Cop shooting Columbus Teen

@joe-shmo said

There is zero evidence supporting such an extravagant claim -@no1marauder

From your own link ( Trends by Race ):
Between 1980 - 2008

"Black victims were over-represented in homicides involving
drugs, with 62.1% of all drug-related homicides involving black
victims. By comparison, 36.9% of drug-related homicide victims
were white and 1% were victi ...[text shortened]... r population! An entire order of magnitude!!


https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf

No, it isn't.

"Black victims".

You keep throwing random stats around which do little or nothing to support any of your claims. This one was that gang murders were fueling the levels of black on black homicide that would "exterminate" the "race" in the US but/for the benevolent actions of US police.

@earl-of-trumps said
When people speak of "causality", I have to sometimes chuckle.

People observe that African Americans make up 13.5% of the population but 38.5% of the US prison population.
What is the cause of this? Racism? Many people tend to think that and in the long run, it may be the reason.
But not racism on the police's or courts'/juries' behalf, necessarily. That figure i ...[text shortened]... , in general.

EDIT to add factoid: There are more African American males in prison than college.

So basically your "personal opinion" is that blacks are disproportionably in jail because they are "racist" against whites? And that is also why police harass, arrest and kill them in disparate numbers?

@no1marauder said
No, it isn't.

"Black victims".

You keep throwing random stats around which do little or nothing to support any of your claims.

OMG...Are you going to honestly argue that these black victims were killed by white drug dealers in black communities all across the US!?! NO...then what are you trying to say here?

🤦‍♂️

@joe-shmo said
Are you going to honestly argue that these black victims were killed white drug dealers!?! What are you smoking?

I'm going to honestly point out that the figure cited does nothing to support your claims defending police disparate levels of arrests for drug abuse, the vast majority of which are for mere possession.

@no1marauder said
I'm going to honestly point out that the figure cited does nothing to support your claims defending police disparate levels of arrests for drug abuse, the vast majority of which are for mere possession.

You could have just saved your time and said nothing, because that is your argument.

@joe-shmo said
You could have just saved your time and said nothing, because that is your argument.

To further puncture your "theories"; the FBI in 2019 (the last year full stats are available) reported over 10 million arrests occurred in the US with less than 5% for violent crimes. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/persons-arrested

@earl-of-trumps said
When people speak of "causality", I have to sometimes chuckle.

People observe that African Americans make up 13.5% of the population but 38.5% of the US prison population.
What is the cause of this? Racism? Many people tend to think that and in the long run, it may be the reason.
But not racism on the police's or courts'/juries' behalf, necessarily. That figure i ...[text shortened]... , in general.

EDIT to add factoid: There are more African American males in prison than college.

No it’s definitely actual police and court based racism coupled with the fact that black people are over represented in the poverty figures.
Poverty coupled with systemic racism now that really will make you “ disrespectful and angry towards society, in general.”.
Poverty on its own will do that. I bet that poor white people are over represented in the white figures for drug related gun deaths.
But most of all it makes people “disrespectful and angry towards” themselves.

@no1marauder said
To further puncture your "theories"; the FBI in 2019 (the last year full stats are available) reported over 10 million arrests occurred in the US with less than 5% for violent crimes. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/persons-arrested

I don't have "theories". I have data, provided by the BJS, cited by YOU that clearly shows that blacks are "involved" in drug related homicide at a 10 fold relative rate to whites. And you say that doesn't justify increased attention from the police...

There is a fire raging out of control next to you in your home. Luckily no1 has two buckets of water that could put it out. Unfortunately ( for no1 and his family ), no1 is a liberal lawyer, and throws one bucket at the opposite wall ( keeping the policing of the fire equal with the policing of the wall ) and instead try's "lawyering" the fire out by sheer will power...

@no1marauder said
Right wingers think that systemic racism is only applicable IF the person is wearing a sheet and burning crosses.

This whole thread is validation of the idea that many whites harbor racial stereotypes that seem to them to justify disparate treatment of blacks in the US. That doesn't make them overt racists (necessarily) but that's not a lot of comfort to blacks being harassed, arrested and even killed at disproportionate rates.

Nobody is justifying disparate treatment.

What they are justifying is disparate outcomes.

There's a difference.

@sh76 said
What they are justifying is disparate outcomes.

With racist reasoning, e.g., blacks get killed because they're bad people.

