Law Enforcement Reform Thread (formerly Defund the Police) (2 Viewers)

[First Time Poster]

So I got busy the other day with the intention to revisit this topic and answer some of the responses put forward but I realized the thread was deleted. But, I felt we had good dialogue happening before I left so I wanted to restart the topic to get the conversation going again. We started some dialogue about it on the liberal board but I feel this topic transcends party lines so I'm making a MCB thread. Post #2, or my next post, is the post I made on the liberal board when asked to elaborate how I felt.

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

I imagine, though not sure, that high incarceration rates can pass some point at which every additional prisoner will result in a certain increase in crime over the long term - given that being incarcerated greatly diminishes a person's ability to get a job once released.

On this subject, I have long thought along the lines that Lapaz is bringing up in this thread. But, I think right now it is less important to talk about the reasons or even the extent of a problem and address the broader issue which is, I think, the U.S. will be better off the less people we incarcerate, the less people who are put into the criminal system, the less people who have interactions with police (at least in any sort of confrotational way, broadly speaking). This is where I can get behind at least some of the "Defund Police" movement. In fact, I think it is very easy to spin "Defund Police" as being pro-police. We place far too much of a burden on police officers to deal with the results of broader social failures and lack of incentive/resources to deal with broad elements of the population.

This is very near my stance. I think I've brought this up before that I like to think of my position as pro-police. I think we as a society put the police in a bad situation and expecting them to behave different is to expect them to not be human.

I've started to go through the multitude of links @Ayo has provided, and I've done my own reading on the subject, and we've had a long trend towards incarceration for all sorts of infractions. I'm far from an expert, but I think we should look at incarceration as a tool of last resort for only the most violent of offenders. Take the George Floyd situation. What was he suspected of? Using a counterfeit bill? He was a known customer of that store, all the players knew who he was, right? Why not issue him a summons for a court date if they decided they had enough evidence to charge him. If he was guilty of the crime, it seems to me that trying to pass off a $20 counterfeit bill could be worked off with some sort of fine and community service. Or something like that... I think there's a lot of room to discuss what should be punished with jail time and what should be punished with fines and other things.

My brother has spent some time in prison, and he's said that he's pretty sure prison makes a good percentage of people more of a criminal than less of one. Just the way everything is set up.

Oddly enough, I think we have made some progress on the issues - one quick example is that incarceration rates are falling. But I am not sure that is the result of any sort of real reform

I think economic expansion is correlated with less street crime, which is one of the large drivers of incarceration in the US.

 

[Lapaz]

Since you like facts African Americans are only thirteen percent of the population yet they are thirty four percent of all incarcerated men in this country.

That is cuz you like facts and numbers.

So do you think to have that major difference in incarcerated African American males might just meant that they seem to be targeted? Or just staggering amounts of criminals seem to be African Americans? And it is staggering!

These are the numbers that have to change because they have obviously been targeted for years and years.

You can keep beating that dead horse of violent arrestees if ya like but it obviously is a dead horse.

I am not saying all cops are racist or even a bunch. The system is set up to feed off of the poor and middle class. When it is it targets African Americans.

Don't know where you live but I am more than sure it is the same there. Just the example of speed traps are never in the great ends of town but they are always in the lower to middle class neighborhoods. Targets certain people and African Americans have a huge amount living at or below the poverty rate and in the middle class.

That is a simple practice that I know you see that is racist unless you live in Maine!

What does the percentage of blacks incarcerated have to who the police kill during arrests? I'm not arguing all of the maladies of society. Blacks represent a disproportionate number of incarcerated people for many reasons, one of which is probably racism, but that is irrelevant to the point I've been making on almost every post, which is disproportionate cop killings of blacks is not supported by evidence. Violent crimes don't have anything to do with targeting, which is why I use that. Targeting partially explains incarceration rates due to non-violent crimes, but violent crimes rates among blacks are as you say "staggeringly" high relative to their population. That is part of the reason that blacks represent a higher percentage of incarcerated people. Is it a stretch to believe that they would also commit other crimes at a rate above their population, or is it all due to targeting? I don't know, because that would take a lot more research, but I'm not trying to argue the causes of that incarceration rate malady.

