*An Oklahoma cop is under fire for allegedly saying Black people are not shot by police as often as they should be.
Tulsa Police Department major Travis Yates is reportedly pursuing a lawsuit against a public radio program for misquoting him during a recent podcast appearance, where he stated that officers are “shooting African-Americans about 24 percent less than we probably ought to be, based on the crimes being committed.”
His issue is not with the callus comment he made on “The Pat Campbell Show” but the fact that the program omitted the names of the researchers he cited to back up his remarks, TooFab reports.
In a statement obtained by KTUL, Yates claims he cited research from Roland Fryer, Heather MacDonald, and the National Academy of Sciences in an effort to support his argument, but their names were omitted in the transcript and his response was diminished to “All of their research says.”
“You get this meme of, ‘Blacks are shot two times, two and a half times more,’ and everybody just goes, ‘Oh, yeah,'” Yates stated on the show. “They’re not making sense here. You have to come into contact with law enforcement for that to occur.”
“When you look at law enforcement contact, if a certain group is creating more crimes, more violent crimes, and law enforcement contact with them, that number is going to be higher,” he continued.
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“Who in the world in their right mind would think that our shootings should be right along the US Census lines?” Yates asked. “That’s insanity.”
“All the research says — and that includes Roland Fryer, an African-American Harvard professor, Heather MacDonald, and the National Academy of Sciences — all of their research says we’re shooting African Americans about 24 percent less than we probably ought to be based on the crimes being committed,” he said.
In the statement released on Wednesday, Yates claims the “most inflammatory, egregious inaccuracy” in the article written by Public Tulsa Radio was use of the word “actually” in the transcript.
Yates insists he never used the word “actually.”.
“I never said actually,” his statement read. “This is plainly false and factually inaccurate. And to think that beyond a discussion of comparative statistics that I would suggest that the ‘police should actually be shooting’ anyone is simply outrageous.”
In Monday’s interview with the radio show, Yates addressed the protests across the nation over police brutality and systemic racism, which he claims doesn’t exist.
“This is what they’re trying to say that all these changes need to come from: this is why we’re protesting, this is why we’re rioting. Because of systematic abuse of power and racism. That just doesn’t exist.”
You can hear his remarks via the YouTube clip above.
