Black Lives Matter is Bad for Society

While Black Lives Matter may be noble in intent, the execution of it is creating many unforeseen consequences. There are a few problems with it. 1. That it does not generate any good for society, as it is trying to combat a problem that does not exists. The African American community is not oppressed, as they believe. As per there website (. http://blacklivesmatter.com...), "Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks" contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression. " a. The Claim that Blacks are unfairly targeted by police officers, just has no warrant to it. Policing does not break down on Racial Lines, but by who commits for crimes. Sadly, today Blacks are over represented in crime. From 1976 to 2005, blacks committed over 52 percent of all murders in America. In 2006, the black arrest rate for most crimes was two to nearly three times blacks" representation in the population. Blacks constituted 39.3 percent of all violent-crime arrests, including 56.3 percent of all robbery and 34.5 percent of all aggravated-assault arrests, and 29.4 percent of all property-crime arrests. (. http://www.city-journal.org...) In 2012, white males were 38 percent of the population and committed 4,582 murders. That same year, black males were just 6.6 percent of the population but committed a staggering 5,531 murders. In other words: black people"at just a fifth of the size"committed almost 1,000 more murders than their white counterparts. (. http://www.breitbart.com...). When Blacks commit significantly more crime than any other ethnicity, of course there are going to be more encounters between the police, and Blacks. b. Less than 4% of Police Shootings involved an unarmed Black Male. Unarmed, does not mean innocent however. "The "unarmed" label is literally accurate, but it frequently fails to convey highly-charged policing situations. In a number of cases, if the victim ended up being unarmed, it was certainly not for lack of trying. At least five black victims had reportedly tried to grab the officer"s gun, or had been beating the cop with his own equipment. Some were shot from an accidental discharge triggered by their own assault on the officer. And two individuals included in the Post"s "unarmed black victims" category were struck by stray bullets aimed at someone else in justified cop shootings. If the victims were not the intended targets, then racism could have played no role in their deaths. "(. http://www.nationalreview.com...) c. The Narrative that the Police are racially biased, is simply untrue. While there may been one or two racist officers out there, painting entire Police Departments as out to get you, does no one any good, creating tension between the Black community and officers that should not exist and just make Officers lives harder and more dangerous. Already some Officers have been hesitant to due their job due to fear of the movement, like in the case of an Alabama Detective, who did not fight back against an assailant as he feared becoming the next Darren Wilson, and as a result was sent to the hospital. (. http://www.cnn.com...) d. The Criminal Justice System is not biased against the Black Community. " In 1997, criminologists Robert Sampson and Janet Lauritsen reviewed the massive literature on charging and sentencing. They concluded that "large racial differences in criminal offending," not racism, explained why more blacks were in prison proportionately than whites and for longer terms. A 1987 analysis of Georgia felony convictions, for example, found that blacks frequently received disproportionately lenient punishment. A 1990 study of 11,000 California cases found that slight racial disparities in sentence length resulted from blacks" prior records and other legally relevant variables. A 1994 Justice Department survey of felony cases from the country"s 75 largest urban areas discovered that blacks actually had a lower chance of prosecution following a felony than whites did and that they were less likely to be found guilty at trial. Following conviction, blacks were more likely to receive prison sentences, however"an outcome that reflected the gravity of their offenses as well as their criminal records. " (. http://www.city-journal.org...) 2. There proposed solutions will simply create more problems in society. a. The Black Lives Matter movement has proposed ending Broken Window Policing. The broken windows model of policing was first described in 1982 in a seminal article by Wilson and Kelling. Briefly, the model focuses on the importance of disorder (e. g. , broken windows) in generating and sustaining more serious crime. Disorder is not directly linked to serious crime; instead, disorder leads to increased fear and withdrawal from residents, which then allows more serious crime to move in because of decreased levels of informal social control. A recent systematic review by Braga, Welsh and Schnell (2015) found that policing strategies focused on disorder overall had a statistically significant, modest impact on reducing all types of crime. This positive effect was driven by the success of place-based, problem-oriented interventions. In contrast, there was no significant overall impact of aggressive order maintenance strategies (. http://cebcp.org...) 'New York City"s experience has suggestively demonstrated the success of Broken Windows over the last 20 years. In 1993, the city"s murder rate was 26.5 per 100,000 people. Starting in 1994, with the election of Rudy Giuliani as mayor and the appointment of Bratton as police commissioner, Broken Windows policing was put into practice citywide (it had been implemented in the subway in 1990)"and crime fell further, faster, and for longer than anywhere else in the country. Today, by far the largest and densest city in the United States has a lower murder rate, at four per 100,000, than the nation as a whole, at 4.5 per 100,000. In 1993, New York accounted for about 7.9 percent of the nation"s homicides; last year, the city"s share was just 2.4 percent. While the national murder rate per 100,000 people has been cut in half since 1994, the rate in New York has declined by more than six times. And those striking figures are emblematic of a broader accomplishment in a city that has seen huge, historic declines in every one of the seven major crime categories. (. http://www.city-journal.org...) It is clearly absurd to want to repeal a theory that has worked so well in bringing Crime down. b. Militarization of the Police- Black Lives Matter misses a few key points. The first is that the Police, are able to more efficiently respond to threats, (2) that it is saving Police Departments money, allowing them to reinvest in other things . On the first point, police need greater fire power to deal with threats than just a pistol, and we have an obligation to provide them with access to that firepower. We learned this lesson in the Hollywood Shootout, when 18 police officers were injured trying to stop two bank robbers when their pistols could not go through the Body Armour that the robbers were wearing. We need to keep Assault Rifles readily accessible to Police Officers so they can respond to situations such as these. (2) Police Departments receive military style vehicles for free. From Chicago and Baltimore to Pennsylvania and Detroit, underfunding has led to less personnel and equipment and more communities for each officer to police. When the Army has no use for an MRAPs, what is the harm in handing it to the Police? It saves the Police Department money, and comes as much needed relief (saving Departments $6 billion), allowing them to field more officers and keep people safe, in turn keeping us safe, and more efficiently combating crime. (. http://www.breitbart.com...) 3. They have created the Ferguson effect. Due the the Black Lives matter movement, Police Officers are more hesitant to due their jobs, and actively confront potentially dangerous individuals. This has lead to a concerning trend in which crime rates have increased across major cities, with some with an upwards of 76%. The hardest hit are the ones with the biggest police scandals, and most active BLM protests. (. http://www.nationalreview.com...) In summary, the Black Lives Matter movement is trying to fight a problem that does not exist. Their proposed solutions would have us throw away one of the most successful Policing strategies, that has brought crime rates significantly down. Chasing after officers and attempting to get them thrown in jail, doesn't lead to justice, but creates more crime.