Crime 2020

The FBI annual crime statistics for 2020 are now out, making their appearance in a new format called the Crime Data Explorer; I’ll be going over the murder stats. Table 1 of the Expanded Homicide Data lists a total of 17,754 murder victims, 7,029 of them white, 9,913 black, 497 other, and 315 unknown. Table 3 lists the murder offenders, totaling 20,982, 5,844 of them white, 8,142 black, 404 other, and 6,592 unknown, the large number of unknown offenders attributable to as yet unsolved cases.

Table 6—the single victim / single offender table—is made up of 7,875 pairs of victims and their corresponding known offenders; it is this table from which a number of published percentages are developed. Of the 7,875 victims, 3,400—43 percent—were killed by white offenders (white Hispanics included in the white category), while 3,938—50 percent—were killed by black offenders. According to Statista population estimates for 2020, whites, including white Hispanics, made up 75.8 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 50 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 36.4 percent of murders on top of that. Of the 3,740 black victims listed in Table 6, 3,210—85.8 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 17,754 and then 85.8 percent of that, we have about 2,071 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 36.4 percent of 17,754 and then 85.8 percent of that, we have about 5,544 additional black victims. So after black offenders kill the expected 2,071 black victims, they go on a roll and kill 5,544 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 664 whites killed by blacks and 354 blacks killed by whites, a ratio of 1 to 1.87. 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 group will commit more out-of-group murders against a larger out group and fewer murders against a smaller out group.

We’ll be dealing with three groups and their corresponding population percentages, white (75.8), black (13.6), and other (10.6). 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 = 42.6. The percentage of white victims of black offenders would be W ÷ (W + O) × B = 11.9. The ratio of 11.9 to 42.6 reduces down to 1 to 3.58. So what do we have to do with the theoretical baseline ratio of 1 to 3.58 to convert it into the actual ratio of 1.87 to 1? We have to multiply the 1 in 1 to 3.58 by 6.69 to get a ratio—6.69 to 3.58—that reduces down to 1.87 to 1. This means that white people are being murdered at 6.69 times the rate they should be by black murder offenders. LeBron got it all wrong; white people are the ones being hunted every day.

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 2020 totaled 1,021 shootings; of those, 241 victims were black; and of those, a grand total of 18 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 18 instances, only four were unquestionably “bad shoots” that resulted in the officer involved being charged.

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 2020, the total number of offenders was 44, and 13 of those were black, which comes out to 29.5 percent. The 2020 table also gives a total for the decade ending in 2020. That total was 502 of which 173 were black, which comes out to 34.5 percent. So in the long haul, black cop killers are over-represented by a factor of a little over 2.5.

Although understanding what the numbers really mean is important for understanding what is really going on in our country, some people just don’t have a clue. A case in point is a recent article by Touré in TheGrio titled “If all lives matter, why aren’t white people addressing white-on-white murders?” The title plays to the fact that the overwhelming majority of murders in any group are committed by members of that particular group. So why should white people be afraid of being murdered by black people when the overwhelming majority of white murder victims are killed by other white people? Well, white people should be afraid of being murdered by black people because they’re being murdered at 6.69 times the rate they should be by black people. In areas where six or seven white people have been murdered by black people, only one white person should have been murdered by a black person.

Touré also observes that certain majority-white cities—Las Vegas, Kansas City, and Tulsa—are among the top 20 in murder rates, the implication being that it must be murderous whites who have driven the rates up in those cities. But police departments keep statistics on the murders they investigate, some of those departments noting the racial classification of the murder offenders; such was the case with the Kansas City PD, that city having a non-Hispanic white population of 55 percent and a black population of 30 percent. The city’s PD processed 203 murder suspects in 2020, of whom 123—60 percent—were black. So a group that makes up 30 percent of the population comprises 60 percent of murder suspects—and Touré thinks white people are the problem. But then again, Touré writes for TheGrio.