(Dallas, Baton Rouge) Violence is not the answer. What is?

[iiandyiiii]

@Shodan

From examining the circumstances of police shootingblack citizens.

This is for 2016. I’m talking about far more than one year. Further, much of the data comes from police departments, which have incentives to exonerate police officers. If Groubert’s shooting hadn’t been recorded, how do you think that official story would have been resolved? What if there had been no video, and his victim had died? Do you think Groubert would have been convicted?

I think it’s highly likely that his police department would have backed his story that his victim lunged into his car dangerously, as if for a weapon, and he would not have been sanctioned at all.

The overwhelmingly large majority of the time, police shootings are either justified, or even unavoidable. Sure, there are incidents the other way. Those get highlighted in the press and by activists. The huge majority of justified police shootings don’t get highlighted, and that gives a distorted picture of reality.

You say “overwhelmingly large majority” as if it’s confirmed fact, and I don’t buy it. You didn’t respond to my mentions of the Groubert shooting – why not? What do you think would have happened in that case if it hadn’t been recorded? Is it at all possible that there are a significant number of bad shootings like Groubert’s, that don’t get recorded, but are ‘resolved’ by police departments as justified?

Or else the activists misrepresent the circumstances and then you still get a distorted picture. That’s why we still get the “hands up - don’t shoot” nonsense, or the notion of the innocent black teenager skipping down the sidewalk with his Skittles when the evil racist shoots him (without mentioning that he was beating the head of a stranger against the sidewalk for asking him what he was doing).

You say Martin “was beating the head of a stranger against the sidewalk for asking him what he was doing”… how do you know this is true? Zimmerman said so… that’s enough for you to confirm it’s true? The court found him not guilty, but that doesn’t mean that they accept that every word of Zimmerman’s is true, just that there’s not enough evidence to convict.

If it’s reasonable to believe that police are dangerous based on anecdotes, then it is reasonable to believe that black people are dangerous based on anecdotes.

It’s not as simple as “police are dangerous”. As for reasonable fear by many black people, that’s based on far more than anecdotes – it’s based on history.

At what point in American history would you say that it was unreasonable for a black American to see police officers as often unpredictable and untrustworthy violent enemies? Never? Were black people right to be afraid of police officers in the 1850s? How about the 1890s to the 1940s? Decades after that? Or never?

At what point was it unreasonable for a black American not to trust the reports and information coming from police officers? Were they wrong to distrust Jim Crow southern police officers? How about during the Civil Rights movement?

Is all this stuff totally over, or is there a possibility that significant remnants remain within some police departments in the country?

[watchwolf49]

@brickbacon

Of course it’s a numbers game. Fewer dead people is about all you can realistically hope for given some percentage of people will do bad things in the best of circumstances. And there’s nothing wrong with that. That should be the pursuit of every endeavor in those realms … [snip]

So … 50 dead in Orlando is bad … 3 dead in Baton Rouge is good?

I see your point, don’t get me wrong … but we have to be intolerant of all murders … whether committed by gunfire, stabbings, poisoning, etc etc etc. … and under no circumstances should we treat a police officer any different than the common citizen.

There is the general perception that police get special favorable treatment. I’m certainly not going to get a pass on a seat belt violation if I say I didn’t know. Yet this seems to be what the Baltimore officers are claiming in the case of the Freddy Grey death, and apparently successfully. Again, it’s the perception that police get a bye on these laws.

How can there be peace before there is justice?

Do we sit back and say “It was just one person who died, we can safely let it pass.” ?

I say no, and I’d like to see the 99.99% of police officers who are honest and diligent step forward and clean up their own ranks. This doesn’t end the violence, but it will build trust … something that is lacking in Baltimore and a number of other places.

[Shodan]

@iiandyiiii

This is for 2016. I’m talking about far more than one year. Further, much of the data comes from police departments, which have incentives to exonerate police officers.

And some of the data on which people base their suspicions come from activists who have incentives to accuse.

You say “overwhelmingly large majority” as if it’s confirmed fact, and I don’t buy it. You didn’t respond to my mentions of the Groubert shooting – why not?

