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Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

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Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#101

Post by danmaz74 »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #68
danmaz74 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious about this link between racism and drugs. When I was growing up in Italy, during the 80s, drugs were a pretty big issue, and we had our own "war on drugs", but at the time there were basically no black people here, so it couldn't be linked to race.

A tldr for the US would be that we tend to arrest poor people and people of color more and punish them more than we do well-heeled white people. On average, blacks in the US are a lot poorer than whites, so they get subjected to that twice over. It doesn't necessarily mean they do more drugs than whites. It just means that "the war on drugs" is often just one more justification for a long history of coming up with ex…

I get it, but I would be cautious in making it look like the war on drug was created just/mostly because of racism, because something very similar happened even in countries where that wasn't a reason.

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#102

Post by danmaz74 »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #75
danmaz74 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious about this link between racism and drugs. When I was growing up in Italy, during the 80s, drugs were a pretty big issue, and we had our own "war on drugs", but at the time there were basically no black people here, so it couldn't be linked to race.

From the Republican horse's mouth: "The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communiti…

Interesting, thanks.

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#103

Post by [deleted] »

maxerickson wrote: post #54
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speeding. Public intoxication. Keeping an attractive nuisance.

Speeding and attractive nuisances are only victimless if you squint, as they both pretty clearly are statistically harmful to others (not when I speed a bunch of people feel the need to say I'm sure). Public intoxication less so, but it is also mostly used as a pretext to remove people from public spaces in cases where it is obvious they shouldn't be there. Speeding is also mostly treated as a minor infraction, not q…

[deleted]

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#104

Post by DoreenMichele »

danmaz74 wrote: post #101
DoreenMichele wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A tldr for the US would be that we tend to arrest poor people and people of color more and punish them more than we do well-heeled white people. On average, blacks in the US are a lot poorer than whites, so they get subjected to that twice over. It doesn't necessarily mean they do more drugs than whites. It just means that "the war on drugs" is often just one more justification for a long history of coming up with ex…

I get it, but I would be cautious in making it look like the war on drug was created just/mostly because of racism, because something very similar happened even in countries where that wasn't a reason.

You are suggesting that to the wrong person. The comment I am replying to is the one that brought up the war on drugs as a racist thing.

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#105

Post by romaaeterna »

ceejayoz wrote: post #88
romaaeterna wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The small numbers of African-origin minorities in Scandinavian countries commit more crime per capita than those in the United States. (The same is also true internally within the Unites States when differentiating between northern and southern states). I'm afraid that Scandinavian models haven't solved the minority crime problem, but only make it worse. Sometimes far worse, as in Oslo, etc.

https://www.thelocal.se/20180508/why-sweden-doesnt-keep-stat... > It doesn't take much effort to find articles claiming to have the 'truth' about the relationship between immigrants or refugees and Swedish crime. Yet the real truth is that there is no up-to-date public data on the ethnic background of criminals in the country, with existing figures more than a decade old. Do you have reputable citations for Oslo/Norw…

So why did Sweden stop reporting numbers on minority crime? And why have they taken down their "most wanted" list from the internet?

There was an SVT (Swedish public broacasting) report on rape convictions in 2018 by national background, you'll find. The BBC has good coverage of it in English.

As far as the Norway question, you do realize that minorities are a very small part of Norwegian population, and it would be sort of bizarre (and racist!) to imagine them driving overall crime?

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#106

Post by philipkglass »

rjf72 wrote: post #8
radlad wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classic chicken or egg...

Violent crime was at extremely negligible levels in the fifties. In just 3-4 decades to the 90s it ended up increasing (per rate) by around 800%. That's a part of where the hyper-tough on crime laws came from, and it's also when you started seeing an increasing militarization of the police. Violent crime then decreased by about 50% to 2014, though that still of course leaves us at a level multiple times higher than w…

I didn't downvote you. In the past I have referred to the same table that you link. But it doesn't substantiate your point about crime rates in the 1950s because the data set starts at 1960. You may be correct, but your link doesn't show it. I would be interested in US violent crime rates in the decades before 1960 if you can find a similar table covering that time range.

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#107

Post by jakelazaroff »

seandoe wrote: post #86
celticmusic wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The motivation for the war on drugs is not borne out of racism, but a combination of greed and public safety concern.

I agree. "Born out of racism" is too strong. I'm not even sure what it means exactly. Was racism rampant at the time? Yes. But the war on drugs still would've happened if there was no racism. Those rugurgitated figures on black vs white drug use vs convictions misses the boat. Go to any city and recognize the color of people that control the drug market. The majority of them are not white. The police don't focus on u…

> Go to any city and recognize the color of people that control the drug market. The majority of them are not white. The police don't focus on users, they focus on dealers-- that's where the violent crime is.

The disparity is in charges of possession. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/racial-disparity-in-marijuana...

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#108

Post by CompanionCuuube »

yardie wrote: post #37
c3534l wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The militarization of the police has come primarily from the militarization of criminals. Before the Valentine's Day Massacres, criminals had better cars and weapons than the police, allowing them to fight and win against the police. Prior to the LA shooting spree, police had no way to fight a criminal armed with assault weapons and no training on how to do so without endangering the public. When I lived in St. Louis…

So if I have this straight in St Louis when the people are protesting against police brutality, the polices solution is to be more brutal? No kidding it’s an arms race. I’ll even bet they are using kettling to invoke a reaction from protestors. They aren’t passively responding to protestors, they are active antagonizing the public to justify their brutality.

> So if I have this straight in St Louis when the people are protesting against police brutality, the polices solution is to be more brutal?

No, they brought in that equipment to deal with the riots. If it was just protesting but not rioting then that would be a different story.

The tools are a force multiplier which is necessary when you're outnumbered. There are fewer police than rioters.

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#109

Post by mywittyname »

eledumb wrote: post #16

I'm a white male, near 1% income and I live in a small town about 30 miles outside a major U.S. city and I'm terrified of the police. We've stopped holding the police accountable for their actions and it's out of control. Local government, state government, prosecutors and most of all the Unions are to blame. Yeah, the Union, I'm the son of a Union executive and Unions have lost their way. The Union is supposed to pr…

Even when someone does take a stand, juries almost never convict.

Re: Victims are often criminals, and that is a paradox American policing can’t solve

#110

Post by galkk »

dcolkitt wrote: post #9

> Cooperating with law enforcement is often morally and practically unthinkable for the city’s most vulnerable The article has a really big blind spot, in that it fails to mention the Drug War even a single time. If you want to understand why America's police act like an occupying army- the militarization of weapons and approaches, the festering hostility between the police and the policed, the heavy-handed suspicion…

As an immigrant, I entirely disagree with that. I believe it's not a specific city or "war on drugs" problem.

As it was clear in the my own country (xUSSR), the criminals are developing their code, where "snitches get stiches" and any cooperation with law enforcement is forbidden by it (e.g. in a prison so called "thief in laws" won't to do any work).

The drugs, especially hard drugs and prostitution are not victimless crimes. Human traffiking is a problem, the impact of drug addicts who is looking for new dose is real.

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