# Controversial encounters between law-enforcement and civilians - the omnibus thread **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [October 10, 2014, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread/700942 "2014-10-10T07:35:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 104
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread/700942/2061 "2015-04-28T16:15:52Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Can you point to where he actually said " blacks are violent and always getting upset about nothing which makes them scary and thus [he’s] okay with the police harassing and killing them", **or are you just putting words in his mouth because it’s easier to shout down a racist bigot than to debate the points he’s raised?** Hah! With friends like you . . . ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread/700942/2062 "2015-04-28T16:16:24Z")
“That said, my greater source of personal concern, outrage and sympathy beyond this particular case is focused neither upon one night’s property damage nor upon the acts, but is focused rather upon the past four-decade period during which an American political elite have shipped middle class and working class jobs away from Baltimore and cities and towns around the U.S. to third-world dictatorships like China and others, plunged tens of millions of good, hard-working Americans into economic devastation, and then followed that action around the nation by diminishing every American’s civil rights protections in order to control an unfairly impoverished population living under an ever-declining standard of living and suffering at the butt end of an ever-more militarized and aggressive surveillance state.” – [Orioles COO John Angelos](http://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/04/orioles-john-angelos-baltimore-protests-mlb) ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread/700942/2063 "2015-04-28T16:26:50Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > There are over 100,000 police in this country today. How many “murders” have they, collectively, committed in the past year? Three? Five? > > Where is your proportionate sense of outrage to the _actual_ murders being committed by actual criminals? I’m glad you brought up **proportions** in your asinine comparison of police vs. black people killing black people, because that’s once again where morons like you forget my admonition: IT’S THE DENOMINATOR, STUPID! Since I could only find FBI data as recent as 2011, we will use that year. We’ll take your estimate of 100,000 cops in the US. According to the CDC’s WISQARS ([http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10\_us.html](http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10_us.html)), there were 133 black people killed during legal intervention in 2011. 133 out of 100,000 police officers killed a black person. According to Wikipedia, there are 38,929,319 black people in the US. According to the FBI, there were 2,447 instances of a black person being killed by a black person in 2011. So, 2,447 out of 38,929,319 black people killed a black person. The odds ratio of a cop killing a black person versus a black person killing a black person is 21.1590 (p \< .0001). This means that it is statistically far more likely for a cop to kill a black person than for a black person to kill a black person. A cop is 21 times more likely to kill a black person than a black person is. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread/700942/2064 "2015-04-28T16:30:23Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > We’ll take your estimate of 100,000 cops in the US. According to the CDC’s WISQARS ([http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10\_us.html](http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10_us.html)), there were 133 black people killed during legal intervention in 2011. 133 out of 100,000 police officers killed a black person. I didn’t say “killed”. I said “murdered”. How many black persons were _murdered_ by police officers in 2011? ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread/700942/2065 "2015-04-28T16:39:37Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > I didn’t say “killed”. I said “murdered”. > > How many black persons were _murdered_ by police officers in 2011? Without the cooperation of police departments (as well as things like body cameras), we can’t know. Just like we don’t know exactly how many slaves were murdered by their masters before 1865, or exactly how many black people were murdered in the Jim Crow South. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread/700942/2066 "2015-04-28T16:46:30Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > I didn’t say “killed”. I said “murdered”. > > How many black persons were _murdered_ by police officers in 2011? Do you know how many it would have to be to flip the odds in the direction of significantly more black people killing black people than cops killing black people? Less than 1; if we presume 1 cop murdered a black person, the OR is 0.16, with a p value of .07. (The odds flip, with nevertheless a non significant association, at a total of 6 (OR = 0.95, p = 0.9)). It’s the denominator, stupid. There are 389 times more black people in the US than cops. Beyond this, the comparison itself is fucking asinine. My point is that it’s also statistically stupid. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread/700942/2067 "2015-04-28T16:49:27Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Without the cooperation of police departments (as well as things like body cameras), we can’t know. We can’t know how many police officers were convicted of murder in 2011, or how many of their victims were black? Or we’re not interested in actually looking up the numbers because doing so would harm the narrative? ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread/700942/2068 "2015-04-28T17:01:53Z")
**Smapti** , I say this with all due respect: you are an unhinged loon. Again, with all due respect. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread/700942/2069 "2015-04-28T17:04:00Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > It’s the denominator, stupid. If you pretend that “the likelihood of a cop murdering a black person” means the same thing as “the likelihood of a black person being murdered by a cop”. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread/700942/2070 "2015-04-28T17:05:12Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > We can’t know how many police officers were convicted of murder in 2011, or how many of their victims were black? > > Or we’re not interested in actually looking up the numbers because doing so would harm the narrative? We can’t know how many black people were actually murdered by police. We’re not talking about murder convictions, we’re talking about murders – which can happen even if there is no conviction. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread/700942/2071 "2015-04-28T17:09:10Z")
So it’s one of those unknown unknowns, then. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread/700942/2072 "2015-04-28T17:16:32Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > So it’s one of those unknown unknowns, then. Rumsfeld? ---
