How anti-police rhetoric is endangering law enforcement

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How anti-police rhetoric is endangering law enforcement

Black Lives Matters and the media demonizing cops; 'The O'Reilly Factor' investigates

This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," July 13, 2016. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
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O'REILLY: "Impact Segment" tonight, demonizing the police, funerals held today for three of the five slain police officers. You'll know they were killed in Dallas on Thursday night. Very sad occasion for the country, obviously. There is no question that the Black Lives Matter and other far left radical groups are attacking the credibility of U.S. law enforcement in general. They're doing that despite facts that destroy their contention that American police are bias against Black people.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics from 2012 to 2013, latest available, African-Americans are responsible for 22.4 percent of all violent crimes in the U.S.A., despite being just 13 percent of the population. Whites responsible for 43 percent of violent crimes with Caucasians making up 62 percent of the population. But here's the kicker. When you look at police shooting victims, whites comprise 50 percent of those shots, Blacks just 26 percent.

Joining us now from Irvine, California, Heather Mac Donald, author of the brand new book "The War On Cops: How The New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe." So, I believe that there is a false narrative and you do, too. I read your book. How did that get out into the public where half the public believes that the cops are institutionally racist against blacks?

HEATHER MAC DONALD, AUTHOR, "THE WAR ON COPS": Well, if the media seized on every video of an officer killing a white person, we might think this was an epidemic of police killing whites in this country. This is completely a function of what the media chooses to focus on. It's a media- driven phenomenon. I would also love to see the media focus on those children in inner city communities whose lives have been lost in the last year. Thanks to police officers backing off of exactly the proactive policing that the media denounces is racist.

O'RIELLY: Yes. But that's a very hard case to make in the sense of specificity. You can say in Chicago there have been more than 2,000 killings this year so far. More than two, not killings, shootings, more than 2,000 shootings so far this year. Nothing is being done about it. Black Lives Matter doesn't seem to care about it they never show up. You can make that case. But, police backing away, it's a theoretical case. But let me challenge for a moment.

MAC DONALD: It's not theoretical, Bill. You cannot talk to an officer today who doesn't say --

O'REILLY: Okay. But that's anecdotal. There are no hard facts.

MAC DONALD: Yes, there are.

O'RIELLY: The facts that we just presented -- the facts that we just presented show that there isn't an epidemic of blacks being gunned down by police. That Whites are far more likely to be killed by police than Blacks. Now, isn't part of the perception though? And I agree with you, that the media sensationalizes every videotape that a minority is being abused by police and they ignore, or a White person is being abused by police or allegedly. But isn't it true that millions of Black Americans have had bad relations at one time or another in their own personal lives with the cops so that they are much more incline to do want to believe this?

MAC DONALD: Well, it is certainly true that we have a very bad history in this country of racism and policing. And that memory takes a long time to die out. There has been complicity on the part of the police and Jim Crow segregation, slavery. But I'm not so sure that we have millions of people with unjustified encounters with the police. I think they are overwhelmed by the number of minority citizens who say, like Mrs. Sweeburn (ph) in the Bronx, thank heavens for the police. Please, Jesus, send more cops.

O'REILLY: Yes. I think you will get that but I think it is true that millions of African-Americans feel aggrieved at some point in their lives. Now, your book focuses on cause and effect.

All right. And one of the effects of the demonization of American police is that violent crime is now for the first time in decades on the rise in American cities. Correct?

MAC DONALD: Correct. And cities with large Black populations. The rise is truly alarming. It's anywhere from 54 percent in Washington, D.C. and last year, increase in homicides to a 90 percent increase in homicides in Cleveland. And, of course, Bill, as you can well predict, who is being killed? Blacks? Who is killing them? Not the police, not Whites, but other Blacks. This is what happens when police back off from the sort of proactive policing that gave us an unforeseen and unprecedented 20-year drop in violent crime.

O'REILLY: All right. And your book backs set-up with statistics, Heather, we appreciate you coming on today. And we have a BillO'Reilly.com poll question for you. Do you approve of Black Lives Matter? Do you approve of that organization, simple yes or no? Now, we know the outcome of this nonscientific poll. We know what it's going to be. But we want to see the plurality and stack it up against the scientific polls on the subject. So please vote.

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