My blogs are usually sparked by an emotional reaction to something I read or hear. Today’s gut-punch was an article written by Mia Love, former Republican congresswoman for Utah, now non-resident senior fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. Ms Love laments the polarisation of the issues surrounding the murder of George Floyd because it’s forcing people to ‘take sides’ rather than strive for reconciliation. I’m with her so far. To illustrate how personally woke she is to the dilemma, she talks of a young white police officer she swore into office who was murdered on the job a few years later. Killed by an ‘itinerant man’ after completing the absolutely routine policing task of stopping to check on a badly-parked vehicle. Sgt Johnson was ambushed and shot multiple times. Imagine how horrifying it was for him, and for his wife and son to hear how he died. Ms Love gives Sgt Derek Johnson 130 words. I know, because I counted them.
Senior Fellow Love then flips the coin and talks about her brother, who once-upon-a-time was tackled by cops in a case of mistaken identity. Brother Love wasn’t murdered, not even injured — just temporarily detained at the scene. But with such force that the cops knocked his lunch out of his hand, by god! 317 words. I know, because I counted them. And not only 250% more words than Sgt Johnson received, but politically loaded terms like ‘colour’, ‘injustice’ and ‘liberty’ are used. Ms Love very carefully mention the skin colour of the participants in her brother’s case, and roundly critiques police aggression, police failure to apologise, blah blah.
But what colour was the man who killed Sgt Derek Johnson, Ms Love? I had to dig deep to discover, phew, that Sgt Johnson was murdered by a fat, repulsive, goofy-looking white guy. Thank Christ for that, right? Would have made everybody squirm with discomfort if he’d been killed by an African American, am I right? But that was 2013 — in 2019, our most recent data shows 48 police officers were ‘feloniously killed’ in the US. The average officer was 40 years old, with 13 years on the job, white (40/48), male (45/48) and killed by an offender using a firearm (44/48). And now the number you’re dying to hear! The colour of the offenders was …
Hmm.
For some odd reason, the skin colour of the ‘felonious murderers’ is omitted! How curious. In fact, to determine the skin colour of the killers you have dig much deeper. Ah, here we go: In 2019, of the 49 alleged offenders identified in connection with the 48 law enforcement officers feloniously killed, the following characteristics are known:
- The average age of the offenders was 31 years old.
- 48 offenders were male; 1 was female.
- 28 of the offenders were White, 15 were Black/African American, and 1 was Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander.
- Race was not reported for 5 of the offenders.
- 12 of the offenders were under judicial supervision at the time of the incidents.
- 9 of the offenders were under the influence of alcohol and/or a controlled substance at the time of the fatal incidents.
- 36 of the offenders had prior criminal arrests.
Ms Love knows that the devil is in the detail. Middle-aged, white, career police officers are disproportionately at risk of being murdered by young, armed, black criminals. Can’t dodge that fact, no matter how you spin it. So despite your protestations, it seems like you’ve picked a side, Ms Love. We’re nowhere close to reconciliation if people don’t acknowledge the inconvenient truths. Maybe the SJW’s should get a world without police, just to see how long they last. When things turn to shit — which it absolutely will — how many ex-cops will there be in the crowd, throwing molotovs at the social workers?
