooting statistics that may have once seemed abstract suddenly became visceral and real, and police shooting incidents that may once have been mired in conflicting accounts suddenly had documentary footage showing exactly what happened. These videos are disturbing. Almost everyone feels horror when seeing a video of someone being killed.
At BLM protests, and from BLM proponents, we have since heard that “it’s open season” for police to kill black people, and that police are “hunting” black people. According to the BLM website itself, “Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise” by “state-sanctioned violence against Black people”.
Putting aside, for the moment, whether language suggesting an intentional genocide is hyperbolic, it’s clear that BLM activists and proponents are emphatically asserting that police are targeting blacks with lethal force: shooting and killing them in circumstances that they wouldn’t shoot and kill whites. And, this claim, that police are targeting blacks with lethal force, seems to be, if not the most important claim of the BLM movement, at least one of the most important claims.
The only problem: it’s completely untrue.
Benchmarks
According to the Washington Post’s database of police shootings, over the last five years there have typically been between 30% and 100% more unarmed whites killed by police than unarmed blacks, with an average across the last five years of 39% more. For instance, in 2020 there were 457 whites shot and killed by police, compared to 243 blacks. Of those, 24 of the whites killed were unarmed compared to 18 blacks. (It’s worth noting that in the vast majority of police shootings of both blacks and whites, police gunfire was justified in response to an armed and threatening suspect.)
If there are more unarmed whites than blacks shot by police each year, what is the basis for the claim that blacks are being targeted by police with lethal force? The idea is that because blacks are 13% of the population, while whites are 76% of the population, if police were not targeting blacks with lethal force, whites would be shot by police at a rate 5-6 times the rate that blacks are shot. In other words, we have to “benchmark” the higher number of shootings of whites to their larger population in order to have a fair comparison. While these disproportionate numbers certainly point to some kind of problem, is the problem police bias?
To start approaching an answer to that question, we must consider the issue of benchmarks in more detail. Police are not supposed to distribute lethal force randomly throughout the population in order to ensure equal application to each racial group. Instead, police are supposed to use lethal force only in response to threats of serious violence during encounters with criminal suspects. Thus, if lethal force were applied by police without any bias whatsoever, we would expect the number of applications of lethal force for each racial group to be proportional to the number of high risk encounters members of each racial group have with police officers, and not with the population overall. The correct benchmark for measuring bias in police use of lethal force is the number of high risk encounters for each group, and not the population of each group.
This is a critical distinction because there are definitive reasons to believe that police have very different rates of high risk encounters per member of different racial groups for reasons related to entirely legitimate policing objectives. For instance, as the evidence in the following section demonstrates, on average, violent crime rates are dramatically higher in predominantly black communities than they are in predominantly white communities. This violence takes a severe toll on those communities, can traumatize residents there, makes it virtually impossible for children to focus on school and academic success, and worse. Because, on average, there is so much greater violence in predominantly black neighborhoods, in order to protect and defend the (mostly) black residents in those communities, police are disproportionately required to confront criminal suspects in those communities. Therefore we should expect there to be more encounters in those communities for the purpose of achieving entirely legitimate and laudable policing objectives.
As another example of why it’s important to use a proper benchmark, there is a substantial body of evidence establishing that members of different racial groups resist arrest at very different rates. Because the vast majority of potentially dangerous encounters happen when a suspect resists arrest, a greater rate of resisting arrest will be expected to increase the number of police shootings, even if police have absolutely no bias when deciding when to shoot.
Therefore, if we want to investigate whether there is bias in the application of lethal force, we need to look at the rate of police shooting per potentially violent encounter with criminal suspects—and not per member of a group’s overall population (most of whom are law abiding, peaceful citizens). When you do so, the supposed anti-black bias disappears completely, and possibly, even reverses.
This investigation can be carried out in two main ways: (1) consideration of high-level descriptive statistics and (2) econometric analysis that controls for circumstances of encounters. There is a considerable and growing body of research worth discussing, much of which I have studied. While below I have space only to review the key findings from the research, I welcome further discussion and analysis with anyone who would like to investigate this topic in more detail with me.
Descriptive Statistics
A preliminary step when doing a statistical investigation is to consider the high-level descriptive statistics, if for nothing else, than as a sanity-check. Although the descriptive statistics often won’t have the granularity to give definitive answers, you can at least discover broad patterns worth investigating. In this case, we are interested in considering whether the number of police shootings of blacks is disproportionately large in relation to the number of potentially violent encounters between police and black suspects, but unfortunately we do not have reliable statistics about the number of potentially violent encounters nationwide. When faced with a lack of data it is common to look for proxy data that we hypothesize will be highly correlated with our missing data. As alluded to above, in this case, the obvious proxy for potentially violent encounters with suspects would be actually occurring violent crime, for which we do have data.
Here the evidence is very clear. For instance, the Wall Street Journal reports that “African-Americans made up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60% of robberies, though they are 13% of the population.” As for non-homicide violent crime, the Justice Department’s National Crime Victimization Survey shows that whites commit about 48% of nonfatal violent crimes and blacks commit 35%. When you look at just serious nonfatal violent crimes, whites commit about 41% and blacks commit about 43%.
In other words, depending on the type of violent crime, whites either commit a slightly greater (non-fatal crimes) or slightly smaller (fatal, and serious non-fatal crimes) percentage of the total violent crime than blacks, but in all cases roughly in the same ballpark. But, as referred to above, over the past 5 years, police have killed 39% more unarmed whites than unarmed blacks. There are many more whites killed by police, even though whites account for a similar absolute number of violent offenders. Thus, if the number of potentially violent encounters with police reflects the violent crime rates, then the raw statistics suggest that there is actually a slight anti-white bias in police applications of lethal force.
But, what if the violent crime rate does not actually reflect the frequency at which police officers face risk of grievous injury from suspects? Can we find a proxy variable that more directly reflects the frequency at which police officers face risk of grievous injury and thus must use lethal force? Perhaps the most direct measure of the danger of grievous injury that police face is the rate at which they are actually murdered by criminals. Thus, if we benchmark police shootings against the number of police murdered by criminals, we should obtain a very good indication of whether police use lethal force more readily in response to lower levels of threat for one group than another. This yields similar results: “Adjusted for the racial disparity at which police are feloniously killed, whites are 1.3 times more likely than blacks to die at the hands of police.” [EDIT: Here is an even better source, that I’ve only come across recently, looking at police killings by racial group in proportion to the rate that police are killed by members of those groups.]
In other words, if you measure police shootings against a legitimate benchmark, one that is actually related to how often police need to use lethal force for entirely lawful, ethical and moral reasons—such as defending themselves or others from grievous injury—there appears to be a clear anti-white bias.
Econometric Analysis
However, looking at the descriptive statistics like this leaves a lot of questions unanswered. For example, perhaps police shoot whites at a higher rate per violent offender, because, hypothetically, whites are more violent in confrontations with police on average, and police are simply responding to legitimate threats. Thus, to really investigate if there is bias, it’s necessary to look through thousands of examples of police confrontation, code them according to the circumstances, weapons involved, behavior of the suspect, and whether there was a shooting, and see if police on average use lethal force more readily in the same circumstances for one group than the other.
Roland G. Fryer Jr. is a star economist at Harvard University. He was one of the youngest professors to achieve tenure at Harvard, received a MacArthur “genius” grant, and won the most prestigious award for a young American economist, the John Bates Clark medal. Without a doubt, he is one of the top researchers in the field of economics. He also is black, grew up poor, personally witnessed episodes of his peers being roughed-up by police, and, initially at least, supported the BLM movement. He set out to lay the empirical and intellectual foundations of the BLM movement by conducting a study exactly like that described above.
