The Numbers Tell a Different Story About Police Killings of Minors
Deadly police force may be most traumatic to a community when officers kill a child. No matter the circumstances, we mourn both today’s loss and the decades of forgone tomorrows. The blow is sharper still when the child’s killing is captured on video and replayed again and again. Most recently, the police killings of Adam Toledo, 13, in Chicago in late March, and Ma’Khia Bryant, 16, last month in Columbus, Ohio, sparked protests and a social-media outcry. The death of Tamir Rice, killed in 2014 at age 12 in Cleveland, remains a touchstone of the Black Lives Matter movement.
All of these cases are tragedies. All raise the question of what, if anything, adults should have done to prevent them. But most news coverage of these killings lacks vital context to inform good answers. Many Americans are misinformed about the dimensions of this problem––and are prone to accept disturbing but false narratives, such as that police officers in America hunt and kill Black children, or radical remedies, such as defunding or abolishing the police in the name of protecting children. The wrong solutions might well result in the deaths of more children from causes other than police killings.
[Clint Smith: Becoming a parent in the age of Black Lives Matter]
Police killings of
