I honestly feel that that circle the wagons mentality is what causes people to fear the police.
If the police were actively policing themselves and calling out the ones who are known bad cases or do bad things then trust would again begin to develop.
But they don’t, it’s all about protecting that shield.
As I said earlier, unless you know of any laws, rules, or directives which are targeted to a race, the “systemic” bias is not part of a “system”, it’s just low-grade racism permeated through society. There’s no advantage to calling it an issue of the system, because what are you going to change if there’s nothing built into the system that targets any one group? All you can change, in a system, is its rules. There are no rules that are discriminatory. That’s already against the law.
If you want to attack the system, that is going to fail. The legality of racism is already determined and it’s been put to pasture. There’s no more you can do from a legal, rule, or directive level. You have to change people.
The question is not whether it’s illegal to murder someone. The question is how the investigation proceeds, and whether the murderers are punished.
When someone who’s not a police officer kills someone (or is suspected of doing so), the police separate all the witnesses immediately and interrogate them. They examine other evidence separately, and will use any discrepancy to threaten obstruction of justice and impeach the witness.
When the police shoot someone, well, here’s how Dallas, which has been in the news recently as a model of good community policing, investigates its officers:
So, yeah. Now, we sometimes have video evidence that demonstrates that the police are lying about their actions, and the actions of their colleagues. Suggesting that the system works in the few cases where we have actual video evidence of murder is bullshit. We somehow manage to convict other murderers without direct video evidence. And we do it because we don’t take their word for it, or the word of their buddies, and because we don’t let them review all the evidence against them before letting them fabricate an explanation.
And, of course, they’re deliberately destroying and disabling the video cameras they’re supposed to carry.
At least we’re getting more video of police encounters from citizens.
Bricker appeared to be arguing that press attention and political pressure are ineffective in addressing the problem of black-on-black crime. Therefore BLM and similar groups are wasting their time when they engage in protests or marches or other forms of activism against the problem of black-on-black crime. Do you agree?
Or do you think that political pressure could affect how black-on-black crime is investigated, and whether the black murderers are punished?
Regards,
Shodan
Wow, the BLM are silent about this because they are a disaffected, marginalized population. The are social marginalized through endemic racism.
Our society places massive barriers to their ability to succeed while singling them out with a significantly harsher application of the law while also restricting their access to that same law.
The argument made in the OP is purely an argument to self justify a position of privilege and bigotry.
They are making an extraordinary claim, that the flawed concept of “race” has any intrinsic meaning. The ground is not perfectly shaped to fit a puddle, the water flows into the structure that exists.
Even if you ignore the fact that they are making causal relationship based on a nonexistent property which is purely a human construct (race). They are ignoring the fact that a huge reason a real societal stratification exists is due to the policies that were enacted and are applied due to that same false premise.
They are Begging the Question
They are directly targeting this issue; systemic racism leads to a higher percentage of black individuals being forced out of the job market and justice system. It does not matter what the arbitrary grouping a society decides to use. This would happen to any group you subject to a higher arrest and conviction rate, and a fear of the police, and limited educational/economic opportunity.
This is true in the UK which just chose to secede from the EU in large part due to bigotry that resulted in similar issues with polish people. And it happened in this country with the Irish in the 1800s.
If you oppress an arbitrary group and exclude them from the legal system, a small minority of that arbitrary group will use extra-legal means to address disputes.
I am betting anyone whom makes an argument like in the OP has never even bothered to look into what BLM is fighting for and is operating on their own biases to define the movement.
The contradiction between the officers’ report and the video wasn’t about the gun – it was about the timing: Officer Loehmann said in his report that he shouted at Rice three times to show his hands as Rice was approaching the car – the video shows that this is impossible, since he shot Rice less than 2 seconds after leaving the car (before the car had even fully stopped).
My point about the gun was just that you were wrong in saying that the video showed the gun in the boy’s waistband, or the boy reaching for it – the video showed no such thing. Looking back, you didn’t specifically say that the video showed the gun in his waistband, or him reaching for it, so perhaps I misread it.
(emphasis mine) Which is what movements like BLM are ultimately about.
I know I am preaching to the choir here but Bricker needs to explain why press attention and political pressure will not help address polices which have excluded the black population from access to the legal system.
Unless he is making a claim that black people are “prone to criminality” due to something that is not due to the systemic oppression.
I would be interested in hearing an argument to support that precept that does not tread dangerously towards a claim based on the discredited concept of “race”. I have personally not seen any non-racial based argument that “Black-on-black crime” is anything but a symptom of broader structural inequalities.
If Bricker is not making that claim than I would also be interested in what alternatives for action there are for this disenfranchised population. I assume someone will resort to the model minority myth, but that is just another form of oppression and is a status change that is not afforded to marginalized groups by themselves. While it is also dependent on a claim of race being something more than a human construct.
I would also like some cite that demonstrates a group gaining more equality within our system without resorting to press attention and political pressure. My memory of our history may be flawed but granting rights without political action is something that I am unaware of ever happening. Especially when the legal system is biased against said group.