In what he describes as “the most surprising result of my career”, his study “didn’t find evidence for anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparity in police use of force across all shootings, and, if anything, found anti-White disparities when controlling for race-specific crime.” Fryer was so shocked that he disbanded his original research team, hired an entirely new team, and repeated the entire data annotation and analysis process from scratch. He found the same results.
This, perhaps, should not have been as surprising to Fryer as it was because it confirms exactly what the raw descriptive statistics reviewed above implied. (Fryer also found that the result did not change when you ignored the police’s reporting of the circumstances, further adding to the robustness of his findings, and rebutting a possible concern that police dishonestly exaggerate the threat of white suspects at a lower rate than with black suspects.)
It’s worth mentioning here that while Fryer’s results raise the possibility that police shoot and kill whites more readily, his results also show that police more readily use non-lethal force against blacks. What could explain why police would more readily shove or hit blacks, but might more readily shoot and kill whites? That remains an unanswered, and largely uninvestigated question.
Unsurprisingly, Fryer’s study precipitated considerable criticism from researchers sympathetic to the BLM movement. In the Appendix at the bottom of this post, I examine some of that criticism as well as other research in the field. While much of that criticism seems to be motivated, at least in part, by the political and social agendas of the critics, it’s safe to say that Fryer’s study is not the final word on the subject. More research is needed.
Nevertheless, thus far, Fryer’s research finding that there was no bias in shootings stands as the gold standard for investigating the question of police bias in use of force. Although there are limitations to Fryer’s study, no properly designed study controlling for the circumstances of shootings has, before or since, produced any findings to the contrary.
Improper Methods
Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for news-media and even researchers themselves to report research findings sloppily or falsely. As an example, consider a recent study that is widely, but falsely, cited to support the contention of police bias in shootings. This study is based on the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS), which contains only data about encounters that led to someone’s death. Because the data contain no information about the total number of police encounters (including both those that result in death and those that do not) it’s impossible to calculate, for any racial group, the rate that any particular type of police encounter will result in a police shooting—and the researchers make no attempt to do so.
Nevertheless, ABC news misleadingly reports that “In the new study, black Americans were three times more likely to be shot and killed by police officers during interactions where the victim appeared to pose little or no threat to officers, the researchers found.” In fact, the study did not investigate the likelihood of black suspects being shot during interactions where they posed little or no threat to officers, because the dataset contained no information about how many such interactions there were and thus calculating such a likelihood would be impossible. Instead, the study found, yet again, that the number of such shootings was disproportionate to the black population, which, as discussed above, gives us no information about bias. (In fairness to ABC News, the paper appears to be almost deliberately written to make this sort of misleading reporting more likely. See the Appendix below for a more in-depth exploration of the issues with this study and research in this field in general.)
A simple example should suffice to illustrate how crucial this distinction is: according to the Washington Post’s database of police shootings, police shoot and kill 10times more unarmed, fleeing men than unarmed, fleeing women, a disparity that dwarfs any racial disparity in the data. Since we are dealing with unarmed, fleeing men and women, we can assume that both the men and women posed no threat to the officers. Can we thus infer that any difference must be due to lethal gender discrimination? Is it “open season” for police to “hunt” and kill men?
Or, alternatively, is it possible that police shoot so many more men who pose no threat than women, simply because police have many more encounters with male suspects who pose no threat than they do with female suspects who pose no threat? The answer is, of course, that if the rate of fatal police error is exactly the same for both men and women, we’d expect vastly more men to be shot simply because police have so many more encounters with male suspects.
In order to investigate whether one group of suspects is more likely to be shot than another in similar circumstances, you must know the number of such circumstances where nobody is shot, and this is what sets Roland Fryer’s study apart from all others. He had access not just to death reports, but to incident reports in general, including those where lethal force was not used. And he was able to code the specifics of the circumstances according to 290 variables. This allowed him to calculate the rates that a given set of circumstances would lead to use of lethal force for different groups. And the result clearly showed there was no detectable bias towards shooting black suspects.
I have been unable to find any study that supports the narrative of anti-black bias by police in the application of lethal force while properly accounting for the circumstances of shootings. The raw statistics, and the studies that account for those critical factors, both seem to agree that police do not more readily shoot blacks.
Supposed “Over-policing”
When these facts are pointed out to BLM proponents, one common response is to say that police are more likely to confront black people because of bias or racism. This artificially creates more police confrontations with blacks, so even if police are not more likely to shoot a black person in any given confrontation, because there are more confrontations, it results in an excessive number of shootings. In other words, police aren’t legitimately responding to vastly higher crime rates in many black communities in order to protect the residents. Rather, racial bias causes black communities to be “over-policed,” which causes more confrontations with police officers.
But, even a cursory examination of crime rates shows the flaws in this argument. As an example, consider the city where I live, Boston. Every year Boston has dozens of murder victims. Here are pictures of the victims:
Please take a minute to look at them. These were all human beings whose lives were cut short by the brutal violence of neighborhood criminals. Their families and friends will never stop grieving for them. Each murder victim leaves an indelible mark on the entire community. Each leaves hundreds of neighborhood children traumatized, unable to focus on school and building the skills they need to be successful in life, always on guard, wondering if they will be next.
If you look through their faces, you’ll quickly notice that there are hardly any pictures of whites among Boston’s murder victims, despite the fact that there are roughly twice as many whites as blacks in the city. That’s because nearly all the murders happen in predominantly black neighborhoods, like Dorchester and Roxbury. In my neighborhood, Jamaica Plain, right next to Dorchester and Roxbury, but skewing somewhat wealthier and whiter, there are few if any murders each year.
The reason that police have more confrontations in predominantly black neighborhoods in Boston is because that is where the great bulk of violent crime is occuring. (Murders are a valuable proxy for violent crime in general because murders, unlike other crimes, rarely go unreported, and those reports can’t be inflated. As a result, they are not as susceptible to statistical manipulation, biased police reporting, differences in rates of calling the police, etc.) These neighborhoods are plagued and traumatized by the most violent criminals. I wonder how people can claim that the reason there are more encounters and arrests in these neighborhoods is not because there is vastly more violent crime, but rather because these neighborhoods are “over policed”. If there is not vastly more violent crime in these neighborhoods, why do almost all the murders happen there?
Looking at an anecdotal example like Boston is instructive, but there are also systematic investigations of the question of whether black communities are “over policed”. The Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics released a report looking into exactly this question on a national scale. “It found that for nonfatal violent crimes that victims said were reported to police, whites accounted for 48% of offenders and 46% of arrestees. Blacks accounted for 35% of offenders and 33% of arrestees. Asians accounted for 2% of offenders and 1% of arrestees. None of these differences between the percentage of offenders and the percentage of arrestees of a given race were statistically significant.” [Emphasis added.]
In plain english, the number of arrests for violent crime is proportional to the number of violent crimes actually committed by each group. Black people are not arrested at a rate disproportionate to the number of crimes committed, suggesting that black neighborhoods are not “over policed”. Instead, the reason more blacks are arrested for violent crimes is because black neighborhoods suffer more from violent crime.
In turn, the primary reason there are more arrests, confrontations with police and, consequently, police shootings in predominantly black neighborhoods is because police disproportionately encounter perpetrators of violent crime there.
