Police Policy vs Black's Civil Rights?

This editorial in the LA Times is OK, I guess on the face of it. But there is at least one sequence in the piece that needs scrutiny. Here is the part that needs more work:

"The fury directed at police may seem out of proportion to outsiders. Certainly the officer did not know a young boy was behind the wheel. The teenager was breaking the law, out at 4 a.m. in a stolen car.
But for many in South Los Angeles — and many African Americans across the city — his death is one more symbol of a law enforcement and justice system that seems to place less value on the lives of blacks"....

Now how can that be? If the officer didn't know it was a young boy behind the wheel, how could he have known the driver was black? This occured after midnight, and the odds that the officer could even see inside the car was nil.
As I have said before, the officer could have killed a white kid just as easily, or a Hispanic, or an Asian. But the driver wasn't any of those. He was black. If the other ethnic groups living in the Los Angeles area committed a lot of crimes, they would be subject to police scrutiny, as necessary. So this boils down to empirical study. Who is committing the crimes? And who isn't?

I'll be back

CC