> He starts by noting that white men and black men are killed by police at around the same rate. This is, again true. But this means that Black people are killed at around 5 times the rate of White people.
> These racial differences show more police violence towards minorities.
Naturally. Don't you think it's completely logical that people who also commit far mor crimes, also get into far more tussles with the police? Probably find a way for your community to become more law abiding and peaceful, and this will stop being an issue all by itself!
One way to do it, is to ask for policies that open up for more social community work, where the first responder to economical, drug related or abusive behaviour stops being the police, but rather a social worker, or some other community representative. It's just a suggestion. Should be right down your lane since you are a left winger!
If you can get democratic traction for something like this, which is far more fruitful than playin the blame game, I think it would help crime go down greatly. It's basically what is done in my own country, and while the system isn't perfect, it's preferable to storming communities with police all the time; a thing that naturally causes some legitimate outrage, though it's not necessarily due to racism.
This way of doing things isn't free, however—and let's face it, Norway is filthy rich—so you can assume there will be pushback on how it should be funded, especially from the Right. Then there's the fact that Norway is a far smaller and more close-knit society in general. But then so are most ethnicly homogeneous neighbourhoods. I still think it's an idea to at least explore. And I also think these ideas are far more preferable to the Right than tearing down statues.
> Elder then notes that police forces can be diverse, which is true but ultimately a distraction.
No, it's not. I means there's a far less chance that the police are racist.
> He mentions the NYPD as an example of a highly diverse police force, but neglects to mention that the NYPD's Stop and Frisk policy was so problematic that it was deemed unconstitutional due to its discriminatory nature[4].
Dude, what has the obviously political and administrative policy of "stop and frisk" to do with the racial composition of NY cops? I'll tell you: Nothing! They'd have to carry out that policy whether they were all black, all white, or diverse to the point of employing martians!
Either way, don't you think it's a little unfair to try to pin political policies on the police force? In fact, then Mayor Bloomberg (D) had the power to stop the frisking policy in New York at any point, but instead he chose to defended it.[1] And for good reason, because AFAIK it was wildly successful, and made New York a lot safer for most people.
> He then mentions that the Police-Public contact survey shows no evidence of police abuse against black people, but the Fryer paper Elder cites manages to reach the opposite conclusion: that based on the Police-Public contact survey, there is statistically significant evidence of greater police use of force against minority populations, even when controlling for a number of factors.
That's because there is no opposite here... Abuse ? Legitimate use of force.
> He then mentions his movie, Uncle Tom, which contains a number of "conservative thinkers", who are mostly pundits. It contains no academic experts.
Of course. All academic experts of the Right are just pundits. I get it...
> [It] ignores the Southern Strategy[5], an explicit Republican strategy to gain support in the south by appealing to white fears about race in the wake of the civil rights movement. 13th goes into detail on this.
Were these fears unfounded then? Obviously the numbers show that blacks do indeed kill far more whites than whites kill blacks, both per capita and in pure numbers. Again, facts, not claims. Do you think that shouldn't be a cause for consern? Man, lives are literally at stake!
>It's exactly that attitude to policing that's the root of all this.
You mean, humanity?
>Yes, we all want our loved ones coming home at the end of the day. But when you go out with the assumption that everybody is trying to kill you
Exactly true - but that's why the crime rate being so high rises the stress levels and enforces these views. Patrolling a Oslo, Norway, which has a murder rate of 0.5 per 100k, is different than patroling Atlanta, Georgia with a murder rate of 17 per 100k. Right?
>Crime has been falling at the same time as police misconduct (not just the actual abuses, but the protection around them) has become more visible.
I think I saw some stats that showed police misconduct has been falling as well - but as you said, visibility has been increased. Maybe this is all being solved, it just takes time.
Having said that, I do think police standards should be high, including admittance, and continual training on de-escalation drills and handling of high-stress situations. That should be simple to implement, and all it costs is taxes (and I think, given the current situation, that cost is worth it)
> when black people call the police, there's the non-zero chance that they're the ones who end up getting shot.
As an absolute number, more white people are shot by police than black. [1]
As a percentage of population, the rate is higher in the black population, however that's a very complex analysis when you break it down by homicides by region and the populations (many urban areas are majority black, or Hispanic).