Anyway, this discussion about incarceration is a red herring. My argument for the last several pages, which it seems people are incapable or unwilling to focus on, is that cops do not disproportionately kill blacks. Almost all of you keep raising up all the maladies of society, instead of addressing the mis-perception of cop killings that I'm trying to address. I understand that incarceration contributes to blacks becoming more violent for various reasons, but cops have to deal with the violent criminal that society may have created, and when they do, they seem to do it fairly color blindly. It's a chicken or egg thing, but cops just have to arrest whatever criminal is presented. There isn't much discretion when asked to arrest a violent criminal. Their discretion comes when deciding on whether to arrest non-violent suspects, but I've pointed out how those killings are under 50/year for blacks, and you know some of those provoked the cops to get violent.

I'm curious, out of the roughly 250 blacks killed annually by cops out of over 2 million arrests (500,000 violent), what percentage do you believe were unjustified? By unjustified, I mean that the arrestee did not do anything that provoked the killing? Then what percentage of the roughly 500 whites killed annually out of the over 5 million annual arrests (1 million violent) were unjustified? Whatever you believe it is, how much further do you think we can get it? Also, do you believe your numbers justify the conclusion that cops are biased towards killing blacks?

 

[RobF]

I'm open to changing my mind, but I don't think there are facts that support that extraordinary belief if you consider the racial makeup of violent arrestees.

Again, you're simply inherently assuming lack of bias throughout your postings, and then using that to argue there is no bias, as has been pointed out to you multiple times by multiple people. And instead of questioning your own assumptions, you're just repeating yourself.

For example: You keep talking about violent arrest statistics. But violent arrest statistics would, in the presence of racism, themselves be biased; black people would be more likely to be charged with violence than white people. Hence, you can't just point at those statistics and argue there's no bias; your basis for reference is in itself subject to bias. Here's an example of actual research looking at this - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11292-019-09362-5 - and here's the conclusions of that study:

"These results have two implications. First, traditional regression analyses of the relationship between race and arrest may be subject to significant selection and omitted variable bias. Second, there is potential racial disparity in co-offender arrest: black co-offenders are more likely than their white partners to be arrested for the same violent offense."​

(That's not the only error in your analysis by the way, but one error is sufficient to show the analysis is wrong, so I'm not going to go through all of them).

Speaking more broadly, there are two reasons for disproportionate arrests and violence between groups of people; prejudice towards those people and underlying objective differences between those groups of people (which in itself can be seen to be the product of systemic racism). In practice, you have both; the one drives the other. What you're doing, though, is just assuming that it's all the latter.

And yet you agree racism exists. But you continually attempt to assert that, for no credible reason, that it wouldn't manifest itself in violence and death. It would. It does. We have real examples of it doing so, that you can't possibly have missed. And if you'd stop assuming that it doesn't exist, you'll see it's there in the statistics as well.

 

[The moose]

What does the percentage of blacks incarcerated have to who the police kill during arrests? I'm not arguing all of the maladies of society. Blacks represent a disproportionate number of incarcerated people for many reasons, one of which is probably racism, but that is irrelevant to the point I've been making on almost every post, which is disproportionate cop killings of blacks is not supported by evidence. Violent crimes don't have anything to do with targeting, which is why I use that. Targeting partially explains incarceration rates due to non-violent crimes, but violent crimes rates among blacks are as you say "staggeringly" high relative to their population. That is part of the reason that blacks represent a higher percentage of incarcerated people. Is it a stretch to believe that they would also commit other crimes at a rate above their population, or is it all due to targeting? I don't know, because that would take a lot more research, but I'm not trying to argue the causes of that incarceration rate malady.

Anyway, this discussion about incarceration is a red herring. My argument for the last several pages, which it seems people are incapable or unwilling to focus on, is that cops do not disproportionately kill blacks. Almost all of you keep raising up all the maladies of society, instead of addressing the mis-perception of cop killings that I'm trying to address. I understand that incarceration contributes to blacks becoming more violent for various reasons, but cops have to deal with the violent criminal that society may have created, and when they do, they seem to do it fairly color blindly. It's a chicken or egg thing, but cops just have to arrest whatever criminal is presented. There isn't much discretion when asked to arrest a violent criminal. Their discretion comes when deciding on whether to arrest non-violent suspects, but I've pointed out how those killings are under 50/year for blacks, and you know some of those provoked the cops to get violent.