As already shown, blacks are unfairly targeted by cops regardless of behavior.

@vivify said
Agreed; but as already pointed out, mainstream media outlets aren't the only sources that support the fact that blacks are targeted victims of hate by law enforcement. Decades of data, studies and historical records confirm this.

But we need to clear up something: is your point specifically bias in news reporting, or are you disputing the fact that blacks are targeted and ...[text shortened]... ly guilty of wrongdoing, that is a position ignorant of the history of systemic abuse toward blacks.

"Decades of data..."

I don't know how many times I would need to clarify this, but I freely concede that if we go back far enough, blacks were treated horribly by police. Can we take that off the table? I'm not confused about that. It has been agreed upon and acknowledge. If so, and we want to evaluate policing in 2021, then can't we agree that some old data is expired?

And can we also agree that at least in theory, that confirmation bias is a real thing. Humans are vulnerable to this. So we have two extreme hypothesis:

(1) Blacks are treated equal by police and those that see things differently are suffering confirmation bias.
(2) Blacks are treated absolutely abysmal by police and 100% of the time black are treated worse than whites for the same thing.

Can we agree that the truth MIGHT lie between these two extremes. Since we're all subject to "confirmation bias" and "preference bias", it is not trivial for us as individuals to see clearly. I'm including myself in that. I have trouble seeing clearly, but I am trying to evaluate based on data. You would have more credibility and hence more ability to persuade me that my perception is off if I saw any evidence that you understood this about yourself too.

We know the news and social media select the stories we see and it is without dispute that they don't present all cases. You have even acknowledged that we may be more likely to see a story with a black victim of a white copy than a white victim of any cop. Maybe that's good, maybe not.

But at the very least, I think we can agree that a careful analysis of recent data is essential to understand the reality today. Anything we blindly accept because it is trending news leaves us vulnerable to confirmation bias and selection bias. Maybe the news is being fair, maybe not. But at the very least, a fair attempt to understand reality requires caution.

Techsouth: If a person is pointing a gun at a police officer, there is no allowance for history (e.g. the black guy's grandparents had it harder).

Vivify: This is a red herring. No one is defending blacks who pull guns out on cops.

This is not a red herring. I believe you yourself cited 1099 citizens killed by cops in 1 year. You included in that number 100% of the people who were pointing guns at police, therefore you yourself are using men pointing guns at police as proof the police are bad. Can you admit that in order to evaluate cops we should subtract out the numbers that include people actively trying to kill the policeman? I know it's not trivial to do because the dataset contains events that are not neatly categorized.

Walter Scott: Police found guilty.
Floyd: Police found guilty.
Garner: Right or wrong, it was ruled a heart attack. The man was morbidly obese.
The police did not have at their own discretion the option to NOT arrest Garner and they did not have at their own discretion the option to let him go just because he decided to fight (what kind of society would we have if we allowed that?). Whether the judgement is right or wrong, I don't have a lot of sympathy for Garner.

And we're dealing with anecdotal evidence in a domain that risks confirmation bias. What good are anecdotes without a broader look at overall numbers? Anecdotal evidence can only serve to call attention to something on which we need to analyze more. You seem like a smart person, but this is something I would expect you to have grasped by now.

e.g. Walter Scott got killed fleeing police while presenting no threat. Is this something that was more likely to have happened because he is black? If so, to what extent has race affected the outcome. This is something that cannot be answered by merely looking at Scott's skin color. It can ONLY be answered by looking at broader statistics that carefully tries to separate causation and correlation.

If all you have to say is that blacks are disproportionately killed, well you've included everyone who was trying to kill police too. Where is your attempt to subtract those numbers out? In your evaluating police, you count events such as these: YouTube Unless you engage in some sort of analysis to subtract these kind of events out, you can talk all you want, you won't persuade me of anything. This event resulted in protests, as usual.

Are black people disproportionately likely to try to kill policemen too? Is that a big factor in why they're being killed more? I'm just asking. It's not a trivial question to answer.

Let's consider another hypothesis. Blacks ARE more likely to be killed by police when you factor out all other complex variables, BUT the difference is not nearly as extreme as the media is making us think it is.

In the end of the day, seems like the likelihood of being killed by the police while not trying to kill the policeman yourself is on the order of the likelihood of dying by lightning strike. And the likelihood of being killed by police while in general cooperation with physical safety requests is on the order of the likelihood of dying from a shark bite. It is about the smallest problem any of us have in our lives (including black and white Americans). That's what I see when I look at the data.

