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FBI Didn't Knock Down a Suspect's Door Because 'It Was an Affluent Neighborhood'

reason.com

321–330 of 393 posts

Re: FBI Didn't Knock Down a Suspect's Door Because 'It Was an Affluent Neighborhood'

#321

People screaming systemic racism in this thread because the FBI didn't knock down "Tarek Abou-Khatwa's" door, doubtfully read the article. If the system is racist than I can either guess they didn't read this or I imagine that they are implying the system is racist by protecting Arabic men. Also this man committed insurance fraud, a non-violent crime with no history of violence so the need to catch them off guard bef…

> It's not clear whether the FBI agents who searched Abou-Khatwa's house were doing him a favor by eschewing a front-door entry. The agent's testimony makes it sound as if the main concern was the impact that knocking down Abou-Khatwa's front door would have on his wealthy neighbors. From the article that you definitely read.

I definitely did. And none of what you pasted has to do with race or is for certain. It is a single agents testimony and has to do with the fact it's a neighborhood full of wealthy politicians and nothing to do with race or systemic racism at all.

My original point was also that if they had performed a no-knock raid on this minority in an affluent area it would be a sign of 'systemic racism' to people who are race baiting. To elaborate further, law enforcement is now in a kafka-esque story of having to figure out the wealth of the suspect, racial demographics of the neighborhood, and race of suspect and his crimes before performing a warrant to decipher the level of force that is allowed and will regardless be the villain according to vocal minorities and journalists. Truly progress.

Re: FBI Didn't Knock Down a Suspect's Door Because 'It Was an Affluent Neighborhood'

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your drug legalization proposals might have the side effects of increasing the number of people who start taking those drugs. People respond to incentives and you can't both say that restrictions aren't making drugs harder to find and that they're driving addicts to dangerous substitutes.

Who knows? (Really, does anybody know?) If you decriminalize, you do make drugs more approachable. You also make treatments more approachable, and health research actually possible. Besides, there are other ways to fight the use of something than sending the police to lock people down with other addicts. And well, all that police involvement does put money on the drug sellers hands, to use on their marketing. Overall…

>Overall, it seems that the highest damage (by orders of magnitude) those substances cause is due to the police involvement.

Most of the damage done to a cancer survivor was done by chemo, but that's not an argument against the treatment. The right level to stop at is where adding one more unit of police damage would stop less than one unit of drug damage but like you say nobody knows where that is.

Re: FBI Didn't Knock Down a Suspect's Door Because 'It Was an Affluent Neighborhood'

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You said "This kind of violence affects everyone" and this is disingenuous when we look at the ratio of black vs white being murdered by police. If you want to argue that this kind of violence affects certain races more, that's fine. But why downplay the fact that it affects all races? The percentages are higher for Black Americans, but White Americans still make up the majority of people shot by police[1]. If peop…

> If people actually cared about creating a broad coalition to address this, they would want to highlight both facts, not hide the latter fact. People fighting for black lives aren't hiding bad things that happen to white people. The reason Duncan Lemp doesn't have posters up about him isn't because black activists against police violence haven't fought for him, it's because both black and white activists against pol…

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Re: FBI Didn't Knock Down a Suspect's Door Because 'It Was an Affluent Neighborhood'

#324
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we are going to bring into account how many African-Americans are being killed by police we need to also bring into account the FBI's violent crime statistics. Blacks made up 56% of known murder offenders. While European Whites were 28% of known murder offenders while making up 60-65% of the population. Remember, African-Americans are only 11% of the population. That is a huge discrepancy that needs to be brought…

I never understand these types of statements. What is the attempted statement here? To imply that black people are inherently violent? What are you getting at? The way i see it, those numbers reflect the state of racially focused stunted development in many communities. It's like when people throw single-parent household statistics around with blacks. What do we think is the root cause here? That their skin color inh…

If someone says that “teachers are racist” and points to differing graduation rates of white and Black kids, do you take that assertion at face value? Or do you point out that the kids aren’t similarly situated. Obviously the latter. It doesn’t make sense to blame teachers for disparities that exist at more basic levels.

So why don’t you apply the same logic to OP’s statement above? The data shows that there is no difference in police killings by race on a per incident basis: https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-the-data-say-about-police-.... Blaming police racism is like blaming teachers. Maybe some are racist, but to a large extent you’re blaming them for problems in the communities they’re serving that are outside their control. Note that there is a five factor difference in incarceration rates between white people in Oregon and white people in Massachusetts. Reducing disparities in criminal justice to race blinds you to the myriad factors involved.

This is an instance of what I call the “liberal conflict of interest” with respect to racial justice. Liberals have taken up racial justice as their cause, but like everyone have strong incentives to view the facts on the ground as vindicating their own ideologies. Liberals don’t like law and order, and they do like teachers, so for disparities involving police they blame “racist police” but for disparities affecting education they don’t reach for “racist teachers.” In the long run this liberal conflict of interest hurts minorities, by obscuring the “root causes.”

Your comment about “single parent household” statistics is another example of a liberal conflict of interest. Let’s stipulate that the “cause” of disparities in single parenthood is generations of slavery and segregation destroying the social structure of these communities. But what about the effect? Countries all over the world with high levels of fatherlessness suffer from high levels of violence by young men. Conversely, the single parenthood rates among white people in Appalachia would be cause for alarm and panic in a number of African countries. But liberals don’t want to explore that avenue (which could lead to solutions) because they’re invested in social theories that reject patriarchy and the importance of fathers in socializing boys. Hence liberals bankrolling outfits like BLM that push not to shore up, but to deconstruct notions of traditional families.

