While I applaud the empathy of Councilors Lori Decter Wright and Kara Joy McKee for the less-advantaged citizens of Tulsa, I am troubled by their apparent lack of empathy for the police.

I am fairly sure that they have never had to stop an erratic, speeding driver of a stolen vehicle who is a known felon on a pitch-black night and approach the car knowing that the driver may shoot the officer, simply because of the driver’s nature or because the press and some public figures continuously explicitly or implicitly paint the false narrative that police as a group are racist. 

To assess the level of bias in policing,  the data necessary to answer the following questions should be provided:

1. For what percentage of the cases where police use force does the use of force violate formal Tulsa police department procedures and how does the percentage vary between  blacks, Hispanics, whites and Asians?

2. What percentage of each group forcibly resists arrest and how does this compare with use of force by police against each group?

3. Does the percentage of the violent/nonviolent crimes committed by each group correlate with the percentage of each group that are arrested?

I have sent two editorials (both rejected) to the Tulsa World to encourage them to find and publish such data so the citizens can reliably ascertain whether the use of force by police is governed by the behavior of the person being arrested or whether it is governed by police bias.

I note that the use of force section of the equality indicator report does not provide the data to answer my three questions.  Economic inequality between races is a fact but I do not think its cure lies in vilifying the police as a monolithic group.