Charges of racism against police are difficult but not impossible to quantify.  Instead of focusing on the intentions of white police officers in justifiable homicides toward blacks, let’s turn the table and look at black police behavior in justifiable homicides on blacks.  Only after an equal comparison of racism charges by both white and black police officers can we answer the noise with clarity.

According to a report written in March 2001 by The U.S. Department of Justice titled "Policing and Homicide," Jodi M. Brown and Patrick A. Langan, Ph.D. studied justifiable homicide by police using valid statistical analysis on 21 years of data.  According to the study:

The black-officer-kills-black-felon rate is 32 per 100,000 black officers in 1998, which is higher than the white-officer-kills-black-felon rate of 14 per 100,000 white officers.

The white-officer-kills-white-felon rate is 28 per 100,000 white officers in 1998, which is higher than the black-officer-kills-white-felon rate of 11 per 100,000 black officers.

In short, black police officers kill blacks at more than twice the rate white police kill blacks, and white police kill whites at more than twice the rate than black police kill whites.  To cry racism under these truths, one would have to believe that black cops are more “racist” toward blacks than white cops and white cops are more “racist” to whites than black cops.

Yes, the data is from 1976-1998.  But one would be hard-pressed to argue that bigotry was less prevalent then versus today.  After all, this data was compiled before we had seen an African-American president, secretary of state, attorney general, or Supreme Court justice.

Even if we flip the outrage and look at police officers being murdered by criminals, the same white racism argument is unfounded.

When a white police officer is murdered, the offender is usually a white (60%); and when a black police officer is murdered, the offender is usually a black (76%).

If white police officers are murdered by blacks 40% of the time, while black police officers are murdered by whites only 24% of the time; then a claim of white racism, even among the criminal element, is dispelled.

Other statistics from the study show that the vast majority of police officers do their job without the lens of color tainting their behaviors.

White officers (42 justifiable homicides per 100,000 white officers in 1998) and black officers (44 justifiable homicides per 100,000 black officers) commit justifiable homicides at about the same rate.

White officers make up 87% of the Nation's 641,208 police and account for 82% of justifiable homicides by police. Black officers make up 11% of the Nation's police and account for 17% of all justifiable homicides.

Policing is tough work, humans are not infallible, and tragic events will happen.  But using linear explanations to explain and determine a charge as harmful as racism is not only ignorant, but inflammatory and dangerous.  Just ask the innocent property owners in Ferguson who had their stores looted and burned.