I'm curious, out of the roughly 250 blacks killed annually by cops out of over 2 million arrests (500,000 violent), what percentage do you believe were unjustified? By unjustified, I mean that the arrestee did not do anything that provoked the killing? Then what percentage of the roughly 500 whites killed annually out of the over 5 million annual arrests (1 million violent) were unjustified? Whatever you believe it is, how much further do you think we can get it? Also, do you believe your numbers justify the conclusion that cops are biased towards killing blacks?

I see you want to pinpoint your whole argument on one tiny set of stats you have.

Again it is a dead horse by now if you don't get it.

The system needs to change. Actually the system needs to change for everyone.

Incarcerated people should not be Americas biggest business anymore. The lower classes should not have to sacrifice their freedom for the incarceration machine America has become.

 

[Lapaz]

Again, you're simply inherently assuming lack of bias throughout your postings, and then using that to argue there is no bias, as has been pointed out to you multiple times by multiple people. And instead of questioning your own assumptions, you're just repeating yourself.

For example: You keep talking about violent arrest statistics. But violent arrest statistics would, in the presence of racism, themselves be biased; black people would be more likely to be charged with violence than white people. Hence, you can't just point at those statistics and argue there's no bias; your basis for reference is in itself subject to bias. Here's an example of actual research looking at this - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11292-019-09362-5 - and here's the conclusions of that study:

"These results have two implications. First, traditional regression analyses of the relationship between race and arrest may be subject to significant selection and omitted variable bias. Second, there is potential racial disparity in co-offender arrest: black co-offenders are more likely than their white partners to be arrested for the same violent offense."​

(That's not the only error in your analysis by the way, but one error is sufficient to show the analysis is wrong, so I'm not going to go through all of them).

Speaking more broadly, there are two reasons for disproportionate arrests and violence between groups of people; prejudice towards those people and underlying objective differences between those groups of people (which in itself can be seen to be the product of systemic racism). In practice, you have both; the one drives the other. What you're doing, though, is just assuming that it's all the latter.

And yet you agree racism exists. But you continually attempt to assert that, for no credible reason, that it wouldn't manifest itself in violence and death. It would. It does. We have real examples of it doing so, that you can't possibly have missed. And if you'd stop assuming that it doesn't exist, you'll see it's there in the statistics as well.

I don't see the evidence of cops disproportionately killing the people they arrest based on race. Your link didn't open for me, but based on your excerpt, it appears to assert that data is missing or biased, and blacks get re-arrested, but that doesn't prove cops are disproportionately killing blacks as a percentage of arrests. As I've said repeatedly, I'm not debating other maladies of society, which that alludes to. I'll repeat, an extraordinary claim, such as that blacks are killed by the police disproportionately, requires extraordinary proof. I don't see much proof once normalized to all arrests, no proof when normalized to violent arrests, much less extraordinary proof.

 

[cuddlemonkey]

I don't see the evidence of cops disproportionately killing the people they arrest based on race. Your link didn't open for me, but based on your excerpt, it appears to assert that data is missing or biased, and blacks get re-arrested, but that doesn't prove cops are disproportionately killing blacks as a percentage of arrests. As I've said repeatedly, I'm not debating other maladies of society, which that alludes to. I'll repeat, an extraordinary claim, such as that blacks are killed by the police disproportionately, requires extraordinary proof. I don't see much proof once normalized to all arrests, no proof when normalized to violent arrests, much less extraordinary proof.

Are you specifically using arrest statistics? How is 'arrest' defined for the purpose of these statistics?

 

[JimEverett]

Again, you're simply inherently assuming lack of bias throughout your postings, and then using that to argue there is no bias, as has been pointed out to you multiple times by multiple people. And instead of questioning your own assumptions, you're just repeating yourself.

