Yes, here we go again. Another county where the police are terrorizing and brutalizing people of color. No, I’m not going to bother with “allegedly”. We’ve seen this enough to know this probably isn’t just a bunch of black people making shit up. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out now that we have an Attourney General whose response to police brutality and overreach more closely resembles a terrible Gene Wilder movie.
Basically, this keeps happening all over the country. At what point do we stop assuming that these are isolated cases, and start thinking about this as a more endemic, serious problem with the police?
Well, not as long as we’re a majority-white country, I don’t think.
It’s not just about being a mostly white country. That certainly makes it hard for a lot of people to relate, but it shouldn’t be impossible for most of them to empathize and help do something about it. And in the age of cellphones and cameras everywhere, and the continued misconduct, incompetence and malice of some police officers, it’s only a matter of time before some critical boiling point is reached.
I do think this is going to take yet another massive effort from minorities to bring about meaningful change. possibly in the same vein as the Civil Rights movement.
Sometimes a small group of people need to drag the rest of the us idiot humans into a more enlightened age, kicking and screaming if need be.
The article is a little light on details, and I would prefer not to just take the ACLU’s word for it.
‘Somebody who used to be sheriff 60 years ago’ is a reason to hide in your home in fear? I would also like to hear why the ACLU thinks the disproportionate arrest rates can’t be due to non-racial factors.
Maybe there’s something there, but you can’t tell it from the article.
Of course, it was okay for Republicans to bring up Senator Byrd’s long-renounced KKK associations of similar vintage.
If I was black, I wouldn’t trust them. Maybe 98% of cops are good guys, but if you give one of that 2% an opportunity he can either make your life a living hell or end it and get away with it. All this stuff that we see on videos now has been happening for generations, the only change is that a fraction gets caught on camera.
Whether they logically should or shouldn’t, it’s common sense that if someone has been mistreated by police, or as a child they saw their father or brother mistreated by police, or grew up hearing stories about family members who were mistreated by police, then they’re much, much more likely to (for rational and very human reasoning) be distrustful of law enforcement and view them as dangerous enemies to be feared. Most of the black people I’ve spoken to about this issue fall into one of these categories.
This is a very, very serious problem for law enforcement, and increases risks to both them and the public, and is not likely to fix itself until we can go a generation or two in which very, very few children see family members mistreated by police, or hear multiple and consistent stories about family members mistreated by police, or are mistreated by police themselves.
50% of black people report that they have personally been mistreated by police. Another 15% report that they have not, but a family member has.
So that’s 65% of black people who have either been mistreated, or have had a family member mistreated.
In comparison: 28% of Hispanic people report being personally mistreated, with another 23% reporting family members having been mistreated. 3% of white people report being personally mistreated by police, with another 5% reporting that family members have been mistreated.
With these numbers, there doesn’t seem to be any chance whatsoever that most black people will see law enforcement as allies to trust or rely upon, and will be much more likely to see them as dangerous and untrustworthy enemies to be feared.
I have one initial comment as I read the ACLU complaint.
So far as a quick read goes, though, there is at least one non-racial explanation that the complaint itself suggests – the disproportionate number of arrest warrants that may exist for minorities as a result of outstanding fines:
This policy is more fairly described as discriminatory against the poor, rather than against race.
As far as I am aware, the policy is not constitutionally impermissible.
A detailed read may reveal additional information that’s relevant to this issue, of course.
The problem is that it’s not a simple problem like the problems the Civil Rights movement solved. If it was a matter of some white people going into their neighborhood and beating and killing people, that could be stopped. But police are SUPPOSED to beat and kill people(sometimes), so the issue is how to get them to be as reluctant to do so to black people as they are to white people. Which is a really difficult problem to solve. Complex problems don’t lend themselves to marches. Government doesn’t do complexity. What some cities have done is simply go back to the bad old days, less policing. This doesn’t make anyone happy either.
The ACLU apparently agrees with you that it was okay.
Not exactly - that’s 65% of black people who claim they were mistreated. BLM claimed that Michael Brown was shot in the back, too, and that police shoot blacks more than whites, neither of which is true. (Citefor the shooting data - the falsity of the “hands up don’t shoot” lie has been established elsewhere).
OK, apart from the disproportionate arrest claim, I think the ACLU might have a decent argument here. I am excluding their conclusory allegations (“The only purpose of the roadblocks is to harass Black residents”) because that’s what they’re trying to prove; they have no document laying out that statement from the sheriff’s department.
But they do (apparently) have a document from the sheriff’s department authorizing deputies to implement “random” roadblocks to check for “escapees,” “vehicle infractions,” and other ordinary law enforcement goals, exactly the kind of roadblock impermissible under City of Indianapolis v. Edmond.
