Police use-of-force data is finally coming to light
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Police use-of-force data is finally coming to light
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Re: Police use-of-force data is finally coming to light
#2Until very recently, and thanks to the likes of The Guardian’s The Counted, Fatal Encounters and Campaign Zero’s Mapping Police Violence, the data to prove the systemic racism that results in the police killings of unarmed black people has not been widely available to the public.
It doesn't sound like, according to the article, the California initiative is to prove racism but rather track, identify, and reduce police initiated violence. Is this the writer's bias?
Re: Police use-of-force data is finally coming to light
#3Until very recently, and thanks to the likes of The Guardian’s The Counted, Fatal Encounters and Campaign Zero’s Mapping Police Violence, the data to prove the systemic racism that results in the police killings of unarmed black people has not been widely available to the public. It doesn't sound like, according to the article, the California initiative is to prove racism but rather track, identify, and reduce police…
Sounds like it. But the writer doesn't seem concerned with epistemic integrity. It's a neat project, though. Publishing use-of-force data seems like it's a sensible thing to do.
Re: Police use-of-force data is finally coming to light
#4Prior to Ferguson, nobody was collecting data on police shootings across the US. Now the press and some nonprofits collect it. The Washington Post has a database.[1] The Guardian has another one.[2] There's a site, "fatalencounters.org", trying to crowdsource this.[3]
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/... [3] http://www.fatalencounters.org/
Re: Police use-of-force data is finally coming to light
#5Until very recently, and thanks to the likes of The Guardian’s The Counted, Fatal Encounters and Campaign Zero’s Mapping Police Violence, the data to prove the systemic racism that results in the police killings of unarmed black people has not been widely available to the public. It doesn't sound like, according to the article, the California initiative is to prove racism but rather track, identify, and reduce police…
Its difficult to quantify teleology, but people make the obvious judgements. What it does is track police initiated violence. What it's for, given the context it exists in, is almost certainly to advance public acceptance of the fact that police violence is often racially motivated. The writer furnished sufficient background to justify this inference, even if you're coming at this issue as a complete blank slate.
Re: Police use-of-force data is finally coming to light
#6An honest question: what's up with the use of the word "murder"?
I'm not asking that to start a fight over whether these shootings were justified. I'm asking because that word has a specific criminal definition, and news organizations typically have very strict policies on implying criminal guilt (witness the pre-conviction use of "alleged X" even in the most obvious of cases).
As I understand it, most of the names described here as "murdered by police" have not produced murder convictions or even murder charges against police officers.
Without getting into subjective discussions of 'guilt', does TechCrunch have a policy on language in criminal cases? What is it?
Re: Police use-of-force data is finally coming to light
#7Until very recently, and thanks to the likes of The Guardian’s The Counted, Fatal Encounters and Campaign Zero’s Mapping Police Violence, the data to prove the systemic racism that results in the police killings of unarmed black people has not been widely available to the public. It doesn't sound like, according to the article, the California initiative is to prove racism but rather track, identify, and reduce police…
As you say, it isn't. But the author doesn't say that that's what it's for.
The author describes three stages in collection, from no data, to third-party collections, and now to government collection.
The given Guardian link shows that blacks are twice as likely as whites to be killed, on a per-capita basis. This is consistent with the hypothesis that there is systemic racism, which previously was mostly conjectural due to lack of data. In the Poppler viewpoint, the racism hypothesis made a testable prediction, which was shown to be true.
Beyond that, the question is about what level of evidence is required before you can say here is proof. Some might say this is evidence which supports multiple hypotheses, others might say it's proof.
Still others might use the term "weak proof" when there some supporting evidence which isn't conclusive. For examples, http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/horoscope-is-a-weak-proof-of-... says "Horoscope is a weak proof of birthdate: Supreme Court" and https://www.aan.com/Guidelines/home/GetGuidelineContent/251 says "When compared to injections without steroids, there is weak proof that epidural steroid injections may result in some improvement in radicular lumbosacral pain in the short term, when assessed between two and six weeks after the injection."
Is "weak proof" a type of proof? (Is "dwarf planet" a type of planet?)
In any case, the author shows why data collection can be useful to test a hypothesis, then describes how the State of California will now be collecting the data, but doesn't make the concrete connection that CA will be collecting that data for that specific purpose.