Evidence and Falsehoods
In summary, the only evidence that I’ve been able to find that controls for the circumstances of police shootings suggests that police do not more readily shoot blacks than whites (though possibly, shoot whites slightly more readily than blacks). And, the counter argument that so-called over-policing leads to more encounters, and thus more opportunities for confrontations that result in a shooting appears to contradict the data as well.
The core grievance of the BLM movement, that police are much more prone to use lethal force against black suspects, appears to be unambiguously false. The truth is that the best available evidence suggests that they are not.
Ferguson Effect: Devastation Inflicted by BLM Falsehoods
The effect of BLM’s falsehood that police more readily shoot black suspects has been the devastation of many low-income black communities. In 2014, after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the BLM movement’s anti-police rhetoric and propaganda found a receptive audience. As police were demonized with falsehoods, their morale declined and their willingness to engage in proactive policing, such as street stops for suspicious behavior and other forms of policing designed to prevent firearms crimes, plummeted. Police officers reported that they were scared or unwilling to confront suspects because any confrontation could escalate into a situation where they would need to use force. Any such situation could turn into a media circus where they would be scapegoated, their careers would be ended, their friends and community would cut all ties with them, and possibly, where they would even be wrongfully convicted and imprisoned. Without community support, many police officers reduced or even eliminated entirely their proactive policing. Thousands simply quit. Fewer police stops led to more guns and more criminals on the street. Murder rates, especially murder rates in low income black neighborhoods—where the police were most reluctant to confront criminal suspects—spiked.
This pattern of false anti-police rhetoric followed by reductions in proactive policing and spiking rates of violent crime, especially in predominantly black neighborhoods, was termed “the Ferguson Effect”. Initially, researchers sympathetic to the BLM movement were skeptical of whether the effect existed, but there is now a growing consensus that the Ferguson Effect is both real and devastating.
Evidence and Magnitude
After completing his landmark study on police shootings, and absorbing the shock of his results, Roland Fryer, the star black Harvard economist who, initially, at least, supported BLM, undertook a second effort: to verify or debunk the Ferguson Effect, and quantify its magnitude. After an exhaustive statistical analysis, he concluded that not only was something like the Ferguson Effect real, but in just the five cities he examined, it caused a staggering 900 excess murders, and 34,000 excess felonies that would not have otherwise occurred—and it was expected to cause hundreds more murders in those cities in the following years. Extrapolated to other cities and time periods this result suggested thousands of additional murder victims nationwide.
Other researchers also studied the question. One of the field’s most prominent researchers, Richard Rosenfield, was initially skeptical, but after re-examining the data, ended up changing his mind. ‘“The only explanation that gets the timing right is a version of the Ferguson effect,” Rosenfeld said. Now, he said, that’s his “leading hypothesis”.’
No evidence was found to support a systematic post-Ferguson change in overall, violent, and property crime trends; however, the disaggregated analyses revealed that robbery rates, declining before Ferguson, increased in the months after Ferguson. Also, there was much greater variation in crime trends in the post-Ferguson era, and select cities did experience increases in homicide. Overall, any Ferguson Effect is constrained largely to cities with historically high levels of violence, a large composition of black residents, and socioeconomic disadvantages. [Emphasis added.]
In other words, the Ferguson Effect has not been experienced broadly throughout our entire society. Instead, it’s been focused in exactly the cities you’d expect: those with large numbers of residents living in low income, predominantly black neighborhoods plagued by violent crime. Far from refuting the Ferguson Effect, this study actually bolsters the theory even further.
As an example of how this study is cited, a CNN article says the Ferguson Effect “has been challenged in academic research as anecdotal rather than data-driven and evidence-based”. In contrast, according to CNN, a data-driven approach found that “any Ferguson Effect is constrained largely to cities with historically high levels of violence, a large composition of black residents, and socioeconomic disadvantages.”
It’s hard to see how challenging the validity or importance of the Ferguson Effect because the devastation is only felt in low income black neighborhoods is not overtly racist. The direct implication seems to be that those neighborhoods don’t really matter. But, there are hardly any studies that challenge the Ferguson Effect, so CNN used the one that was available.
“The Minneapolis Effect”
In 2020, the theory was tested again when protests and riots swept across the country following George Floyd’s death while in police custody. The covid pandemic lockdowns had been underway for months by then, and many kinds of crime were predictably down as a result of fewer people being out and about. However, as anti-police rhetoric and propaganda increased after Floyd’s death, once again, police reduced proactive policing and murders spiked. This time, even more than in 2016. One top expert in the field estimates that the result of de-policing during June and July of 2020 alone resulted in an additional 1,520 murders. He explains:
“Crime rates are increasing only for a few specific categories—namely homicides and shootings. These crime categories are particularly responsive to reductions in proactive policing. The data also pinpoint the timing of the spikes to late May 2020, which corresponds with the death of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis and subsequent anti-police protests—protests that likely led to declines in law enforcement….police officers have scaled back on proactive or officer-initiated law enforcement, such as street stops and other forms of policing designed to prevent firearms crimes.”
Other top researchers in the field concur. De-policing as a result of false anti-police rhetoric is causing a massive spike in homicides, mostly in predominantly black neighborhoods. The graphic below shows that there was no spike in murders for three months after pandemic lockdowns started (shaded pink), but that murders suddenly spiked after protests following George Floyd’s death (the red line).
You can read more background and analysis exploring the spike in homicides following BLM’s politicization of Floyds death, now termed the “Minneapolis Effect”, here and here.
Putting Harm In Perspective
The growing consensus in the field of criminology that a decline in proactive policing is resulting in drastic increases in murders, is so substantial that even strongly left leaning media outlets, like CNN, which have typically been supportive of the BLM movement, are starting to acknowledge the role of de-policing.
Regardless of whether you call it the Ferguson Effect or the Minneapolis effect, if you add up the estimates of murders from the different studies in various cities and time periods, you get something in the neighborhood of 2,500 additional murders on the lowest end, but, possibly, well over 10,000 on the high end.
While it may be difficult to pin down an exact number, what’s clear is that thousands of black people have been murdered as a result of BLM’s falsehoods villainizing the police, and the resultant anti-police sentiment that makes police even more wary of confronting criminal suspects.
It’s worth taking a moment to put these numbers in perspective:
18 unarmed blacks shot by police annually
26 unarmed whites shot by police annually
2500 (at least, but possibly well over 10,000) additional murders—mostly black—as a result of the de-policing prompted by BLM falsehoods
8000 blacks murdered by criminals annually
It would take roughly 140 years for police to shoot as many unarmed black people as have been murdered as a result of BLM falsehoods in just the past few years. But, the thousands of additional black murder victims are just the tip of the iceberg of devastation that BLM falsehoods have inflicted on black communities. For each victim murdered by criminals there are dozens of lives derailed; hundreds of children traumatized.
Perhaps even greater than the deaths and trauma that result directly from BLM’s falsehoods, is the damage done by drawing attention away from the real solutions to the approximately 8,000 black people murdered annually. The tragedy of the BLM movement is not just the additional murders and devastation to low income black communities that its falsehoods have caused directly, but also how those falsehoods retard progress on tackling the violence which was already plaguing those communities before BLM even came along.
How could we possibly have gone so wrong?
How Systemic and Structural Patterns that Disadvantage Black People Propel the BLM Movement
As the above research has emerged proving the enormity of the devastation wrought by the BLM movement’s falsehoods, I’ve spent considerable time wrestling with the question of how our society could get something so important, so utterly wrong.
My Hometown: Newton, Massachusetts
As I’ve considered that question, my mind keeps coming back to where I grew up, a wealthy suburb of Boston called Newton. It’s rare for there to be even a single murder in Newton each year. According to city-data.com, the last murder was well over a decade ago. By and large, Newton residents simply don’t need to worry about the safety of themselves or their children.