For example: You keep talking about violent arrest statistics. But violent arrest statistics would, in the presence of racism, themselves be biased; black people would be more likely to be charged with violence than white people. Hence, you can't just point at those statistics and argue there's no bias; your basis for reference is in itself subject to bias. Here's an example of actual research looking at this - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11292-019-09362-5 - and here's the conclusions of that study:

"These results have two implications. First, traditional regression analyses of the relationship between race and arrest may be subject to significant selection and omitted variable bias. Second, there is potential racial disparity in co-offender arrest: black co-offenders are more likely than their white partners to be arrested for the same violent offense."​

(That's not the only error in your analysis by the way, but one error is sufficient to show the analysis is wrong, so I'm not going to go through all of them).

Speaking more broadly, there are two reasons for disproportionate arrests and violence between groups of people; prejudice towards those people and underlying objective differences between those groups of people (which in itself can be seen to be the product of systemic racism). In practice, you have both; the one drives the other. What you're doing, though, is just assuming that it's all the latter.

And yet you agree racism exists. But you continually attempt to assert that, for no credible reason, that it wouldn't manifest itself in violence and death. It would. It does. We have real examples of it doing so, that you can't possibly have missed. And if you'd stop assuming that it doesn't exist, you'll see it's there in the statistics as well.

What are the effects of racism in the US?
It seems to me that one of the results from the historical pattern of racism in the country is that it promotes more criminality, including violence.

 

[Ayo]

What are the effects of racism in the US?
It seems to me that one of the results from the historical pattern of racism in the country is that it promotes more criminality, including violence.

How would you explain the precipitous decline in crime, particularly violent crime, over the past 20-30 years? Do you think that racism has decreased in that time, which contributes to a decrease in criminality and violence?

I think there might have been something to that during the re-shaping of urban spaces as Black communities were cordoned off by commercial and industrial zoning and the drawing of highways and even interstates, greatly increasing population density in these areas, with very little infrastructure, opportunity, education, etc.

People might not see these decisions as white-based affirmative action, but they *definitely* are.

E.g. from David Simon's twitter yesterday:




this was all by design. Put them in a desperate situation far from everyone else, turn them into the predicted spectacle. Make white people, from a distance, fear them. But that stopped a while back - the crime at levels you are talking about - largely because the communities began working from within.

 

[JimEverett]

How would you explain the precipitous decline in crime, particularly violent crime, over the past 20-30 years? Do you think that racism has decreased in that time, which contributes to a decrease in criminality and violence?

I think there might have been something to that during the re-shaping of urban spaces as Black communities were cordoned off by commercial and industrial zoning and the drawing of highways and even interstates, greatly increasing population density in these areas, with very little infrastructure, opportunity, education, etc.

People might not see these decisions as white-based affirmative action, but they *definitely* are.

E.g. from David Simon's twitter yesterday:




this was all by design. Put them in a desperate situation far from everyone else, turn them into the predicted spectacle. Make white people, from a distance, fear them. But that stopped a while back - the crime at levels you are talking about - largely because the communities began working from within.

I think there a whole lot of factors having to do with the decrease in violent crime in the last few decades. I think a decrease in racism does play a part. For example - I think desegregating schools, employment discrimination laws, less discrimination in capital access have contributed in no small degree. There are other causes as well.
I also think it is sort of a mistake to see widespread racist motivations in some of the post ww2 urban planning. I agree they had a disastrous effect in many places and ost of those were black communities. But having an interest in the subject I have found that a lot of those policies (not all, by any means) came out of good intentions. For example - the modernist "projects" that were originally designed to house a majority of white people were designed with the goal in mind of providing the poor living in basically shanty-town ghettos with the comforts of middle-class life. In hindsight we know the plan was a failure, but I don't think you can read "racist" intentions in the projects.

 

[Lapaz]

Are you specifically using arrest statistics? How is 'arrest' defined for the purpose of these statistics?

I'm using FBI data. I've discussed it some throughout this thread. The FBI groups things a little different than the data that I think MT posted a bunch of posts back. At the site, there are links for data declaration which gives you a little more information.

Table 43

ucr.fbi.gov

 

[RobF]

I don't see the evidence of cops disproportionately killing the people they arrest based on race. Your link didn't open for me, but based on your excerpt, it appears to assert that data is missing or biased, and blacks get re-arrested, but that doesn't prove cops are disproportionately killing blacks as a percentage of arrests. As I've said repeatedly, I'm not debating other maladies of society, which that alludes to. I'll repeat, an extraordinary claim, such as that blacks are killed by the police disproportionately, requires extraordinary proof. I don't see much proof once normalized to all arrests, no proof when normalized to violent arrests, much less extraordinary proof.

