Op-Ed: It’s time to start showing the videos of police shooting white people

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Despite the shootings that receive widespread media coverage, white people make up the demographic with the highest fatalities from police shootings — nearly twice as many white people are killed by police each year. It's long past due for videos of fatal police shootings of white people to be shown with the same frequency and vigor as fatal police shootings of black people.

This phenomenon is largely fueled by the media and is problematic. It creates the false perception that it is primarily black men who are shot and killed by the police. This leads many to believe falsely that the country's police officers are racists who target and hunt black men. This allows left-wing politicians to promote falsehoods and indoctrinate the masses with claims that the country's criminal justice system is systemically racist — even though it's not true. They hide the facts so they can advance an agenda.

Consider the facts. Black men comprise 6-7% of the country's population but account for over 50% of homicides, 29.1% of all rapes, over 50% of all robberies, and 33% of assaults. This leads to disproportionate interactions with police and, subsequently, shootings. It's not racism causing these shooting discrepancies. It's the excessive amount of crime committed by black men.

Many on the Left like to cite the oft-repeated statistic that black men are three times more likely to be involved in fatal police shootings than white people. They use this to justify not reporting on white people shot by police. Yet what is constantly omitted in this claim is that, based on their proportion of the country's population, black men commit crime, specifically violent crime, at a significantly higher rate than white people.

By now, we all know the names of many black people killed by the police. You are probably familiar with Michael Brown, George Floyd, Eric Garner, and Breonna Taylor. But if I were to ask you to name just one white person who was fatally shot by police, it is a safe assumption you couldn't. The stories of Tony Timpa, Daniel Shaver, and the many other white people killed by police officers remain largely unknown.

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