No, I don’t think you sound too “white” whatever that means.
I wanted to know to see if your experience with cops with guns drawn would be similar to what a black man faces, that’s all.
The experiences of men in general, whether they be black, white, brown, or purple, are probably more similar than women and men of the same race when interacting with the police.
I believe there was more than one cop shooting. I can imagine a scenario where Clark moves toward one cop, that cop shoots at him (and misses or hits him in the foot) and another cop joins in the shooting.
I don’t know that this is how it played out. Did the cops claim that nobody fired except the cop on whom Clark was advancing?
What level of skepticism do we apply to the claims of that 50%? I assume you wouldn’t just take their word for it, any more than you want to take the word of the police.
Mistrust of the police might be a problem, but what do we do about it when that mistrust isn’t justified? Suppose we investigate the claims of the 50%, and find that some portion of the complaints are either multiple reports of the same incident, misrepresentation of the circumstances, or the natural tendency of criminals to complain when they get arrested. What do we do about that portion?
There was a good deal of talk that Michael Brown was shot in the back while he was innocently going about his life. Turns out that wasn’t the case - he was ten minutes off a strong-arm robbery, and he assaulted the cop who stopped him and tried to grab his gun. And BLM is still complaining about it to anyone who will listen. Jamar Clark breaks his girlfriend’s ankle and attacks the police and rescue workers who come to treat her. There are people in my community who persist in calling this a racist execution. What do we do about that?
Yeah yeah, I know - Sean Groubert and Philando Castile and two or three others. The vastly overwhelming majority of the time, police shootings, including police shootings of black men, are entirely justified. Or Ferguson - the horrible mistreatment of some poor black women, just because she was driving without a license or any insurance and with five outstanding warrants in two different jurisdictions.
“The cops mistreated my cousin! They Taser-ed him for no reason at all!”
“Well, wasn’t he driving with expired tags, no insurance, thru a high-crime neighborhood? When he was stopped, didn’t he lie about the registration? Weren’t drugs found in his pocket, and didn’t he try to run?”
“Nah - it was because he was black! You can’t trust the cops!”
What do we do about that, when “that” is the case far more often than a bad shooting?
Regards,
Shodan
Unless my reading of the reporting and video is entirely incorrect, both of the cops (the only two involved) were in roughly the same spot. Their after-incident report stated that before being shot Clark extended an object in front of him and moved towards the officers, and then “fearing for their safety”, they opened fire.
It seems very dfficult to reconcile this with the autopsy results of 7 shots in the back, 1 in the front, with the 1 in the front while he was lying prone.
And considering that they purposefully muted their body cameras immediately afterwards, skepticism of their account seems very reasonable.
For a single account, sure. But for a large polled group? Why would I be any more skeptical of the polling results than for any other poll? Polls can be incorrect, of course, but I see no reason to be more skeptical of this one than others (I can dig up the cite if you need it).
I’m all for investigating such claims, and if turns out the complaints are not warranted, then that would be useful information.
Your “vastly overwhelming majority of the time” statement is opinion, not fact. You think this 50% number is less convincing/relevant/significant than comparisons of the facts of a handful of high profile police shootings. I think the 50% number is far more so, especially when I look at our history – I think Bull Connors was the norm for American law enforcement for most of our history, and I see no reason to believe that a few decades of changing culture would be enough to entirely overturn this.
And why are you dismissing the Ferguson DOJ report? It had very solid evidence of biased treatment by the PD against black folks of the community – solid enough to convince several SDMB conservatives, IIRC, that the PD was majorly screwed up. I have no idea what the crack about a few black women with warrants comes from – the Ferguson report showed patterns of large scale behavior against black residents no matter their warrant/criminal/legal status.
We disagree that “that” is the case far more often than bad shootings (or, I’d assume, other forms of mistreatment of black people).
I would assume you would be as skeptical of the claims of the 50% as you are of the police claims. Apparently not.
Police shootings are always investigated. Almost always, the shootings are found to be justified, not because of racism, not because of the blue wall, but because they are in accord with reasonable policies that reasonable people agree are in the best interests of balancing the safety of the public and the efficient enforcement of the law. Random surveys are not. If you choose to believe the one over the other, that is unfortunate.
Regards,
Shodan
Why would you assume this? These are two entirely different things both being asked and in how they’re measured. Do you have the exact same level of skepticism for the two?
This is just assertion. If cops routinely lie (or otherwise fail to tell the whole truth) to protect each other, and IA and investigating prosecutors routinely don’t bring their “A” game when investigating cops, both of which happen at least a non-zero amount of time, then the fact that investigations usually clear the cops doesn’t tell us anything about whether they should or not. Investigations into lynchings and police killings of black people during Jim Crow usually didn’t result in any prosecutions… does that mean that lynchings and Jim Crow police killings were usually “in the best interests of balancing the safety of the public and the efficient enforcement of law”?
Here’s the Ferguson report discussion:
Some highlights from that report (in case you forgot):
“From October 2012 to October 2014, every time a person was arrested because he or she was “resisting arrest,” that person was black.”
“African Americans are more than twice as likely as white drivers to be searched during vehicle stops even after controlling for non-race based variables such as the reason the vehicle stop was initiated, but are found in possession of contraband 26% less often than white drivers”
“From 2012 to 2014, FPD issued four or more citations to African Americans on 73 occasions, but issued four or more citations to non-African Americans only twice.”
“from 2011 to 2013, African Americans accounted for 95% of Manner of Walking in Roadway charges, and 94% of all Failure to Comply charges.”
“the disparate impact of FPD’s enforcement practices on African Americans is 48% larger when citations are issued not on the basis of radar or laser, but by some other method, such as the officer’s own visual assessment”
“These disparities are also present in FPD’s use of force. Nearly 90% of documented force used by FPD officers was used against African Americans. In every canine bite incident for which racial information is available, the person bitten was African American.”
