Dan O'Donnell presents the most comprehensive research into police shootings you will ever hear. The plain truth is that racism is not a factor in officer-involved shootings and all of the available data confirms it.
“Policing in our country is inherently and intentionally racist,” Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib tweeted Monday in a predictably hysterical response to a deadly officer-involved shooting in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota.
On Sunday, while arresting 20-year-old Daunte Wright for an outstanding warrant, Officer Kim Potter fired a single shot at Wright as he wrestled with fellow officers and tried to drive away.
“Taser! Taser! Taser!” Potter can be heard yelling on body camera video of the incident.
“As I watched the video and listened to the officer’s commands, it is my belief that the officer had the intention to deploy their taser but instead shot Mr. Wright with a single bullet,” Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon said in a news conference the following day. “This appears to me, from what I viewed, and the officer’s reaction and distress immediately after, that this was an accidental discharge that resulted in a tragic death of Mr. Wright.”
An investigation is ongoing, but Potter—and, it seems, every police officer in America by extension—has already been judged to be guilty.
“We need to abolish American policing as it currently exists,” declared MSNBC pundit Jason Johnson.
“Daunte Wright’s killing was not a random, disconnected ‘accident,’” added New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “It was the repeated outcome of an indefensible system that grants impunity for state violence.”
This could not possibly be farther from the truth. Although braying politicians and dishonest media narratives have convinced millions that systemic racism in policing that has led to an epidemic of deadly officer-involved shootings in recent years, the actual evidence just doesn’t support this.