There are certainly some incidents of police misconduct and unjustified shootings. They are quite rare, especially compared to the huge majority of shootings that are established as justified.

Is it at all possible that there are a significant number of bad shootings like Groubert’s, that don’t get recorded, but are ‘resolved’ by police departments as justified?

Sure it’s possible.

Civilian review boards and IAD exist for a reason. They are not perfect, but they are certainly more reliable than BLM. Can you supply any kind of evidence beyond anecdote that there are lots of police murders that have been covered up? Let’s confine ourselves, if possible, to the last twenty years or so.

You say Martin “was beating the head of a stranger against the sidewalk for asking him what he was doing”… how do you know this is true? Zimmerman said so… that’s enough for you to confirm it’s true?

No, it was established by evidence apart from Zimmerman’s testimony. We know that Martin was beating Zimmerman’s head against the sidewalk because of the medical report showing Zimmerman’s injuries, the witness who saw Martin on top of Zimmerman beating him, and the circumstantial evidence that showed moisture and grass on Zimmerman’s back and Martin’s knees. We went over this a hundred times - it is not the case that anyone took Zimmerman’s word for it.

This is much of the problem - even when something is established by independent evidence, BLM and its like refuse to believe it, and use it as a basis for accusations of racism.

The court found him not guilty, but that doesn’t mean that they accept that every word of Zimmerman’s is true, just that there’s not enough evidence to convict.

No one should accept that every word of Zimmerman’s is true. We should accept those parts as true that are established by independent evidence.

It’s not as simple as “police are dangerous”. As for reasonable fear by many black people, that’s based on far more than anecdotes – it’s based on history.

And the reasonable fear by police is based on history as well - the history of blacks being disproportionately involved in violent street crime, and resisting arrest when they get busted for it. Or resisting arrest when they are arrested even for minor crimes. Or resisting arrest at all, and thereby making things that much worse for themselves.

At what point in American history would you say that it was unreasonable for a black American to see police officers as often unpredictable and untrustworthy violent enemies?

It’s 2016. Anyone who thinks he can resist arrest because of Jim Crow is a bit behind the times.

Regards,
Shodan

[Duke_of_Rat]

@jsc1953

1. Police - largely white – who can be characterized as trigger-happy, ill-trained, paranoid or racist, pick one…are shooting civilians, a disproportionate number of whom are black. This has probably been happening for decades but thanks to cell-phone video we have proof. And it largely goes unpunished.

Cite? Do we know that this statement is factually true?

[XT]

1. Police - largely white – who can be characterized as trigger-happy, ill-trained, paranoid or racist, pick one…are shooting civilians, a disproportionate number of whom are black. This has probably been happening for decades but thanks to cell-phone video we have proof. And it largely goes unpunished.

Hm. I think I’d start with trying to teach people at least the basics on statistics and probability. A question…of the over a million US police officers, how many are involved in civilian shootings per year? Of those shootings, how many are involved in an event that involved a death? Of those, how many are involved in the deaths of a minority? Of those, how many are involved of the death of a black minority? And of those, how many of those deaths didn’t involve a weapon or threat to the officers or to some member of the public?

Answer those and you can assert that a million+ people can be ‘characterized as trigger-happy’ and that ‘shooting civilians’ is a large issue.

After that we can talk about the other caricatures you have brought up to paint with a broad brush such a large group of people.

2. Black people, outraged over #1, are shooting white cops.

I think that, like you and like many conservatives based on the frenzy about how the US is going to hell in a hand cart, that a race war is brewing and that gangs are taking over the streets, the folks making this claim are really, really bad at statistics and probability assessments. Undoubtedly the recent shootings of police are in response to the perception that cops are out to get blacks and that a large percentage of cop/black encounters end with a black person being shot, but that perception is flawed. To put this in perspective, in 2015, according to this, police across the US shot and killed 990 people. 494 were ‘white’, 258 were ‘black’, 172 were ‘hispanic’, and the rest were ‘other’ or ‘unknown’. Even if every police shooting of a black person was unjustified and ever black person unarmed and totally innocent (which we know wasn’t the case), it’s an extremely small number considering the millions of police officers and millions of events that happen every year.

