Law Enforcement Reform Thread (formerly Defund the Police) (3 Viewers)

Lapaz said:

With that, my assumptions are as follows:
1) 80% of police killings occur when police are arresting someone for a murder, because murderers have the least to lose by killing a cop. I suspect at least another 15% are for other arrests associated with violent crimes, and 5% during arrests for non-violent crimes.

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No. You can't just assume that.

Lapaz said:

If 80% of the police killings occurred when arresting murderers, then 167.2 (209*0.8) blacks and 319.2 (399*0.8) whites were killed during murder arrests.

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And even if you could assume that, you can't then apply it that way. If 80% of police killings occurred during arrests for murder and negligent manslaughter - which, again, you can't just assume - it wouldn't follow that would be evenly distributed across all races. It would be affected both by the rate at which each group is arrested for murder and the presence of any bias towards that group. You can't just multiple the number of shootings of each group by 0.8 and think you've come up with the number of shot murderers in each group. You haven't.

Lapaz said:

From that I determined that the likelihood of being killed by a cop during a murder arrest for blacks is simply 209*0.8 killed by cops/4778 murder arrests = 3.5% while for whites it is 399*0.8/3953 = 8.07%. So it is more than twice as likely for a white murderer to be killed by the police during an arrest than a black murderer.

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And so you definitely can't then produce this as some sort of conclusion, let alone as definitively as you're doing here. By assuming even distribution previously, this figure is predominantly an inverse reflection of what proportion of arrests of a race are for murder. If statistically they're more likely to be arrested for murder, you've just assumed they're less likely to be killed during the arrest. That's a reflection of your assumptions, not any underlying reality. It literally doesn't tell us anything at all about that.

Lapaz said:

If you eliminate my assumptions, and just divide police killings of a race/arrests of that race, then you get the likelihood of a white person being killed during an arrest is 0.0075% (399/5.3M) to 0.0099 for blacks, so blacks are most likely to be killed during arrests, but I don't think this is an accurate depiction, because the vast majority of arrests are for non-violent crimes, and people don't usually want to add murder charges to non-violent crimes. So the critical element in all of these analyses is the behavior of the person being arrested, and the most violent acts towards police are almost certainly coming from the arrests for the most violent acts. This suggest to me that there is very little if any bias towards killing blacks.

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And here, you eliminate your assumptions, and accurately observe that black people are disproportionately killed by the police even when compared to the already disproportionate baseline that is the rate they're arrested... and then you immediately go straight back to assumptions about shootings being related to arrests and the nature of the offense.

Basically, in your analysis, you appear to be literally just assuming that there is no bias, and then you're using this to argue that there is no bias. No. Don't do that. It doesn't work like that. At all.

Lapaz-

Two Honest questions with a comment about why I am asking each:

1) Why did you select murder? Why not all violent crimes or more importantly drug related? The reason I ask is 5,000 out of over a million of ANYTHING is statistically insignificant (let alone 40 million) so you must DE-strapolate (these formulas are extremely area specific so I don’t know what they are in sociological terms) or use a smaller control demographic. In other words, there aren’t enough murders to extrapolate to the whole from. Or even close for that matter.

2) what are your assumptions? you mention your assumptions. Moreover, you mention them twice and Then go on to say “if you eliminate my assumptions..” Well yeah, we need to do that. Your assumptions are a giant red flag in the middle of your hypothesis. your assumption IS your hypothesis, or it is supposed to be rather. The data backs up the assumption (hypothesis) not the other way around. And because you can’t prove a hypothesis when your first data point is an assumption, you are already in the weeds.

I, nor anyone else reading your post have any idea if your assumptions are right or not. We can’t get there because your data is flawed. Mind you, it isn’t flawed because of your sourcing or comprehension is poor either. I am arguing your data is flawed, because your premise in reaching your methodology is wrong. Therefore your data is being used inappropriately.