Nevertheless, everyone I know in Newton is supportive of the BLM movement, the city has held BLM rallies, the mayor and other officials have made statements of public support, and as you drive through the city’s neighborhoods you will often see BLM yard signs. I have the strong impression that Newton as a whole is very supportive of the BLM movement.
I try to imagine how residents in a city like Newton would react if instead of zero murders annually in their city, residents were being murdered by the dozens, every single year—as actually happens in the nearby Boston neighborhoods of Roxbury and Dorchester. If Newton were plagued by such criminal violence, would we be hearing calls from concerned Newton parents to reduce or even eliminate proactive law enforcement, such as street stops and other forms of policing that are designed to prevent firearms crimes?
It’s almost impossible even to imagine Newton parents calling for less officer-initiated policing if their—mostly white—children were the ones in danger and being murdered. So, why do so many Newton residents think that is the right answer in neighboring Dorchester and Roxbury, where other people’s—mostly black—children are being murdered?
Why Do People Support BLM Despite It’s Devastating Impact on Black Communities?
I know many BLM supporters, and I fully believe their sincerity when they profess to be against racism. Nevertheless, to someone familiar with the facts, it seems like it would take an almost willful blindness not to see the dangers that BLM’s fraudulent villainization of police poses to violence plagued communities. Fatal police shootings of unarmed blacks account for approximately 0.18% of black homicides each year—less than one fifth of one percent of the black people murdered each year by neighborhood criminals. The communities where those murders are occuring are being crushed by violence, but not from the police. How could anyone who actually cares about the black people living in those communities not at least suspect that the radical decreases in proactive policing, and policing in general, called for by the BLM movement would have deadly consequences for those communities?
The best explanation I can come up with for why a person (white, black or any other race) would support the BLM movement, is ignorance of even the most rudimentary facts. For example, support for BLM correlates very highly with being more liberal, and a recent survey found that among those who describe themselves as “Very Liberal”, more than 50% believe law enforcement killed 1,000 or more unarmed black men in 2019. Nearly 8% believed they killed more than 10,000! According to the Washington Post, the real number of unarmed black men shot and killed by police in 2019 was 11. That’s a difference of 3 orders of magnitude. It’s impossible to reason intelligently when your beliefs about the relevant facts are so completely divorced from reality.
For those reasons, I don’t believe that anti-black racism is a primary factor in explaining why so many people support BLM. Rather than racism, rank ignorance appears the likely culprit.
The Role of Press, Politicians and Academia
But, if ignorance of the most rudimentary facts is the true culprit, that raises the question, how have the normal channels for educating people about social policy questions failed so completely? After all, most people believe what they read and hear in the media. Most people are not experts. If they read in the media over and over again that police are targeting blacks with lethal force, and they never read anyone contesting that claim, then they’ll tend to assume it’s an accepted fact.
But, it’s not quite so easy to excuse the media for failing to inform them of the key facts. Verifying, scrutinizing and reporting on the veracity of people’s claims is literally the job description of the news media. That’s what they’re there for. That’s what people depend on them to do. Whereas consumers of news media may (problematically) assume that job is being done for them, reporters are never supposed to assume that claims are true without research, and it’s literally their job to provide the key background facts to their readers.
It may be tempting to excuse the news media with the defense that they have just been reporting on newsworthy events. BLM activists have been organizing protests, posting on social media, writing books, and so forth. Even if journalists disagree with activists it is still their job to report on what they are saying. And, particularly, it’s the news media’s responsibility to report on what black voices are saying right now because of the legacy of oppression that black people have suffered. Therefore, the news media bear no responsibility for their audience’s failure to grasp even the most basic facts. They’ve just been reporting the news.
The problem with this argument is two fold. First, as mentioned above, it is never the news media’s job to uncritically report falsehoods. Where people are asserting misinformation, it’s the news media’s job to accompany reports of those claims with key facts contextualizing that information. But the second reason is perhaps more disturbing.
Disregarding Black Scholars
There has been a sizable contingent of highly respected black scholars, intellectuals and public figures who have been studying the challenges faced by low income black communities for decades and who have been vocally pointing out the falsehoods of the BLM movement. Examples include Thomas Sowell, Glenn Loury and John McWhorter. Black scholars like these have been struggling to get their message out, and their message is scathing. Sowell, for instance, describes BLM as “self serving” and is despairing about the damage the movement is doing to black communities:
“Even though I’m regarded as pessimistic, I was never pessimistic enough to think that things would degenerate to the point where they are now, where adult human beings are talking about getting rid of the police, where they’re talking about reducing the number of police, reducing the resources put into police work, at a time when murder rates have been skyrocketing over what they were just a year ago in 2019. And, what is frightening, is how many people in responsible positions are caving in to every demand that is made, repeating any kind of nonsense that you’re supposed to repeat.”
Unfortunately, these critics have found it virtually impossible to get a similar amount of air-time, op-eds, positive references to their research, and glowing biopics in corporate media and academia as BLM activists and proponents receive daily from the news media, professors and politicians.
There is nothing accidental about this. Famed journalist and former NYT editor Bari Weiss published this account from a high school teacher on her blog:
Since the BLM protests often came up in our discussions, I thought of assigning Glenn Loury, a Brown University professor and public intellectual whose writings express a nuanced, center-right position on racial issues in America. Unfortunately, my administration put the kibosh on my proposal.
The head of school responded to me that “people like Loury’s lived experience—and therefore his derived social philosophy” made him an exception to the rule that black thinkers acknowledge structural racism as the paramount impediment in society. He added that “the moment we are in institutionally and culturally, does not lend itself to dispassionate discussion and debate,” and discussing Loury’s ideas would “only confuse and/or enflame students, both those in the class and others that hear about it outside of the class.” He preferred I assign “mainstream white conservatives,” effectively denying black students the opportunity to hear from a black professor who holds views that diverge from the orthodoxy pushed on them.
Why have the voices of black activists spreading devastating falsehoods been relentlessly promoted by the media, schools, universities and politicians while highly esteemed black scholars whose research would have exposed those falsehoods, and the damage those falsehoods are inflicting, been largely ignored? The news media has not simply been reporting the news. Academics have not simply been researching in pursuit of truth. Rather, through careful choices of which voices they elevate and promote, they’ve been shaping a narrative. And that narrative neglected the voices, and crucial insight, of some of the most distinguished black professors and leaders in the country.
Structural and Systemic Patterns that Disadvantage Black People
The history of this neglect may not be written for a long time, seeing as how BLM’s ascent appears to continue unabated. But when that history is someday written, it will not be kind to those who played key roles in enabling and promoting falsehoods of such tremendous destructive force.
Ultimately whether journalists’, editors’, and media owners’ decisions to promote destructive falsehoods instead of investigating and reporting the truth was motivated by racial animosity may be unknowable. We can’t look inside their heads to see what was going on.
But, even if it turns out that overt racial animosity did not play a role in promoting BLM, it seems there could hardly be a better example of how structural and systemic patterns that come from a history of racism continue to disadvantage black people today. Nor can I think of any contemporary example of such patterns that can match the sheer destructive impact that BLM has had on many black communities.
