Amanda Feliz, Micro Activity #14

Santhanam, Laura. “After Ferguson, Black Men Still Face the Highest Risk of Being Killed by Police.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 9 Aug. 2019, 5:10 pm EDT, www.pbs.org/newshour/health/after-ferguson-black-men-and-boys-still-face-the-highest-risk-of-being-killed-by-police.

In the article the author includes the statistics of black men being killed by police after Ferguson. The main idea of this article is to describe how black men faced a higher risk of being killed by police after the riots in Ferguson. The author states that “black men and boys face the highest risk of being killed by police–at a rate of 96 out of 100,000 deaths” (paragraph 3). The author, Frank Edwards, is an assistant professor in Rutger University who has studied federal data from 2013 to 2018 that was taken from the National Vital Statistics System. 

I agree with this text because after Ferguson the death rates of black men and boys started to increase. The author  determines “that risk is greatest between ages 20 and 35 for men and women overall, and men are far more likely than women to be killed by police” (paragraph 5). A question I have for the author is do  these Black civilians live in  lower income communities? I would further ask the author to explain why she would want  to investigate the statistics after Ferguson. This article tells me that black men and boys’ lives can be in danger due to lack of police training. 

The author’s writing style was very detailed. She informed readers how black men and boys have high risk of being killed with police and she included really strong evidence to back up what she was saying. Her purpose in writing this article was to provide statistics and inform people about a dangerous “trend” in policing. I believe she is a credible author because she backed up by a legitimate news company, and thus has published multiple other articles on the same website. 

A quote that stood out was when the author said “over the years, there have been several police-involved shootings of unarmed people of color.” This is showing that police involved shootings with unarmed black people has been going on for many years. 

“Breaking News, World, US, DC News and Analysis.” Edited by David Fallis , The Washington Post, WP Company, www.washingtonpost.com/. 

In the article, the author’s main idea is to explain how people have been shot and killed by the police within the past year. He discusses very good topics which were the police shooting rates between black Americans and white Americans, shootings across the countries, discussing about black Americans rates and etc. The author supports his claims by using the Washington post’s database, since the Washington post’s database contains records of every fatal shooting in the United States by a police officer. 

I agree with the author’s text because the information that was mentioned was backed up by multiple sources. According to the article: “An overwhelming majority of people shot and killed by police are male — over 95 percent. More than half the victims are between 20 and 40 years old.”A question I have about this text is what race of men are targeted in police  shooting cases? This article tells me that the victims that police targets are black male Americans. This connects to my research question because it’s information about statistics that affect black men and boys and their encounter.   

The author’s writing style was very interesting, he included new information I didn’t know before. The author is a really good writer. He added much evidence to support his claims. He catched my attention making me want to keep reading his article. The thoughts and ideas were very organized. His purpose in writing this article was to provide readers information on significant shooting cases that police are responsible for. The author is credible because the author has written other popular articles for the Washington post.  The author stated that “Post investigation found that the FBI undercounted fatal police shootings by more than half.” This quote is significant because this goes to show how much shootings police are responsible for.