RobF said:

No. You can't just assume that.


And even if you could assume that, you can't then apply it that way. If 80% of police killings occurred during arrests for murder and negligent manslaughter - which, again, you can't just assume - it wouldn't follow that would be evenly distributed across all races. It would be affected both by the rate at which each group is arrested for murder and the presence of any bias towards that group. You can't just multiple the number of shootings of each group by 0.8 and think you've come up with the number of shot murderers in each group. You haven't.

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The presence of bias may change the 80% number, but without access to a database, I think it is reasonable to assume that murderers are the most likely to engage in violence against the police, and therefore the most likely to be killed by the police. It may not be equal for each race, but I doubt it'll change that much, because those are the most violent people.

RobF said:

And so you definitely can't then produce this as some sort of conclusion, let alone as definitively as you're doing here. By assuming even distribution previously, this figure is predominantly an inverse reflection of what proportion of arrests of a race are for murder. If statistically they're more likely to be arrested for murder, you've just assumed they're less likely to be killed during the arrest. That's a reflection of your assumptions, not any underlying reality. It literally doesn't tell us anything at all about that.

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I said the evidence suggests that there isn't bias. The flip side is most people conclude there is bias based on the per capita analysis they've done. I've been much less definitive, but I certainly am not convinced that there is a bias towards killing blacks. I think there is a good chance that the bias is towards killing people that resist violently, and not significantly towards killing blacks.

RobF said:

And here, you eliminate your assumptions, and accurately observe that black people are disproportionately killed by the police even when compared to the already disproportionate baseline that is the rate they're arrested... and then you immediately go straight back to assumptions about shootings being related to arrests and the nature of the offense.

Basically, in your analysis, you appear to be literally just assuming that there is no bias, and then you're using this to argue that there is no bias. No. Don't do that. It doesn't work like that. At all.

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Yes when all arrests are taken into account and compared, blacks do get killed more often, but it is about 32% more (.0099%/.0075%), not 350% more (eg 3.5 times more), as I frequently hear claimed. Also, that 32% provides no context about the behavior that led to the killings. And of all of the killings, I suspect that the percent of unjustified killings is very small. There are bad cops that need to be fired, and every unjustified killing should lead to jail time, and sometimes the death penalty for the cop, but in my opinion the magnitude of the problem is mischaracterized due to some horrible videos.

CoolBrees said:

Lapaz-

Two Honest questions with a comment about why I am asking each:

1) Why did you select murder? Why not all violent crimes or more importantly drug related? The reason I ask is 5,000 out of over a million of ANYTHING is statistically insignificant (let alone 40 million) so you must DE-strapolate (these formulas are extremely area specific so I don’t know what they are in sociological terms) or use a smaller control demographic. In other words, there aren’t enough murders to extrapolate to the whole from. Or even close for that matter.

2) what are your assumptions? you mention your assumptions. Moreover, you mention them twice and Then go on to say “if you eliminate my assumptions..” Well yeah, we need to do that. Your assumptions are a giant red flag in the middle of your hypothesis. your assumption IS your hypothesis, or it is supposed to be rather. The data backs up the assumption (hypothesis) not the other way around. And because you can’t prove a hypothesis when your first data point is an assumption, you are already in the weeds.

I, nor anyone else reading your post have any idea if your assumptions are right or not. We can’t get there because your data is flawed. Mind you, it isn’t flawed because of your sourcing or comprehension is poor either. I am arguing your data is flawed, because your premise in reaching your methodology is wrong. Therefore your data is being used inappropriately.

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I selected murders because they can’t be biased by over-policing and it is my hypothesis that they are the most violent and therefore most likely to violently resist arrest, which will lead to more police killings.
The vast majority of drug crimes are of the possession and distribution variety, but they don’t usually carry life sentences.