There are around 10 million arrests per year in the US. With large numbers, some are going to go bad. I fully and 100%, truly, honestly concede are some bad events where the police act badly both toward white people and toward black people. I don't need you to list one or two more that I might have somehow missed. Chances are, if it was in national news, I've already heard about it. If you want to persuade me of anything, you can engage in statistical methods that attempt to separate confirmation bias from reality and shows and understanding of the difference between causation and correlation.

@techsouth said
"Decades of data..."

I don't know how many times I would need to clarify this, but I freely concede that if we go back far enough, blacks were treated horribly by police. Can we take that off the table?

No, because the history still affects blacks. Systemic racism hasn't let up and is still significant. You absolutely cannot separate the history of oppression toward blacks with how they are treated by law enforcement today.

https://theintercept.com/2020/09/29/police-white-supremacist-infiltration-fbi/

UNREDACTED FBI DOCUMENT SHEDS NEW LIGHT ON WHITE SUPREMACIST INFILTRATION OF LAW ENFORCEMENT

Since 2000, law enforcement officials with alleged connections to white supremacist groups have been exposed in more than a dozen states, while hundreds of federal, state, and local law enforcement officials have been caught expressing racist, nativist, and sexist views on social media, “which demonstrates that overt bias is far too common,” German noted in the report.

“Efforts to address systemic and implicit biases in law enforcement are unlikely to be effective in reducing the racial disparities in the criminal justice system as long as explicit racism in law enforcement continues to endure,” German wrote in that report. “There is ample evidence to demonstrate that it does.”

https://oversight.house.gov/legislation/hearings/confronting-violent-white-supremacy-part-iv-white-supremacy-in-blue-the

White Supremacy in Blue—The Infiltration of Local Police Departments

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) first raised concerns about the white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement in a 2006 intelligence assessment, but there have been repeated indications that the presence of white supremacists in police departments remains a nationwide problem.

@techsouth said
"Decades of data..."

I don't know how many times I would need to clarify this, but I freely concede that if we go back far enough, blacks were treated horribly by police. Can we take that off the table? I'm not confused about that. It has been agreed upon and acknowledge. If so, and we want to evaluate policing in 2021, then can't we agree that some old data is expi ...[text shortened]... n bias from reality and shows and understanding of the difference between causation and correlation.

You gave a very detailed post that deserves a detailed response. I don't have time now, but I will respond in detail later.

For now, keep in mind my previous post: you cannot argue about police brutality toward blacks in a vacuum where everything is equal with how society treats blacks vs. whites. Your posts seem to hinge on the belief that you can.

@joe-shmo said
I don't have "theories". I have data, provided by the BJS, cited by YOU that clearly shows that blacks are "involved" in drug related homicide at a 10 fold relative rate to whites. And you say that doesn't justify increased attention from the police...

There is a fire raging out of control next to you in your home. Luckily no1 has two buckets of water that coul ...[text shortened]... al with the policing of the wall ) and instead try's "lawyering" the fire out by sheer will power...

very good analogy

@vivify said
You gave a very detailed post that deserves a detailed response. I don't have time now, but I will respond in detail later.

For now, keep in mind my previous post: you cannot argue about police brutality toward blacks in a vacuum where everything is equal with how society treats blacks vs. whites. Your posts seem to hinge on the belief that you can.

Techsouth: If a person is pointing a gun at a police officer, there is no allowance for history (e.g. the black guy's grandparents had it harder).

vivify: This is a red herring. No one is defending blacks who pull guns out on cops.

Techsouth: This is not a red herring. I believe you yourself cited 1099 citizens killed by cops in 1 year.

vivify: For now, keep in mind my previous post: you cannot argue about police brutality toward blacks in a vacuum where everything is equal with how society treats blacks vs. whites.

You're talking about a broad issue that is not useful for evaluating police. Consider the shooting of Ma'Khia Bryant. It doesn't take much cultural knowledge to guess that Bryant comes from a bad background, and one could easily guess that this goes back a few generations and may include racism. But the police arrived on this seen literally seconds before the shooting. I judge the police's action in this case based on that timeframe. It may be a worthwhile to consider broader societal issues.

But, this cannot be used in any way as a data point for police treating black people badly. Any attempted analysis that does not subtract events such as this out will not persuade me of anything bad about police.