How has the press so totally failed to report the key facts about BLM’s falsehoods? Maybe it’s just because so few of the key media owners, editors, and journalists, were the ones at risk of being murdered as a result of those falsehoods. They were mostly wealthy and mostly white, living far from the impacted communities. The incentives weren’t aligned for those key people in power to produce hard hitting journalism because it wasn’t their lives on the line. It wasn’t necessarily any person’s antipathy for blacks that has propelled the BLM movement to such heights, but rather the structure of the system itself, where the most powerful decision makers were insulated from the devastation wrought by their delinquent click motivated journalism. And how was that system, where the key decision makers were insulated from the harmful effects of their decisions, established? It’s hard not to see, as the primary culprit, the legacy of years of oppression that have ensured that so many of the key decision makers would be wealthy and white.
Concluding Thoughts
Absolution for BLM?
Some BLM proponents may object that, even if they were to concede that the core BLM premise that police more readily shoot blacks is false, and even if they were to concede that BLM rhetoric asserting that falsehood has resulted in the murders of thousands of black people, there is still a lot of positive that has come out of the movement. After all, if you read Fryer’s research, for example, you will see that while he found that police were possibly more likely to shoot white suspects, he also found that police were substantially more likely to use some sort of non-lethal physical force against black suspects. Aren’t such disparities worthy of discussion and examination?
And, I would tend to agree that poorly understood phenomena like that are worthy of further research. Why would police possibly more readily shoot and kill white suspects, but less readily shove or hit them? Personally, I find the model that Fyer proposes to explain this strange discrepancy to be unconvincing, but I certainly agree with him that it’s an important area for further research. Should we grant the BLM movement absolution for the devastation wrought by its falsehoods, because it is simultaneously drawing attention to these unanswered and important questions? That might be a more compelling argument if I saw any evidence that the BLM movement was spurring real research into these questions as opposed to obscuring them, or possibly, in some cases, making it impossible to research them at all.
The Power of a Name
One of the most pernicious aspects of the BLM movement is its name. A more accurate and descriptive name for the movement might be something like the “Anti Proactive Policing Movement”. The movement’s rhetoric, its focus on organizing around police shootings, and its actual impact are all, to a significant degree, centered on the reduction of proactive policing. If the movement were named honestly, by its policy objectives, there would be much more room for people to disagree with those policy objectives and for a rational dialogue to ensue. Instead, by adopting the name Black Lives Matter, the activists who invented the phrase put everyone who disagrees with their misguided policy objectives in the position of defensively distinguishing their disagreement with the policy from their agreement with the slogan. It was a good rhetorical strategy, but it wasn’t good for the black communities they were trying to help.
Also troubling is how the name elides the considerable difference of opinion within the black community itself, both in regards to the methods and rhetoric of the movement and the policy objectives the movement promotes. Many black people do not share BLM’s hostility to police and don’t want less police or less policing.
The truth is that, with the exception of a small handful of marginalized misfits, today nearly everyone in America believes that black lives matter. In my entire life, I have never met a human being who said or implied that black lives don’t matter. But, nobody should support the Black Lives Matter movement: it’s a poisonous falsehood, uncritically promoted by corporate media, that is devastating many black communities.
Thomson Reuters Must Do Better
Ultimately, I don’t believe it’s Thomson Reuters’ role to affirm or renounce social movements. Nevertheless, over the past few years, witnessing open and pervasive support within Thomson Reuters for a movement that is having such a devastating impact on the most disadvantaged black communities has made the work environment feel untenably hostile for me. I have frequently felt the imperative to speak out against the anti-black bias and devastation but have instead held my tongue because I was scared of the consequences. Indeed, a few months ago, my feelings of alienation reached a point that I couldn’t tolerate it anymore, and I asked to take unpaid leave. Even then, I kept my concerns to myself and didn’t share them with my manager and leadership, because, I feared, I could be fired for even letting them know why I want to take a leave, and possibly even informally blacklisted in the job market if rumors spread to other employers. But, when I made the decision to return to Thomson Reuters after my leave, I knew I could only justify returning to myself if I had the courage to stand up for the truth. I cannot live with myself in an environment where people freely express uninformed support for a movement inflicting such destruction in the most disadvantaged black communities, without, at the very least, offering an alternative perspective based on research and evidence. Perhaps more importantly, I cannot ethically work at a company that is the home for Reuters News, one of the most important and widely respected news agencies in the world, without working to bring attention to potentially severe problems in our reporting.
I’ll also note that just like I understand that it is not Thomson Reuters’ role to affirm or renounce social movements, I also understand that it is doubly not the role of Reuters News to do so. Reuters News has a commitment to remaining as objective and unbiased as possible so as to retain the great trust that our readership places in us. However, like just about every other corporate media outlet, I believe Reuters News needs to do better in informing its readership about the basic facts so the readers can make up their own minds about the truth or falsity of BLM’s claims, and the magnitude of the devastation that the movement is inflicting on so many black communities. Readers can only make up their own minds intelligently if they have the key information, and, as discussed above, polls of people’s beliefs about even the most rudimentary facts show that the key information is not being widely disseminated and absorbed by readers.
Thus, I believe that we at Thomson Reuters need to do better. I also believe that we have a strength of community and sense of purpose that means we can do better. I hope we do.
Postscript
Last time I posted on the hub speaking out against systemic and structural societal patterns and institutions that harm marginalized groups and against the ways that people at Thomson Reuters may be unintentionally helping to perpetuate such patterns and institutions, someone flagged my post by ticking the “Report abuse” checkbox and my post was temporarily taken down. One of the sad facts about fighting against such patterns and institutions is that often people perpetuating and promoting them, frequently unintentionally, are more interested in silencing examination of how their actions disadvantage minorities than they are in dialogue and self-examination. If you believe this post should not be taken down, please let HR know, and please forward this post. If it is taken down, I would be more than happy to provide a PDF version to anyone who asks, for dissemination throughout the company. The fight against bias that harms marginalized groups is too important to let it be thwarted by those who wish to silence open discussion. Discussion of race, and the ways that institutions in our society continue to perpetuate racial disadvantage are uncomfortable and difficult, but it is essential that we have them nonetheless.
Appendix
For people who have not studied statistics or econometrics recently, or at all, it may be difficult at first glance to understand the problems in many of the studies that purportedly show bias in police shootings. However, one of the most common problems should be straightforward to understand even for someone with no background in statistics with just a few minutes studying some illustrative hypothetical examples. In this Appendix, I present such examples, as well as a more in-depth discussion of some of the key research in the field.
Meaning and Identification of Bias
If there is bias in police shootings, that means that if all but race were equal in two situations, the black person would be more likely to be killed than the white person. In other words, in a particular type of situation, for example, where a large unarmed male suspect is physically resisting arrest, police would be more likely to shoot the suspect if he is black, than if he is white (or vice versa). Thus, if we look at all the police encounters with large, unarmed, male suspects, and we find that there is a higher rate of shootings for black suspects than white suspects, that suggests that there is bias.
Why did I specify specific adjectives like “large”, “unarmed”, and “male” in my example? Because police use force in response to a perceived threat, and because different sizes, strengths, attitudes, and weapons of a suspect can radically change the threat they pose, it’s critical to compare apples to apples. There is a much lower rate of police shootings when police are arresting small, unarmed, women than there is when arresting large, armed, men. Ideally we’d also like to know other details such as the time of day, whether police came to the scene as a consequence of a report of illegal activity, whether the suspect was resisting arrest, whether there were innocent third parties endangered by the behavior of the suspect, and so forth. The more variables we can control for that might have an impact on use of lethal force, the more we can isolate the impact, if any, of race specifically.
