You went into a lot of detail, but I just wanted to redirect attention to your initial suggestion that higher arrest rates of minorities is indicative of higher crime rates among those folks. You were just posing a question, I know. But the rhetorical device you used (whose name escapes me) prejudices the reader by presuming that the question has a knowable answer, which it does not. And citing arrest records is a red herring, for many of the reasons you elicit.
> it's often more a reflection of individual neighborhoods and communities and their tolerance or lack of tolerance for various things
Combining this with the larger discussion, are you suggesting that predominantly white communities have a higher tolerance for lawless behavior like drug use, and thus are comfortable being policed at lower rates? (Or the converse, that communities of color are less tolerant of lawbreaking and demand more policing.) I admit that I haven't heard that before. And it makes me uncomfortable, because on balance people I have known across ethnic groups are pretty much the same. It would be a little odd to discover that white communities are generally more tolerant of criminal behavior.
> Busting people at an airbnb in a quite retirement neighborhood as opposed to a college campus, drug complaints blocks from an elem school in a low income area as opposed to breckenridge, co - (which told it's police to leave weed alone many moons ago)
Intentionally unequal application of the laws starts with this kind of thinking, and leads to downstream problems that spring from the resulting distrust of the justice system.
Your Breck (95% white) example is telling. Communities shouldn't be able to exempt themselves from state & federal laws just because most of the residents are white and they have decided they don't like those laws. Even writing it sounds absurd. And it's definitely not a privilege that is afforded to communities of color.