How do we make it stop? Specifically, if you were president, what would you do?

Besides perhaps an attempt to educate people and to give all of this stuff on both sides some perspective, I think you have to bite the bullet and institute a mandate (funded) for body cameras across the board and across the country as well as police vehicle cameras. You’d need to set out guild lines for use (and attempted non-use), as well as training. Perhaps we should also tighten up gathered statistics and have some sort of federal IG oversight, at least in cases where a death occurred, though you could expand that to cases where abuse was either indicated or claimed. All of this would cost the world, but it might be the only way to demonstrate how often or vanishingly small actual police abuse actually is and whether police focus on minorities like hispanics (who don’t seem to get any of the love wrt getting whacked by police wrt public focus OR threads on this board) and blacks because of their race or because they commit a larger percentage of crimes than their percentage of the population. Maybe try and find out what the root cause of that is and address those root issues in some way. My feeling is that if we legalized some of the drugs we are currently wasting resources on, that this would most likely take at least some of the pressure off of law enforcement AND the community (plus the prison and court system). The root cause of a lot of this is going to get back to poverty and lack of opportunity as well as discrimination in the wider sense though, and those will be tougher to fight.

On the other side, it might be beneficial to have some sort of community outreach program by the police to not only involve the local communities, but perhaps to teach and educate people on what it is the police do, the best way to try and interact with the police in a situation (and NOT get killed, beaten or otherwise harmed) and to show some of what is going on from the polices perspective.

[iiandyiiii]

@Shodan

And some of the data on which people base their suspicions come from activists who have incentives to accuse.

What I find most convincing are the reports of non-activist black people.

There are certainly some incidents of police misconduct and unjustified shootings. They are quite rare, especially compared to the huge majority of shootings that are established as justified.

But how do you know those “established as justified” are actually justified? And when did this rarity start being true? Has it always been true in American history, or is this a recent development?

Sure it’s possible.

Civilian review boards and IAD exist for a reason. They are not perfect, but they are certainly more reliable than BLM. Can you supply any kind of evidence beyond anecdote that there are lots of police murders that have been covered up? Let’s confine ourselves, if possible, to the last twenty years or so.

I’m unconvinced they’re more reliable than BLM and/or other reports by black people.

As for evidence – for encounters that are recorded, the ratio that are investigated and lead to convictions vs those that are ruled as justified is much, much higher than encounters that are not recorded. I’ll look for a cite when I can.

Again, I’ll ask about Groubert – what do you believe would have happened had it not been recorded, and had the victim been killed? Would Groubert have been prosecuted? Would his department have supported his story that the victim behaved dangerously and lunged into his car as if for a weapon?

No, it was established by evidence apart from Zimmerman’s testimony. We know that Martin was beating Zimmerman’s head against the sidewalk because of the medical report showing Zimmerman’s injuries, the witness who saw Martin on top of Zimmerman beating him, and the circumstantial evidence that showed moisture and grass on Zimmerman’s back and Martin’s knees. We went over this a hundred times - it is not the case that anyone took Zimmerman’s word for it.

I’m not questioning that Martin beat Zimmerman’s head – I’m questioning that you know for certain that he did it because Zimmerman asked him what he was doing. How do you know this with anything approaching certainty?

This is much of the problem - even when something is established by independent evidence, BLM and its like refuse to believe it, and use it as a basis for accusations of racism.
No one should accept that every word of Zimmerman’s is true. We should accept those parts as true that are established by independent evidence.

So why do you make claims about why Martin beat Zimmerman without any independent evidence?

And the reasonable fear by police is based on history as well - the history of blacks being disproportionately involved in violent street crime, and resisting arrest when they get busted for it. Or resisting arrest when they are arrested even for minor crimes. Or resisting arrest at all, and thereby making things that much worse for themselves.

The police have all the power in these encounters. If both sides have “reasonable fear”, one side is bearing the overwhelming majority of deaths, and it’s the side without power.

