Womp womp womp ….
Via WaPo Fact Check:
Search the phrase “every 28 hours” on Google, Twitter, Instagram or Facebook and thousands of messages like these will come up. This is the phrase that has gone viral after police-involved killings of black males in Ferguson, Mo., and Staten Island, N.Y.: “Every 28 hours, an unarmed black person is killed by police.”
It is now being used to describe the deaths of two New York City police officers, to draw comparisons between the deaths of police and deaths of unarmed African Americans killed by police.
PolitiFact rated this claim false in August when a CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill said it on air. Hill corrected his statement after the PolitiFact article.
Yet the claim is still being perpetuated widely. It’s written on signs at protests, shared through #every28hours or written on social media memes. Where did this statement come from, and is it accurate?