Hillary Lies Cops Die

By Larry Elder The fascinating thing about Hillary Clintons lie that African-Americans are disproportionately killed by police is that she continues peddling it after the murders of three law enforcement officers in Baton Rouge which followed the ambush killings of five officers in Dallas. In both cases the murderers were black men apparently convinced that the cops were out to get black people and who therefore sought to exact revenge. President Barack Obama too talks about the disparity that blacks compared to whites are more likely to be killed by the police. That Obama -- in lecturing about this so-called disparity -- gets away with ignoring the disproportionate rate at which blacks especially young blacks commit violent crime is truly astonishing. Should blacks at 13 percent of the population comprise 13 percent of doctors 13 percent of lawyers and 13 percent of NBA players? If not does this mean there is a disparity that we must address as a society? According to economist John Lott teenage black males compared to teen white males are nine times more likely to commit murder -- and the murder victim is almost always another young black man. What about that disparity Mr. President? Its also interesting to watch the reaction of those who believe Clinton and defend her position even when they are confronted with the facts. Talk about -- pardon the pun -- shooting the messenger. When I told someone that according to The Washington Post of the 965 blacks killed by cops last year less than 4 percent involved a white cop and unarmed black man he sniffed Why should a cop kill anyone who is unarmed? Well take the case for Michael Brown arguably the white police-black suspect encounter that launched the Black Lives Matter movement and its mantra Hands Up Dont Shoot. Eyewitness testimony and physical evidence show that Brown charged the police officer and attempted to get the cops gun. Unarmed does not mean non-threatening. Its hard to believe that two Ivy League-educated lawyers Obama and Clinton do not understand things like statistics ratios and how to properly interpret crime data to incorporate the rate at which crime is committed by young black men versus the rate at which crime is committed by young white men. As Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute writes in The Wall Street Journal According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics blacks were charged with 62 percent of all robberies 57 percent of murders and 45 percent of assaults in the 75 largest U.S. counties in 2009 though they made up roughly 15 percent of the population there. This leads us to but one conclusion: Obama and Clinton are flat-out lying. The goal is obvious -- to retain that monolithic black vote without which Democrats cannot win at the presidential level. Obama cannot brag about -- and Clinton cannot run on -- his economic record for blacks. Under his watch black poverty is up. Net worth is down. The wealth gap between blacks and whites is at a 25-year high. And as to the employment of black men their labor force participation rate (the percentage of those 20 years of age and over who are either working or looking for work) hit its lowest rate in December 2013 -- well into Obamas second term and his economic recovery. That low was the worst since 1972 when the Bureau of Labor Statistics began keeping such records. And since December 2010 black mens employment rate every single month to date has seen lower numbers than any month under all other presidents dating back to 1972. So what to do? Change the subject of course. Make the election about social justice. Prattle on about what Clinton calls the school-to-prison pipeline. Never mind that this drive to induce paranoia among blacks has real-world consequences. As mentioned already it has helped inspire murderers to kill officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge. But it also causes police officers to be less proactive fearing that they too will be accused of unfairly profiling blacks. Cops pull back. This police passivity means crime increases the victims of which are disproportionately black the very people Ms. Clinton claims to care so deeply about. Lies get votes. But they also get people killed.