It’s 2016. Anyone who thinks he can resist arrest because of Jim Crow is a bit behind the times.

This is a simplistic dismissal of a very complex history. Did police discrimination end with Jim Crow? If not, when do you believe it ended?

Even putting aside race, is it at all possible that police culture in America is too quick to resort to deadly force? The UK has a lot fewer guns – about a fifth to a third, or so, per capita, than we do. They also have a lot fewer gun murders – about 1/60th, per capita. Not surprisingly, they shoot a lot fewer people. But what’s surprising is how many fewer – UK police shoot, per capita, about 1/14,000 times as many people as US police shoot.

Does this concern you at all, or is it worthy of any research or investigation?

What responsibility do you believe lies with police departments, officers, and law enforcement culture in general? Do they have any responsibility to take action that might reduce the incredible terror that so many black people have towards them?

[Dinsdale]

Just impresses me as such an ugly combination of factors.

Unquestionable racism in the US. Increasing income/opportunity disparity, w/ people of color disproportionately represented among those lowest percentiles. Increasing militarization of police. A huge proliferation of guns.

Further, while we can debate what the “facts” are, the situation likely reflects the “perceptions” of different groups of people. Whether a different group considers a particular perception held by some different group to be well-founded, any meaningful progress is unlikely so long as that perception remains unchanged.

Hell, I’m a white middle aged guy, and I’ve had more than one situation where I’ve felt (rightly or wrongly) intimidated or wrongly served by LEOs. I can only imagine what a person of color would likely experience, and how that would affect their mindset over time.

I find myself frustrated and stressed by so many aspects of modern society. Decisions seem to be made by people other than me for reasons I cannot comprehend, and everything seems so expensive and complicated. And I’m reasonably well educated and well off. I can only imagine the frustration and anger that would build up if I were poor and uneducated.

I just don’t see how we move forward until we make progress on most of those issues.

[watchwolf49]

@Duke_of_Rat

Cite? Do we know that this statement is factually true?

The Washington Post is compiling a list of people shot dead by police officers … Here’s the tally from 2015 … of the 990 people killed, 730 were actually attacking the police.

Interesting stuff …

ETA: About a quarter are black, compared to about an eighth for the total population … so about twice as likely to be capped by police than whites.

[Little_Nemo]

@Shodan

It’s 2016. Anyone who thinks he can resist arrest because of Jim Crow is a bit behind the times.

It’s 2016. Anyone who thinks the police don’t treat black people and white people differently hasn’t been watching the news.

[Dinsdale]

@watchwolf49

The Washington Post is compiling a list of people shot dead by police officers … Here’s the tally from 2015 … of the 990 people killed, 730 were actually attacking the police.

Interesting stuff …

ETA: About a quarter are black, compared to about an eighth for the total population … so about twice as likely to be capped by police than whites.

Yeah, but this defies such simplistic calculation. What is the racial make-up of people “actually attacking police”? Or stopped by/interacting with police? Are blacks more likely to be stopped by or attack police? If so, why?

[iiandyiiii]

@watchwolf49

The Washington Post is compiling a list of people shot dead by police officers … Here’s the tally from 2015 … of the 990 people killed, 730 were actually attacking the police.

Interesting stuff …

ETA: About a quarter are black, compared to about an eighth for the total population … so about twice as likely to be capped by police than whites.

My browser doesn’t seem to like that page. Do they have a breakdown of how they determined whether the suspect was attacking the police? And do they have a breakdown for the other 260?

[watchwolf49]

@Dinsdale

Yeah, but this defies such simplistic calculation. What is the racial make-up of people “actually attacking police”? Or stopped by/interacting with police? Are blacks more likely to be stopped by or attack police? If so, why?

jcs claims “a disproportionate number of whom are black” are being killed by police.

rat asked for a cite.

The Washington Post numbers indicate jcs is correct.

That website will break these numbers down in quite a few different ways … and they also include a brief description of the incidents … all 990 of them. This is about the killings, and doesn’t include stopped by or interactions.

