"It's not so much the volume of interactions Black Americans have with the police that troubles them or differentiates them from other racial groups, but rather the quality of those interactions."
Not sure what "preferred narrative" you are referring too, but most black people think America has a "police problem". Define that however you like. Bunch of other polls from the same organization for those curious enough to dig deeper. Seek Higher Things friend.
The data indicates that people want more accountability and reform. Which is exactly what I am arguing for.
> It's not simply people "demonizing" a profession (which again, people choose to work in).
Who cares if they chose to work in it? It's a necessary part of a functioning state. You act as if someone choosing to be a police officer means they deserve to be demonized. Please, let me know how that attitude is going to lead to any solutions.
Framing in these types of polls is incredibly important (indeed, I found two others from around the same time as yours, and all were fairly different from one another in their conclusions[1][2]).
If you ask people whether they want the police presence in their communities to stay the same or increase, large majorities agree. Only 19% of black Americans want police presence to decrease.[3]
And yet none of this is inconsistent. If the problems in predominantly non-white urban areas are at least in part crime problems that the police aren't solving, it makes sense for those citizens to want to take money from the police, whom they perceive to not be doing their jobs. At the same time, these same people probably would prefer the police to just do their jobs in the first place.
This is even more pronounced among so-called fragile communities, where 95% of black residents want to retain police presence, and in the Chicago area, 68% want increased police presence.
Black people encountering police at a much higher rate than white people could be taken itself as evidence of systemic bias in policing.
A study found that white police are no more likely to shoot minorities than non-white police, but that is dismissed as flawed reasoning. [1]
Another study examining lethal and non-lethal interactions with police;
> In the raw data, blacks are 21.3 percent more likely to be involved in an interaction with police in which at least a weapon is drawn than whites and the difference is statistically significant. Adding our full set of controls reduces the racial difference to 19.4 percent.
> In stark contrast to non-lethal uses of force, we find no racial differences in officer-involved shootings on either the extensive or intensive margins. Using data from Houston, Texas – where
we have both officer-involved shootings and a randomly chosen set of potential interactions with police where lethal force may have been justified – we find, in the raw data, that blacks are 23.8 percent less likely to be shot at by police relative to whites. [2]
I think at this point the statistics can be used to argue both ways.
I think what’s left behind is the undeniable fact that certain inner cities are more like war zones than civilian population centers with the number of daily shooting and killings. Chicago just saw 18 murders in 24 hours, or nearly ~4,500 shootings per year. [3]
According to the Washington Post last year there were 9 fatal shootings of unarmed black people by police (19 of white people). Fatal police shootings in total were about 1,000 and ~25% were black, a number that under-represents black people relative to the rate of violent crime.
Compare to what the Atlantic describes as the “homicide plague afflicting black America“ of black on black civilian violence, which claims nearly 100,000 lives per decade. This is not whataboutism, this is flip sides of the same coin, because while “defunding” police can reduce the total number of armed and unarmed black people killed by police a maximum of ~2,500 per decade, what will it do to the 100,000 killed per decade in inner city gang wars?
In my estimation, the vilification of police as racist, declarations of “ACAB” and “Fuck 12”, and calling to abolish or defund the police is more likely to result in significantly more dangerous environments where the majority of black homicides are occurring.
Since many people here are not discussing the actual article, let me copy-paste the author's conclusion:
> It's not so much the volume of interactions Black Americans have with the police that troubles them or differentiates them from other racial groups, but rather the quality of those interactions.
> Most Black Americans want the police to spend at least as much time in their area as they currently do, indicating that they value the need for the service that police provide. However, that exposure comes with more trepidation for Black than White or Hispanic Americans about what they might experience in a police encounter. And those harboring the least confidence that they will be treated well, or who have had negative encounters in the past, are much more likely to want the police presence curtailed.
Cops harass Blacks, but cops also harass too many people, period.
There is too much of a police state, period.
This paper(1) is by a Black economist at Harvard. On page 5, Blacks are 25% less likely to be shot, though they are more likely to experience non-lethal force. The paper concludes there are a minority of officers who discriminate.
I was quite surprised by that.
I also was curious about that because it didn't match my preconceived notions, so did a rough check of some of the crime stats myself(2). It seems about 25% of fatal shootings are of Blacks, which is about proportionately double the rate. But if you look at something like arrest rate for violent crime as a metric for encounters with police, they're a little bit over 25%, which would be consistent with the former paper's conclusion.
I have no doubt that in the past there was terrible discrimination, and that presently a minority of officers do it, which is still unacceptable. But whenever I see people talking about this topic presently, I never see facts or statistics brought into it and it comes off as hand-wavey virtue signalling.
I also worry that there is a growing problem of a police state -- it is not only a problem of discrimination.
> Blacks (and other minorities) in the US are policed more aggressively than Whites. This is a fact, and I don’t know anyone who would disagree with it.
Many actual black people, for one:
> When asked whether they want the police to spend more time, the same amount of time or less time than they currently do in their area, most Black Americans -- 61% -- want the police presence to remain the same. This is similar to the 67% of all U.S. adults preferring the status quo, including 71% of White Americans.
> Meanwhile, nearly equal proportions of Black Americans say they would like the police to spend more time in their area (20%) as say they'd like them to spend less time there (19%).
The implication of OPs post was that this was a frequent enough occurrence to legitimately fear interactions with police.
My point is that this is excessive, and partly a result of the eagerness that the media to latch onto and sensationalize stories of blacks being killed by police.
It is relevant to the discussion.
Edit: all of this particularly when negative interactions are going to very heavily skew towards people who are combative and/or noncompliant. This is total paranoia.
50% of black Americans agree that MORE police are needed on the street, according to a 2020 study. [1]
To campaign for their reduction is to campaign against the interests of black people. In fact, it sounds incredibly racist to suggest black people can't decide this and their voice needs to be trampled upon.
You're distorting what I said.
As regards these protests I believe that they will probably only make things worse. Black areas are where the most crime occurs so there is going to be more police activity in those areas. The protests encourage a feeling amount black people that the police are the enemy and that if you're stopped it's always only because you're black. On the police side this means that the typical interaction with a black person will be more difficult on average, leading to a perception on their side that black people are trouble. Put the two together and you have a greater potential for someone to get hurt.
> "People whining about cops being mean to them ... tend to
> think that their police interaction is a super special
> customer service experience"
Strong disagree. In the US, cops are much more likely to hurt minorities than white people. Maybe other white folks the luxury of considering a police interaction as a "customer experience," but every single one of my Black&brown friends doesn't feel safe around cops, and with good reason. Minorities whine about police because police are more likely to unnecessarily hurt them and their friends.
[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/316247/black-americans-police-e...
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