> You've got to try to make things right.
Discrimination based on race doesn't strike me as a very good strategy for making things right. It seems to me like it will just foster increased racial tensions, resentment and problems without solving anything.
>The question we should be concerned with should be: 'How is policing/governance structured in a way that enables or encourages people to act upon their biases to detrimental results?'
That begs the question, though, of whether the structure is actually set up in such a way. Blacks in the US commit murder at a rate eight times that of whites. Wouldn't you expect them to be shot comparatively more often by police?
I don't think it's reasonable to take a handful of incidents where police were clearly in the wrong and then try to extrapolate that based on statistics relating to incidents in which we have no reason to believe that's the case.
> Please stop with this racist skewing of statistics. There are thousands of factors involved.
But that's the whole point. If black people are disproportionately shot by police because police are racist, that's a problem with police. If it's because "thousands of factors" cause black people to have disproportionately more encounters with police, but the police themselves are acting with neutrality, then it's a problem somewhere else and you can't fix it through police reform.
The answer is fundamental if you actually want to solve the problem. But not evaluating it is convenient if you just want to keep using it as a political bludgeon forever, because by not even looking in the right places for a solution, the problem is never solved and you can run for office on it over and over.
> The police don't target racial minorities because they are racist.
Depends on what you mean by “they.” Individual officers are a mixed bag, but someone else mentioned the ties between police and right-wing/racist groups. “The police” as an institution however is definitely racist.
> The police don't target racial minorities because they are racist. People who want power over others sign up for policing - and then go after groups who have the least ability to fight back.
The fact that racial minorities have the least ability to fight back is a significant component of institutional racism. Why are they in that position in the first place? Because the USA has not yet excised from its culture the racist policies, values, and attitudes that it has held since before its foundation.
>The police killings are rare, especially when it comes to killing black people and the topic is only political.
Viewing it in this way is a bit ahistorical. The problem is not just police violence, but a generally turbid relationship between law enforcement and communities of color. There is widespread distrust on both sides, so when a killing happens it is difficult for the community to take it in good faith.
Also, for comparison, the last time there was a high profile wrongful police killing of a white person, the police chief of Minneapolis had to resign almost immediately. I'm hard-pressed to find the last time one had to quit after the killing of a non-white one.
> ...obviously we would expect police deaths to mirror trends in crime, socio-economic status...
If you look at the data in aggragate, I believe you'll find that there's a disparity even when controlling for factors like that.
> But in countries like the U.K. where one third of their police killings in a whole year are a terrorist who was in the middle of a stabbing spree? That’s just ideological fashion.
British police don't carry firearms in the general case so obviously police deaths aren't a large issue for British BLM, but there's still very much a racial disparity in justice system encounters that still exists despite controlling for the kinds of factors you listed previously. Different sentences for the same crime kind of stuff.
> The reality is that there’s a fundamental difference in that in Europe police is just another government branch that’s helping people, like firefighters and doctors; normal people don’t need to fear them and avoid any unnecessary interactions, which seems to be the case in the US.
I'm German. Our cops are infamous for racial profiling and can, at least according to several independent investigations, even get away with murdering people in their jail cells (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oury_Jalloh).
> I think the reason police treat right-wing groups far more leniently than left-wing groups is because right-wing groups are much more likely to be armed and resist violently.
...and because all police are right-leaning, and in some cases right-wing themselves.
> The crime rates are nearly similar among all races
This is patently false and not all crimes are the same. The murder and assault rate, for example, is tragically - and dangerously - high for blacks.
> The thing is though, police don't patrol white communities.
The thing is though, police patrol crime-ridden communities, which sadly are often black communities. Or do you think there's a massive unknown murder wave in New Hampshire that would be uncovered if only the police presence there was increased?
I'm sorry to be blunt but this kind of obfuscation of facts is extremely unhelpful and we'll never resolve societies problems by shifting the blame to 'the man' all the time.
> feel that thug brutality is a bigger problem than police brutality
That phrasing, as if we had to choose between two forms of brutality, is the problem itself. Police brutality doesn't decrease other forms of violence.
On the contrary, it legitimizes it and contextualizes it as a war. This has been exhaustively studied for the past half century. It is a sociological problem which has sociological solutions, which a functioning police force is a large part of. Perhaps it is easier to see this pattern if you look at other countries than your own.