**Author:** ![Steophan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steophan/32/9595_2.png) [@Steophan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steophan)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread/700942/2073 "2015-04-28T17:38:13Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > We can’t know how many black people were actually murdered by police. We’re not talking about murder convictions, we’re talking about murders – which can happen even if there is no conviction. It’s possible, but very rare. You basically need a believable post-trial confession or extremely strong evidence that, for whatever reason, was not presented at trial. It’s reasonable to say that OJ Simpson, or the Emmett Till killers, got away with murder. It’s not reasonable in any of the cases presented in this thread. The number of police killings that we can reasonably say are murder, rather than manslaughter, negligence, accidents or justified self defence, may very well be zero. Using “murder” to refer to a wide range of other deaths is false, dangerous, and disrespectful to those who were actually murdered. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread/700942/2074 "2015-04-28T17:47:22Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > There are over 100,000 police in this country today. How many “murders” have they, collectively, committed in the past year? Three? Five? > > Where is your proportionate sense of outrage to the _actual_ murders being committed by actual criminals? This is SUCH an idiotic line of argument. Everyone, EVERYONE, is bothered by the fact that criminals commit murders. That’s why we have the entire criminal justice system. That’s why we have cops. That’s why we have courts. We hate criminals. Criminals should be caught and punished. But it’s an accepted fact of human existence that some percentage of the population will be criminals. It was true in ancient Rome, it was true in 10th century China, it’s true today. Cops committing crimes, however, is far more outrageous and offensive to our understanding of civil society, even if a (meaningless) comparison of absolute numbers suggests that it is less important than non-cops committing crimes. Cops committing crimes renders meaningless the very structures that we put into place to protect ourselves from lawlessness. It’s a betrayal. ---
**Author:** ![Steophan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steophan/32/9595_2.png) [@Steophan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steophan)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread/700942/2075 "2015-04-28T17:49:24Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > According to the FBI, there were 2,447 instances of a black person being killed by a black person in 2011. That figure seems extremely low, suggesting that only one third\* of black people murdered were killed by other black people. That contradicts _everything_ I’ve ever seen on the subject. Does it refer to all murders, or only those the FBI investigated? Very rough stats, but there’s around 15,000 murders per year in the US, and around 50% of the victims are black. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread/700942/2076 "2015-04-28T17:51:04Z")
> [@Steophan](#): > > It’s possible, but very rare. You basically need a believable post-trial confession or extremely strong evidence that, for whatever reason, was not presented at trial. It’s reasonable to say that OJ Simpson, or the Emmett Till killers, got away with murder. It’s not reasonable in any of the cases presented in this thread. It’s not even reasonable to suppose Oscar Grant wasn’t murdered? A person deliberately drew a gun, pointed it at Grant, and on purpose fired the weapon at Grant’s torso while Grant was lying face down, his hands cuffed behind him. Grant died, which is a reasonable thing to expect would happen when you do that. I mean, one could reasonably argue that was murder. The cop was not _convicted_ of murder, but that’s typical. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread/700942/2077 "2015-04-28T17:53:43Z")
> [@Steophan](#): > > White criminals being killed when threatening the police? Yeah, they’re idiots who brought it on themselves. In any other circumstance, investigate to decide whether it was murder, manslaughter, negligence, accident, or justified, then proceed accordingly. Exactly the same as with black people killed. > > In case you’re not aware, there’s many mentally ill and/or homeless people of every skin colour killed by the police in America. But for some reason this is less of a scandal than black criminals being shot attacking the police. Which is utterly fucking stupid, shows an absurd inability to prioritise things, and proves that you’re only capable of seeing things in a racial context. > > The repeated claim is that innocent black people are being deliberately killed by the police, but nothing in this thread backs that up. We’ve seen criminals killed attacking or resisting the police, and we’ve seen the occasional innocent accidentally killed. No innocents being targeted. > [@madmonk28](#): > > **Steophan** , the problem with being a hateful bigot is that you only see life through the lens of your hateful bigotry. As a result, you live in a world in which police harassing and killing black people is just a small annoyance and thus nothing that they should get upset about. In your world, blacks are violent and always getting upset about nothing which makes them scary and thus you’re okay with the police harassing and killing them. It bears repeating: you are a hateful bigot. **Monk** , I’m failing to see the hateful bigotry in **Steophan’s** statement. If someone points a gun at a cop, he’s gonna get shot. It doesn’t matter what color his skin is. Same if they pull a knife or whatever. Skin color is meaningless in this context. If someone attacks a cop, bad shit is gonna happen and that was the point of his post. Perhaps you could point out what was hateful or bigoted about it, other than its accuracy. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread/700942/2078 "2015-04-28T18:31:53Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > If someone points a gun at a cop, he’s gonna get shot. Other things that can get you shot by police – reaching for ID, running away, moving in a way a cop interprets (rightly or wrongly) as threatening, having the bad luck to be arrested by a group of police that includes an old, unqualified idiot who mistakes his gun for a taser… ---
**Author:** ![FXMastermind](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fxmastermind/32/7289_2.png) [@FXMastermind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FXMastermind)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread/700942/2079 "2015-04-28T18:38:43Z")
If anyone still doubts the racist violent nature of cops (not all of them of course), but if you actually have doubts, or just reject the very notion, the facts probably won’t make any difference to you at all. For those who are unsure, there is no doubt after looking at reality. In this case, the cops beat one of their own, which makes it impossible to deny it happened, or to deny that sometimes cops just start inflicting brutal violence on black men, with out warning at all. [An Undercover Cop, Brutally Beaten, Revealed Racial Divide In Boston](http://www.wbur.org/2009/07/30/the-fence) [Officer Mike Cox believed in the system. Until he was brutally beaten by fellow cops in an arrest gone wrong, and the Boston police covered it up](http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2009/06/21/the_blue_wall_of_silence/). [1995 Beating by Boston Police Highlights Dangers for Black Undercover Officers](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/20/AR2009072003216.html) He was brutally and illegally beaten by cops, who thought he was just a black man. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, then nothing will ever get through… ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread/700942/2080 "2015-04-28T18:44:20Z")
And all of this happened _twenty years ago_, you say? Well, this is no doubt VERY relevant to events happening in an era where people graduating from high school were not yet alive at the time. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread/700942.md?page=103) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/controversial-encounters-between-law-enforcement-and-civilians-the-omnibus-thread/700942.md?page=105)