You think 5000 out of 40M is statistically insignificant, yet the premise of blacks being killed more by police is based on about 200 blacks killed per year out of 40M. I’m using murder arrests of about 5000 compared to 200 murders vs 4000 vs 400 murders. That’s more statistically significant. I understand that my hypothesis of murder arrests leading to most police killings is questionable to many of you, but I think that is very likely.

SaintForLife said:

It looks like it's already happening.

Bond denied for officer who killed Rayshard Brooks

Judge Jeffrey Frazier found probable cause exists to detain Garrett Rolfe for the slaying of Rayshard Brooks outside a Wendy's fast food restaurant in Atlanta, court records show. Rolfe is white. Brooks was Black.

www.fox8live.com

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So, I didn’t even read the article because in the synopsis it said that the number wasn’t significant enough to affect staffing.

V Chip said:

I think I see what it is -- you keep saying "encounters" when what you're referring to is arrests. Is that what the 7.7 million number represents?

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Yes. When I asked earlier about "encounters" and what was meant by that, it's because there's *no way* that there are 7.7 million encounters between law enforcement and civilians.

It's ten times that.

But this is illustrative of the inability to manage the basics of this field of study. The proposals and hypotheses wouldn't pass muster in an Intro to Criminology course. It's such selective narrowing of data and misunderstanding of the scope of bias. I mean, to use a phrase like "statistically significant" without any context or explanation or justification is just using a phrase that sounds like a phrase that needs to be used in order to assert something that might not merit assertion. It's a rhetorical prop.

And even when looking at encounters, they aren't all 'logged' and even when they are, the report is something fashioned by the police officers so even a deep dive into logged encounters is problematic.

That's why this field is so slippery when it comes to handling data. The FBI has realized this and started to change its approach to housing data and defining crimes.

I mean, the FBI changed the definition of 'rape' changed in 2013. People act like data is this monolithic, unassailable collection of numbers that equate to some obvious and apparent truth.

It's actually damaging to public discourse and understanding. I'll quote Lewis's Moneyball here to illustrate what I am talking about.

Bill James, the father of Sabermetrics and the pioneer of sports analytics, lamented what his work turned into:

I wonder if we haven't become so numbed by all these numbers that we are no longer capable of truly assimilating any knowledge which might result from them.

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Michael Lewis went on to add:

Intelligence in baseball had become equated in the public mind with the ability to recite arcane baseball stats. What James's wider audience had failed to understand was that the statistics were beside the point. The point was understanding; the point was to make life on earth just a bit more intelligible; and that point, somehow, had been lost.

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This is where we are.

The numbers are supposed to push us toward inquiry and knowledge and understanding. Instead people point to numbers and say "well, the data speaks for itself."

That's naive and ignores the reality of how data is created and assembled and gathered and analyzed.

It is positively pervasive in the lazy and casual and conclusion-driven handling of 'data' and 'stats' pretty much everywhere.

It's infuriating, actually....

So, I got a reply to my letter. I got their use of force policy, and the last two yearly reports. I may attach them here. Not sure where to go from here.

Lapaz said:

I apologize about the confusion, and thanks for engaging in good faith. Yes, I meant arrests, not just encounters. I wrongly used them as synonyms. Also, I posted the source of the 7.7M arrests at SR.com, and I thought I had posted it here. Here it is:

Table 43

ucr.fbi.gov

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I’m still meaning to reply to this, but would prefer to do so from my computer and not my phone. A lot has been touched on in replies to you already but I wanted to make sure I continued our dialogue. It’s coming but it might be a couple days.

I thought this was a very good read
=================

I was a police officer for nearly ten years and I was a bastage. We all were.

This essay has been kicking around in my head for years now and I’ve never felt confident enough to write it. It’s a time in my life I’m ashamed of. It’s a time that I hurt people and, through inaction, allowed others to be hurt. It’s a time that I acted as a violent agent of capitalism and white supremacy.

Under the guise of public safety, I personally ruined people’s lives but in so doing, made the public no safer… so did the family members and close friends of mine who also bore the badge alongside me.

