This week, tape emerged from Memphis, Tennessee of five black police officers engaging in the beating of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old black man. Nichols was pulled over for reckless driving according to the officers; they ordered him to get on the ground and to give them his hands; he did not comply and instead began to run. When the officers caught up with him, they pummeled him, complete with strikes to the head while his hands were being held behind his back. Nichols died in the hospital.
The five officers involved were charged with second-degree murder, kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression. All were fired from the police department.
The national media coverage was swift — and confused. For some in the media, the narrative was clear: the police are generally brutal, and thus must be dramatically curbed. “The issue here, as plenty of people have pointed out, is not black versus white, it’s blue versus the rest of us,” said MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan. “You can’t reform this stuff with body cameras or diversifying the police, as we just saw in Memphis.” Instead, Hasan suggested, abolition of the police might be a possible solution.
This solution, of course, is no solution at all: Memphis has one of the highest crime rates in the United States. According to Neighborhood Scout, the chances of becoming a victim of violent or property crime in the city are one in 12. And we know with statistical near-certainty that high-profile cases of police misconduct generally result in police stand-downs — which in turn result in more crime. As professors Tanaya Devi and Roland Freyer found in 2020, “all investigations that were preceded by ‘viral’ incidents of deadly force have led to a large and statistically significant increase in homicides and total crime.”
A second media narrative quickly emerged from the Nichols killing: despite the fact that all involved were black, that the Memphis Police Department is majority black, that the chief of police is black — the killing was a result of “white supremacy.” The Washington Post headlined, “Black Memphis police spark dialogue on systemic racism in the US.” Van Jones opined at CNN.com, “The police who killed Tyre Nichols were Black. But they might still have been driven by racism.” Kimberle Crenshaw, founder of intersectionality, explained, “One cannot imagine this happening in a well-heeled white community. That is a racial problem that the law has consistently said is a non-problem.”
This narrative, like the first, is designed to avoid solutions. If all policing is the result of structures of white supremacy, the only answer is to abolish policing. If each individual instance of police brutality, no matter the race of the officers, is an example of racism, then the only way to alleviate police brutality is by completely restructuring American society — which is just what those like Crenshaw propose. The result won’t be a safer America, but a much less safe and more fractious one.
In reality, instances of police brutality cross races. Whether it’s Daniel Shaver being shot to death in a hotel while attempting to comply with police demands in 2016 or whether it’s two Arkansas Sheriff’s Deputies beating Randal Worcester in August 2022, white victims of police brutality aren’t hard to find. Some police brutality can undoubtedly be curbed by better recruitment and training. But if we wish to actually lower the number of encounters between a given population and the police, thus reducing the number of possible violent interactions, the most obvious method would be to reduce criminal activity — which requires more policing and more law-abiding behavior.
None of this should be controversial. But solutions aren’t what advocates of police abolition or critical race theory are looking for. They’re looking for revolution. And all revolutions have casualties.
Ben Shapiro, 38, is a graduate of UCLA and Harvard Law School, host of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” and co-founder of Daily Wire+. He is a three-time New York Times bestselling author; his latest book is “The Authoritarian Moment: How The Left Weaponized America’s Institutions Against Dissent.” To find out more about Ben Shapiro and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website.
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How do you fight violent crime? We’ve got the worst of humanity roaming the streets of our cities every day and night. And now we have “nice” criminals that steal, loot, plunder, murder, and rape at will and it’s OK, they’re really nice people, family men, pillars of the community. Very nice happy guys high on dope that resist arrest and try to get away. They don’t mean to really hurt anyone, and often they don’t even use real guns. (Why do we permit toy stores to sell look-a-like guns anyway) So what kind of policeman are you going to hire to deal with our increasing violent crime population. And our increasing population of teens and nice guys getting involved shooting people. How do we stop this already out of control situation? The police won’t be able to control it, we won’t let them. Anything they do that is successful will be terminated as brutality and white supremist. We’re in a no win situation.
People would have to be complete idiots not to see what would happen if there wasn’t a police dept.Even a moron can see that utter caos would insue.But, that is exactly what they want. Then organized crime would control everything and allow local criminals to do whatever they want.
I knew they would figure out how to get whitey involved in this debacle. An EMT guy was white. They were gonna arrest the police station receptionist but found him before going so deep.
Cops black and white are worthless gangs of thugs
Your grossly overstate the thugness of Cops. However, it is predictably true that every law enforcement group does have a few rotten apples. The vast majority of Cops are honest and have the needed integrity and perform within the boundaries of their legal authority.
Agreed
Maybe Your nations police just suck and are fine with sucking lol
Black cops killing a black suspect? That has to be very inconvenient. Still, rioters didn’t need much of a reason to burn and loot, but for now shop keepers keep your wares but glass companies, you’re out of luck.
I agree with Deb, it is black on black crime. It is very sad to see what is happening and causing more disunity by this.
Disunity is the goal.1 of the oldest and most effective tactics is divide and conquer. The best way to accomplish that is to make people feel wronged, a victim and entitled.Read the Communist Manifesto. Everything that is being done like this, is in there. All the communist/marxist strategies are being implimented.We can’t allow that to happen.
The focal point should be black on black crime.
How disappointed the Commie liberal political faction of this country must be that it was not White policemen that exercised possibly excessive force to control the suspects refusal to cooperate!!! However, it does seem to have been a case of excessive force being used regardless of the skin color of some of the police individuals involved. Sadly, it is sometimes true that, regardless of skin color, some policemen, in the heat of arresting an uncooperative potential arrestee, that some level of force is justified.
