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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

#131

Post by seandoe »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #107
seandoe wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Even with simple possession charges, police are looking to bust dealers(or at least players in the game), not users. With players you can make deals and move up the chain, users are a dead end. The disparity in charges of possession doesn't necessarily signify racism to me.

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

#132

Post by CompanionCuuube »

qekbg wrote: post #7
Ballas wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an outsider, it seems that the way the police in the US react is the consequence of interaction with the public. In places where the police have an active role in settling disputes, they also enjoy more respect from the community.

It's because you only hear about the bad things. Sure there are some crazy cops like everywhere else. But all in all I'm certain most cops are good people who just want to help citizens and remove the bad guys.

But you're going to hear a lot about "a few bad apples spoil the barrel" as if it's okay to talk about people like disposable fruit. Think for a moment, would those people be okay with letting the police use that reasoning?

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

#133

Post by opo »

goliatone wrote: post #59
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.

> 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 communities. We could arrest their leaders,…

There are reasons to be skeptical of this alleged quote by Ehrlichman. As user GatorD42 pointed out when this was brought up before:

>...Baum claims Ehrlichman said that to him in 1994 while he was researching for a book he published in 1996 about the drug war. He didn't include the quote in that book, but instead published it in 2012 and again in 2016, after Ehrlichman had died (in 1999).

This is an amazing and explosive quote - if Baum had included it in his book in 1996 I am sure it would have garnered a great deal of attention. Instead Baum would not include it in his book, but instead would wait for decades later when Ehrlichman was no longer around to dispute it.

At any rate, if the quote was actually said by Ehrlichman, it doesn't actually describe the drug polices of the Nixon administration. While Nixon is remembered for "war on drugs", the actual substance of his policies seem to be different than what people think it was:

>...I have been fortunate over the years to discuss the distorted memory of Nixon's drug policies with almost all of his key advisors as well as with historians. Their consensus is that because he was dramatically expanding the U.S. treatment system (by 350% in just 18 months!) and cutting criminal penalties, he had to reassure his right wing that he hadn’t gone soft. So he laid on some of the toughest anti-drug rhetoric in history, including making a White House speech declaring a “war on drugs” and calling drugs “public enemy number one”. It worked so well as cover that many people remember that “tough” press event and forget that what Nixon did at it was introduce not a general or a cop or a preacher to be his drug policy chief but…a medical doctor (Jerry Jaffe, a sweet, bookish man who had longish hair and sideburns and often wore the Mickey Mouse tie his kids had given him).

http://www.samefacts.com/2011/06/drug-policy/who-started-the...

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

#134

Post by Ancalagon »

spodek wrote: post #12

Citizens shooting each other is conflict resolution, which only becomes a police issue when people know no other resolution than violence. By the time conflict reaches the police, it's escalated to where third parties like the police can only clean up after. If an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, teaching social and emotional skills to children would help a lot, though would take a generation to see wide…

Commenting here for later, thank you for the recommendations

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

#135

Post by rjf72 »

bena wrote: post #84
rjf72 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Eh. This might be a case of not really having good data. Looking at the "data", one would conclude that Autism is on the rise. But we didn't even know what it was not too long ago. And we sure as hell didn't check for it. There are more diagnoses of Autism because we're actually looking now. Today, domestic violence would be classified as a violent crime. In the fifties, it was called keeping your wife in line. Lynch…

I think this is a rather extreme mischaracterization of a society, but proving things like this statistically is not possible. Because, while it may be a mischaracterization, you are certainly correct that domestic violence was much more normalized (even if still extremely rare) and you likely would have seen a much lower reporting rate because of this. So that problem does cause an issue with getting down to the very exact number.

Fortunately, there's a much simpler response. Just referencing the data from the provided link (starting in the 60s) [1], the increase in crime is for literally every single category of crime. And most saw very dramatic increases: robbery 400%, assault 500%, burgularly 300%, theft 300%, auto theft 300% increase, etc. You can cast uncertainty on some of the figures but the extremely high rate increases paired with the fact it was spread across literally every single crime leaves little 0 doubt that there was absolutely an exponentially increasing crime rate between 1960 and 1991.