As to the legislative history of the bill, in the summer of 2015 senators Booker and Boxer proposed the PRIDE bill for better nationwide reporting. Booker writes, at https://medium.com/@CoryBooker/the-role-of-reliable-data-in-... :
> Almost half a century later, tragic events across the country — in New York, Ferguson, North Charleston and Baltimore — have reminded us how critical trust is to the fabric of our democracy. These incidents have raised the public’s awareness and sparked a long overdue national debate about how police and citizens interact and how they should interact.
and how it's hard to act without good data. This shows that PRIDE is coupled to the question of possible influence of racism in how police deal with people.
That's a proposed bill at the federal level. It's not the state bill. The history of CA AB-71 is at https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm... . That bill started a few months after PRIDE. The analysis for the bill includes specific references to PRIDE. It sounds very much like the same concerns of Booker are also behind AB-71, which includes knowing if there is a systemic racial bias in police initiated violence.
So while the bill doesn't say it outright, the reason for the bill seems to include gathering the information which can help prove (or disprove) systemic racism.
Re: Police use-of-force data is finally coming to light
#8Until very recently, and thanks to the likes of The Guardian’s The Counted, Fatal Encounters and Campaign Zero’s Mapping Police Violence, the data to prove the systemic racism that results in the police killings of unarmed black people has not been widely available to the public. It doesn't sound like, according to the article, the California initiative is to prove racism but rather track, identify, and reduce police…
Its difficult to quantify teleology, but people make the obvious judgements. What it does is track police initiated violence. What it's for , given the context it exists in, is almost certainly to advance public acceptance of the fact that police violence is often racially motivated. The writer furnished sufficient background to justify this inference, even if you're coming at this issue as a complete blank slate.
> advance public acceptance of the fact that police violence is often racially motivated
I've never been convinced of this "fact", once controlled for economic/social class and culture. I've certainly never seen the numbers controlled for economic/social class, culture, and any residual correlation between crime and race, which is what would be needed to actually conclude that the police were acting racist rather than rational.
Most of the "evidence" for the racial motivation of the violence is based on appeals to emotion and simplistic explanations, both of which are unlikely to capture the reality of the situation, coupled with lots of buzzwords intended to actually shut down conversation about the topic.
The publicity certainly hasn't been enough to prove their point: if police shootings are evenly distributed by total population, a black man should be shot every other day; if police shootings are evenly distributed by violent crime demographics, a black man or two should be shot every day. We're hearing about stories much less frequently than that, which doesn't tell us anything about whether or not it's racist, as opposed to merely militaristic and violent in general.
I think we're a far cry from showing that blacks account for >50% of fatal police shootings AND the discrepancy not being explained by cultural factors (such as being more likely to flee or resist).
Of course, people "feel" things, so why let facts and analysis intrude?
Re: Police use-of-force data is finally coming to light
#9An honest question: what's up with the use of the word "murder"? I'm not asking that to start a fight over whether these shootings were justified. I'm asking because that word has a specific criminal definition, and news organizations typically have very strict policies on implying criminal guilt (witness the pre-conviction use of "alleged X" even in the most obvious of cases). As I understand it, most of the names d…
Well, TC is probably trying to carve itself out as an "edgy" news source" with edgy reporters, so they can play loosey goosey with language.
And it's a shame because there definitely is an issue with police aggressiveness and violence and espousing a shoot first ask questions later philosophy for policing.
On the other hand, we have too many people with guns who should not own guns. I'm ambivalent about the second amendment but so long as we have it, strictly test owners yearly and anyone possessing one illegally has to do massive community work and pay prohibitive fines.
Re: Police use-of-force data is finally coming to light
#10An honest question: what's up with the use of the word "murder"? I'm not asking that to start a fight over whether these shootings were justified. I'm asking because that word has a specific criminal definition, and news organizations typically have very strict policies on implying criminal guilt (witness the pre-conviction use of "alleged X" even in the most obvious of cases). As I understand it, most of the names d…
Well, part of the problem is a lack of consistent prosecution, so it's not a surprise that there have been little in the way of murder charges or convictions.
We've seen video of an officer shooting someone and then going back to his squad car and appearing to remove a gun from his bag and plant it on the victim. Carrying around a "burner" gun (in case you might need it) seems premeditated to me, but IANAL.