After a pair of police-involved shootings of young black men, President Barack Obama is drawing attention to the disproportionate rate at which young black men get shot or killed after coming in contact with police, but the data in Democrat-run Chicago paints a more nuanced picture that dispels liberal politicians’ promises of quick fixes.
As the news of two police involved shootings knocked Hillary Clinton’s email troubles off the front pages, President Obama released a statement lamenting the shootings saying “all Americans should be troubled” by the separate incidents where police officers shot and killed young black men. Obama’s criticism of police came only hours before five Dallas officers were killed during a Black Lives Matter protest.
“To be concerned about these issues is not political correctness. It’s just being an American,” Obama insisted. “And to recognize the reality that we got some tough history and we haven’t gotten through that history yet.”
But the president seems to forget all about that “being an American” when it concerns the staggering murder rates of Chicago.
Whatever the final facts in the two recent cases may or may not be, Obama’s silence on the bloodletting in his adopted hometown is deafening. And shootings in Chicago, where his former Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, is Mayor, have very little to do with confrontations with police.
Race, on the other hand, is most certainly a major factor. Sadly, it is predominantly black on black violence in the Windy City, with the number of black victims this year, mostly between the ages of 18 and 35, four times higher than the death rate of all other races combined. In 2016, the Windy City has suffered 263 murdered blacks compared to only 60 Hispanics and 17 whites and other races.
This death toll is already on track to be way up compared to the last three years. In 2015, for instance, 401 blacks were murdered while 81 Hispanics and 20 whites/others were murdered. 2014 saw 253, 67, and 32 respectively while 2013 saw 357, 83, and 8.
Meanwhile between 2016 and 2014 there were only a total of 30 citizens felled by police compared to a total murder rate over that same period of years of well over two thousands deaths of victims of all races.
It is also clear that the preponderance of murderers were also black. While not every shooting is solved and pinned on a perpetrator, from the arrests made thus far in 2016, 46 perpetrators have been black, 16 have been Hispanic and only two have been white/other.
The stats for 2015 and 2014 are similar in the lopsided representation of black shooters. In 2015, 94 of those identified as a shooter were black, 20 were Hispanic and 10 were white/other. In 2014, it was 99 black killers, 16 Hispanic and 12 white/others.
Indeed even as Obama ignored Chicago as he sided with the Black Lives Matter narrative, only hours later five Dallas police officers were gunned down at a Black Lives Matter protest.
This onslaught of crime committed against blacks and the shocking loss of black lives has been arguably ignored in Washington both by Congress and Chicago’s favorite son, Barack Obama.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.