It’s a very complicated issue, any attempt to simplify will leave important details out. I’m not sure “defies” is appropriate, not if this information suggests some basic truth. Better to say these are statistics, and all due caution is required when we use statistics. The statistics themselves are not truth, they are just clues as to what the truth is.

[YogSothoth]

Have the local police share power with a panel of civilians not affiliated with the police. Certain policies, procedures, etc. will have to have the consent of both the sheriff and the civilian panel in order to be implemented.

Allow this panel to be able to investigate cops. Break the blue wall of silence, hold them accountable to non-cops and people not already working in the justice system.

[aldiboronti]

Run an experiment. Take one of the troubled areas and have black officers patrol it for a few years. Let’s see once and for all if white racism really is at the root of this. If things stay much the same (as I suggest they will) at least we can rule out this red herring and work on finding the real cause.

[Duke_of_Rat]

@watchwolf49

The Washington Post is compiling a list of people shot dead by police officers … Here’s the tally from 2015 … of the 990 people killed, 730 were actually attacking the police.

Interesting stuff …

ETA: About a quarter are black, compared to about an eighth for the total population … so about twice as likely to be capped by police than whites.

That’s part of it. Now all we need is a cite for police being mostly white, paranoid, racist, ill-trained, trigger happy, etc.

[jsc1953]

@Duke_of_Rat

That’s part of it. Now all we need is a cite for police being mostly white, paranoid, racist, ill-trained, trigger happy, etc.

Go back to the OP. I didn’t say most police are paranoid/racist/ill-trained; I didn’t state any proportion at all. I said that those were the potential list of reasons why a police officer would shoot an unarmed and nonthreatening civilian. If there’s another reason you want to put on the list, feel free.

[iiandyiiii]

@aldiboronti

Run an experiment. Take one of the troubled areas and have black officers patrol it for a few years. Let’s see once and for all if white racism really is at the root of this. If things stay much the same (as I suggest they will) at least we can rule out this red herring and work on finding the real cause.

Who is saying “white racism” is at the root of this? From what I can tell, Black Lives Matter believes that institutional and systemic biases are the most important part.

[DigitalC]

Yeah, the focus is on cops targetting black people, not white cops specifically.

[Shodan]

Are black officers less likely to shoot black suspects? I can’t tell - this is even more subject to the problems that police shootings are not uniformly reported.

I did find this-

…because more than two-thirds of police officers are white and blacks commit about half of violent crimes, it stands to reason most police shootings would involve a white cop and a black suspect.

Blacks also are more likely than whites, Hispanics or Asians to resist arrest, according to Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute.

Black cops have shot black suspects at essentially the same rate as white cops have, Prof. Klinger’s data indicate.

The police chief of Dallas said something related - if you want to make a difference and prevent both police shootings of blacks, and blacks shooting other blacks, don’t just complain - fill out an application and join the police force.

Of course, joining a protest and joining a police force have different standards.

Regards,
Shodan

[XT]

The BBC has an article that discusses some of this, as well as talks about the data that multiple people in this thread have linked to from the Washington Post:

The truth is that the raw statistics can’t tell us whether the police are treating African Americans differently from white people. To understand that, we’d need to look at more details about what happened in each incident. There’s a big difference between a case where someone was shooting at the police, and a case where someone was passive and unarmed.

One person who has tried to do that is an economist from Harvard University called Roland Fryer, the first ever African American to win the prestigious John Bates Clark medal in economics. This month Fryer released a preliminary study examining records from 10 cities and counties, with the best data coming from Houston - it’s not yet peer-reviewed, but it has received a lot of attention in the press.

Fryer’s research suggests that African Americans and Hispanics are substantially more likely to experience force in their interactions with the police - such as having a gun pointed at them, being handcuffed without arrest, or being pepper-sprayed or hit with a baton. This racial difference is reduced, but doesn’t completely disappear, when Fryer adds all sorts of statistical controls such as whether the incident was indoors or outdoors, in a high-crime area, took place at night, and so on.

However, Fryer doesn’t find any racial difference in the cases where police offers actually shoot someone.