As is inevitable when discussing police brutality, the argument has come up saying that there is not a systemic injustice or a racist system at the core of the disproportionate amount of brutality against the African American community, but it is instead simply a reflection of the fact that African Americans commit a disproportionate amount of crime, and as such have more interactions with police. While it is true that African Americans commit a disproportionate amount of crime, this alone does not suffice to prove this alternate hypothesis. The way I see it, there are two additional questions which must be answered:
1) Are the quantity of interactions with police sufficiently correlative to make this argument? That is to say, if the data regarding your alternate explanation does not show that there is a strong correlation between these two factors, your hypothesis falls apart.
2) Are there widespread and systemic injustices leading to this increase in crime rates? Again, if there are injustices leading to the disproportionate amount of crime committed by African Americans, you are simply denying the injustice by demonstrating that the injustice runs far deeper than originally claimed.
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From the information I have seen, this hypothesis falls short on both accounts.
As SvennoJ has showed, levels of police violence doesn't show a strong correlation with the levels of violent crime. As such, this alternate hypothesis does not stand up to even correlative scrutiny:
Towards the second point, systemic injustices run very deep. This is far from an issue that ends at the street level. There are issues with the underfunding of schools in heavily minority communities and the school to prison pipeline, discrimination in the workplace and injustices regarding pay rates, insufficient social safety net programs, and deep flaws in the criminal justice system such as the heavy criminalization of minor offenses and the fact that prison time actually increases recidivism rates. The system is deeply flawed. And yes, many of these factors affect individuals outside of the African American community, however, the combination of all of these issues come together to both reflect the unique struggle of these communities and show how widespread the benefit of reforms can be.
