False media reports appear to be driving NFL protests

Fox News:

The NFL players kneeling during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” in football stadiums across the country are engaging in protests based on false claims and misleading media reports that give the impression that police are killing African-Americans at a rate greater than they are killing whites.

In addition, my own research shows that contrary to some claims, blacks have good relations with police they deal with in their neighborhoods.

After Colin Kaepernick, then a quarterback with the San Francisco 49ers, started kneeling during the playing of the national anthem 13 months ago, he said: “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color…. There are bodies in the street and people (police) are getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

However, a study last year by Harvard Economics Professor Roland Fryer, who is black, concluded that for the Houston police department: “On the most extreme use of force – officer-involved shootings – we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account.” Unfortunately, he doesn’t have the race of the officer doing the shooting and the data for just one police department doesn’t allow the investigation of police policies.

Using four national databases of crime statistics representing confrontations between police and civilians in many parts of the U.S., the study did find that blacks were more likely than whites to be treated with some lower level of force by police during confrontations – such as being handcuffed, pushed to the ground or pepper-sprayed. That is a legitimate issue that merits further study. But it’s not the same as saying racist white cops are – to use Kaepernick’s inflammatory phrase – “getting away with murder” of African-Americans.
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The media have helped create a biased perception that is far from reality on police shootings. In a new study, the Crime Prevention Research Center (where I serve as president) finds that when a white officer kills a suspect, the media usually mention the race of the officer. This is rarely true when the officer is black.

As a result, many people incorrectly believe the police are racist. But when it comes to the cops who African-Americans deal with personally, they often have a different view.

For example, a July Quinnipiac University poll in New York City found that blacks strongly support the cops in their own neighborhoods – 62 percent approve compared to just 35 percent who disapprove. That rating is 11 percent higher than blacks give the New York City Police Department as a whole, where perceptions are far more likely to be influenced by media reports.

Data also show that blacks don’t hesitate to reach out to police and report crime. Indeed, from 2008 to 2012, blacks were actually more likely than whites, Hispanics or Asians to report violent crimes committed against them to the police.
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More importantly, this trust in local community police appears to be well-placed. This is because despite what Kaepernick and others falsely claim, white police officers aren’t killing defenseless blacks just because they can. Blacks also are a smaller percentage of people killed by police than the black share of murderers and other violent criminals.
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The protesters are misinformed.  Instead of pandering to their misinformed view of events, the league and teh media should be educating them on the real world and not the delusions of persecution they have been taught by liberals in the media and the racial grievance industry.