The FBI annual crime statistics for 2022 are now out, making their appearance in the Crime Data Explorer; I’ll be going over the murder stats. Table 1 of the Expanded Homicide Data lists a total of 19,196 murder victims, 7,704 of them white, 10,470 black, 568 other, and 454 unknown. Table 3 lists the murder offenders, totaling 23,508, 6,629 of them white, 9,655 black, 3,698 other, and 3,076 unknown.
Table 6—the single victim / single offender table—is made up of 8,911 pairs of victims and their corresponding known offenders; it is this table from which a number of published percentages are developed. Of the 8,911 victims, 3,679—41.3 percent—were killed by white offenders (white Hispanics included in the white category), while 4,545—51 percent—were killed by black offenders. According to Statista population estimates for 2022, whites, including white Hispanics, made up 75.5 percent of the population and blacks made up 13.6 percent. So a group that is less than a fifth the size of a larger group manages to commit more murders than the larger group.
Now if blacks make up 13.6 percent of the population but commit 51 percent of murders, it means that after they commit 13.6 percent of murders—which would be expected—they go on to commit an additional 37.4 percent of murders on top of that. Of the 4,545 black victims listed in Table 6, 3,644—80.2 percent—were killed by other blacks. We can apply the percentages derived from Table 6 to the total murders listed in Table 1 to come up with a ballpark estimate of the number of black-on-black murders. If we take 13.6 percent of 19,196 and then 80.2 percent of that, we have about 2,093 black victims—the expected number of victims if the percentage of murders committed by black offenders was equal to the percentage of blacks in the country’s population. If we take 37.4 percent of 19,196 and then 80.2 percent of that, we have about 5,757 additional black victims. So after black offenders kill the expected 2,093 black victims, they go on a roll and kill 5,757 more for good measure, completely invalidating the proposition that Black Lives Matter.
Having dealt with black-on-black murders, let’s now turn to black-on-white murders and white-on-black murders. According to Table 6, there were 781 whites killed by blacks and 363 blacks killed by whites, a ratio of 1 to 2.15. What would the ratio be if all groups committed murder at the same rate, had the same percentages of out-of-group murders, and if their out-of-group murders were proportionately distributed among the out groups? If all groups committed murder at the same rate, the percentage of murder committed by each group would correspond to the percentage they make up of the population; and if the percentage of out-of-group murders is the same for each group, then the percentage of the total out-of-group murders for each group would also correspond to the percentage they make up of the population. The proportional distribution of out-of-group murders means that a larger group will commit more out-of-group murders, and a smaller group will commit fewer out-of-group murders, even though the percentage of out-of-group murders is the same for both groups.
We’ll be dealing with three groups and their corresponding population percentages, white (75.5), black (13.6), and other (10.9). To make the operations easier to follow, we’ll use the letters W, B, and O to stand for the percentages of the respective groups. The out groups murdered by white offenders would equal B + O, and the percentage of black victims would be B ÷ (B + O). Therefore the percentage of black victims of white offenders would be B ÷ (B + O) × W = 41.9. The percentage of white victims of black offenders would be W ÷ (W + O) × B = 11.9. The ratio of 11.9 to 41.9 reduces down to 1 to 3.52. So what do we have to do with the theoretical baseline ratio of 1 to 3.52 to convert it into the actual ratio of 2.15 to 1? We have to multiply the 1 in 1 to 3.52 by 7.57 to get a ratio—7.57 to 3.52—that reduces down to 2.15 to 1. This means that white people are being murdered at 7.57 times the rate they should be by black murder offenders.
In addition to being victims of murder offenders, black people are also allegedly being mowed down in droves by the police. The Washington Post maintains a database of fatal police shootings called Fatal Force that can be filtered for categories such as race and whether the person was armed. The figures for 2022 totaled 1,096 shootings; of those, 225 victims were black; and of those, a grand total of 10 were unarmed, that category being the one where we would most likely expect to find unjustified shootings. However, even unarmed people can be dangerous enough to be justifiably shot. Out of these 10 instances, only three resulted in the officer involved being charged. And that should have been only two: The officer who shot Patrick Lyoya was justified, and I have previously reviewed that case here.
Having discussed black people killed by police, it may be instructive to look at police killed by black people. The FBI statistics include a section called Law Enforcement Officers Feloniously Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA), Table 42. In 2022, the total number of offenders was 51, but the race was not reported for a whopping 30 out of the 51. Out of the remaining 21, 15 were white and 6 were black, with 0 reported for the other groups of Asians, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders. The 2022 table also gives a total for the decade ending in 2022, and that provides a more useful overall picture. The total was 492, with 248 white, 145 black, 10 combined for the smaller groups, and 89 with race not reported. This comes out to whites being underrepresented at 50.4 percent and blacks being overrepresented by a factor of 2.17 at 29.5 percent.
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