You don't see because you're not looking. You commented on a link you didn't open, and completely ignored the fundamental point that if you normalise to a measure that's biased and find proportionality, what you're actually showing is bias throughout, which is the opposite of what you're claiming. That is, if deaths are proportionate to arrests, but arrests are biased, then so are deaths. And you're not even addressing that. You're just repeating yourself, over and over again. What are you aiming to achieve by doing that?

Let me put it bluntly: if you want to use your approach to claim that there's no bias in deaths, you would have to first show there's no bias in arrests (and you'd also have to fix your flawed methodology, but you know, one step at a time). You have not done that. And both myself and I think @Ayo have already provided evidence that there is bias in arrests.

The position that there is no bias, that racism simply vanishes when it comes to the exercise of force by the police, is not credible.

Another example that some might find interesting. You talked earlier about not being able to look at individual arrests. People have looked at that. The Citizens Police Data Project in Chicago provides records of police interactions with the public. A data scientist went over those records - the Police's own descriptions of the incidents - and found that "Chicago police officers used more force against black citizens, on average, than any other race—even though black citizens tended to exercise less resistance than whites. Under the same circumstances and faced with the same level of danger, cops tended to resolve the situation without firing their weapons much more often for white citizens than black citizens." And "The disparities were especially pronounced in the use of lethal force. According to the analysis of the police reports, black subjects were deemed to present a deadly threat to police officers slightly more often than whites. But when faced with a white subject deemed to present a deadly threat, officers used lethal force in just 28 percent of cases. Meanwhile, officers fired upon black subjects in 43 percent of similar situations." Source: https://slate.com/news-and-politics...ent-decree-black-lives-matter-resistance.html .

 

[RobF]

What are the effects of racism in the US?
It seems to me that one of the results from the historical pattern of racism in the country is that it promotes more criminality, including violence.

I agree. That's what I was referring to when I said "underlying objective differences between those groups of people (which in itself can be seen to be the product of systemic racism)." And I would contend that in itself exacerbates existing prejudice, which in turn drives the circumstances that cause that.

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

I agree. That's what I was referring to when I said "underlying objective differences between those groups of people (which in itself can be seen to be the product of systemic racism)." And I would contend that in itself exacerbates existing prejudice, which in turn drives the circumstances that cause that.

I think @JimEverett initially introduced me to a statistic years ago that highlights this -- the largest demographic group to illegally use marijuana was white college students, but the largest demographic group to be arrested for illegal marijuana use was black males.

 

[Lapaz]

You don't see because you're not looking. You commented on a link you didn't open, and completely ignored the fundamental point that if you normalise to a measure that's biased and find proportionality, what you're actually showing is bias throughout, which is the opposite of what you're claiming. That is, if deaths are proportionate to arrests, but arrests are biased, then so are deaths. And you're not even addressing that. You're just repeating yourself, over and over again. What are you aiming to achieve by doing that?

Let me put it bluntly: if you want to use your approach to claim that there's no bias in deaths, you would have to first show there's no bias in arrests (and you'd also have to fix your flawed methodology, but you know, one step at a time). You have not done that. And both myself and I think @Ayo have already provided evidence that there is bias in arrests.

The position that there is no bias, that racism simply vanishes when it comes to the exercise of force by the police, is not credible.

Another example that some might find interesting. You talked earlier about not being able to look at individual arrests. People have looked at that. The Citizens Police Data Project in Chicago provides records of police interactions with the public. A data scientist went over those records - the Police's own descriptions of the incidents - and found that "Chicago police officers used more force against black citizens, on average, than any other race—even though black citizens tended to exercise less resistance than whites. Under the same circumstances and faced with the same level of danger, cops tended to resolve the situation without firing their weapons much more often for white citizens than black citizens." And "The disparities were especially pronounced in the use of lethal force. According to the analysis of the police reports, black subjects were deemed to present a deadly threat to police officers slightly more often than whites. But when faced with a white subject deemed to present a deadly threat, officers used lethal force in just 28 percent of cases. Meanwhile, officers fired upon black subjects in 43 percent of similar situations." Source: https://slate.com/news-and-politics...ent-decree-black-lives-matter-resistance.html .

