It was meant to be an obviously ridiculous demand. Too late to add a /sarcasm tag to it now.
Here are other equally ridiculous demands:
The last one is a variant of a demand from the Black Liberation Collective.
Seems as if it’s all for scoffing, and disclaimers of sarcasm.
Hebegebe, will you be sending any kids off to college any time soon?
Yes. D will start in 2017, S in 2020.
I assume the statistics are correct. It’s the conclusions you want to draw that are suspect. That is, you have shown us no reason to believe that the people shot by the police were dangerous people who should have been killed by the police. The punishment for alleged crime, even alleged murder, is not summary execution by police.
i, on the other hand, have pointed to numerous examples of people who were killed unjustifiably by the police. In each case, the police then lied about the cases and tried to cover them up. We’ve recently seen numerous causes where the police have lied about police killings. That makes me have a difficulty believing the police narrative when it is disputed and when I don’t have independent evidence, because the police have given me every reason to think they are not telling the truth.
disagree with your interpretation pizzagirl… but perhaps that is the danger of twitter.
@hebegebe do you have a political litmus test for where your kids should go to college
@cardinalfang,
We agree that police killings are out of control, and that the police may try to cover it up. Why do you think they are worse for blacks than whites? Is it because it is “obvious”, or because you see a few stories on TV?
My basic assumption was that police executions would be proportional to the number of encounters the police had with each racial group. I just used the murder rate as a proxy for the proportion of encounters for each group. I thought it would be a good one because it is bias free, as it is is the race of the offender, not the race of the suspect. I deliberately wanted to avoid something like traffic stops because that could reflect bias.
If you have another suggestion for measuring the proportion of valid interactions each group has with police, feel free to send me a link, or better yet, analyze it yourself.
If the 3.5x murder rate represents the per capita ratio of valid interactions, tell me why blacks are not getting killed at a 3.5x per capita rate, but instead at a much lower 2.4x rate. That suggests police are reluctant to shoot blacks, not the opposite. Tell me where I am wrong.
24 unarmed black men were killed from January to July this year. That is not “a few cases on TV”. This is not unusual for the year either, but the high-profile cases have brought attention to the issue.
Also to the murder stat: murders make up less than 1% of violent crimes, let alone all crimes. Seeing as these unjust killings are not happening with murders, I do not see how that extrapolation can be called reflective. Additionally, in what murder cases are police officers already on the scene besides when your favorite TV character dies? Murders are usually post-investigated, and 30% go unsolved in the US. That means they don’t even get a glimpse of the murderer, let alone a chance to shoot him.
@hebegebe I think Trump could use your statistical analysis. BTW police have alot more encounters with blacks than whites It is called racial profiling
Racial profiling would increase the number of interactions and should push that number much higher than 3.5x. So why is it at 2.4x?
Well, they could have been mistakes. When people are in stressful situations they make mistakes. Police are known to make mistakes. It takes a person of very limited perceptions to conclude that it’s intentional one way or another.
Let’s assume that N% of all police killings are unjustified, and that unjustified killings are equally likely with any race of victim.** Then, since black men and boys are killed by police way out of their proportion in the population, and way out of their proportion in the male population, it follows that unjustified killings hit black men and boys worse than men of other races.
** To be clear, I don’t think it’s true that a killing is equally likely to be unjustified if the dead person is white as if the dead person is black. In the lab, police officers are quicker to shoot black people than white people, and we have no reason to believe it’s any different in the field.
Do you have other reliable sources on crimes broken down by race?
If we find that overall blacks commit crimes at considerably less than 2.4x their population, then it suggests a racial component to the killings. But if blacks commit crimes at considerably more than 2.4x their population, then it suggests a reluctance to use deadly force against blacks.
Again, I am against all killings by police except in real cases of self defense. But when they happen, let’s hope it is free of racial bias.
@“Cardinal Fang” ,
Interesting point. I will have to think about that some more tomorrow with a fresh mind.
hebegebe you may want to look at post 567 It answers your questions
I knowI have privilege. Why do I need to constantly check it? It IS code for “shut up.”
Interesting theory. I wonder if it is correct. How do police officers compare to the population at large in that respect?
Most studies bear out that people have subconscious reactions towards others who differ from them in some way even if they don’t demonstrate it outwardly.
A related finding was noted in https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=80755 :
@ucbalumnus Yes, the hunt goes on for better answers to these questions.
Below is a link to an article entitled;
“Cops hesitate more, err less when shooting black suspects, study finds”
It describes relatively new research on this issue. I chose to put up the article rather than the journal article for the sake of access, but there is enough information there for anyone to find it if they have publication privileges.
Re: http://www.forcescience.org/fsnews/266.html
The test volunteers were recruited from the Spokane, WA area, which is about 90% white, 5% Latino, and 2% black. Perhaps the near absence of black people may have resulted in the lack of stereotype priming relating to black people, and the overwhelming majority of white people (including among criminal suspects) may have resulted in stereotype priming relating to white people.