ABC’s Thomas: ‘Biases African-Americans Have Been Complaining About ... Are Real’

THOMAS: "Martha, this is a defining moment. These tensions come at a time when police around the country are seeing lots of violence, especially in major cities, much of it with guns. And we know in many of those cities, a lot of the victims and the suspects in the shootings are African-Americans. Sadly, blacks are overrepresented in urban violence. But we should be clear that the violence is not just contained to cities and it crosses racial lines. More than half of the people murdered in 2014 were white and roughly half of the murder suspects were white. To further intensify the situation currently, the number of officers killed by gunfire is up 44 percent compared to last year. But regardless of the pressure, the citizens of this country of all races deserve the best of policing. What we’re seeing now is that when police make mistakes, they’re much more likely to be caught on tape and we’re — the view we’re getting sometimes is ugly. We’re seeing that some of the biases that African-Americans have been complaining about for years are, in fact, real."