Do you believe arrest data is biased to under-report or over-report, or do you just believe that white criminals are not arrested for similar crimes? If you believe the latter, which is what I believe you are asserting, how does that have anything to do with cop killings per arrest, unless you ALSO don't believe the stats on how many people cops actually killed of each race. If you're simply saying that cops arrest blacks more often for the same crimes, that still doesn't change the calculus that once they are arresting someone, the data doesn't indicate that they kill by race. However few hold enough malice to kill by race, other factors offset that somehow. If you believe the former, which is that arrests are falsely reported, where is the evidence of that?

Let's say the data is biased. Where is the proof of the bias that blacks don't commit the violent crimes? I keep going back to that because over 82% of killings occur when people are being arrested for violent crimes. You can assert bias in marijuana and any other non-violent crime, but far fewer people are killed during those arrests. Even if the non-violent crime data or actual arrests are horribly biased against blacks, it doesn't change cop killing stats very much, because less than 18% of killings occur during non-violent crime arrests, even though non-violent arrests constitute about 90% of arrests. Even if cops were hugely biased to arrest blacks for non-violent crimes, they still only kill a small amount of that group. The more biased cops are to over-arresting blacks, the less biased cops seem toward killing them, because only up to 50 blacks are killed annually during arrests for non-violent crimes. They could arrest all 40 million blacks for non-violent crimes, but they still kill less than 50 annually. That would indicate that cops are extremely non-biased to kill blacks. If they only arrested a tiny number such as 100 per year for non-violent crimes, and they kill about 50, then you could argue that cops are hugely biased to kill blacks. I realize that more arrests presents more opportunities to kill, but that’s why I try to rely on the data not subject to over-policing, which is the violent variety.

Regarding the link by the OP, I clearly stated that the link would not open, so I commented only on the portion that the op commented upon. I suppose I could've ignored that part of his post. You aren't one to talk about commenting on things you haven't read, because you haven't bothered to read or perhaps comprehend many of my posts, since I have never stated that there is no racism. I've never stated that it vanishes when it comes to the use of force. I have stated that the bias is not so great that it results in disparate killings. The data shows that cops kill the races about evenly to arrest ratios. That's not saying racism vanishes. That's saying something is happening to even things out.

With respect to your Slate link on the study of the Chicago PD from 2004 to 2016, the percentages were almost the same within margins of error except on the lethal force application which was 28 vs 43%. Note, I think this is a bit of cherry picking, because the Chicago PD may have been one of the more racist PDs in the nation based on The Torture Letters published by the University of Chicago Press and the 13 JAN 2017 DoJ report which criticized it severely, so it was probably not representative of the U.S. from 2004 to 2016. That may explain the 28 to 43% ratio more than anything else, but my contention is not that there are not bad PDs, but rather that the end result is blacks are not killed disproportionately to arrest rates on average nationwide. Also note, the Chicago PD agreed to a court-enforced agreement of reforms. This is one of the problems that we face in these discussions, which usually look backwards, instead of more recent status. Even the Chicago PD is probably far better today than it was when this study analyzed it.

The Slate article says that The Invisible Institute studied 60,000 cases, but don't say how many times cops had to use lethal force by firing a weapon. Firing upon someone doesn't imply that they killed that person. Given that the Chicago PD is only about 1.5% (12,000/800,000) of all the police in the country, and only about 1000 are killed annually nationwide, they probably only killed about 15 people per year. Due to a few racists on the PD, probably about 10 of those were black to 5 whites, but that's pure conjecture. We're not talking big numbers. Regardless, I don't deny that the Chicago police force seems to have had some racists that needed to be removed, but that PD isn't representative of the national evidence today. If the Chicago PD is over-represented in black killings per arrest, then that must mean that some other PDs are underrepresented.

 

[MT15]

lapaz, so you are saying that what is happening is that black (men, especially) people are treated differently by law enforcement in every sort of way: they are arrested more often, the police use force more often, they are pulled over more often, they are searched during traffic stops more often, they are killed while being unarmed significantly more often than other races, but at the point of arrest, when lethal force is used, all those differences just cease to exist? And all of a sudden there’s no more bias present in the system?

