Collateral Damage

The July news was filled with stories of two young men shot down by police during the usual sort of police activity that provides absolutely no value to the public but is solely intended to generate income for states, counties, and cities. Of course, the shooting of five cops by a deranged Army veteran suffering from delusions and PTSD from his tours in Afghanistan has overshadowed the vast discrepancy in danger to cops vs. the people they stop and assess “the cost of being black” taxes. For example, the FBI counted 51 law enforcement officers were 'feloniously' killed in the line of duty in 2014 while so far this year “1,502 people have been shot and killed by on-duty police officers since Jan. 1, 2015. Of them, 732 were white, and 381 were black (and 382 were of another or unknown race).” Since the FBI doesn’t have access to all of the country’s police records, that count is obviously low. Any way you count it, it looks to me like if there is a war going on, the cops are winning

The question is, “Should they be winning this way?”