Just because we don’t have a metric for wariness doesn’t mean that it can’t be dialed up or down. A perfect example is the black guy in the white truck who got shot by the cop when he was complying with the cops request for ID and he reached back into his truck. The cop was jittery, a Nervous Nellie who should never have been given a gun. Wrong as it was, I doubt he would have had that heightened level of wariness/nervousness/suspicion with everyone he’s ever stopped, including the 85 year-old woman.
What about the majority – the non-violent ones? Are they being treated how they deserve?
So you don’t advocate treating them differently after all? You think young black male suspects should be treated the same as young white male suspects?
You haven’t even tried to explain it. 6 to 14 magically became 12 to 28. Maybe I’m missing something, but statistics don’t magically double for no reason, from my understanding. If black people are 6 times more likely to be violent, than a cop is 6 times more likely, when encountering a black suspect, to experience a violent response. Why did you double the number?
That’s not what you said. You said I stymied discussion with false accusations of racism. That requires me to call something “racist”! Calling something “wrong” is not the same as calling it “racist”. Is it stymieing discussion to say something is wrong?
21 times more young black men are killed. Since only 6 to 9 times as many commit violent crimes, there is a disparity here (your nonsensical doubling disregarded).
Cite that a greater proportion of black dads are not raising their children properly?
Cite that a greater proportion of black dads are doing this?
You can’t double it here. Young black men are 6 to 9 times more likely to be involved in violent crime – not just be more violent. That likelihood of being criminal is already included in the likelihood of committing violent crime.
You fail at statistics here. Your 12-28 number is invented out of whole cloth, or failed math.
As has been shown, your reading of the facts and statistics are wrong. Your 12-28 number is complete bunk. Bad, bad math. More failure.
What if both men are dressed in baggy jeans and hoodies? What if they’re both dressed like Batman?
He certainly loses nothing by doing so. I have no problem with a cop approaching both cars the same way. There is no risk to the cop in doing so. If he wants to approach them differently, that might be fine too, but it’s irrelevant to the question of disparate treatment of young black men.
I just want to reiterate here about Steophan’s failed statistics. He took the 6 to 14 number (the 14 is unsupported – it should be 6 to 9) for the greater likelihood of young black men being involved in violent crime, and then multiplied it by another factor – that (according to him) young black men are twice as likely to be criminals.
This second factor, whatever it is, is already included in the 6 to 9 (or 6 to 14) number. It can’t be applied twice.
So Steophan’s math here is totally bunk. He fails statistics. Young black men are 21 times more likely to be killed by police than young white men, while they’re only 6 to 9 times as likely to commit violent crime. This discrepancy exists.
It’s very reasonable to believe that his nervousness may have been heightened by the skin color of the man.
Then Steophan’s statement is meaningless. Agreed?
Did he ever shoot an 85-year-old white woman?
This thread is not about them, unless you have any evidence that it’s those who are being killed by the police.
But no, in many cases they are not being treated how they deserve. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with this thread.
I’m not applying it twice. Or are you somehow unaware that young black people come to the attention of the police far more often that young white people, and even if they were being treated equally would be twice as likely to come to their attention based solely on crime statistics?
The point is, that for any given young black person, the expected likelihood of being shot is 6-14 times, based on the statistical likelihood of violence. What you are ignoring is that a greater proportion of black people than white come into contact with the police. The police are only shooting a subset of the people they come into contact with, not a random sampling of the entire population. That is where the factor of two comes from, based on the fact that young black men are twice as likely to commit crime than young white men, and using that as a proxy for the amount of black people they encounter.
But, fuck it, let’s take this further. We all know that the cops are more than twice as likely to encounter any given young black man than young white man. Which would mean that they are actually shooting far less of the young black men they encounter than the young white men. This is because they are, due to some level of racism, more likely to stop young black men, but no more likely to shoot one.
Please, learn how statistics work. You’re embarrassing yourself.
For the Batman example, I’d say yes. Because, again, we have introduced cues that override the cue of race. Not so much with the baggy pants and hoodie. If you could show me that whites who dress that way are violent in the same proportion that blacks are, I’d say yes. Otherwise, no.
It is NOT irrelevant. You either say that cops are doing the natural thing in assessing a threat and acting correspondingly, or they are not. You seem to grudgingly admit that they should be able to do this, but you don’t want to say it flatly because of where it leads. The real problem is that blackness has become a cue for “greater propensity for violence”. You want to fix things, you need to fix that.
I agree. Not sure why you would think I wouldn’t.
Policing strategies can make it far, far more likely than that. Which is a problem on its own.
That does not follow at all. That doesn’t come within light years of making sense.
That’s exactly what this thread is about.
This makes no sense. The same would apply to white people (and all other demographics). White people who are more statitiscally represented in crime stats are similarly more likely to come into contact with police. This 6 to 9 times is a ratio – so the ratio stays the same, since the police will also be more likely to come into contact with white people (and others) that are more likely to be criminals.
9, not 14.
This is already taken into account. It’s a ratio.
Nope. Makes no sense. The cops are similarly more likely to come into contact with young white men than old white men – but that doesn’t mean these ratios multiply. Young black men commit violent crimes at a rate of 6 to 9 times that of young white men. That statistic already includes the increased likelihood of coming into contact with them.
No they’re not. This makes no sense whatsoever.
Complete blather. Gibberish math.
LOL. You’re really reaching here.
Which statement, specifically, are you referring to?
Huh?
If they were killed 6-9 times more by police, would that feel acceptable?
Show me that black people who dress that way are violent in a different proportion than white people who do.
Threat assessment should be based on behavior. Basing it on skin color hurts the community, and hurts society. It hurts cops. I’m saying they shouldn’t do this based on race at all. Perhaps other factors should be included. Race certainly should not, because of the harmful effects it has on society. Further, it’s unnecessary. Cops lose nothing whatsoever by treating young black and young white men the same.
It would mean that Steophan’s argument is coherent, at least. Right now, he’s just making up numbers and applying multiples anywhere he chooses.
Can anyone besides Steophan make any sense of the 12-28 number? He sure can’t explain it. Can someone else give it a try?
This one:
If wariness can’t be measured that precisely - and we all know it can’t - the statement is meaningless.
I may have misunderstood you. I thought you were saying the officer was just as likely to shoot an 85-year-old woman as he was to shoot a black man, but I think you might’ve been saying the opposite. The wording was a little unclear.
We’d have to establish if those statistics were based on equal policing, and I’ve already posted evidence that that’s not the case. No, it’s not enough that shootings match up with broad crime stats. We also have to know that the last are being applied fairly.
I strongly disagree. As I said, just because we lack a formal metric for wariness doesn’t mean that we can’t dial it up or down. How about anger, happiness, joy, fear…do those things only exist as toggle switches, too?
Okay.
That’s not the question.
The answer to the OP is that your statistic doesn’t tell us anything valuable other than maybe we should question what is happening (like you are doing).
To find out if the 21x statistic is alarming you would have to produce statistics on how people react when confronted by police and then compare if the police response (to any particular reaction) is different according to race.
Since you have grouped them as black vs white, you should be able to come up with statistics on where (on the street, at their home, in the park) suspected violent criminals are confronted by police and by what method (warrant, probable cause, casual questioning). If you can group those statistics into your two buckets and find trends that show black youths are killed more often given the same circumstances than white youths, then let’s be concerned about your statistic.
The OP is outraged based on very little statistical value.