Unfortunately, oftentimes the available data does not have all the granularity you would like to have in the ideal world, and instead just uses gross categories like “unarmed” and “male”. (The Fryer study was an exception, and through an extensive manual labeling process obtained data for 290 relevant details for each example.) For simplicity’s sake, in the following examples, we’ll assume we are working with a dataset that only codes incidents according to race and whether the suspect is armed.
Important Note: In all the hypothetical examples below, I’ve drastically inflated the rate of shootings from anything remotely realistic, so that shootings are visible in the charts. Please do not walk away thinking that police shoot 8% of unarmed suspects, when the true number is likely closer to 0.001%. I’m just making up extreme numbers in order to make possible a visual illustration of a key mathematical fact.
Consider the following hypothetical data suggesting that there is not a racially biased application of lethal force. Percentages represent the rate of killing per encounter.
For both groups there were about 500 encounters, of which about 40 resulted in a fatal shooting, so the rate of fatal shootings is the same for each group. This means that when faced with an unarmed suspect resisting arrest, there is no evidence that police responded differently to the suspect based on their race.
Compare the graph above with the graph below.
In this new hypothetical, there are again the same number of shootings for each group, but this time we can see that there were many more police encounters for whites than for blacks. This suggests that the rate of shooting was higher for blacks (8% vs just 5%). Thus this graph supports the hypothesis that there is bias in police shootings.
Now consider another hypothetical:
In this chart, there are twice as many shootings of blacks than whites. But, in this chart, there are also twice as many encounters with blacks than whites, so the rate at which an encounter leads to a shooting is the same. This suggests that in any given encounter police are no more likely to shoot the suspect based on their being black, and thus this data does not support the hypothesis that police more readily shoot black people (though it says nothing about whether there is biased “over policing” as discussed at length in the main body of this post).
With that understanding of bias, let’s look at a more complicated hypothetical example. Here we have data for both armed and unarmed shootings. Again, the rate of shooting for each racial group in each category is the same. Armed blacks and armed whites are both shot at a rate of 50%. And unarmed blacks and unarmed whites are both shot at a rate of 8%. In this hypothetical, there are approximately twice as many armed whites (250) killed as armed blacks (125), however, that does not imply any bias on the part of police, because whites are having twice as many encounters with police—in any given encounter, police are no more likely to shoot a white suspect than a black suspect.
Now, imagine a scenario identical to the above scenario, except now we are dealing with a dataset that only has information about encounters that lead to a fatal shooting. We have no data about encounters that do not lead to a shooting.
Because we have no data about non-shooting encounters, in this graph there are no blue bars, however the red bars are exactly the same length as they were in the previous graph. Notice also that the percentages listed are different. The lack of encounter data makes it impossible to calculate a rate of shooting for each scenario type. Because it is impossible to calculate a rate of shooting, I’ve inserted a different percentage instead: the percentage of cases of each scenario type for each racial group. For instance, of the black suspects who were killed, 76% of them were armed, and 24% of them were unarmed. And for the white suspects who were killed, 86% of them were armed and only 14% of them were unarmed.
One may look at those numbers and think: the percentage of blacks shot while unarmed is much higher than the percentage of whites shot while unarmed, therefore police are more likely to shoot unarmed blacks. However, as we know from the previous graph, police were not more likely to shoot unarmed blacks than whites in any given encounter, and the number of shootings is perfectly consistent with completely unbiased application of lethal force.
Indeed, in this hypothetical, the only reason a greater percentage of the black people shot are unarmed, is because there are many more armed whites shot than armed blacks. The number of unarmed encounters and the number of unarmed shootings is the same for black and white, indicating that there is no bias.
Incorrect Use of Study Results to Argue for Bias
The example above of a mistaken inference of bias illustrates exactly the problem with many of the studies that people use to (falsely) argue that there is racial bias in police shootings. Two in particular which I’ve recently seen cited to support the claim of bias are both based on the National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS). One, which I described above, was published in 2020 and the other was published a few years earlier in 2016. When used to argue that police more readily shoot blacks, they both suffer from the same problem: NVDRS has no information about the number of police encounters, and thus it is impossible to calculate the rate of shooting per encounter.
For example, the 2016 study states that:
Black victims were significantly more likely to be unarmed than white or Hispanic victims. Black victims were also significantly less likely than whites to have posed an immediate threat to LE. White victims were significantly more likely than black victims to be killed in incidents related to mental health or substance-induced disruptive behaviors and more likely than black or Hispanic victims to be involved in potential “suicide by cop” incidents. Hispanic victims were also more likely than black victims to be involved in a potential “suicide by cop” incident. Incidents involving black and Hispanic victims were more likely than those involving white victims to have at least one black LE officer involved in the fatal injury. [Emphasis added.]
It’s a common but catastrophic type of statistical mistake to infer that police more readily shoot unarmed black people who pose no immediate threat based on the first two sentences in bold above. To understand why, consider that during the study period there were approximately the same number of unarmed whites killed, 40, as blacks, 39. Therefore, if there were the same number of police encounters of the type that leads to an unarmed shooting, then the rate per encounter would be nearly identical for whites and blacks, indicating an absence of bias.
This is precisely the same inferential error that I illustrated in the hypothetical example above. There, as here, it was impossible to calculate rates of shootings because the dataset had no data about the number of encounters. Instead, in the hypothetical, and in the study above, a different set of percentages is calculated: the percent of suspects killed who were armed, and the percent killed who were unarmed. Because a greater percentage of blacks who are fatally shot are unarmed, to a reader without a background in statistics, those percentages have a tendency to give the impression that there was some bias, when in fact it says literally nothing about the presence or absence of bias.
But, since there were the same number of unarmed blacks and unarmed whites fatally shot, for these numbers not to suggest bias, there must also have been the same number of encounters that led to such shootings for both groups. Is it plausible that there would be the same number of encounters? If policing resources for reducing violent crime are focused on neighborhoods that experience the most violent crime, as they should be, then we would expect the number of police encounters to be proportional to the amount of serious violent crime committed. In that case, the answer is yes, since according to the evidence reviewed in the main body of my post, blacks and whites commit roughly the same number of serious violent crimes and are arrested for those crimes in similar numbers (despite the fact that whites are a greater percentage of the population).
If the rates of police shooting of unarmed suspects are similar, why would unarmed suspects be a greater proportion of blacks shot than of whites shot? One possible explanation is for exactly the same reason this was true in the hypothetical examples above. If there were more armed whites shot than armed blacks, this reduces the proportion of whites shot who are unarmed. (But, just like in the hypothetical, this doesn’t actually tell us anything at all about whether there was bias in police shootings of unarmed suspects.)
Interestingly, in the underlined portion of the quote above, the study itself hints at a perfectly plausible explanation for why there would be proportionately more armed whites encountered by police than armed blacks: police have many more encounters with armed whites suffering from substance abuse or mental health issues, and more encounters with armed whites intending “suicide by cop”. Because police have so many more encounters with armed whites posing a threat, it makes perfect sense that unarmed whites would be a smaller proportion of whites killed compared to unarmed blacks.
Thus, this study gives us no evidence whatsoever to support the hypothesis of bias in police shootings. This is not merely splitting hairs, or nitpicking. Without data on the number of police encounters, it’s impossible to calculate the rates of shootings, and thus impossible to identify bias. The data examined by this study is perfectly consistent with a complete absence of bias.
The second study based on the NVDRS suffers from exactly the same problems. The number of whites, 16, and blacks, 17, in the category of “likely unarmed” was, again, almost identical. Thus if there were the same number of encounters with police of the type that leads to unarmed shooting, then the rates of shooting per encounter would be identical. This would indicate a lack of bias.
