Ben Shapiro: When Black Police Officers Kill a Black Man, That’s White Supremacy

Five black police officers were caught on tape beating Tyre Nichols (a 29-year old black man) in Memphis, Tennessee, this week. According to officers, Nichols was stopped for reckless driving. They ordered him to lie down and give them his hands. He refused and began to run. The officers pulled Nichols over for reckless driving. They ordered him to get down and give them his hands. He refused, running away from them. Nichols was taken to the hospital and died.

The five officers were all charged with second-degree killing, kidnapping, and official misconduct. All five officers were fired from the police department.

The national media coverage was swift — and confused. Some media personnel saw the story as clear: police are brutal and must be severely curtailed. “The issue here, as plenty of people have pointed out, is not black versus white, it’s blue versus the rest of us,” Mehdi Hasan, MSNBC’s correspondent. “You can’t reform this stuff with body cameras or diversifying the police, as we just saw in Memphis.” Hasan suggested that abolition might be an option.

This is not a solution. Memphis has one of America’s highest criminal rates. Neighborhood Scout says that 1 in 12 residents of Memphis are likely to be victims of property or violent crime. And we know with statistical near-certainty that high-profile cases of police misconduct generally result in police stand-downs — which in turn result in more crime. As Roland Freyer and Tanaya Freyer, professors, discovered in 2020. “all investigations that were preceded by ‘viral’ incidents of deadly force have led to a large and statistically significant increase in homicides and total crime.”

A second media narrative quickly emerged from the Nichols killing: despite the fact that all involved were black, that the Memphis Police Department is majority black, that the chief of police is black — the killing was a result of “white supremacy.” The Washington Post headlined: “Black Memphis police spark dialogue on systemic racism in the US.” CNN.com cites Van Jones’ opinion. “The police who killed Tyre Nichols were Black. But they might still have been driven by racism.” Kimberle Crenshaw is the founder of intersectionality. “One cannot imagine this happening in a well-heeled white community. That is a racial problem that the law has consistently said is a non-problem.”

Like the first, this narrative is meant to avoid solutions. If all police are the result of white supremacy structures, then the only solution is to eliminate policing. If each individual instance of police brutality, no matter the race of the officers, is an example of racism, then the only way to alleviate police brutality is by completely restructuring American society — which is just what those like Crenshaw propose. This will not result in a safer America but one that is more volatile and less secure.

In reality, incidents of police brutality are not restricted to one race. It doesn’t matter if Daniel Shaver is shot to death in a hotel for refusing to obey police demands in 2016, or if Randal Worcester was beaten by two Arkansas Sheriff’s deputies in August 2022. White victims of police brutality can be found easily. Training and better recruitment are two ways to reduce police brutality. But if we wish to actually lower the number of encounters between a given population and the police, thus reducing the number of possible violent interactions, the most obvious method would be to reduce criminal activity — which requires Continue reading Policing and Continue reading law-abiding behavior.

This should not be controversial. However, advocates for police abolition and critical race theory don’t want to find solutions. They want revolution. All revolutions are not without their casualties.

Ben Shapiro (38), is a Harvard Law School graduate and host of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” He is also co-founder of Daily Wire+. He is a New York Times best-selling author who is also the co-founder of Daily Wire+. “The Authoritarian Moment: How The Left Weaponized America’s Institutions Against Dissent.” Visit the Creators Syndicate website www.creators.com for more information about Ben Shapiro as well as features by other Creators Syndicate writers or cartoonists.

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