Your Opinion: Irresponsible headline

Dear Editor:

On reading the June 2 News Tribune headline, "Black Missouri drivers still get stopped more," I could not help but ask myself what purpose was intended by this headline?

Is it to denigrate our state's finest? Is it to create news during a slow news cycle? Is it to emulate Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton whose purpose in life is to keep the racial divide alive?

After all the riots causing a massive amount of property loss, lack of public protection of the citizenry by our police while dealing with the riots, cost to our cities for dealing with the riots and those hurt or killed in the process, virtually no police have been prosecuted for actions causing the riots or police departments proven to allow or promote wholesale racial bias! In my opinion, headlines such as the subject of this letter, is a catalyst for race riots.

The seventh paragraph quote from the article: "(state Attorney General Chris) Koster said in a statement the 'statistical disproportion does not prove that law enforcement officers are making vehicle stops based on the perceived race or ethnicity of the driver.'" Shouldn't this statement be enough for media to investigate further before inferring by a headline that there is racial bias in what sounds like all Missouri law enforcement?

The secondary headline "JC police stop black drivers at higher rate" includes the statement (in 2015): "There were 1,588 males stopped and 933 females." As a male, I'm offended that I'm being profiled! Since there are more females than males by census statistics, this apparent profiling is unfair and should be investigated! (A joke for you liberals).

Isn't it about time the media becomes responsible with regard to its choice of headlines? Why doesn't the media do its job and report on actual instances of individual police or department institutionalized racial bias? I can tell you why. To find it would be like finding a needle in a haystack and maybe there isn't even a needle. It's so easy to sit on your duff and get statistics from any source on the internet and/or activists and pick out the one for a headline which will create the most interest to sell papers!