# Should People of Color trust the police?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-people-of-color-trust-the-police/786433>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [May 12, 2017, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-people-of-color-trust-the-police/786433 "2017-05-12T06:41:08Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 14

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**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\
**Post date:** [May 12, 2017, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-people-of-color-trust-the-police/786433/14 "2017-05-12T13:12:38Z")

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> [@Shodan](#):
>
> 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. ([Cite](http://www.nber.org/papers/w22399.pdf)for the shooting data - the falsity of the “hands up don’t shoot” lie has been established elsewhere).
> 
> If black people are afraid of the police because ‘they shot that poor boy down in cold blood’ and it turns out that ‘in cold blood’ means ‘while [he was trying to grab the gun from the police officers who were called in because he attacked the paramedics who were trying to treat his girlfriend’s ankle which he had brok](http://www.startribune.com/what-we-know-about-the-death-of-jamar-clark/353199331/)en’, then what needs to be done is to tell blacktivists not to scare people with lies about the police.
> 
> Regards,  
> Shodan

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.

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