581–590 of 650 posts
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Weirdly, it only seems to come up when you mention police brutality!
That's disingenuous. Police brutality almost always comes up in the context of BLM and in this specific case the article made it a racial issue. You can't do that and then say "why are we talking about race" when (the general) you started the conversation talking about race.
> “I blame myself,” she kept saying. “I never let him out on Halloween. A bunch of Black boys together. I shouldn’t have let him out. But he begged me.” Notice that while average white parents might worry about criminals before letting their kids out on the street, the black parents worry (with good reason) about the police. (Just to spell it out: this is why so many BLM activists feel comfortable saying "abolish the…
Coming from a poor (and incidentally very white) area myself, I understand the sentiment behind 'defund the police', but being comfortably middle class now, I also recognize it's something of a nonstarter with people who don't have that experience. I prefer 'Police Out Of Poor Neighborhoods'. Police actually add value in rich neighborhoods (maybe by definition), and it's got a humorous acronym. Edit: And police are m…
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So, let’s look at the numbers. What’s the ratio of people to police? I would bet that it’s a lot higher than 20:1. In other words, a black person meeting a polic officer is a whole lot more likely to get killed than a black person meeting another black person. That’s why fear of police is perfectly rational for blacks.
But the point is about whether you are afraid to go outside or not, and if so, is it because of criminals or police. Before you leave, you don't know how many criminals or police you are going to encounter. Even if tigers are really scary when you meet one, I am not afraid to go outside because I might get eaten by a tiger. I guess we could do a lot of subgroup analysis here and try to figure out based on day of the…
On the other hand, I’ve seen more than enough people being arrested for nonsense, having done nothing but tick an officer off in some apparently random way - and these people will always be released immediately before the police would have to explain to a judge why they had arrested this person. Being detained is plenty scary enough, and could cost you your job.
> “I blame myself,” she kept saying. “I never let him out on Halloween. A bunch of Black boys together. I shouldn’t have let him out. But he begged me.” Notice that while average white parents might worry about criminals before letting their kids out on the street, the black parents worry (with good reason) about the police. (Just to spell it out: this is why so many BLM activists feel comfortable saying "abolish the…
I just don't get it. The number of unarmed black men shot by police across the entire US in 2019 was 14. [0] How does such a small number spark this level of fear and protest? Also, do people actually think the police generally and on average does more harm than good as to request abolishing it? [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/police...
It doesn't. The protests aren't limited to all of the extreme cases you mention.
The way I see it, the protests are joined in by a large number of cohorts who wouldn't care about that smaller very specific demographic, but lots of people have found some reason to be empathetic to victims of police or otherwise critical of the legal/incarceration system.
Some people want more police accountability (via either employment contracts, civil law, or criminal law). Some people want to reduce or eliminate no-knock warrants/raids. Some people want to decriminalize lots of recreational drug use. Some people just want to be able to walk/drive without getting pulled over because some cop thinks they "fit a description". Some are tired of the legal system abusing/harassing them so they can see a friend / family member in jail.
Add up the list of people who have some grievances with police and I doubt you get too far from a majority of the country. There are still a ton of people who "support the police", even if they also have a grievance with "the system".
It's vaguely like optimizing a funnel in e-commerce. The point is to reduce friction at all points to optimize for the best ratio of people who are exposed to your system who then complete the desired action (purchase and have a positive experience). Police have almost no incentive to fix any of these interactions. Their fitness function as an industry has more to do with pumping stats and clearance rates and little to do with making sure your interaction with the police was pleasant. That is... unless you are a family member with police (I do so I see it).
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Black people are certainly killed by police at a disproportionate rate relative to their population, that is an objective fact. This does not necessarily imply that there is racial bias by the police, however. For example if black people encounter the police 2-3x as much, you would expect them to be killed by police more frequently as well even without any bias.
> This does not necessarily imply that there is racial bias by the police, however. A 2010 NY State report on police-on-police shootings, studying them nationally, found clear evidence of racial bias being a factor in suh shootings. But I'm sure that either racial bias has been eliminated in the last decade or it somehow doesn't effect police interactions with people who aren’t unrecognized police officers. https://w…
It's not that surprising that the same would apply to police officers, e.g. off-duty black officers live in black neighborhoods and black neighborhoods have a larger police presence or higher crime rates, so there are disproportionately many police shootings and black officers are no less affected than anyone else there.
The article seems to imply this:
> Of the 26 fatal shootings, 5, including Officer Ridley’s case, involved an off-duty officer who came across a crime in progress and moved to help other officers or a civilian, the report found. In five other cases, including the Edwards shooting, an off-duty officer was a crime victim and then tried to make an arrest or to take police action, the report found.