If you find yourself accused of taking sides with hate speech, this framing in the form of a false choice might be a big part of why.
> Instead of having a unifying and inclusive movement for police reform we got a politically weaponized racially polarizing movement.
Yep. Watching (unarmed, white) Daniel Shaver weeping and begging for his life as he crawled on his hands and knees down the hallway before officer Philip Brailsford executed him with a spray of bullets — that was as clear-cut a case as you could get that the police in many districts are NOT policing their own as much as they should. In many ways, there is a straight line from
Brailsford to Chauvin: a cop with lots of citizen complaints and a bad attitude ends up killing someone who didn’t need to die. Race, even when it is a factor, is an unnecessary distraction from the bigger picture.
>> It's less complex if you look at all these problems as symptoms. At the core is the racism.
I dont agree. Racism is a problem but I think corruption is the core. The police are often taught that they are above the law, starting with quotas - which encourage ticketing people for minor, subjective, or fictitious infractions. Moving up to things like parallel construction (lying in court), civil forfeiture (stealing from people), coercing confessions, and more. Then sprinkle in speeding when on duty when there is no reason, or illegally parking at McDonalds to run in for a burger. From small to significant infractions they give themselves and each other a pass, or are taught or encouraged to do wrong. In an environment like that you drop in a couple racists and well...
There are studies on workplace safety. If you want to prevent fatal accidents you start by creating a culture of safety from the bottom. You clean up work spaces. You take care of trip hazards. You measure the number of bandages used each month and take measures to prevent those accidents. Over time this results in fewer fatalities even on large construction projects.
> So, if it is the fault of each black individual, as you claim is the underpinning of society, why are black communities being more policed?
Because effective policing means distributing police resources according to demand?
> police institution that trains its members to be more aggressive and fearful of black communities?
It seems perfectly reasonable to be more fearful when going into a more dangerous area. I don't see any evidence that police are somehow less aggressive or fearful when going into areas dominated by violent gangs with other skin colours. Can you point to some official training doctrine that tells police to be fearful of black people? I'm quite sure that has been illegal for a long time.
> Even more fundamental is the adversarial relationship that the culture of policing has developed with the public. The warrior mindset is at the root of so many of these problems. We need to disband all of the police forces and start again with a new culture based around a guardian mindset and community service.
The problem is every time this is brought up, it's met with talk of how reform is possible, reform is the answer, you can't disband the police because $(blatantly_ridiculous_reason).
The police in this country are unaccountable, in a literal sense. There is no mechanism to hold them accountable; what exists to do this is inefficient, inaccessible to most people who may need to use it, and also largely ineffective even in the rare cases it does work.
And none of this can surprise when you know the past of most police offices lies in slave patrols and union busting Pinkertons.
Policing in the United States is not broken, it's doing exactly what it was always intended to do: abusing poor people in the interest of the owning class. You can't reform that which is doing exactly what it was designed to do.
And if you hold officers accountable, then they won't overpolice minority neighborhoods, they won't beat people to death for sleeping in front of your buildings, they might hesitate to shoot someone in the back for stealing a $5 beer. I.e., they become less effective to the owning class. And that's why it doesn't happen.
Until this cultural gap is resolved, where we acknowledge not just what is happening but why it's happening and that it's happening was the intended, desired outcome, we can't move forward on it.
> It isn't great for police reform policy, because you don't have metrics to judge success or aspire to.
I feel that the idea of a racial bias behind police killings in the US is misguided. The issue exists, but as this study seems to prove, it's not an issue of police killing too many blacks- the issue is of police killing too easily. This simply doesn't happen in other countries.
If you approach the problem as one of racial bias, while still expecting police officers to escalate confrontations and meet any potential threat with lethal force- which is the real issue IMO- then the problem is never going to be solved.
> If members of my community are being killed with abandon across the country by the police
Frankly, I don't even think that this is true. I think the US police is just hyper-violent, mostly for cultural reasons (both on the side of the police and on the side of the criminals). The 2.3 million inmates in US prisons are the demonstration of a deeply flawed culture in that respect. And the fact that blacks are disproportionately engaging in criminal behaviour (for whatever reason) makes them more vulnerable to police violence. But just framing this as a racism issue is misguided. There, I said it.
