I live in an apartment building and a few years ago, a woman moved in below me. I never met her and I didn’t know who she was. But in a short time, I realized she was not doing very well. Not sure if it was schizophrenia or some other mental health issue, but every once in a while, she’d stand out on her balcony and scream things like “Save me. Help me. Get me out of here.” There was no one living with her. So it wasn’t an abusive relationship. She was just really, really distraught.
On one of those nights when her screams were louder and longer than ever, I suddenly heard a calm, male voice on the street below her balcony.
The voice said, “Wow. You’re going through a really tough time right now eh?” Just then, there was silence.
She stopped the crazy screaming and her voice changed to a humble whimper. “yeah.”
“Have you been feeling like this for a while now?”
“Yeah. I don’t know what to do.”
“That sounds really hard. My name is Andy by the way. What’s your name?”
“Becky.”
“Hi Becky. Sorry that you’re going through this right now. It sounds like you’re having a really bad day. If you’ll let me, I’d like to try to help you. It’s not fair that you’re feeling this way, but I can’t do much to help you while I’m down here. If it’s ok with you, would you like to let me in so we can have a talk and I can find out what I can do to help you to feel better? It sounds like you could really use some help right now.”
“Ok, I’ll let you in.” And then the screaming stopped, and it hasn’t returned since. That person on the street was a police officer.
A short while after that event, the George Floyd story happened. And all the mainstream news was inundated with tragic video footage of his death.
When that happened, the mainstream media quickly decided that this was a racially motivated crime perpetrated by the police. There was an ongoing diatribe that police predominantly targeted racial minorities. They also implied that there has been an ongoing epidemic of police brutality towards visible minorities all over the world.
But I didn’t hear any research on this from the mainstream news. I’m a curious person and, also as a journalist, I wanted to know.
In September 2024, the U.S. population was 326.7 million people. And out of those hundreds of millions of people, the police shot (not killed) 828 people in that year.
Out of those 828 people, the minority were black. 181 were black.
In addition, in 2023, the FBI reported that 9,284 Black people were murdered in the United States. In 80–90% of Black homicide cases, the victim was killed by another Black person.
The mainstream media did not share those numbers with the public. Why?