> In all but 2 of the 26 fatal shootings of officers that were examined, the victim was holding a gun and had it “displayed” when he or she was shot, the report found.
Sounds a lot like off-duty white officers may just be less likely to encounter situations in which they draw their weapons.
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I can't second the GPs post hard enough. Police tend to abuse the poor much more often than they help. When they are there to help it's usually a zero-sum proposition: one poor person, usually a non-white, is gonna get a beat down at the hands of "justice" far out of proportion to whatever transgression against another poor person they may be guilty of. I grew up poor, white, in a neighborhood with non-whites (black,…
I understand that the police need to be reformed, and that they disproportionately police the poor. There are much better options than withdrawing them from all poor neighborhoods though. As we have seen time and time again, when the police are impotent, someone else will step up into the void to provide security. Typically, that's either organized crime, or (worse) vigilante justice. The net result is always the sam…
That's why all this crying over law and order in response to the protests is kind of hilarious. Their heavy handed tactics have backfired hard, and I have no sympathy for any of them. I feel for the police the same way I'd feel for an occupying army facing resistance.
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> Their primary concern is to defend private property, the people themselves come second. And of course the more private property one has, the better the protection...
Civil Forfeiture means private property can be a liability unless one has a lot of extra liquidity to fund a legal defense.
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Black people are certainly killed by police at a disproportionate rate relative to their population, that is an objective fact. This does not necessarily imply that there is racial bias by the police, however. For example if black people encounter the police 2-3x as much, you would expect them to be killed by police more frequently as well even without any bias.
Black people encountering police at a much higher rate than white people could be taken itself as evidence of systemic bias in policing. A study found that white police are no more likely to shoot minorities than non-white police, but that is dismissed as flawed reasoning. [1] Another study examining lethal and non-lethal interactions with police; > In the raw data, blacks are 21.3 percent more likely to be involved…
The vilification of police as racist is political. It's always political. The police being jerks to everyone somehow seems less unfair and more acceptable than the police being jerks to only black people, so the people who want change argue that it's racism even though that's basically a lie. Because if it's racism you can get people angrier about it. (The problem is it also alienates all the non-black victims of police misconduct who would otherwise be allies, and also allows opponents to pretend there isn't a problem if they can disprove the racism, even though the misconduct and mistreatment still exist regardless of whether they're racially motivated.)
But the less extreme calls to "defund the police" aren't actually that unreasonable. Because you don't defund the murder police, only the rest of it. Reduce their number by narrowing their scope to only investigating major crimes, so that there aren't as many police needed, so that you're less likely to interact with any of them and have a bad experience.
You basically do the opposite of the "broken window" garbage -- forget about broken windows and instead concentrate on solving ~100% of the murders. Which becomes easier when you discontinue having a million BS traffic stops for revenue extraction and stop and frisk, since they only increase community resentment of the police and make them less likely to cooperate in investigations of serious crimes.
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> Notice that while average white parents might worry about criminals before letting their kids out on the street, the black parents worry (with good reason) about the police They are both worried about criminals. The fact that some criminals have badges and guns and a conspiracy of accomplices in positions of power shielding them from accountability for their crimes doesn't make them any less criminals. > Just to sp…
I take issue with your framing of the police as criminals because it misses the point; the police are not criminals, the law and the legal establishment fully supports their actions. Those actions are institutionally racist as they are intended to be. There are no bad apples here, it's the barrel that is rotten.
I don't understand. You're saying that individual police members are not at fault for their actions? That the police institution is rotten (barrel) but stops at the individual officer (apple)?
I 100% agree that the barrel is rotten, but there are plenty of bad individuals as a result of the barrel being rotten for so long.
A way to test this, change the 'barrel' and see which 'apples' stick around. i.e. if all apples are good changing the barrel doesn't result in difference in apples just the apples' actions.
We're already seeing #bluflu, walk outs, resignations because in some specific areas of the country, the barrel is being changed out piece by piece.
I disagree that apples are not bad. Lots of them are. It'll be a painful transition, but it will be one for better if we can keep it up.
> “I blame myself,” she kept saying. “I never let him out on Halloween. A bunch of Black boys together. I shouldn’t have let him out. But he begged me.” Notice that while average white parents might worry about criminals before letting their kids out on the street, the black parents worry (with good reason) about the police. (Just to spell it out: this is why so many BLM activists feel comfortable saying "abolish the…
This may be their view, but it is overwhelmingly incorrect.