(It’s also worth noticing that according to the Washington Post police shooting database, over the last five years, police have killed 39% more unarmed whites than blacks. However, in 2012, the subject year of the first study, and 2015, the subject year of the second study, there were almost the same number of unarmed blacks and whites shot by police, suggesting the possibility that these were unusual years. It appears that both papers reach back 4-5 years to find periods that don’t exhibit the pattern of the last 5 years where substantially more unarmed whites have been killed than blacks. In neither paper do the authors explain why they choose to examine the years they choose, or why they didn’t simply use all the data, or all the most recent data.)
Comparison to Fryer Study
It’s worth contrasting the methods in the papers above, which are incapable of examining whether there was police bias, with the method in Fryer’s paper, which although drastically more labor intensive, is designed specifically to determine if there is police bias. Fryer looked at thousands of police arrest reports, and coded each report according to over 290 variables. Crucially, he took a random sample which included cases where police did not shoot suspects. This allowed him to calculate whether there was a different rate of shooting for different racial groups when controlling for relevant variables like the behavior of the suspect. As he says, “A simple count of the number of police shootings that occur does little to explore whether racial differences in the frequency of officer-involved shootings are due to police malfeasance or differences in suspect behavior.” That is the crux of the issue with using the two NVDRS studies above to argue that there is police bias. The NVDRS data simply does not contain the data necessary to support that contention.
One of the most interesting facts about Fryer’s study is that in addition to running a proper statistical test for bias, as an experiment he also calculated the same flawed statistics that are frequently falsely used as evidence of bias (like those discussed above). When he used those improper methods to estimate bias with his data, his data showed the same supposed bias as other studies using those improper methods. However, when using proper methods that bias disappeared completely:
Perhaps the most striking finding is when one replicates the analysis in Ross (2015) across all five datasets: calculating the probability of being black, unarmed, and shot by police divided by the probability of being white, unarmed, and shot by police. A quantity greater than one is consistent with racial bias. Using the data from Ross (2015), this ratio is 3.28. Using the data from the Post database I get 6.20 and 5.99 if using the data in Fryer (forthcoming). In other words, if I ignore the detail available in the Fryer data and simply report the descriptive statistics reported in Ross (2015), I could conclude that the data provided evidence of even more racial bias than that reported in Ross (2015). Yet, when using the simple statistical framework that economists have used for more than a half century to analyze racial differences on myriad dimensions – from wages to incarceration to teen pregnancy – the evidence for bias disappears. The differences in results on police shootings in America seem to be driven by differences in what qualifies for a valid research design and not differences in datasets.
The fact that the improper methods showed the same supposed bias when applied to Fryer’s dataset, but the bias completely disappeared and even reversed when using proper methods, underscores the point that the studies using flawed methodologies that purportedly show bias actually carry essentially no evidentiary weight for establishing bias.
Limitations of Fryer Study
Given that Fryer’s study upended unwarranted assumptions held by many people about the biased application of lethal force, it’s not surprising that the study precipitated a torrent of criticism. While much of that criticism seems to be motivated, at least in part, by the political and social agendas of the critics, there are some important limitations and caveats worthy of discussion.
Data Limited to Houston
The most obvious limitation of Fryer’s study is that the most complete data that he examines comes from just one city, Houston. Critics have raised the concern that there may be selection bias in how the city was chosen, and/or that the city may not be representative of patterns in other cities.
However, there are sound reasons to believe that police use of force is no different in Houston than in other major cities, and also that there was no selection bias in the choice of Houston. In regards to selection bias, according to Fryer, he selected Houston because it had the most comprehensive set of officer-involved shooting data:
“The most comprehensive set of officer-involved shooting data is from the Houston Police Department. For this reason, we contacted HPD to help construct a data set of police-civilian interactions in which lethal force may have been justified. If we had the data from other cities, we would definitely use it.”
This means that Houston didn’t somehow self-select into the study by being the only police department willing to share their data. Rather, Fryer identified and approached Houston because Houston had the most complete data.
In regards to Houston being idiosyncratic, it’s important to remember that Houston shows the same surface level disparities that other cities show. Further, as described above, when Fryer calculated the improper statistical tests typically used to falsely demonstrate bias, Houston showed the same supposed bias as other cities. It was only when he did a proper econometric test that the disparities disappeared.
Therefore, there is no reason to suspect that Houston is not representative of a general pattern in police shootings. And, at the very least, Fyer’s findings in Houston are a definitive demonstration that the surface level disparities and improper statistics used to falsely argue for bias in other cities, actually carry no evidentiary weight for establishing bias.
Nevertheless, in order to prove conclusively that there is no bias in police shootings nationally, ideally studies like Fryer’s would be conducted in other cities.
Police Bias in Initiating Interactions
If police are biased towards perceiving black subjects as more threatening than they are, they may stop black subjects who pose less of a threat more often than white subjects. Since the black subjects turn out to be less dangerous and more compliant, there would consequently be a lower rate of escalation, and thus a lower rate of police shootings per stop, compared to whites, thus biasing the data. One paper critical of Fyer’s study explains the problem like so:
“This could occur if officers have a higher threshold for stopping white civilians during the unseen first stage of police-civilian contact, meaning that white civilians observed in the data are incomparable because they tend to pose a greater threat to police than observed minorities.”
“if even a small subset of police have propensities to more frequently encounter black relative to white individuals, then analyses of pooled encounter-conditional data will fail to detect systemic anti-black racial disparities in the encounter-conditional use of lethal force by the larger subset of police.”
Fryer himself has discussed this limitation in his original paper and subsequently:
“I totally agree that deciding who to stop in a police stop is highly problematic and there certainly may be racial bias in that decision. So let’s think about the officer-involved shootings in which there’s a robbery in progress or a violent crime. Those are less likely to be plagued by selection bias in the decision of who to harass or stop. Analyzing only those cases yields similar results.”
In other words, if you are concerned that police bias in initiating encounters with suspects were driving Fryer’s finding that there wasn’t bias in police shootings, then you can look just at encounters where police exercised no judgement or discretion in their choice of whether to initiate an encounter. For example, if police are called to a location to respond to a violent crime or robbery that is in progress, then they do not have an opportunity to exercise discretion (and therefore bias) as to whether they engage a suspect at all. But, when you look at only those cases where police do not have an opportunity to introduce bias into the encounter rates, the findings do not change: the data still do not show bias in police shootings.
It’s also worth mentioning that even if police were introducing bias in the encounter rates by stopping more non-threatening black subjects, and thereby decreasing the proportion of encounters that are at high risk of leading to a shooting, you would expect Fryer’s econometric analysis to control for that, at least to the extent that the 290 variables that his team coded were capable of distinguishing between non-threatening subjects and threatening ones, and thus isolating the impact of race.
Bias in charging decisions
In addition to police bias in initiating encounters there is another kind of police bias that could impact Fryer’s study results: police characterization of encounters.
“A second concern is the reliability of police department reports. There are two types of potential bias. First, police officers may bend the truth about the context of a particular interaction so as to justify their own actions; for instance, indicating a suspect was threatening when they were calmly following an officer’s commands. This type of bias is less of a concern in Fryer (forthcoming) because the qualitative results are identical whether or not one includes contextual factors about the encounter recounted by police.”
