The uninhibited Investors Business Daily has this editorial with the above title regarding the USDoJ report on the Ferguson, MO PD, not to be confused with the report the same day on the Brown shooting, which we noted here.
I have not had time to review this report in detail myself, so I can't vouch for the accuracy of the editorial, but I link it for those readers who are interested, and I have pasted part of it after the break.
I have not had time to review this report in detail myself, so I can't vouch for the accuracy of the editorial, but I link it for those readers who are interested, and I have pasted part of it after the break.
Racial Politics: Unable to pin racism charges on Ferguson policeman Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, Attorney General Eric Holder is using half-baked data to manufacture a case of racism against his entire police force.
Holder's race-baiting civil rights crew combed through several years of Ferguson Police Department data on traffic stops, searches and arrests and "found a pattern of racial disparities in Ferguson's police activities."
"African Americans are overrepresented in FPD's vehicular stops" and victims of "racial bias," Holder concludes in his report.
He notes that blacks accounted for 85% of vehicle stops, "despite comprising only 67% of Ferguson's population," while whites made up 15% of stops, despite representing 29% of the population.
So there you have it, a slam-dunk case of racism, right? Hardly.
Outrageously, the nation's top prosecutor failed to control for factors that explain the racial "disparity" in traffic stops, such as speeding, DUI, expired license plates, headlight, seat-belt and child-restraint violations and other reasons for being pulled over.
Holder's own department statistics show that African Americans, on average, violate speeding and other traffic laws at much greater rates than whites.
The Justice Department's research arm, the National Institute of Justice, explains that differences in traffic stops can simply be attributed to "differences in offending."
In an ideal world, I would have written that. Darn.
One thing I found remarkable was DOJ's failure to understand the dispositive importance of its revelation that Ferguson is two-thirds black.
What does that tell you?
It tells you that the black citizens of Ferguson could have replaced the ENTIRE TOWN ADMINISTRATION, certainly including the leadership of the police department, anytime they wanted.
My goodness.