What part doesn’t make sense? In the past, there was a culture of violent racism that specifically targeted black people. But there were also black people in that culture who were never personally harmed by that violence. If overtly violent racism didn’t impact all black people in the same way, why would you expect non-violent racism to impact all black people in the same way?
That’s a reasonable question to ask (and based on the DOJ’s report, they answered it in their background research, but without laying out all the calculations and numbers), but I think there’s more than enough information without that answer (based on the collection of other evidence, such as the disparate treatment of black defendants by the courts) to conclude that the Ferguson PD (and Ferguson justice system as a whole) most likely acts with racial bias to the detriment of black people. There’s lots of other evidence, and racial bias (it seems to me) is the simplest answer that covers it all. We can go ahead and ask that question, but we don’t need to tie ourselves into knots to avoid stating that the Ferguson PD probably is not treating black people fairly due to their race.
Racial bias is not outlandish. Would you need to see this question specifically answered to conclude that many police departments in the 1950s acted with racial bias? I think that stuff still exists, and is still significant, even though it’s to a lesser degree.
So I think we can make this conclusion with reasonable (though not absolute) certainty, based on the mounds of other evidence.
St Louis gets an average crime rating of ~900, according to city-data.com.
Ferguson gets an average crime rating of ~400.
The national average is ~300.
Since those are based on hard crimes (murder, theft, etc.), they’re less likely to be poluted by policing style. Murders in particular are going to be unaffected, so it’s safe to say that St. Louis has a higher percentage of people engaging in criminal behavior than Ferguson.
While, in the previous data, it is clear that major crime is not a significant hobby of Ferguson locals, I don’t know how well correlated that is to petty crime. I’d guess that there’s a reasonably strong correlation, but since you’re the one making the argument, it seems reasonable to let you be the one to provide numbers that support that argument this time. It’s entirely plausible that the police of Ferguson were ordered to collect money, and a slightly higher level of general misbehavior among a majority population of African Americans led to their being hit more often, which caused them to resent the police and, correspondingly to misbehave even more, creating an ever-worsening feedback loop. Again, I doubt that this explains the situation, but your argument is leaving a ton of gaps open that should be supported by numbers.
Overall, we can say that these numbers are all due to racism, poverty, or genuine criminal behavior, but it’s all just blowing hot air if no one’s going to try and find any way to support them. Particularly, if you’re going to say something like, “Surely, crime can’t be worse in Ferguson than St. Louis!” That really only takes a few seconds to Google.
I don’t think you understand what I wrote. The DOJ report looked at (among other things) the numbers for non-traffic court cases. Ferguson had 567 non-traffic court cases per 1000 population. This is 7 times the rate of St. Louis’s rate of 80 non-traffic court cases per 1000 population.
If anything, your cites just make this look worse – why do Ferguson courts see so many more cases than St. Louis, if the overall crime rate is worse in St. Louis?
As the report makes clear, the vast majority of law enforcement actions in Ferguson are not for ‘criminal’ acts (burglary, robbery, or violence), but for either minor traffic violations, municipal code violations, or for “Failure to Appear” in the municipal court on such charges. The culture of ‘focus on revenue’ has pushed the department to judge officers not on their ability to maintain public safety. but on the volume of arrests and citations that they ‘produce’ on the basis of such charges.
Once a person has entered the system there, the way the municipal court functions essentially makes it impossible for a person with limited financial resources to escape… there was a particular example given of a woman who had received two parking tickets (for about $150) nearly a decade ago, had been arrested multiple times, spent over a week in jail, paid over $500 to the city, and still owed over $500 more. People are effective being persecuted merely on the basis of being poor, and the court habitually issued arrest warrants for “Failure to Appear” even when the person had been arrested and then paid a bond that was greater than the amount of the actual fine, and even when the court had already decided that the initial violation did not merit arrest. The court was effectively, as was stated in the report, using the police department as a collection agency in a way that served no legitimate public safety interest.
