Are Black Lives Matter's claims reasonable?

Much attention has been focussed on a particular black police office from Florida, the reason being that he has been brave enough to question the claims and the motives of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.

Officer Jay Stalien took to the internet to wonder whether BLM valued the lives of police officers (including black police officers) as much as black civilians who happen to have been killed by white police officers. Hardly ground-breaking stuff, and largely consistent with the Blue Live Matter and All Lives Matter crowd. But his very particular viewpoint, as a police officer and a black man, has resulted in his analysis being widely shared on social media.

Officer Stalien also provided some statistics which he claims disproves many of BLM's base beliefs, specifically the idea that black people are unfairly penalised by the law enforcement forces. The BBC did its own fact-checking on Stalien's fact-checking and concluded that, well, statistics are not very reliable. Big news, and not particularly helpful.

For example, Officer Stalien's claim that cities with a higher number of black people will necessarily result in a higher number of black people being arrested (but that this does not amount to targeting), is kind of self-evident, as is the BBC's comment that this in itself does not mean that racist targeting is not actually occurring. Similarly, Officer Stalien's statistics showing that more white people are killed by police than blacks (238 whites, 123 blacks, 79 Hispanics, and 69 other/unknown race, as of 2016) is shown to be of limited utility, because it ignores the relative populations of the different races. In fact, black people are killed by police at a much higher rate than white people, just as BLM claims. And finally, Officer Stalien points out that black people kill other black people to a much greater degree than do the police (by a factor about 40!), and BLM have nothing to say on this.

Well, statistics shmatistics. We know that "facts" can be used to show pretty much anything with a little massage. It seems to me, though, that what is not being asked in this conversation is what are the relative numbers of black people and white people who actually break the law, or who run close to the edge of the law, and thereby invite police investigation in the first place. This may be through engaging in drugs activity, hanging out in gangs, or even something as simple and technically innocent as being out on the street at 2:30 in the morning - basically, anything that might contribute to what one might call putting themselves in the way of police attention. Now, I am sure there are no statistics on such matters, nor is such a thing probably even technically possible (or perhaps even desirable). I am probably being branded right now as a racist for even suggesting it. But frankly I have no idea whether black people are in fact inherently more likely to be involved in criminal or near-criminal activity than white people, and therefore more likely to attract the attentions of the police (which might in turn lead to the use of firearms). I am just saying that this would be better measure of potential police profiling than just a simplistic statement that black deaths at the hands of the police is disproportionate compared to their representation in the population as a whole. I'm not wrong there, am I?

Now, let me be quite clear. I am not saying that BLM is deliberately misrepresenting the facts to bolster their political agenda. Neither am I saying that the law enforcement lobby have it right either. Clearly much work needs to be done on teaching police officers de-escalation techniques. Even more importantly, we need to get all those drugs and guns off the street (so that the police do not feel the need for them too, and so that they are not constantly fearful of a gun attack). And, going even further back, we need to tackle income equality, so that young people are not turning to drugs and gangs out of frustration. Oh, yes, and we need to make those pigs fly...

I guess I am just saying that things are actually much more complex than either BLM or Officer Stalien are suggesting, and that the base causes need to be tackled not just the symptoms.