Four cops dead, at least 7 more wounded by snipers at Dallas protest

The BBQ Pit
61

Where is this overwhelming evidence of which you speak? Baton Rogue? That video is inconclusive - certainly not overwhelming. Minnesota? The video didn’t start until after the shooting. Are there unwarranted killings by the police? Certainly and those cops need to be punished. Is it an out of control epidemic? No way.

This is the Pit and, I believe, no cites are required but I’ll give some anyway. In an admittedly short term study (Jan-Aug 2015), StreetCred Software looked at police killings of unarmed people nation-wide by police. There were 125 such incidents that they could find. Here are some stats form that study. (Link to study at bottom)

65% of the time officers were dispatched to calls of violent crime or property destruction. So the cops are entering an already volatile situation with no control over the race of who they are going to encounter when they get there.

25% are traffic stops. 25% of these suspects had convictions for violent crimes. This really only matters if the officers were aware of the history at the time of the encounter and it figured into their decision making. It does show that a significant number of these suspects already had a propensity for violence.

By race 42% were black, 36% were white and 16% were hispanic. Many will argue that these numbers alone prove a racist mentality since only 13% of the U.S. population is black. But that assumes that these are random events. The fact is that the majority of calls for service take place in urban areas and the majority of those are in minority neighborhoods. So there is nothing unusual or inherently racist about those numbers.

In 64 of the 125 cases there were civilian witnesses. In 40 of those cases the witness(es) said the cops were 100% right in their actions. In 20 some witnesses said the cops were right and some said they were wrong. In 4 cases the witnesses said the cops were 100% wrong.

Nearly half of the cases in which unarmed civilians died after an encounter with police did not involve a shooting, and the person died by another cause - most often a reaction or complication after deployment of tools or techniques with the
intent of using non-deadly force. In shooting cases the officers tried a taser 29% of the time before shooting. It would appear that officers are not trigger-happy shooting first and asking questions later.

The media was 4 times as likely to report the race of both officers and suspects if the suspect was black. Do you think that might impact public perception? FWIW, in the reports I’ve seen of the Dallas incident (executions?) I’ve not seen any mention of race of cops or killers.

An article by Heather Mac Donald (link below) also contains some interesting statistics.

Blacks are killed at six times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined. In Los Angeles, blacks between the ages of 20 and 24 die at a rate 20 to 30 times the national mean. Who is killing them? Not the police, and not white civilians, but other blacks. The astronomical black death-by-homicide rate is a function of the black crime rate. Black males between the ages of 14 and 17 commit homicide at ten times the rate of white and Hispanic male teens combined. Blacks of all ages commit homicide at eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined, and at eleven times the rate of whites alone.

Approximately 40% of cop-killers over the last decade have been black.

The number of police officers killed in shootings more than doubled during the first three months of 2016. In fact, officers are at much greater risk from blacks than unarmed blacks are from the police. Over the last decade, an officer’s chance of getting killed by a black has been 18.5 times higher than the chance of an unarmed black getting killed by a cop.

So maybe, just maybe, officers of all colors are justified in their heightened sense of danger when dealing with black male suspects. Are most blacks a danger to cops? Far from it. Not even close. But to ignore the reality that poor, black neighborhoods are statistically more dangerous places is to put your head in the sand.

I guess the bottom line for both sides is that, if you don’t want to be painted with a broad brush, put down your own brush (or, as appears to be the case in Dallas, your rifles). Much easier said than done.

62

Would the murders have been OK if they did somehow make cops less likely to jump the gun? :confused:

Is this intended as some sort of irony? I’m trying to guess what sort of cognitive pattern leads to comments like this, or OP’s. Do you think BLM protesters endorsed these murders? Do you think the libtards do have empathy for the terrorists?

63

“The number of police officers killed in shootings more than doubled during the first three months of 2016.”

Wow, what a national trend. What are the absolute numbers? It wasn’t something silly like going from 8 to 16, right? Because that would be awfully misleading.

64

One issue I think is not investigated properly as other factors just push it to the back:

If the reports are correct the perpetrator screamed about the end of times, or the end coming. Pointing also to mental issues as a factor in the mayhem. Ever since (and before) a mad killer in Arizona targeted a congress woman and killed many in a mall, the issue of not having a good system to identify, to take care of the mentally ill, and to control their access to guns has not been looked at it properly IMHO.

65

Yes, I’m sure the issue with disproportionate police violence against black folks is due to their fear there might be a sniper aiming for them while they’re stop 'n frisking :rolleyes:

66

It’s add an extra tragic spin on this to know that Dallas PD was among the best on the country at using modern policing tactics to reduce excessive force.

67

Why does that coroner have a putty knife and a bucket in the van?

Our thoughts are with you Dallas, as they are with all those everywhere who are senselessly killed by jerks with guns.

68

My post is that because the mentally ill are a stigmatized group, if the police violently clamp down on them society at large will not care. There is no mentally ill lives matter movement. The protests over the shooting in new Mexico or the murder of Kelly Thomas are exceptions, not the rule.

Mentally ill people are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrator.

Believing in the end times is not necessarily a sign of mental illness.

