Law Enforcement Reform Thread (formerly Defund the Police) (6 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.

 

[Lapaz]

I list you the top 5 because I have 8 years to fall back on.
5.. The Iran deal. He did nothing but make Iran stronger just like Clinton did to North Korea except Iran was worse.
4.. His apology tour. No American President should go around apologizing to foreign diplomats. Obama did and he and he enjoyed it.
3.. His terrible recovery. I’ll give him this he inherited a bad economy. The issue is his shovel ready jobs weren’t there. The result was the worst recovery ever.1
2.. His numerous scandals. The black panther voter intimidation’s NSA warrantless surveillance sending pallets of cash to Iran IRS targeting fast and furious gun walking Benghazi solyndra and on and on. I could have just listed scandals to give you 5.
1.. Obamacare He promised ”If you like your plan you can keep it” so many times we all lost count. He promised we’d save $2,500 a year when in fact most peoples rates went up with some as high as a 200% increase. He promised “If you like your Dr you can still see him” which was bull. The changing of medical coding was enough by itself to be ashamed of.

Here’s something he gave us you’ll love. Largely because of him we got Trump. If not for Obama Hillary might have been President by now. So I guess I owe you a thank you.

It would be fun tearing this list apart in another thread, but I'm not commenting on these any further on this thread, and I hope others don't. It would be better to start a separate thread about things you didn't like about Obama. I'm sure you will get plenty of responses to that.

 

[JimEverett]

The street stops shows a big disparity, and I have no doubt that some of that is racial profiling. I would be okay with requiring cops to justify their street stops. That is the only way we can discern abuse of that authority. With respect to the likelihood of physical force being about twice as likely in black encounters vs white encounters, that is probably due to behavior of the suspect. Those examples you cited that involved minor crimes are awful. I recall a little about some of those, but I don't know enough to comment.

The street stops numbers don't tell me much. Policing is different depending on a whole host of factors: no one expects policing to be the same in a dense urban environment as it is in a low population rural area. Perhaps the same thing with neighborhoods: should police patrol high crime areas the same as low crime areas?
Seems to me to be competing interests at times: residents in high crime areas want more police patrols, but more police patrols equal more police encounters and raise the number of violent encounters.

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

Every cop needs to be accountable for physical force, but so do the people encountering the police. Let's make policy that assure that both are accountable.

I'm not sure what you mean by this last line. Private citizens do not work for the government. You think there should be a law that private citizens must be deferential to representatives of the government? And I assume that the cop is going to be the final arbiter of who is being respectful enough for their liking?

That seems to be placing an undue burden on private citizens to modify behavior to the liking of the government. Which is problematic to say the least.

Look, I understand that people should be polite and respectful to everyone. And there's a practical argument to trying to not escalate any situation, but I'm not sure that should be a matter of law. Granted, this is well outside my area of expertise @superchuck500 or @JimEverett probably know the legal obligations a private citizen has when dealing with the police.

Basically, I'm in favor of reducing the expectations of the police to not try to prevent crimes or find unreported crimes. Stop placing the expectation that they patrol around neighborhoods and stop people just to see what shakes out.

I also think we need to stop trying to treat all crime with a jail sentence. What can be accomplished with fines and community service? Etc.

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

The street stops numbers don't tell me much. Policing is different depending on a whole host of factors: no one expects policing to be the same in a dense urban environment as it is in a low population rural area. Perhaps the same thing with neighborhoods: should police patrol high crime areas the same as low crime areas?
Seems to me to be competing interests at times: residents in high crime areas want more police patrols, but more police patrols equal more police encounters and raise the number of violent encounters.

I think it goes more than just patrolling but determining when to make a stop. If there are no crimes reported, how active should police be in stopping private citizens?

 

[JimEverett]

I think it goes more than just patrolling but determining when to make a stop. If there are no crimes reported, how active should police be in stopping private citizens?

I can agree with that. But if you are actively patrolling an area more than another even with a limited-stop-directive, the high patrol area will still see more stops than a lower patrolled area.

