- Drew Berquist - https://www.drewberquist.com -

BLM Has Made Black Communities More Dangerous

It is no surprise that BLM’s attacks on law enforcement have made police reticent in engaging with the black community. While a more dangerous atmosphere is the outcome, that’s not at all what black Americans want.

FNC: “The Black Lives Matter movement started a massive wave of Americans uniting to call for defunding the police and eradicating white supremacy to make positive changes for Black Americans. But experts reflecting on the movement’s scorecard in 2022 say Black America hasn’t benefited.

A Gallup poll from August 2020 found 81% of Black Americans wanted “police to spend [the] same amount of or more time in their area,” compared to 19% reporting police should spend less time in their neighborhood.”

“I would argue that, on balance, these communities are worse off because by [BLM] overemphasizing the role of police, they’ve changed police behavior for the worse,” the Manhattan Institute’s Jason Riley told press. “In other words, police do become more cautious. They’re less likely to get out of their cars and engage with people in the community. And to the extent that police are less proactive, the criminals have the run of the place.”

Riley opined that “police brutality still exists, bad cops exist,” and he has no “problem with raising awareness about police misconduct.” But he noted that BLM is “over-focused” on police and doesn’t factor in that “97, 98% [of Black homicides] do not involve police at all.”

“You have to remember the overwhelming majority of people who live in these communities are law-abiding. You’re talking about a very small percentage, mostly men, and mostly young men that are causing all this havoc in these communities. Many of these people would leave these communities. They can’t afford to move anywhere else, so they’re forced to deal with this,” Riley said.

Dr. Carol Swain, a retired professor of political science and law at Vanderbilt University, told media that “an intelligent observer would be hard-pressed to identify any area in American society where BLM’s activism has benefited the Black community.”

“What BLM has done is pervert the criminal justice system by engaging in activities that have resulted in a growing trend of trials by media,” Swain said. “BLM has intimidated juries and judges. Its leaders have no interest in due process or the presumption of innocence.”

Swain added that “BLM focuses on scattered cases of police abuse,” but ignores “the horrendous Black-on-Black crimes that take place daily in cities around the nation…BLM does not want young Black men and women to know the importance of individual choice in determining how an encounter with police will end. Instead of modeling lawful behavior, BLM and progressive politicians in Congress seem to hold the regressive belief that Black people are always right even when they are clearly wrong,” Swain said.

“Many progressives — White and Black — hold a dangerous belief that black people are justified in challenging and disobeying lawful police orders. This encourages a dangerous double standard that erodes the rule of law and contributes to more criminal behavior.”

This piece was written by David Kamioner on May 13, 2022. It originally appeared in LifeZette [3] and is used by permission.