The court had no system for people who could not afford a fine to make restitution in some other manner (like community service), made no allowances for ‘ability to pay’ when determining a fine, and gave no credit for (and did not even track) time served when people had been arrested. The City in fact has a (grossly unconstitutional) statue that allows people to be held in jail merely for their inability (not unwillingness, but inability) to pay a fine, for months at a time.
The report describes inconsistencies based on race, but the problem is really not they were acting in a racist matter itself, but that the court and police department were aware that their policies and practices (many of which were themselves illegal) were having a disparate impact on blacks, and failed to take corrective action because it would have compromised their revenue stream. The actual ‘explicit’ racism that is so much discussed here is actually fairly tangential to the main point of the report.
Nicely put. The only quibble I have is when you take the leap to assume race bias. Given the revenue scheme you cite, do you think that they cared on iota what color the people were> No, they were basically targeting the most vulnerable. In this case, they just happen to be black. But this Boss Hogg way of raising money I do not think has race as a motivator in any way. It’s a “it’s the poor, so fuck 'em” kind of attitude.
And that’s where I think the problem is. I think there’s an awful lot of confirmation bias at play here. If one has a starting point that the Ferguson poise target black people, you read everything as supporting that narrative. Bu that doesn’t make it so. It seems t=safe to say that the people targeted were the poor. Beyond that, you’re just assigning motivations to them which are unnecessary, and I think, wrong. As I just asked, do you think this despicable revenue scheme really cared what color the people are? I think they just wanted poor people, who would not be hiring lawyers, and milk them. I have enough disgust for that, racism is an unnecessary badge to that tattoo them with. Also, and I’m always surprised that those so genuinely concerned with racism seem to be relatively cavalier about making the charge. I don’t even accuse people of lying unless I can make an airtight case. I think the bar for racism should be at least as high.
You know how they say you can’t con an honest man? Well, you can’t ticket an innocent man either. If the people of Ferguson (black, poor, left-handed Anabaptist and otherwise) obeyed and respected the law, it would be impossible for the police to cite them as a means of raising revenue.
I don’t know where you think that my post claimed that all black people are poor.
The fact is (as you so elegantly put it) that the group of poor people in this country “aligns pretty well with” the group of black people. Now, why might that be? Could it, just maybe, be due to the fact that black people have been the victims of centuries of racially-biased oppression? Or did they all just happen to make poor choices along the way?
Yep. And if you grow up in a failing school system with parents who didn’t do a good job raising you, who didn’t trust or value the institutions that weren’t giving them a fair shake, who were themselves poorly educated, overworked, not around to raise you, then it’s hard to do even those basic things.
There is a cycle of poverty, and it is very difficult to escape from. And in the case of black people, the cycle of poverty began and was perpetuated by racially-biased policies and actions. That some people have managed to escape is not evidence against it.
Do you really think you can refute “black people are poor due to racial bias” with “look, a not-poor black person”?
What a crazy random happenstance.
Complete bullshit. It’s possible to write tickets for and arrest innocent people.
That’s not my starting point – that’s my conclusion based on all the evidence. There’s tons of evidence that revenue was a major focus, and tons of evidence that black people were treated disparately. According to the DOJ, the disparities are absolutely not explained by how poor (or more likely to be involved in crime) black people are. They were treated disparately by the courts, which could not be explained by crime statistics (since we’re comparing folks who were already arrested) or disparate economics.
I (obviously) don’t think I’m being cavalier – I think racial bias is the simplest explanation here.
And I think that you’re inclined to resist the possibility that racial bias is involved, though I don’t know why – it certainly shouldn’t be shocking, considering the history of the country.
This is incredible bullshit. Did you read the report? You are in essence calling the report a piece of criminal fraud.
