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| Is Michael Brown a statistical anomaly? Frankly, there's no way to know... |
Many of my media theorist friends are wondering how to include coverage of Ferguson and Staten Island tragedies in courses next semester. Perhaps they'll be aided by some of my recent digging.
THE LIKELY VICTIMS
Searching the CDC's Fatal Injury Database for deaths attributed to "legal intervention with a firearm," Bill O'Reilly claims that police in this country are killing far more whites than blacks. "In 2012," O'Reilly says, "123 African-Americans were shot dead by police.... Same year, 326 whites were killed by police bullets."
But a ProPublica report sees it differently. Three of its reporters suggest that young black males (age 15-19) are 21 times more likely to be shot dead by police than their white counterparts. From 2010 to 2012, teenage white men were killed at the rate of 1.5 in 1 million. Compare that to 31 in 1 million for teenage black men.