> I have seen the unraveling over the past year in my own neighborhood. In October, about three blocks from my house, a neighbor was shot and killed in a home invasion. About a mile south in the same month, a 15-year-old girl was shot to death in an act of road rage. And just a few weeks ago, a little more than a half-mile west of me, another teenager was fatally shot.
What exactly would police have done in any of these situations to prevent them from happening?
> They claim that, by taking money from police and putting it toward social programs, they can eliminate the need for heavy-handed policing in the first place. But the social programs are an afterthought. What matters most to these activists is tearing down the cops, not building up the tattered neighborhoods those cops are charged with protecting.
Progressives in the US want an increased federal minimum wage and guaranteed healthcare for everyone. Studies seemed to show mixed results on whether or not this will result in a decrease in overall crime, but now seems like the time to try.
> Everything most middle-income Americans think about our police forces is wrong.
That statement is a bit vague, everyone is going to substitute their own interpretation in. The police don't target racial minorities because they are racist. People who want power over others sign up for policing - and then go after groups who have the least ability to fight back.
The middle income might know the symptoms, but they are missing the cause. The cause is that if a fellow wants to hurl someone else to the ground, kick them and keep them down without a fair fight then their best chance as getting to that situation is to sign on to the police. This is an inescapable structural pressure that needs constant attention.
Naturally. Don't you think it's completely logical that people who also commit far mor crimes, also get into far more tussles with the police? Probably find a way for your community to become more law abiding and peaceful, and this will stop being an issue all by itself!
One way to do it, is to ask for policies that open up for more social community work, where the first responder to economical, drug related or abusive behaviour stops being the police, but rather a social worker, or some other community representative. It's just a suggestion. Should be right down your lane since you are a left winger!
If you can get democratic traction for something like this, which is far more fruitful than playin the blame game, I think it would help crime go down greatly. It's basically what is done in my own country, and while the system isn't perfect, it's preferable to storming communities with police all the time; a thing that naturally causes some legitimate outrage, though it's not necessarily due to racism.
This way of doing things isn't free, however—and let's face it, Norway is filthy rich—so you can assume there will be pushback on how it should be funded, especially from the Right. Then there's the fact that Norway is a far smaller and more close-knit society in general. But then so are most ethnicly homogeneous neighbourhoods. I still think it's an idea to at least explore. And I also think these ideas are far more preferable to the Right than tearing down statues.
> Elder then notes that police forces can be diverse, which is true but ultimately a distraction.
No, it's not. I means there's a far less chance that the police are racist.
> He mentions the NYPD as an example of a highly diverse police force, but neglects to mention that the NYPD's Stop and Frisk policy was so problematic that it was deemed unconstitutional due to its discriminatory nature[4].
Dude, what has the obviously political and administrative policy of "stop and frisk" to do with the racial composition of NY cops? I'll tell you: Nothing! They'd have to carry out that policy whether they were all black, all white, or diverse to the point of employing martians!
Either way, don't you think it's a little unfair to try to pin political policies on the police force? In fact, then Mayor Bloomberg (D) had the power to stop the frisking policy in New York at any point, but instead he chose to defended it.[1] And for good reason, because AFAIK it was wildly successful, and made New York a lot safer for most people.
> He then mentions that the Police-Public contact survey shows no evidence of police abuse against black people, but the Fryer paper Elder cites manages to reach the opposite conclusion: that based on the Police-Public contact survey, there is statistically significant evidence of greater police use of force against minority populations, even when controlling for a number of factors.
That's because there is no opposite here... Abuse ? Legitimate use of force.
> He then mentions his movie, Uncle Tom, which contains a number of "conservative thinkers", who are mostly pundits. It contains no academic experts.
Of course. All academic experts of the Right are just pundits. I get it...
> [It] ignores the Southern Strategy[5], an explicit Republican strategy to gain support in the south by appealing to white fears about race in the wake of the civil rights movement. 13th goes into detail on this.
Were these fears unfounded then? Obviously the numbers show that blacks do indeed kill far more whites than whites kill blacks, both per capita and in pure numbers. Again, facts, not claims. Do you think that shouldn't be a cause for consern? Man, lives are literally at stake!
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