Donald Gilleland

Community columnist

NFL players across the league knelt, locked arms, raised their fists and even refused to come out of their locker rooms during the national anthem last Sunday, ESPN reported. Coaches and even owners joined them. This was a continuation of Colin Kaepernick’s protest of police killings of blacks and the general treatment of minorities, which started when he alone took a knee at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego a month ago.

I spent 30 years serving in military uniforms defending, among other things, the right to free speech. Some of my friends died defending those rights. I would not criticize anyone who exercises free speech rights, but those rights come with responsibilities, and I believe there are better ways for Kaepernick and other athletes to accomplish their goals.

Heather MacDonald of the conservative think tank Manhattan Institute in an Internet video asks the question: "Does the truth matter?" According to a transcript of the video, a recent deadly force research study by Lois James, a researcher at Washington State University, found police officers were less likely to shoot unarmed black suspects than to shoot white or Hispanic suspects.

According to MacDonald, Harvard Economics Professor Roland Fryer analyzed more than 1,000 officer-involved shootings across America. He concluded there is zero evidence of racial bias in police shootings. He found that in some large cities blacks were 24 percent less likely than whites to be shot by police officers, even though the black suspects were armed or violent.

According MacDonald's analysis of the Washington Post police shooting database and federal crime statistics revealed that cops kill nearly 12 percent of white and Hispanic homicide victims. In contrast, cops kill only 4 percent of black homicide victims. Yet that 4 percent represents 26 percent of police shooting victims nationally, while blacks account for only 13 percent of our national population. Perhaps that is because police shootings occur more frequently where officers confront armed or violently resisting suspects who are disproportionately black.

MacDonald wrote that according to the most recent statistics from the Department of Justice: of the 75 largest counties in the U.S., blacks make up 15 percent of the population, but account for 62 percent of robberies; 57 percent of murders and 45 percent of assaults. In New York City blacks account for 23 percent of the population, but commit 75 percent of all shootings. By contrast, whites make up 34 percent of the population but account for only 2 percent of shootings, MacDonald wrote.

These facts are not very well known because these studies have not yet reached national attention, but they are quoted in many articles by or about MacDonald. Despite Kaepernick’s claims, the real problem is not police targeting blacks. The real problem is that for whatever reason blacks commit a disproportionate share of the crimes.

"In 2014, over 6,000 blacks were murdered, more than all white and Hispanic homicide victims combined," MacDonald wrote. Police did not kill them; other blacks killed them. In fact, a police officer is 18.5 times more likely to be killed by an armed black suspect "than an unarmed black man is likely to be killed by a police officer," according to MacDonald.

Does the truth matter? If so, here is a truth, according to MacDonald: There is no government agency more dedicated to the proposition that Black Lives Matter than the police.

We need a national effort to explain these facts so everyone will know that many of the protests against police shootings are based on misinformation as bad as that which produced the “hands up don’t shoot” movement in 2014.

Donald Gilleland is retired and lives in Suntree. He has written five books in the last four years, all of which are available on the Internet or directly from him. Check out his web page at www.donaldgilleland.com.