Monday on Fox News Channel’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” host Bill O’Reilly used his opening “Talking Points Memo” segment to address Black Lives Matters protesters interrupting former President Bill Clinton at a rally to promote his wife Hillary Clinton’s candidacy for president.
The protesters were focused on Clinton’s 1990s crime legislative, which they argued has unfairly incarcerated black Americans at a higher level. O’Reilly, however, argued that blacks were committing more crime, which make that ethnic groups incarceration rate than any other ethnic group.
“Now the race question,” O’Reilly said. “Again, according to FBI data, from 1976 to 1995, black Americans were identified by police as committing more than half of the homicides in the USA. African-Americans make up 13 percent of the population. In addition, a national crime victims survey reported that blacks committed robberies at a rate of 60 percent. Again, the black community is just 13 percent of the population. So what’s the beef if black Americans are committing crimes out-of-proportion to other ethnic groups, why is there a racial component to their presence in prison? Why?”
O’Reilly also dismissed the incarceration levels were higher because of drug use in the black community, noting that those convicted on drug-related charges were found guilty of trafficking, not use.
“Also, forget about the drug myth,” he added. “Right now in federal penitentiaries 99.5 percent of drug-convicted inmates are traffickers, not users — 99.5 percent. So the question becomes, why is the Democratic Party caving into propaganda put out by radical groups like Black Lives Matter? It is clear that tough sentencing reform spearheaded by both parties in the 90s and signed by Bill Clinton saved perhaps millions of American lives. Yet the entire criminal justice system is now being branded as racist and oppressive. Disgraceful.”
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