69

This is what happens when demagogues tell angry people that tyranny can be fought with easily obtained firearms. Second Amendment solutions for everybody!

70

That is right, but also it does not deny that in most recent mass murders that it has been an important factor present in the perpetrator.

It is when the person takes the matter into their own hands. BTW do not think that I’m asking to be punishing with the mentally ill, my point is that as a society we should be helping them even more that the pitiful amounts than I see today. I think it is important. Both to prevent misunderstandings with the police that end as being a victim, or to prevent them to gain access to guns.

71

This seems a rather odd point to argue about. Starving Artist’s post, considered on its own without presupposition regarding the poster’s stances on gun control or police misconduct is reasonable, pertinent and demonstrably a true general statement. The effects on policing practices in a climate where LEO’s have a general fear of armed civilians are sadly predictable.

I have no doubt that you and SA (and SA and I) differ on the particulars of what society should do about that sort of climate*, but I like to celebrate those times when Starving Artist posts something I can agree about.

*I think the clear line of thought once one accepts the premise (fearful cops make bad decisions) is to explore what we can do to make the armed populace less threatening. But that line of thought might then lead to awful communistic proposals like bans on certain weapons or features for civilian firearms, mandatory firearms training and licensing, better screening and tracking of firearm sales and purchases, more restrictive laws regarding carry and concealment, etc. I imagine **SA **put special emphasis on the closing punctuation when he made the post, but maybe some day soon this country will follow the obvious implications of the “scared cop/bad cop” premise instead of using it to double down on reactionary police techniques. Maybe. But not likely.

72

To compare the cop shootings in Dallas with the incidents in Louisiana and Minnesota bespeaks you either an unmitigated hater of law enforcement or a fucking imbecile. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and go for the latter. (Apt user name BTW).

73

What possible scenario justifies ambushing cops protecting peaceful demonstrators? I’m against lynch mobs, but the shooter saying he wanted to kill white cops pretty much seals it for me. No matter how you spin that, it was intentional homicide, motivated by hate. If you don’t see killing cops as unacceptable, you’re sick in the head.

74

I do think the press in general is being almost criminally negligent in how they report police killings.

Take for example this Quartz article link “More black people were killed by US police in 2015 than were lynched in the worst year of Jim Crow.”

This intrinsically associates police killings with lynchings. It also presents the data in a very disingenuous way.

For one, it notes that we have more police killings of blacks than lynchings during any year of Jim Crow. But these aren’t “like numbers.” Exactly zero lynchings are justifiable, legally or morally. However the evidence suggests that at least a good majority, and probably a very high percentage, of police killings are legally justifiable shootings of a person trying to hurt a police officer or another person.

For two, it ignores the fact that police were killing people during the Jim Crow era as well. But it doesn’t even explore those numbers. So then it goes on to make the fantastic claim that “blacks are less safe today” than they were during Jim Crow. Except, we don’t actually know that that was true. Blacks died from police shootings and lynchings during Jim Crow. They also died from regular homicides. We do know that lynchings don’t really happen anymore. We also know that the homicide rate has gone down over the last twenty years. So a blanket statement that blacks are no more safe today than during Jim Crow cannot be determined from the data presented.

But it’s extremely disingenuous to lump “all” police shootings in, morally, with Jim Crow era lynchings.

75

The lack of exploration of past police treatment of black people is a good point, and is actually part of this whole issue. For the vast majority of American history, law enforcement in most communities was an actively deadly and brutal enemy of black people… after decades and centuries of law enforcement committing daily atrocities against black people, then it’s not surprising that there will be an affect on their mindsets. If they grow up with stories that police were the bogeymen (with legitimate reason!), then they are a lot more likely to react in fear when interacting with them.

76

How do you fight tyranny without killing the agents of said tyranny?

77

I think these are fair points. During Jim Crow, blacks had to fear the lynch mobs and a large proportion of the police. Now the lynch mobs are gone and there is more oversight of police. Certainly the police have a long way to go and the onset of video cameras everywhere has a lot to do with it. But I agree with the premise that blacks are not less safe today, it’s just that the police killings of years past just went uncounted in these studies.

78

As it should be.

I only wished it worked the same way for police officers.

79

Too many police officers … not enough prison guards … recipe for disaster.

80

Speaking as a committed SDMB libtard in good standing, my expression of “no empathy” was specifically for the shooters themselves. Even if, as Peremensoe speculated, they did think of themselves as “shooting back” because of a grievance about police violence, it is undeniable that they deliberately chose and planned to initiate murderous violence in the absence of any immediate threat, using a peaceful demonstration as cover (and bait). I have no empathy with that choice whatsoever.

I question whether this incident really counts as “things getting out of hand”. I would call it “things getting out of hand” if, say, a protestor brought a gun to a peaceful protest not intending to use it, and a snappish altercation with a cop then escalated into tragedy. That’s the sort of hot-weather Do the Right Thing-type scenario that “things getting out of hand” implies, IMHO.

The Dallas shootings, on the contrary, appear to have been deliberately and carefully planned to take advantage of a peaceful protest as an opportunity for targeting cops who weren’t actually harming anybody. That’s premeditated murder, not “things getting out of hand”.