If a group of people is known to shoot more cops than other populations than it would make sense for all cops who don’t want to get shot to treat that population as more of a threat.
If the problem is not that cops hate black people but that cops are justifiably more afraid of black people than the any movement such as BLM that justifies resistance toward cops is just going to make things worse. However, a movement that tries to address violence in the black community will make blacks safer from the police as well as from each other.
Which is causing the problem cops attitude toward blacks or blacks attitude toward cops? There have already been data that shows cops disproportionately shoot cops and data that shows cops do not disproportionately shoot black people. That makes it seem to me that the tactics cops use toward black suspects are working, but that more needs to be done to change black people’s attitude toward cops.
You are begging the question.
http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet
[ul]
About 14 million Whites and 2.6 million African Americans report using an illicit drug
5 times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of Whites
[li]African Americans represent 12% of the total population of drug users, but 38% of those arrested for drug offenses, and 59% of those in state prison for a drug offense.[/li][li]African Americans serve virtually as much time in prison for a drug offense (58.7 months) as whites do for a violent offense (61.7 months). (Sentencing Project)[/li][/ul]
Black Americans are very justified in not trusting the legal system as it is biased against them. The oppression that they are suffering do to an inequitable application of justice is the driving factor.
It is absurd for you to place blame on those being oppressed. Without an uprising they are not the ones with the power to change the system.
Your argument is purely victim blaming.
The Justice system is pretty fair. What isnt fair is the social system, where Blacks are trapped in a cycle of living in crime ridden areas as they are poor, and being poor as they as trapped in those areas. Thus Blacks commit more crimes.
My cite does not align with your claim so please bring a cite.
Statistics show that black American’s arrest rate for the same crime exceeds their portion of offenders and that they are more likely to be convicted and that they serve longer sentences.
Or are we just using different definitions for “fair”
From my previous link:
http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet
[ul]
5 times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of Whites
[li]African Americans represent 12% of the total population of drug users, but 38% of those arrested for drug offenses, and 59% of those in state prison for a drug offense.[/li][li]African Americans serve virtually as much time in prison for a drug offense (58.7 months) as whites do for a violent offense (61.7 months). (Sentencing Project)[/ul][/li]
To but it another way, 500% more whites commit drug offenses yet 1000% more blacks are convicted.
Blacks are only 12% of the population but suffer 38% of arrests for those crimes and 59% of the prison population for those crimes is black.
Blacks serve similar terms for non-violent drug offenses as whites serve for violent crimes.
I find your claim that the justice system is “pretty fair” as absurd and fanciful. The data shows that Black Americans are arrested, convicted and sentenced at an embarrassingly higher rate than whites. Justify the reality that you hand wave away that fact.
Provide a cite or concede your claim is baseless and invalid.
I dont debate with people who make demands. :rolleyes:
It should also be noted that that 28.5 percent of black males will likely serve time in a state or federal prison for a felony conviction, a rate seven times that for white males.
This extreme inequity in conviction rates helps create a permanent underclass; a population that has lost their voting rights as which will not qualify for most employment.
In Florida 31%, Alabama 29% and 25% of otherwise eligible black men cannot vote let alone qualify for most jobs that would allow them to gain economic stability.
The fact that non-violent drug-related sentences falling disproportionately on blacks helps perpetuate this cycle of poverty.
These fellow Americans and fellow human beings are locked into poverty because of institutional racism, not because they are poor.
If you just make unsubstantiated non-factual claims that border on absurd you don’t debate, you opine.
So there is no great loss.
But note that others will take your diversion as a concession that there is no basis in fact for your unsubstantiated claims.
No, I don’t think that’s what he was arguing. He was arguing that political pressure is less necessary because black on black crime is already effectively addressed
Which is again why BLM is concerned with police violence against black people, because that violence is not appropriately addressed by the criminal justice system. As far as I can tell, Bricker and I are in agreement on this.
Could it affect it? Sure. Is there a pressing need to do so? I don’t see one. I’m open to arguments that there is, although I’m really not sure I understand your point here.
I made no arguments against BLM. I was addressing specific posters on the SDMB about specific terminology that they used.
The justice system is particularly unfair in the case where a crime is committed by a law enforcement officer against someone else. In such a case, it is incredibly unlikely that the LEO is punished, or that the victim is made whole. In fact, generally the victim is punished further by the justice system, since the LEO (and potentially his colleagues) will fabricate a story in which the victim is the perpetrator of a crime, and the LEO the victim.
This injustice, which is disproportionately borne by black people, is what BLM protests are about.
Please read what I wrote again:
I think some do have a point that it is kind of a deflection; there indeed does seem to be a few too many white trash types who join the force, don’t really care about the law, and want an easy pension. Some of them don’t wanna address that.
However, perhaps what the people who mention black/black crime are more trying to say is that the black community is overrepresented in crime; that there is a behavior problem in that community.
Both are true; the police need to hire better people, but also, the blacks need more figures with Cosby’s message that more young blacks need to study hard and pull their pants up (of course tho not with Cosby’s alleged conduct); Cosby’s old message doesn’t seem like it would’ve approved of some of the extreme tactics of BLM.