But enough is enough........

Since we don't have a thread on the protests and George Floyd and all that, I'll just go ahead and leave this here. Those three yokels who chased down and killed Ahmaud Arbery have been indicted on murder charges.

insidejob said:

Since we don't have a thread on the protests and George Floyd and all that, I'll just go ahead and leave this here. Those three yokels who chased down and killed Ahmaud Arbery have been indicted on murder charges.

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Good. That looked like premeditated murder. It goes to show that there may be justice. I wouldn't lump the killing of an innocent man like Arbery with Floyd, because Floyd was an actual criminal that was killed by a bad cop using excessive force. The yokels were almost certainly racially motivated and killed a man that didn't do anything wrong. On the other hand, there is evidence that Floyd's killing was personal animosity and a cop abusing his power, although you can't discount racial prejudice inflaming that animosity.

Lapaz said:

Good. That looked like premeditated murder. It goes to show that there may be justice. I wouldn't lump the killing of an innocent man like Arbery with Floyd, because Floyd was an actual criminal that was killed by a bad cop using excessive force. The yokels were almost certainly racially motivated and killed a man that didn't do anything wrong. On the other hand, there is evidence that Floyd's killing was personal animosity and a cop abusing his power, although you can't discount racial prejudice inflaming that animosity.

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1. Innocent in the eyes of the law until proven guilty in court.

2. Who cares? It's not the job of the police to murder someone. I don't give a damn if he admitted on the spot to a twelve state murder spree, he was entitled to due process. Instead, he was murdered in cold blood.

cuddlemonkey said:

1. Innocent in the eyes of the law until proven guilty in court.

2. Who cares? It's not the job of the police to murder someone. I don't give a damn if he admitted on the spot to a twelve state murder spree, he was entitled to due process. Instead, he was murdered in cold blood.

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I agree with you that Chauvin committed murder regardless of whether Floyd was a criminal. I just don’t like lumping Aubery in with Floyd. Aubery was killed by vigilantes in cold blood, while Floyd was killed due to excessive force that doesn’t always lead to death. Aubery’s murderers deserve 1st degree murder, while Chauvin may only merit 3rd degree murder.

Lapaz said:

I agree with you that Chauvin committed murder regardless of whether Floyd was a criminal. I just don’t like lumping Aubery in with Floyd. Aubery was killed by vigilantes in cold blood, while Floyd was killed due to excessive force that doesn’t always lead to death. Aubery’s murderers deserve 1st degree murder, while Chauvin may only merit 3rd degree murder.

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I feel like you are missing the forest for the trees.

The problem is a consistent targeting of black Americans by law enforcement or those who claim to be on the side of the "law". Remember, with Ahmed Aubery, it was over a month before his killers were arrested b/c one was a former cop. They assumed he was a criminal and therefore should be dealt with by any means necessary. I'm confident they were convinced that Aubery was a criminal, and they were justified in detaining him.

This type of targeting has a very long history in this country, and it has been both within actual police departments intentionally back in the late 19th and early 20th century, as well as by mobs such as we see with Aubery's murder. The myth that black Americans are criminal and need to be kept on a short leash. There have been numerous sociological studies that suggest that people commit crimes at roughly the same rate regardless of race, when controlled for poverty levels, but are targeted by police at much higher levels (when controlled for poverty levels).

So I started reading this thread. My takeaway is...Satan's Penis. Sign me up!

But seriously, lots of interesting discussion and I'm gonna think on it some more.

One quick note to @First Time Poster . Thank you sir for doing this! And the Chappelle story just made me get all choked up. Seriously.

More later.

UncleTrvlingJim said:

I feel like you are missing the forest for the trees.