That laser/radar one tells us that officers’ eyes were 48% more likely to see black speeders (but not white speeders) than radar and lasers.
Further:
Ferguson, 1/30th the size of Boston, nevertheless issued about 7 times as many individual arrest warrants, which added up to 16,000 fugitives (out of a 21,000 population).
Black arrestees in Ferguson were 68% less likely to have their court cases dismissed than non-black arrestees. Note that this one is just comparing people who were arrested.
Ferguson averaged 567 non-traffic court cases per 1000 residents. In comparison, St. Louis averaged 80 non-traffic court cases per 1000 residents (which was still above average for Missouri). St. Louis had a far higher overall crime rate than Ferguson.
I found this bit quite infuriating too. I’d like them or their superiors to be grilled by some reporters about why that happened / was allowed to happen.
Sure, but aren’t the investigations done by other police?
Besides, the whole “Most shootings are justified” reasoning would hold up a lot better, at least to me, if when there was a completely outrageous shooting, other police and their unions and lawyers said “That is in no way indicative of how we train our officers, or how they are supposed to react”
Instead, it’s a “witch hunt” to get officers who are clearly in the wrong fired.
Or, during videos where a cop is doing something completely outrageous, maybe the other officers would like, i don’t know, tell him that’s enough or something to that effect? Nope, they just watch a guy on his hands and knees get kicked in the jaw and do nothing.
It’s things like that that lead me to believe there are serious issues that aren’t “Most black people lie when they say they have been mistreated by the police”
What I am asking is why you treat these two with differing levels of skepticism. Why do you assume that black people always tell the truth on an anonymous survey, but police lie under oath?
Is it because when we investigate such claims, we find that one group or the other is generally more truthful? In the specific example of police shootings, we do not find that police in general are less truthful - most police shootings are justified.
“Routinely” is not the same as “a non-zero amount of the time”. I am certainly willing to believe that police lie more often than never. Are you willing to believe that black people lie about their treatment by police more often than never?
This is just assertion. If black people routinely lie (or otherwise fail to tell the whole truth) to protect their own interests, and this happens a non-zero amount of the time, then then the fact that they claim to have been mistreated either in surveys or upon arrest doesn’t tell us anything about whether they have been unfairly treated, or not.
Do you agree?
No. The Jim Crow laws are all gone now. Which is a good thing, because those laws did not have the safety of the public, especially the black public, at heart.
But they are all gone. Lynchings don’t happen anymore, and now that we do investigate police killings, we find that most of the time, no prosecution is necessary or appropriate. There are some (rare) exceptions, and those tend to be heavily publicized and distorted, but police do not routinely shoot black people unless they flee, resist arrest, fail to show their hands, or otherwise act stupid.
Therefore, racism. :dubious:
Regards,
Shodan
I don’t assume this.
More of this assertion, which is just opinion. There’s a ton we don’t know about most police shootings, aside from that the powers that be didn’t prosecute. That doesn’t tell us much beyond the powers that be chose not to prosecute. That could be for good reason, or for corrupt reason. If the only source of info is the powers that be, we can’t know for sure.
Certainly. I see no reason to believe black people routinely lie or otherwise fail to tell the truth in these instances, of course.
None of those actions justify deadly force, and it is much less likely in comparable encounters with white people.
:dubious: indeed.
You believe it is okay for police to shoot an unarmed person who is running away?
I think your question is a bit broader than this, but many states have a “fleeing felon” law that authorizes deadly force (in some cases). [url=Utah Code Section 76-2-404]Here is Utah’s:
That doesn’t mean they can shoot just anybody they want, or anybody that runs, but there are certainly some circumstances where “it is okay for police to shoot an unarmed person who is running away”.
I don’t know if you’re speaking about “morally” justify here, but in legal terms, doing things like “flee, resist arrest, fail to show their hands, or otherwise act stupid” are excellent ways of getting shot by the police, and oftentimes the legal system will judge the police actions justified.
Thanks for the site.
Fair enough. If the police just saw the guy gun down 34 nuns who were holding kittens, then sure.
If the cops stop a guy for jaywalking and he takes off running, then no. Not so much.
Do you mean like this case?, where the officer was acquitted after emptying his gun into someone crawling on his hands and knees, as he was told to do so by that same officer.
You said that the fact there is a non-zero chance of the police lying meant we couldn’t tell anything from the investigations. A non-zero chance of black people lying would mean that we cannot tell anything from surveys or what they say when they are arrested.
Or you assume that police routinely lie, even though investigation by other police, civilian review boards, and DAs, usually find no wrongdoing. You do not assume that black people lie on surveys and upon arrest, even though those are not verified at all.
Why do you believe black people based on no evidence, and disbelieve police based on evidence?
Regards,
Shodan
nm
We can tell a lot about a particular instance by the facts of the investigation. Lots of investigations are quality and informative. I was replying to your broad assertion about investigations in general. I don’t think the fact that most shootings don’t result in prosecution tells us much, since we don’t know how many of these investigations are fair and unbiased.
I don’t assume anything. You, on the other hand, assumed the autopsy would support the account of the police.
I remain skeptical of this account, both because of the autopsy and because they acted suspiciously by muting their mics. Further, I think initial skepticism is wise, just to ensure that police violence is always challenged and investigated.
I have a general concern about law enforcement because of things like the Ferguson report, the polling on police mistreatment, the fact that for most of American history police were the enemies of black people, and because that, in my understanding of the facts, it’s quite common for police accounts to conflict with the facts of the case, even when the investigations don’t result in prosecution.