 

[CoolBrees]

Lapaz-

The first thing to do when you are in a hole is stop digging. When you put forward the statement:

“The 80% number was an assumption that most police killings occurred during arrests of murderers, which can't be affected by overpolicing.”

anyone with any statistical background in any field is going to cringe at that statement. In college science class, they would fail you or your premise alone.

all other things equal, which is sidestepping a mountain, how can you state this with any certainty at all? How do you say words like “can’t” when saying something “can’t be affected by over policing.”? You are stating a hypothesis with a personal(!) assumption as evidence. Slow down. You must first hypothecate and validate that sentence. you then may be able to apply that sentence to another as credible evidence (or data). Otherwise, you don’t know what is causing what, or if all of your data is either coincidental or correlation without causation.

You should first start with the hypothesis-
“most police killings occurred during arrests of murders or violent crimes.”
Because that is the criterium you have selected. Can you prove this?

Once your analysis proves (or disproves) that, then you could state it as part of your overall hypothesis which is ...? That Blacks are killed less often than others think? Ok, so how do you eliminate variation? Like false reports? Your data suggests 100% of all police reports filed are accurate. I am going to go out on a limb and say that isn’t true.

We haven’t even gotten to your actual point, and none of your argument’s supporting evidence is holding together.

I don’t mean this in a critical way but your math is all over the place. I do enough modeling to know that I could review pretty much any research paper and know if their methodology and data analysis are sound. Just like I am sure I could hand @Ayo my data sets for a high speed packaging line and he could validate that the methods were concise and the data collections qualitative. But neither one of us would have the background to do more than a technical review of each other’s work (well I know I am not that smart). Much less write on it. I would most certainly draw conclusions that were incorrect due to lack of knowledge of subject matter. It wouldn’t necessarily be out of malice or ill intent, it would simply be that I don’t know what variations to expect and how to mitigate them when they inevitably arise.

 

[Lapaz]

lapaz, so you are saying that what is happening is that black (men, especially) people are treated differently by law enforcement in every sort of way: they are arrested more often, the police use force more often, they are pulled over more often, they are searched during traffic stops more often, they are killed while being unarmed significantly more often than other races, but at the point of arrest, when lethal force is used, all those differences just cease to exist? And all of a sudden there’s no more bias present in the system?

All of those other things are much more subjective. Killings are not subjective. It can be analyzed objectively. Also, despite even racist cops that might not have any hesitation to arresting and abusing people are going to be much more hesitant to kill someone. Also, I suspect killings require much more scrutiny, which puts them at risk of losing their jobs.

 

[Lapaz]

Lapaz-

The first thing to do when you are in a hole is stop digging. When you put forward the statement:

“The 80% number was an assumption that most police killings occurred during arrests of murderers, which can't be affected by overpolicing.”

anyone with any statistical background in any field is going to cringe at that statement. In college science class, they would fail you or your premise alone.

all other things equal, which is sidestepping a mountain, how can you state this with any certainty at all? How do you say words like “can’t” when saying something “can’t be affected by over policing.”? You are stating a hypothesis with a personal(!) assumption as evidence. Slow down. You must first hypothecate and validate that sentence. you then may be able to apply that sentence to another as credible evidence (or data). Otherwise, you don’t know what is causing what, or if all of your data is either coincidental or correlation without causation.

You should first start with the hypothesis-
“most police killings occurred during arrests of murders or violent crimes.”
Because that is the criterium you have selected. Can you prove this?

Since you cringed, it must be obviously a gross assumption. So please explain how over-policing can affect murder arrests?

Did you see the post from I believe MT that showed the 2015 stats on cop killing by type of arrest? It stated that Violent crime arrests led to over 82% of cop killings. So I hypothesized murders, but I re-calculated with violent crime killings. Over-policing should still have very little affect on those crimes. The result changed from whites were disproportionately killed to being about equal.

Also, I haven’t gotten proof that explains away the roughly equal ratio of cop killings per arrest. I think those making the claim should have to prove that extraordinary claim. It is accepted dogma without evidence.