The problem is a consistent targeting of black Americans by law enforcement or those who claim to be on the side of the "law". Remember, with Ahmed Aubery, it was over a month before his killers were arrested b/c one was a former cop. They assumed he was a criminal and therefore should be dealt with by any means necessary. I'm confident they were convinced that Aubery was a criminal, and they were justified in detaining him.

This type of targeting has a very long history in this country, and it has been both within actual police departments intentionally back in the late 19th and early 20th century, as well as by mobs such as we see with Aubery's murder. The myth that black Americans are criminal and need to be kept on a short leash. There have been numerous sociological studies that suggest that people commit crimes at roughly the same rate regardless of race, when controlled for poverty levels, but are targeted by police at much higher levels (when controlled for poverty levels).

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I don't think I miss that point, but I think people always want to lump everything into neat baskets. The Aubrey and Floyd cases are drastically different. Human motivations are varied and complex. One case is clearly racist, while the other isn't. I think most people look at the trees (individual cases), and cast aspersions on the forest (police are racist). It isn't always black and white.

With respect to your point about controlling for poverty and how it relates to targeting of blacks, if you control for poverty, then you can no longer use the result to compare how blacks are handled by police vs whites on a per capita basis of the whole population, because that eliminates a large portion of the population. You are now looking only at the impoverished population. When you eliminate per capita of the whole population, the targeting isn't apparent, because whites are getting arrested more than twice as much as blacks (5.3M vs 2.1M in 2018), despite whites representing only 9% of the impoverished population, compared to 22% for blacks and another 15% for mixed race people. If crime is linked to poverty, which makes sense, and blacks are disproportionately represented by poverty, then they are also probably disproportionately committing crimes, yet they are getting arrested less frequently. That doesn't support targeting of blacks. It does raise many questions about the causes of the poverty.



Regardless, cops don't make the laws. They can only enforce them. All cops can do is deal with the people they have to arrest. It isn't their fault if they have to arrest more blacks than whites as a proportion of their population, if the laws require it. I know jurisdictions have some latitude on how they will enforce those laws, but those decisions are not made by beat cops. They are made by police chiefs and elected officials. Politicians have to change unjust laws, and jurisdictions need to change priorities. Of course there are some bad cops, but I contend those are the trees. Put the blame where it belongs.

Lapaz said:

I don't think I miss that point, but I think people always want to lump everything into neat baskets. The Aubrey and Floyd cases are drastically different. Human motivations are varied and complex. One case is clearly racist, while the other isn't. I think most people look at the trees (individual cases), and cast aspersions on the forest (police are racist). It isn't always black and white.

With respect to your point about controlling for poverty and how it relates to targeting of blacks, if you control for poverty, then you can no longer use the result to compare how blacks are handled by police vs whites on a per capita basis of the whole population, because that eliminates a large portion of the population. You are now looking only at the impoverished population. When you eliminate per capita of the whole population, the targeting isn't apparent, because whites are getting arrested more than twice as much as blacks (5.3M vs 2.1M in 2018), despite whites representing only 9% of the impoverished population, compared to 22% for blacks and another 15% for mixed race people. If crime is linked to poverty, which makes sense, and blacks are disproportionately represented by poverty, then they are also probably disproportionately committing crimes, yet they are getting arrested less frequently. That doesn't support targeting of blacks. It does raise many questions about the causes of the poverty.

Table 43

ucr.fbi.gov

Poverty Rate by Race/Ethnicity | KFF

disparity, Disparities

www.kff.org

Regardless, cops don't make the laws. They can only enforce them. All cops can do is deal with the people they have to arrest. It isn't their fault if they have to arrest more blacks than whites as a proportion of their population, if the laws require it. I know jurisdictions have some latitude on how they will enforce those laws, but those decisions are not made by beat cops. They are made by police chiefs and elected officials. Politicians have to change unjust laws, and jurisdictions need to change priorities. Of course there are some bad cops, but I contend those are the trees. Put the blame where it belongs.

