This is in response to the “Right Here, Right Now” opinion by Patricia Suzanne (“Lies from the Left and Media: Aren’t You Tired?”) on May 1.
I take issue with almost all of this opinion piece, but here, I will highlight just one point. Patricia highlights an unattributed survey in which the liberal respondents purportedly believed that there were more than 1,000 unarmed Black Americans killed by police in 2019 whereas only nine were actually killed. While there is no available government data on this issue, the U.S. News and World Report published results of a leading study by Mapping Police Violence. It found that there were 1,099 deaths due to police harm in 2019, of which 54% (where race was documented) were persons of color.
Another (Statista) report shows 999 shooting deaths by police in 2019, of which 235 (not nine) were Black. Considering that Blacks are 12.2% of the population, that’s a high number.
While, of course, you can play lots of games with statistics and come up with some sort of rationale to support an argument, you shouldn’t use unaccountable numbers to preach a false conclusion as Patricia Suzanne did in her “Right Here, Right Now” opinion. I wish The Signal would publish more than token opinions from the left in the opinion section.
Duane Mooring
Castaic
