Is there a racial disparity in police shootings in America?

Great Debates
101

You were lucky in your choice of comparable country because I can’t recall anything bad ever happening to the Irish.

I am glad you have come around to the truth about disparate crime rates being real. Obviously, history has a large impact on the way people live today and that includes crime rates. But just because black people were brutalized by white people in the past does not mean that the government should allow black criminals to brutalize them now. The overwhelming majority of the victims of black criminals are black. 70% for murder victims and similar numbers for victims of other crimes. The only way to help black neighborhoods live in peace is better policing. Repeating myths about black people being targeted for death by police makes trust disappear, police work harder, and crime more likely.

After 9-11 a lot of people were afraid to fly and drove instead. It is estimated that the increase in car traffic caused an extra 1,500 car crash fatalities. There are many people who are afraid to go to the beach because of fear of shark attacks. Meanwhile Vitamin D shortage is a much more likely health threat that affects tens of millions and makes heart disease worse. Hyping the dangers of airplane terrorism and shark attacks makes the deaths by much more common dangers worse and would kill many more people than the alternative.

We see this in police and race cases. Baltimore had riots after Freddie Gray died. Since then there have been an extra 100 murders a year. A studyjust came out that shows investigations of police departments after viral incidents lead to an extra 900 murders.

102

Somehow I’m unconvinced that the status quo, in which half of black people report mistreatment by police, and in which cops who kill and brutalized unarmed black men usually face relatively minor consequences, is better than fighting to hold police accountable.

For centuries, law enforcement was the legitimate deadly enemy of black Americans. Few police departments seem willing to expend serious effort to try and change this. But nothing will change about the perception until law enforcement changes. Black people didn’t start this mess, and black people can’t fix it on their own. Only America as a whole can fix this.

Something is broken in law enforcement - polls show that more and more Americans are, thankfully, now siding with BLM.

103

Isn’t “better policing” exactly what protesters are demanding? I agree, let’s give that a try.

104

It seems pretty clear that you aren’t actually interested in equality of opportunity.

105

Damn. Where you been dude?

106

Away from the boards for a while, my wife and I became foster parents and I suddenly had a lot less free time.

107

Well, congrats to you both and welcome back. Don’t be a stranger.

108

Completely agree there is a disparity, but are we certain it is based on race?

A couple decades ago it was assumed gender bias must exist in U.S. politics because men were being elected at higher rates than women. They were but it wasn’t gender discrimination. It was because of incumbent bias. Same result but with a different cause.

We see minorities experiencing a higher rate of police abuse; this is the result. The cause may be racism or it may be something else. If it is racism we are well on our way to solving the problem. But if the cause isn’t racism our society’s attempted fix isn’t going to work.

It would be interesting to compare the police abuse majority/minority rates with low income vs higher income arrests and other similar demographics.

109

In post 98 I linked to an article demonstrating disparities up to 1000% per capita. With that, and documents like the Ferguson report, it seems clear that systemic racial bias is involved.

110

Thank you, that is very kind.

Problem is, race and class are closely intertwined in the US. Combine that with a high degree of residential segregation, and the picture is even more muddled.

That said, I’d argue that the fix is the same regardless of the relative impact of race and class:

  1. Implement force reduction and deescalation. The 8 Can’t Wait campaign shows evidence of harm reduction from the introduction of 8 common-sense police policies pertaining to the use of force.

  2. Implement independent oversight. Police shouldn’t be investigating police, and prosecutors that depend on a close working relationship with the police shouldn’t be prosecuting police. The conflict of interest is obvious. Independent agencies must be established for these tasks, and strong civilian review boards for police agencies.

  3. Implement mandatory reporting standards and enforce them.

  4. Narrow the role of the police. They shouldn’t be doing wellness checks, dealing with the mentally ill, or the myriad other tasks they aren’t properly trained or mentally equipped to do.

  5. Commit to community policing, including requiring officers to live in the area they police.

  6. If necessary, dissolve police departments and form new ones. If the culture is too toxic, or the union-mandated immunity and cover for problem officers is too strong, scrap it and start over.

111

When police departments routinely lie in their initial reports about deaths like that of George Floyd, it’s hard to conceive that they’re capable of changing from within the system.

112

I’m not sure I support #6 but otherwise agree your proposed fix will have a positive effect regardless of the cause. Hopefully we’ll see this or something similar play out.

113

There are something like 17,985 police agencies in the US, and that’s part of the problem. They vary considerably in structure, policies, accountability, and rates of violence.