As one aside, that 1991 date is really quite peculiar. Nearly every single crime hit its peak in that year. You'd expect different crimes to decline at different rates or even statistical noise to have played a role. Yet at a glance the only crime that didn't hit its peak in 1991 was forcible rape, which peaked in 1992. The 'Military Cooperation with Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies Act' [2] formalizing the increasing militarization of police (which would really go into overdrive after the North Hollywood shootout) was passed in 1981.

[1] - http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Cooperation_with_Civi...

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

#136

Post by Retra »

geggam wrote: post #99
Retra wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to quote a previous comment of mine here, because I think your rhetoric is shallow: >Violence is usually too far removed from the relevant abstractions. It's not difficult to see violence behind everything, because rules don't mean much if they aren't enforced, and it's all too easy to conflate violence with a threat of violence, or a threat of force with a threat of violence, etc. > But that's not a very u…

Now you are saying a specific group of people get to define acceptable violence. This is insane... who defines that group ? Are all govts legitimate ? Do all govts get to define violence ? There is no ethical violence or all violence is ethical because your reasons arent more valid than someone elses

I am not saying that. I'm saying that considering the government to act only violently is a gross mischaracterization of reality such that even if you define things such that it is technically true, it is not a useful position to take.

My government has never forced me to do anything with a threat of violence -- I have been threatened with different manners of obvious inconvenience, but if that is no more acceptable to you than an actual threat of violence, then I'm afraid that is an unproductive, reductive, and uncompromising opinion.

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

#137

Post by geggam »

Retra wrote: post #136
geggam wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you are saying a specific group of people get to define acceptable violence. This is insane... who defines that group ? Are all govts legitimate ? Do all govts get to define violence ? There is no ethical violence or all violence is ethical because your reasons arent more valid than someone elses

I am not saying that. I'm saying that considering the government to act only violently is a gross mischaracterization of reality such that even if you define things such that it is technically true, it is not a useful position to take. My government has never forced me to do anything with a threat of violence -- I have been threatened with different manners of obvious inconvenience, but if that is no more acceptable…

If you commit a victimless crime (speeding) and the agent of the state fears for his life while talking to you... you are dead.

How is that not violent ?

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

#138

Post by steveeq1 »

overthemoon wrote: post #130
CompanionCuuube wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0010028573... Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability edit: > The reality of the availability bias isn't in question, it's whether or not people's belief about police brutality is accurate It would be nice to have some objective evidence showing why this example is a special case immune to availability bias.

The reality of the availability bias isn't in question, it's whether or not people's belief about police brutality is accurate and if not, why it isn't. Sure, the AB is real. It MAY be a factor in why people think black people are killed in proportionally higher numbers than people of other races, but what's relevant is whether or not it's actually happening.

That's a straw man. Of course it "happens". the point is that people make it out to be far bigger problem than it actually is.

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

#139

Post by spodek »

Ancalagon wrote: post #134
spodek wrote: post #12

Citizens shooting each other is conflict resolution, which only becomes a police issue when people know no other resolution than violence. By the time conflict reaches the police, it's escalated to where third parties like the police can only clean up after. If an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, teaching social and emotional skills to children would help a lot, though would take a generation to see wide…

Commenting here for later, thank you for the recommendations

I hope they help.

You might also be interested in my books, which teach the social and emotional skills of leadership, initiative, and entrepreneurship, based on courses I teach at NYU.

Initiative: https://www.amazon.com/Initiative-Proven-Method-Bring-Passio...

Leadership Step by Step: https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Step-Become-Person-Others/...

One of my past students used the Initiative skills to teach the Leadership material to youths in Gaza https://leadpalestine.com. Every situation is unique and it's just one project, but his project shows promise of teaching youths before they get caught up in violence. He tells me that the program helps change views of leadership from command-and-control, authoritarian to based in understanding and support, though I'm oversimplifying. I'm just sharing one example.

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

#140

Post by lurquer »

sandworm101 wrote: post #113
seandoe wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The early days of the drug war, the ban on pot, was very much a racial thing. There were "scientific" studies and political speeches focusing on how dangerous it would make the negro population, how black men high on pot would be raping white women. Generations later, the crackdown on crack cocaine, as opposed to the more expensive normal cocaine, also broke down along racial lines. The drug wars in other countries,…

In how many African countries, Middle Eastern, or Asian countries is marijuana legal?

Race has little to do with the criminalization of such drugs, as evidenced by the answer to the above question.

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