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Well, yes and no. Cops have a conscience, or at least they should. They shouldn't break the law, which they do far too often. And they should speak out when they see other cops breaking the law. Too many don't do that either. Some of that bad behavior is related to hiring the wrong kind of people. And some of it is poor or misguided leadership from the top.

Those policies didn't make Chauvin kill Floyd. But those policies do lead to over policing and more opportunities for cops to either do bad things or make mistakes.

Further, systemic racism built into policing practices is an open secret in too many police departments. They would never admit it, but it's clear blacks get targeted at a far, far higher rate than any other group, and it's not entirely based on them committing more crimes on a per capita basis.

We have a policing problem, and we really need to rethink and maybe retask who does what when responding to calls.

Poverty is no doubt a major problem, but solving that isn't going to fix the policing problem. Blacks should be able to feel the same sense of security that whites do. There's a clear disparity there.

Honestly, the times when I got pulled over early in my life, I was nervous as hell. I can't imagine how much worse a young black male would feel. It breaks my heart that theiy feel like something bad can happen to them anytime. They are just not given equal treatment.

I don't know what all of the answers are, but what we cannot do is go back to the status quo. It's time we treat everyone equally and fairly, and black families be made whole as possible. Nothing can replace the lost lives, loss of justice and loss of so much more. But we've got to start somewhere.

Lapaz said:

The 7.7M figure indicates that the police have to arrest a large number of people annually, so considering that many people resist violently, having about 1000 people killed by the police isn't extraordinary.

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Where do you get the data that says "many people resist violently?" Is that an assumption/made up stat?

Lapaz said:

With that, my assumptions are as follows:
1) 80% of police killings occur when police are arresting someone for a murder, because murderers have the least to lose by killing a cop. I suspect at least another 15% are for other arrests associated with violent crimes, and 5% during arrests for non-violent crimes.

2) The statistica stats on police killing by race are accurate which state that in 2018, police killed 399 white people and 209 black people. That 2 to 1 ratio is fairly steady over the last few years.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/numbers are representative.

3) Since I have the FBI murder stats for 2018, I assume that 2018 is representative of today's rates. In 2018, blacks committed 4778 murders to whites committing 3953 murders.

If 80% of the police killings occurred when arresting murderers, then 167.2 (209*0.8) blacks and 319.2 (399*0.8) whites were killed during murder arrests.

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That is a BIG assumption. I don't think there is any data that supports the idea that 80% of those killed by the police have committed a murder -- or more accurately, were being arrested for committing a murder. So I went looking for data on homicides committed by police.

According to this study from the BJS, the percent of persons killed by police for murder or attempted murder would seem to be very small. Homicide and Attempted Homicide make up less than 20% of all crimes of those killed by police. In fact, the homicide number is only 3 times higher than the "did not commit or allegedly commit ANY crimes" -- and homicide or attempted homicide is only 7 times higher than those arrest-related deaths where the deceased did not commit or allegedly commit any crime. For the 211 reported homicides by police, that means 6 people were killed without even allegedly committing any offense (perhaps bystanders or maybe they were sleeping in their beds during a no-knock warrant search), while approximately 40 were for homicide or attempted homicide. So I think the assumption of 80% killed in the arresting of murderers is way, way off.

Lapaz said:

So the critical element in all of these analyses is the behavior of the person being arrested, and the most violent acts towards police are almost certainly coming from the arrests for the most violent acts. This suggest to me that there is very little if any bias towards killing blacks.
...
I believe there is a lot of distrust among the black community towards cops, and it is a self-fulling prophecy, because it leads to more tension in any arrests and encounters. This may be justified due to more abusive tactics towards the black community, so the real problem may be perception and some abusive tactics, but not so much killings.

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I think with such flawed assumptions, this conclusion you arrived at must be summarily dismissed. I had serious doubts about the 80% assumption before I went out and investigated to find out if there was any kind of data to support it, and according to this study there definitely isn't -- it's more like 20%.