So who can we trust on whether or not black people are mistreated by police if we can’t trust the reports of black people? Do you have any reason to believe that black people are more likely to lie about being mistreated by police than others?
If the Sean Groubert and Charles Kinsey shootings hadn’t been recorded on video, do you believe that those officers would have been prosecuted? I don’t think they would have been. I also think it’s reasonable to consider that there might be a significant number of shootings that were in this vein (i.e. inappropriate shootings) that are recorded as “good” shootings, because there are no witnesses and no video. You might disagree, but then what could change your mind? Until all shootings are recorded, we only have the reports of black people (the ones who survived the encounters) and of cops to explain various incidents – considering that 150, 100, and 50 years ago it’s almost certainly true that black people would have been more honest and accurate sources of what actually happened in these encounters than the cops of the time, I think it’s very possible that they still are.
I see no reason to believe that black people are any less honest and accurate about how they are personally treated now than they were 50 years ago – I doubt if anyone would be surprised if a great majority of black people at the time reported mistreatment by police.
I’d gently observe that there are a set of cases in which a person may feel mistreated by the police, but that perception is inaccurate.
So my thought would be: an attempt to drill down into the facts that gave rise to the claim of mistreatment might be fruitful.
For example: “He pulled me over and demanded my license. I asked him why he pulled me over because I didn’t do anything wrong, and he kept asking for my license instead of telling me.”
Do police have to tell you why they pulled you over before they check your license?
They do not. (Although I’d certainly say it’s good practice to do so.) But failure to do so is not mistreatment, and yet I can easily imagine someone saying it is.
Now, please don’t read this as a denial of police mistreatment. It certainly happens. I’m speaking only to the reliability of self-reported numbers.
That sounds far too much like the DOJ findings from Ferguson.
As for Blacks mischaracterizing mistreatment, lets just do a little experiment and assume they’re only right 30% of the time, Hispanics only 60% and Whites 90%
Original vs Modeled
Back - 65% mistreated becomes 20%
Hispanic - 51% mistreated becomes 30%
White - 8% mistreated becomes 7%
In no world does the idea that Blacks/Hispanics simply mischaracterize police interactions make the overall issue any better.
You don’t simply take anyone’s word for it - you look at the evidence. If there is no evidence, you cannot draw any conclusions.
No, I would guess that black people lie about being mistreated about as much as any other group. They just get arrested more, because they commit a disproportionate number of crimes, and criminals often complain of mistreatment.
No, I wouldn’t disagree. There might be. I am not going to assume there are without evidence.
I don’t believe this is the case - other kinds of evidence are often available.
I suppose it’s possible that nothing has changed in the last 50 years, but I don’t consider it at all likely. Especially considering all the massive other social changes during that period. There are lots more black police officers than there were 50 or 100 years ago - do you think it likely that racially based police shootings continue unchanged nonetheless?
It’s not what you don’t know that’s the problem, it’s what you do know that ain’t so. Part of the narrative nowadays is that police shoot black men more than other races. That does not seem to be the case. 50 years ago, maybe it was the case, and blacks would have been accurate in the claim. They are being less than accurate now, and yet the claim is still being made.
I think witness reports count as evidence, but I’ll agree you can’t take anyone’s word alone on a single instance. But when there’s a pattern, even if it’s just (to begin with) a pattern of perception, I think it’s reasonable to take that as a starting point.
But in no world do anywhere close to 50% of black people commit crimes – even in the US cities with the highest levels of criminal statistics, the number of black people convicted of crimes is much, much less than the 50% who are reporting being mistreated by police.
Other kinds of evidence are sometimes available, but in many cases that evidence is gathered by an interested party – the cops themselves. That makes it a little harder to trust, IMO, considering that they have an incentive one way or the other.
Not unchanged – just that it was a massive problem back then (mistreatment in general, not just shootings), and still may be a very large problem even if it’s to a much lesser degree.
I think the statistics do show that police shoot black men more often – IIRC, the difference between young black men and young white men in police shootings was 21 times, when the difference in violent criminal statistics was 6 to 9 times. That doesn’t answer the question of why these numbers are different, but I don’t think it’s accurate to say they’re the same.
Yes. What’s the alternative? Not trust the police? what would that mean? Forming vigilante squads to deal with crime, rather than calling 911? Not using the police for law enforcement situations?
The alternative is assuming that any interaction with the police can end with you injured, arrested or shot.
This means that you are less likely to report a crime, as you perceive that there is a good chance that you will be in some way mistreated by the responding officers.
This means that you will act more suspicious around police, as you will be trying to avoid their notice, which generally just makes you more noticeable.
It does mean that rather than depending on the justice system to take care of local troublemakers, people take care of them themselves.
But, yes, as strawman as you try to make it, that is exactly what happens when the community does not trust the police.