Free Republic

For more than 100 years, the FBI has been collecting crime data from local police departments across the country through the Uniform Crime Reporting Program, which has been the gold standard of national crime statistics.By 2020, almost every law enforcement agency was included in the FBI’s database. Some agencies reported topline numbers, such as the total number of murders or car thefts, through the Summary Reporting System. Others reported granular incident data with details about each reported crime through the newer National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). Then it all changed in 2021. In an effort to fully modernize the system,...

If BLM leaders care about black lives, they ought to focus on what can improve the quality of life for black Americans — starting with stronger families. >Positing that “Black Lives Matter” is such an obvious fact that repeating it sounds banal. Only an outright racist would question this premise. Therefore, the frequent “All Lives Matter” retort of critics often inflames the sensibilities of activists, with many in the BLM movement find this assertion objectionable on the basis that it misinterprets their message. The phrase “Black Lives Matter” is not a declaration that other lives are unimportant, activists say, but...

Before politicians rush headlong into the potentially disastrous decision to defund police departments, they should think about the ramifications. More than three centuries ago, British writer Jonathan Swift observed, “Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late.” Well, a new movement to defund the police is well on its way. And in a remarkably short time, it has quickly outpaced the logic and common sense questions that could slow it down.The goal of the “defund the police” movement is obviously to punish police officers for bad behavior....

The media help foster a narrative there is an epidemic of Caucasian police officers killing black Americans out of racist impulses. But is it really true? This past week, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was charged with the second-degree murder of George Floyd, a black man. Footage and photos of FloydÂ’s death launched protests and riots across the country. Despite there being no evidence yet that the officer was racist, it is simply assumed that racism motivated the Caucasian copÂ’s abusive actions.Law enforcement officers can be careless or abusive without being racist. In Dallas, in 2016, a Caucasian man died...