Mr Bootlicker,all cops are corrupt
WrongI personally know numerous law enforcement officers and they hate the bad cops. Your comment is one reason why.You can’t blame them all for the actions of a few.You have no idea the pressure they are under.
IMO, Ben’s last last paragraph says it all.
yep, divide and conquer
Exactly
black on black crime is 6 times higher than any other ethnic combo..DUH!!!! Graphic example.
Because of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are African Americans now in the clan?
This is what happens when the A-holes on the left remove their brains and roll them around on the kitchen table, when they put them back in the thinking goes all to hell.
How can you possibly make that stretch that Blacks Killing Blacks is because of White Supremacy.
I understand that a lot of people on the left have willed their brains to science, but I also Hurd that science is contesting the Will’s!
That last sentence really cracked me up!
Thanks!
Better police training and hiring yes, but we also need to make running from the police/fighting them a long term jail time. Do as they say, fight in court later and you will live longer.
Thanks for mentioning the part of the story not mentioned at all–what exactly occurred to cause the reaction (however brutal). I keep looking for a better explanation than it was a simple traffic stop where the victim didn’t react as asked. I would really like a background check published unwiped of this individual because something is not kosher in the telling, especially when Al Sharpton shows up to add his version of the events. Of course, brutality in any form is wrong but we are not getting the whole picture only segued version of an “innocent” person of interest.
Yep
YepHow many of these cases involved failure to comply to an officers instructions, running from them and fighting them?How many already had a criminal record? Warrants? Etc.
Four of the 5 police officers involved in this case were hired after the 2020 riots and defund the police movement that swept across this nation. Causing literally hundreds, if not thousands of good cops nation-wide to take early retirement or simply opt to leave the profession for something else. Thus leaving gapping holes in staffing all across the country, that needed to be filled. The 4 of the 5 officers in question were hired under the greatly lowered recruitment standards, that would have likely barred these individuals from ever becoming cops before in terms of background and other screening practices designed to weed out these type of individuals from ever having a gun and badge.
When you intentionally create an environment, which is what the defund the police movement was all about, that makes being a police officer not only more dangerous, but makes cops personally liable for criminal or civil actions from all directions with no one having their backs up the command chain, what you end up with is having to scrap the bottom of the barrel in terms of simply finding warm bodies willing to take the job. Then you end up with things like this where you have what appears to be an out of control team of cops acting more like a street gang than law enforcement.
Is this an example of so-called white supremacy? No, of course not. That is just the left trying to fan the flames of division and racism in their ignorant supporters. What we have here is yet another example of the end result of what happens when bad Democrat policies, in this case defund the police, so-called bail reform laws and other anti law and order legislation is enacted across the country in order to appease the leftist movement systemactically trying to dismantle our country from within. The end result is acts of murder like this one.
I’m sure at some point in the near future, some Democrat running for the Presidency or Congress will put forth a serous proposal to disband all local and state police departments and replace them all with a national police force run out of Washington, D.C. All in the name of “restoring law and order and a “fairer justice system” of course. That will be our 21st century version of the Brown Shirts for the United States. What could possibly go wrong? (That was a rhetorical question, as I’m sure most of you could figure out.) Never let a good crisis go to waste as said by Rahm Emanuel.
Yes and we have seen what the DC police are like, blaming and jailing the Trump supporters, while they killed 2 women, one beaten to death, and the other shot to death. AND the Democrats have twice held televised ceremonies where they gave them medals for their bad behavior.
True.Most of the police were Capitol Police and answered directly to crazy Pelosi. Tell me there’s not something wrong with that picture.
The corollary to what Rahm said is ” if there isn’t a crisis make one!” That is where global warming came from. It’s a permanent crisis that requires the government intervention to “solve”
EXACTLY RIGHT.There are so many scams being perpetrated on us and on a hugh scale and so many non thinkers who buy into them.Sad to see how easily so many people are deceived.Never take time to think for themselves.Just because an idea is pushed on a large scale and pounded repeatedly into our heads, doesn’t make it true. The so called experts they use are all bought and paid for.
Should this happen ,those who screamed the loudest will be sorriest
It was incredible that not one of those LEO’s came forward to say “STOP!” Such is the power and consequence of mob mentality. Unfortunately, these “bottom of the barrel” pickings will be around for a long time, unless they can be fired (good luck). Police departments can bring in experts to teach better behavior on the job, but those stripes are deeply ingrained and will be hard to change.
EXACTLY RIGHT
This tragic happening isn’t racial since all involved are black, or of one race. Nor should we use a broad brush to paint all police as evil. Some are and some are very good people just like us!
Unfortunately we humans are not perfect, nor all good.
With a decline in religion there has also been decline in morals.
Exactly
I was expecting a spin on this, but thought they could have done better than racism. Which blacks are we to be racist against? I always find it confusing which criminals we are to scream racist at.
ONLY A CANCEROUS liberal OR A CHUMP WOULD SAY, ”WHITE SUPREMACY
“Cancerous” to describe most liberals is a redundant adjective …!
Tragically, the mainstream media outlets are saturated with Marxist commentators who chronically push equity and white supremacy. These ant-American thugs are so full of hate that they are doing their best to actively destroy our Constitutional Republic. Sadly, many low information ignoramuses are still sticking their heads in the sand — believing that they have every right as free Americans to be apathetic and self-centered.
YepThey have lost thier duty to report only facts, not commentary.Used to be when a story was commentary, they were required to state it as such.Equity and equality are NOT the same thing. They are playing word games again.
Yup, blame it on whitey. Way to go!