Darren Wilson's Side of the Story

[Tom Joad]

Originally Posted by finnbow

I have just as much idea as anyone here what happened there and it is far less of an idea than the grand jury or DOJ. I have a particular distaste for the politicization of such a shooting and the mob in Ferguson trying to improperly influence the proper adjudication of justice.

I'll also readily admit to being repelled by stories covered ad nauseum by cable news without little or no idea of what occurred, be it a cute blonde girl going missing in Aruba or a strong-arm robber and cop assailant being shot in the streets of Ferguson. These are local stories and should be handled locally, both in terms of media coverage and jurisprudence.

When it comes to young black males being shot by police it's not local, it's a nationwide pattern.

http://www.propublica.org/article/de...lack-and-white

Young black males in recent years were at a far greater risk of being shot dead by police than their white counterparts – 21 times greater, according to a ProPublica analysis of federally collected data on fatal police shootings.

The 1,217 deadly police shootings from 2010 to 2012 captured in the federal data show that blacks, age 15 to 19, were killed at a rate of 31.17 per million, while just 1.47 per million white males in that age range died at the hands of police.

One way of appreciating that stark disparity, ProPublica's analysis shows, is to calculate how many more whites over those three years would have had to have been killed for them to have been at equal risk. The number is jarring – 185, more than one per week.

ProPublica's risk analysis on young males killed by police certainly seems to support what has been an article of faith in the African American community for decades: Blacks are being killed at disturbing rates when set against the rest of the American population.