A Majority of Cop Killers Have Been White

[G_j]

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/12/attacks-against-police-officers-are-in-decline

As officials continue to investigate Saturday's tragic killing of two NYPD officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, details have surfaced about the suspect, 28 year old Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who allegedly shot a woman in Baltimore before traveling to New York. Anti-police posts he appears to have published on social media sites prior to the killings have lead many to connect his crime to protests that occurred in previous weeks, and some commenters have cast blame on officials including New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, Attorney General Eric Holder, and President Obama, all of whom have condemned the violence. (Read my colleague Kevin Drum's response to that.)

But, while every killing of an officer is a tragedy, it is worth noting, as my colleague Shane Bauer reported in the context of another story, assaults and felony killings of police officers in the US are down sharply over the past two decades. Attention has also been focused on Brinsley's race, but FBI data shows that, though African Americans are arrested and incarcerated at a higher rate than whites, the majority of assailants who feloniously killed police officers in the past year were white.

[onehandle]

1. We white males, have more, and find it much easier to obtain guns.

The gun culture industry makes the architects of 9/11 jealous.

[malaise]

2. Where were the ReTHUGs who are bawling now

there was a deafening silence from them when those two cops were killed in Nevada after Bundy and his militia friends were ready to fire shots at Federal agents. That slaughter was connected.

[Vinca]

3. Re the Bundy incident. Imagine if all involved had been black.

Remember the photo of the sniper on the overpass aiming at federal officers? They would have droned that ranch.

[malaise]

5. +1,000

They would all be dead

[kelliekat44]

11. They would have been invaded by now. nt

[Trillo]

4. Interesting shift in the peaks of the top two graphs.

Looks like the police were better at protecting themselves than at protecting the citizens during the approximate years of 1970-1990. Something to ponder. Would the peaks been about the same for only homicides or only violence, but not mixing homicide with violence?

[MadDAsHell]

6. I wouldn't say this is surprising. A majority (72%) of American citizens are white...

[former9thward]

8. At the link it says 15 of the cops killed were white, 11 black and 2 not identified.

Of the 27 cases they looked at 25 of the cops killed were white and 2 black.

[okaawhatever]

9. But for arrests (police interacting with criminals) the stats are different and blacks = whites nt

[kelliekat44]

12. Wrong, the media would have you think the majority of everything criminal and murderous is at the

hands of black people.

[tenderfoot]

7. Golly, where's DU bourgeois trolling cop fellating scold patrol?????

No uppity anti-cop liberals to call out?

[G_j]

10. LOL!