Because Fryer’s results were the same whether he ran his analysis including or excluding police characterizations, the bias in those characterizations cannot account for his results. However, there is one type of related bias Fryer was not able to devise a method to test or correct for:
“A second type of bias is that officers may be more likely to charge black suspects with crimes such as resisting arrest or attempted assault on a public safety officer rather than misdemeanors, relative to whites, for identical behavior. This type of bias is an important limitation of Fryer (forthcoming) because it implies that the counterfactuals coded from arrest data may themselves contain bias. It is unclear how to estimate the extent of such bias or how to address it statistically.”
Therefore, to conclusively prove a complete absence of police bias in shootings, future researchers would need to find a way to conduct a study that, like Fryer’s, could properly account for circumstances and encounter rates, while simultaneously not being biased by any differences in propensity to charge (if they exist).
Fryer first presented his data, and collected feedback from his peers, in a seminar last summer at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He presented the work again to colleagues at Harvard, Brown, University College London, and the London School of Economics. Aware of the paper’s incendiary nature and importance, he sent the paper out to 50 colleagues asking for feedback. He also hired a second research team to recode all the data that he used for his analysis, just to make sure the results would replicate. Fryer’s paper was not “peer-reviewed.” It was reviewed, though, very thoroughly, and by a large number of his peers.
Not the Final Word… But, the best evidence we have today
In addition to the studies discussed above, I’ve reviewed others, and would be happy to discuss the research field with anyone at Thomson Reuters who is interested. Regardless, as is clear from the limitations discussed above, Fryer’s study is far from the final word on police shooting bias. There are plenty of unanswered questions left to be explored, and it’s certainly conceivable that at some point in the future, a new study that also uses proper methods to control for circumstances of encounters will contradict Fryer’s study by showing some evidence of police shooting bias.
Nevertheless, in my investigation so far, I have not been able to identify a single study using valid research design that has found bias in police shootings. To date, Fryer’s study is the only study using valid research design to test for bias, and it provides strong evidence for an absence of bias in police shootings (or, if anything, a slight bias towards shooting whites). As described in the main body of this post, these findings are also consistent with an analysis using high-level descriptive statistics. Thus, the best evidence available today strongly suggests that police are not biased towards shooting black suspects.
I must say that this was a really disappointing article by one of my favorite authors. But, then again, I do have the benefit of hindsight, so let me point the many ways Steven missed the point.
Zimmerman wasn’t White. He was a multiracial young man who had a White father and an Afro-Indigenous Peruvian mother. He was as White as Obama.
Zimmerman observed a few things. He observed his wife freak out as an eyewitness to the fleeing perpetrators to a home invasion that left a mother and child hiding in their closet. He called the police when his wife later saw one of those perpetrators again. He called the police a second time when his wife, again recognized this perpetrator who had not been caught. That is when the NW was created because of multiple crimes occurring in the neighborhood. The next time Zimmerman called the police was when he saw a suspect casing the window of the house of a fellow NW member. This suspect, Emmanuel Burgess, would eventually be caught and tied not only to the casing of this house, but to the home invasion months before. But his accomplices were still at large. A few weeks later, Zimmerman would observe a suspect near the same window of the same house. That suspect was Trayvon Martin.
Zimmerman never stalked Martin. He observed and reported according to NW protocol. At no point did he approach Martin.
When he informed the dispatcher that Martin was running, the dispatcher asked Zimmerman in which direction Martin was running. As Martin ran between the houses, Zimmerman exited his car trying to keep a line of sight. The dispatcher, hearing his heavy breathing asked if he was following. When told yes, the dispatcher told Zimmerman it wasn’t necessary. To which Zimmerman acquiesced. We know this because the heavy breathing stopped and he had a long conversation with the dispatch in which he was no longer moving enough to hear wind go by, and in which he stated twice that Martin was gone. How much time was he ‘following?’ Exactly 14 seconds.
The time that Zimmerman took of 14 seconds was enough to carry him the distance from where we know he parked his car (video) and the T where we know the altercation would occur (where keys and other items were dropped).
We know that Martin was no longer there from Zimmerman’s statements and from Rachel Jeantel’s statements that Martin said he had made it to the back of the house he was staying in.
For this reason, we know that Martin, left te area of altercation and then went back. We also know, per Rachel Jeantel, that Martin was the first to speak, considering the fact that he came back and that He spoke first, it is safe to say he was the one doing the confronting, not Zimmerman.
A few good reasons why Martin might have felt quite comfortable returning to confront Zimmerman for the affront of staring at him while on the phone: Martin was an avid practitioner of MMA. He watched it constantly and practiced it with his peers in rounds, even to the point of reporting that he made his opponent bleed. Martin was also larger than Zimmerman. In an interview with People, the family reported him as 6’3. The police report stated he was 6’0. I think the family was more accurate than the police as a vector analysis of the 7-Eleven video estimated his height at 6’2 is easily replicable. The police reported his weight at 160 lbs. that was naked and desanguinated after the bullet hole to his heart and lungs. That makes his weight with clothing (2.5 lbs for sneakers, 2.5 for ave clothing and anywhere from 2 to 5lbs of blood lost). A decent guess would be at least 167 lbs. We know Zimmerman was 5’7.5 to be exact and we know he wasn’t actually weighed that night as he wasn’t arrested. When he was eventually arrested, he weighed 185 lbs. So Zimmerman was a pudgier, shorter man.
We also know that Zimmerman weighed 250lbs in 2005 and was trying to lose weight. He later enrolled in cardio boxing but was never allowed to spar because he didn’t know how to throw a punch. So we know where the assumption of a 100lbs difference came and why it was inaccurate. We also know Zimmerman didn’t throw the first punch. In fact, Jeantel would later admit that she thought Martin threw the first punch as well.
No, the defense of Zimmerman did not just come from White Conservatives. They were just the loudest because, 1. The media called Zimmerman White, and two, the media equated Zimmerman with Stand Your Ground, even though it was traditional self defense (he was mounted so he could not retreat). When the Pro Arms group saw this case made into an NRA battle, they jumped all in to it. In contrast, because Zimmerman was portrayed as a White racist, Hispanics and Multi-Racials steered clear. Including me. Until I saw all the evidence.
There was no evidence of racial animus. Zimmerman grew up, not only with an AfroPeruvian mother, but the vast majority of his friends being Black and/or Latino. In fact, he called one if his friends who happened to be White, his token White friend. Zimmerman was active, not only in protesting the beating of a homeless Black man, but he also mentored two Black kids whose father was serving a life sentence in jail.
Zimmerman did not volunteer Martin’s race. He was asked what it was point blank. He responsed, ‘he looks Black.’ That would indicate he wasn’t sure. In the prior calls, when asked, he stated that the person was Black or White or Whatever. Yes he called the cops of Whites and Hispanics as well. In fact, until the year before, he never mentioned a Black man before. But he had mentioned Whites and Hispanics. It is only when Martin approaches him and he gets a good look that he states, ‘and he is a Black man.’
The claim on fuckin’ blank as racial holds no water. Filtering for noise, the first vowel is a composite ou sound. Not uu. ABC filtered and determined he said Cold.
Martin was not brave, nor a hero for jumping someone smaller than him. Nor was Zimmerman a hero for surviving. But he had a right to defend himself when a bigger man mounted him, slammed his head into the cement and put him in fear of losing consciousness. And when, in the struggle, his holster was revealed, it became a struggle to make sure his gun wasn’t taken away and used against him. Zimmerman had been pummeled for at least two minutes when Jonathan Good saw Martin mounted on top of him reigning blows on him. No gun visible. That gunshot was fired after Good told Martin to stop and then he went in to call the police. For Zimmerman, it must have been wrenching to see someone come out, see he was in trouble and then leave. Yes, he had every right to pull that trigger.
Salsassin's Thoughts 