You can use Mapping Police Violence to get something of an idea of the variation in departments. For example, here in Kentucky we have two sizable metro areas, Lexington and Louisville. They are about 75 miles apart. Lexington has a median income of $49,778 and is 14.5% black; Louisville has a median income of $51,960 and is 22.2% black. They are similar in a broad range of ways. And yet, the Louisville PD kills people at a higher rate than Lexington PD, and kills black people at almost 5 times the rate as the Lexington PD. Living in the area I can tell you that the Louisville PD is considered far more problematic than the Lexington PD. I say this in service of the point that I could imagine the Lexington PD going along with some major reforms, whereas the Louisville PD might have to be disbanded and replaced.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that your average PD can change its culture from within. That’s difficult for any organization. However, people do respond to incentives. When police are held accountable for their actions, the incentives change. Hiring trainers that teach escalation and casual violence becomes less appealing. If lying to cover up another officer’s misconduct can land you in jail instead of not being punished in any way, you can expect less lying. I would think, anyway.

114

The “winning ticket”? :confused: I realize this was a throwaway phrase to make your post fun and colorful. Still, I’m curious what it means. Who won what and why?

Instead of a 100:1 sentencing discrepancy, it’s now a 18:1 discrepancy IIRC, for these “same” drugs. The new sentencing ratio is in one of the links I gave you to read — double-check it for us, please.

The issue can be reduced to liberal hypocrisy. Name of a Democrat; Name of a Democrat; Name of a Democrat; Name of a Democrat. Got it.

115

I like them all but #8, that has never really been done and could cause cause. And no Camden didnt do that.

116

I don’t see any hypocrisy. They were not against the bill in private, only to vote for it.
They voted for it because they were trying to address a serious issue that was devastating the black community of the time.
Those who describe the law as an example of racism are either ignorant of its history or being deceitful to stir up animosity.
What do you think the motives of the Congressional Black Caucus and 90% of congressional democrats were in supporting the bill?

117

What you don’t seem to get is that I don’t care what that ratio is, if it’s unequal (and that is what the data shows us) then it needs to be equal.

If it’s unequal for different reasons, like multiple arrests, multiple infractions, then I can see why sentencing could vary. But if it’s unequal simply because one is prevalent in the black community and one is prevalent in the white communities, then we are in agreement.

The problems come into play when we start conflating differing cases, ones that are multiple offenders with one time offenders and seeing a different sentence being handed down and then complaining it isn’t equal.

This also something iiandyiii refuses to see, if black people commit more crimes, a lot more crimes, then they will be more represented in prison. It doesn’t default to “racism”.

Now there may very well BE racism in police forces across the nation, but finding it isn’t going to be as simple as pointing to incarceration rates.

When it is found, it needs to be burned, tarred, feathered and tossed in the garbage disposal.

But all I’ve seen so far is a big ass broad brush with calls for disbanding and defunding the very people who are supposed to be protecting us, and for a very large percentage DO IT WELL.

This problem is multifaceted and will require both the community AND the police forces to work together but so far all I have seen is blame on the policing and little to no introspection as to the WHY black people commit a ,very much so larger, crime footprint than any other “race”

Except for iiandyiii of course blaming it all on the white mans actions 200 years ago , along with random other acts of racism or police brutality since then.

Stop committing crimes is the FIRST STEP in a nation of laws.

118

This “nation of laws” has been brutalizing and oppressing black people for centuries. The first step is for that oppression and brutalization to stop.

119

Really, that’s all you have seen? Try reading the thread again, note the posts about cultures of honor, and correlation between poverty and crime. There’s your why.

Are you aware that this isn’t a problem unique to American black people? American poor whites have responded to a decline in economic opportunity with the same social problems that plague many black communities: broken families, crime, and early death. Here in Kentucky, with its 7.8% black population, we lead the nation in the percentage of children that live with neither parent. Drugs and crime and hopelessness are rampant, and don’t care about skin color.

Furthermore, look around the world, and there’s no shortage of oppressed minorities with similar (or worse) outcomes. Ever heard of the Bihari people in Bangladesh?

120

I agree that poverty and crime go hand in hand, does this dispute anything I said?

The answer to the woes of the black community isn’t racism, if anything, it’s more likely to be classism. Poverty sucks, start addressing that.

I’m glad you agree with me about the answer to all the ills of the black community isn’t racism though, at least we have a starting point.

Curious as to the actual numbers, is the white crime rate on par with the black community crime rate since you know, they are both equally impoverished. The broken families is a good bet on a poverty line, as it usually requires 2 working parents to not only subsist but also parent, help push the importance of school etc.