Re: FBI Didn't Knock Down a Suspect's Door Because 'It Was an Affluent Neighborhood'

#325
post #178

Let's compare this experience to that of Amir Locke [1]. To summarize: the Minneapolis PD was executing a no-knock warrant in a homicide investigation. Locke was not the target of the warrant but was sleeping on the couch. He was licensed for the firearm and it was completely legal. When startled awake, he reached for his gun (natural reaction) and the police shot and killed him. You'd think the NRA would be all over…

Begs the question: If you can be startled away by the someone breaking into your home and you reach for you gun and are shot dead by the police, do you really have the right to bear arms? I would really love to see some laws that allow us to defend ourselves against police. If they decide to just beat my ass, they can and I can't defend myself. WTF!?

At some point there needs to be a supreme court decision that reconciles the legality of no-knock warrants with castle doctrine/self-defense/second-amendment.

My understanding of the current state of things is that in some jurisdictions it's simultaneously legal for armed police to violently enter your home without identifying themselves and for you to defend your home by firing a weapon at them.

Basically, we have legalized gunfights, as long as the police have a warrant. In almost all of these cases the police will "win" and therefor we essentially we have legalized murder where the police at least know they're about to get into a firefight whereas the suspect likely does not.

Re: FBI Didn't Knock Down a Suspect's Door Because 'It Was an Affluent Neighborhood'

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's jsut not true. A county sheriff has far more power than a software developer, despite being far less wealthy

The police exist to protect the property of the wealthy. Of course they have more power than people who make similar money. They have been granted that power by much wealthier, more powerful people. And it is conditional on fulfilling their role.

So, you don't believe that money is the same as power, like you stated up there.

Re: FBI Didn't Knock Down a Suspect's Door Because 'It Was an Affluent Neighborhood'

#327
post #281
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we are going to bring into account how many African-Americans are being killed by police we need to also bring into account the FBI's violent crime statistics. Blacks made up 56% of known murder offenders. While European Whites were 28% of known murder offenders while making up 60-65% of the population. Remember, African-Americans are only 11% of the population. That is a huge discrepancy that needs to be brought…

I'm going to assume good intent here and say you've been sucked into some white supremacist propaganda. This falls under the umbrella of "1350" [1]: > The number 13 used in conjunction with either the number 52 or the number 90 is a shorthand reference to racist propaganda claims by white supremacists against African-Americans to depict them as savage and criminal in nature. If anything, it's evidence of overpolicing…

No one is arguing that Black Americans are inherently violent.

They are arguing that "historical travesties" -> "current situation for Black Americans" -> "increased risks of criminality and violence" -> "more interactions with cops" -> "more deaths by police".

Which requires different tools to solve than "cops are racist" -> "cops shoot more Black Americans".

And if our goal is to actually help Black Americans than we need to be clear eyed about the causes even if that makes us uncomfortable.

Re: FBI Didn't Knock Down a Suspect's Door Because 'It Was an Affluent Neighborhood'

#328
post #139

Fought Experiment: Lets say law enforcement was given the task to examine the affairs of 100, randomly selected, poor/medium income households and 100, randomly selected, very wealthy households. Statistically, where would they find the most amount of criminal activity? Has any similar research been done, and would you care to share the data?

Hum... If you are sending the police to arrest people, you better have some odds very close to 100% that they are criminals.

If the police is just investigating, they shouldn't have any kind of violent behavior.

Re: FBI Didn't Knock Down a Suspect's Door Because 'It Was an Affluent Neighborhood'

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understand these types of statements. What is the attempted statement here? To imply that black people are inherently violent? What are you getting at? The way i see it, those numbers reflect the state of racially focused stunted development in many communities. It's like when people throw single-parent household statistics around with blacks. What do we think is the root cause here? That their skin color inh…

If someone says that “teachers are racist” and points to differing graduation rates of white and Black kids, do you take that assertion at face value? Or do you point out that the kids aren’t similarly situated. Obviously the latter. It doesn’t make sense to blame teachers for disparities that exist at more basic levels. So why don’t you apply the same logic to OP’s statement above? The data shows that there is no di…

Liberals are invested in social theories that reject the importance of fathers in socializing boys? Are you sure you're not getting this stuff from Youtube, and kind of winding yourself up? Stable two-parent households, high education, and liberalism are all correlated.

Re: FBI Didn't Knock Down a Suspect's Door Because 'It Was an Affluent Neighborhood'

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone says that “teachers are racist” and points to differing graduation rates of white and Black kids, do you take that assertion at face value? Or do you point out that the kids aren’t similarly situated. Obviously the latter. It doesn’t make sense to blame teachers for disparities that exist at more basic levels. So why don’t you apply the same logic to OP’s statement above? The data shows that there is no di…

Liberals are invested in social theories that reject the importance of fathers in socializing boys? Are you sure you're not getting this stuff from Youtube, and kind of winding yourself up? Stable two-parent households, high education, and liberalism are all correlated.

I believe he’s grouping liberals with a more radical left wing, common by the right wing.

What he’s referring to is the BLM website stating “We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement” that it looks like they’ve since removed.

https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/aug/28/ask-politifac...

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