While the depraved murder of George Floyd should outrage us all, I believe it continues a misdirected focus on police killings, particularly of unarmed men. According to the Washington Post database, in 2019 there were 249 blacks killed by the police: 165 had guns, 33 had knives, and only 14 were unarmed. In 2016, Harvard’s Roland Fryer released a study of racial differences in police use of deadly force and found no evidence of bias in police shootings. His conclusions have been echoed by researchers at the University of Maryland and Michigan State University.
By contrast, in 2018, according to FBI statistics, there were 7,406 black homicides. When Floyd was murdered over the Memorial Day weekend, there were 85 shootings and 24 deaths in Chicago. Black Lives Matters, however, has shown little public concern over any of this violence. Indeed, an article in the influential black magazine The Root outright defended black activists’ refusal to talk about these homicides:
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