To specifically quote snippets from the report (page 70), with some cutting for context…
The report then goes on to discuss various evidence of racial bias and discriminatory intent on the part of various officials, and points out… “To violate the Equal Protection Clause, official action need not rest solely on racially discriminatory purposes; rather, official action violates the Equal Protection Clause if it is motivated, at least in part, by discriminatory purpose.” There is ample evidence given that the disparate impact is at least ‘in part’ claimed to be justified by racial stereotypes.
I’ll note (just like Ray) that racial bias doesn’t need to be intentional to exist. In fact, I don’t think it matters whether it’s intentional. The evidence collectively in the DOJ’s report, unless they’re making things up (and I’ve seen nothing to suggest they are), leads me to believe that racial bias (whether intentional or not) is part of the explanation for the disparate treatment.
Why are you folks still responding to this guy (Smapti, that is)?
For the record, the statement being claimed to be from “Bizarro Land” was that black people “are poor due to historical and ongoing mistreatment based on their race” – that is, that as a group they were – and continue to be – economically disadvantaged for historical reasons that have blocked educational and employment opportunities and to a very large degree marginalized them, ghettofied them, and reduced them to second-class status in virtually all social dimensions.
This plain fact isn’t even rationally debatable, let alone “flatly wrong”.
And if thou were right, black people wouldn’t have incomes averaging 73% less than whites.
That’s one of the most preposterous, insensitive, and offensive statements that routinely comes out of the worst of right-wing pundits. It’s the Republican mantra used in support of decimation of all social services: “we don’t need to worry about the poor – it’s their own damn fault!” (That’s why it’s OK to give tax breaks to billionaires while cutting food stamp programs.)
What is truly offensive to try to make the claim that anyone who is poor – particularly a race that has been discriminated against for centuries – is poor because they made the choice to be so. The clear implication, of course, is that they are either stupid or lazy, and probably both. And don’t forget the awesome corollary – that so many blacks are in jail because they’re naturally predisposed to thievery. :rolleyes:
You seem to think this is such a terrific point that it should be made twice. The statistics tell an entirely different story. And a couple of basketball players making $10 million a year don’t change either the income averages nor the chronic absence of opportunity for a very large segment of this demographic.
The history of flagrant racial bias throughout history and many of those areas doesn’t persuade you? How about the specific incidents cited in the report?
They all seem to follow a pattern, and the case of Michael Brown fits that mold perfectly. The pattern is exemplified by one of the incidents cited. Police cruiser stops in front of a black man waiting at a bus stop, and officer yells at him in a hostile and threatening tone to “get over here”. Officer demands his ID and threatens him when he hesitates. ID is used to run a warrant check. When nothing turns up, officer tells black man to “get out of my face”.
The pattern is that of police confrontations with blacks frequently starting with a hostile and belligerent approach for little or no reason. But my question is this. If these police actions are targeting “the poor” rather than being racially motivated, how did the cops know the guy at the bus stop was poor? Is that visible just like skin color? And why did the DOJ report conclude that racism was so rampant?
Guys, guys, guys. Let’s get something straight here.
“If (or an) thou wast (or thou wert or thou beest) right …”
It’s a simple fact that from at least the end of Reconstruction, the entire justice system was designed—as a major purpose—to suppress people on the basis of race. And until very recently, the majority of law enforcement officials had absolutely no problem in openly expressing their racist beliefs.
Possibly the one major triumph of the civil rights era is that it is no longer considered socially acceptable to be explicitly racist, so no one these days will admit to being a racist.
Strangely enough, the lesson that conservatives have taken from this is that racism is so extraordinary that it requires extraordinary proof.
If people are being ticketed and arrested for crimes that didn’t take place, then that either indicates stunning incompetence on behalf of the defendant and/or their counsel (which is beyond the city’s ability to control) or that the entire judicial apparatus of the United States is fundamentally corrupt (which the DOJ does not allege).
I do not dispute the finding that the police are disparately targeting black people as a means of raising revenue. I dispute that the people being targeted are factually innocent and I dispute that policing to raise revenue is inherently wrong.