 

[Lapaz]

The street stops numbers don't tell me much. Policing is different depending on a whole host of factors: no one expects policing to be the same in a dense urban environment as it is in a low population rural area. Perhaps the same thing with neighborhoods: should police patrol high crime areas the same as low crime areas?
Seems to me to be competing interests at times: residents in high crime areas want more police patrols, but more police patrols equal more police encounters and raise the number of violent encounters.

You’re right policing is different for many reasons. Also blacks haves much higher percentage of their population living in urban higher crime areas, which at least partially explains why blacks get stopped more frequently relative to whites. Also, Table 7 of the 2015 CBPB from the US Dept of Justice has a note saying that the 17% multiple street stop number for blacks differs significantly from the comparison group. That suggests there could be a problem with that stat line.

Thats not true. They do support that notion — blacks are killed at almost 3 times the rate of whites per capita.

No, they didn’t. They came from a government website, true, but the link you gave says clearly “Findings described in this report are based on data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2015 Police-Public Contact Survey (PPCS), a supplement to the National Crime Victimization
Survey (NCVS). The NCVS collects information from a nationally representative sample of persons age 12 or older in U.S. households. The PPCS was designed to collect information from those 16 or older on contact with police during the 12 months prior to the interview.”

Statistics and surveys are two very different things. A survey can be statistically significant, but it’s not flawless and can contain bias or flawed methodology. The NCVS has had its methodology criticized in the past, even after changes were made to it. One thing I’ve personally tried to discover is if the household survey includes those incarcerated, but there is no indication if it does or does not.

I did a little research on the National Crime Victimization Survey, and nothing on my first page of my Google search on NCVS bias generated any hits. Here is the first link I found and its from Michigan University. It suggests that it is a rigorous survey with lots of quality controls:

Accuracy of NCVS Estimates

www.icpsr.umich.edu

I found this study from the Journal of Quantitative Criminology from 2005, but you need permission to read anything more than the abstract. The abstract isn't too critical.

Revisiting Respondent "Fatigue Bias" in the National Crime Victimization Survey on JSTOR

For more than three decades the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)—and its predecessor the National Crime Survey (NCS)—have been used to calculate estim...

www.jstor.org

Can you show link some studies from non-biased sources that support that NCVS does a poor job or has problems? I'd also be interested in links showing that blacks are killed disproportionately per police encounter? I don't need links to show killings per capita, because killings per police encounters are what matter, since cops don't encounter people as a percentage of the population. How much areas are policed is a different matter that relates to policies of where police resources are placed, and that's a different debate. I'd like to simply keep it to what happens once a cop encounters someone.

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

I can agree with that. But if you are actively patrolling an area more than another even with a limited-stop-directive, the high patrol area will still see more stops than a lower patrolled area.

Yeah, absolutely.

I am curious about how much the local residents of "high crime" areas actually want those larger number of patrols. My understanding is that a lot of it is driven by politicians to prove that they are "tough on crime" and there is a tremendous amount of pressure on police to make arrests. Is that for the benefit of the residents of those areas or for politicians to prove that they are tough on crime?

 

[JimEverett]

Yeah, absolutely.

I am curious about how much the local residents of "high crime" areas actually want those larger number of patrols. My understanding is that a lot of it is driven by politicians to prove that they are "tough on crime" and there is a tremendous amount of pressure on police to make arrests. Is that for the benefit of the residents of those areas or for politicians to prove that they are tough on crime?

A short little anecdote: When I first started practicing criminal defense law I had the mentality of F-the police and they are the bad guys, etc. I did my own investigations at the time and I remember going to some projects to talk to residents about an incident that had happened involving my client. After talking with a lot of people I rememeber it having a big impact on my views, given that these were parents with children, people just wanting to live in a neighborhood without fear of violence, or people harassing their kids, parents, friends, etc. And they wanted that bad element out and their best hope was police.
That began to really change my perspective - not to the point that it means I think high patrols are necessarily good, but just that it does provide a degree of ambiguity. Perhaps if we were to address those concerns with limited use of the police it would be better? - and that is the hope that results from these protests and calls for defunding police.

 

[UncleTrvlingJim]

A short little anecdote: When I first started practicing criminal defense law I had the mentality of F-the police and they are the bad guys, etc. I did my own investigations at the time and I remember going to some projects to talk to residents about an incident that had happened involving my client. After talking with a lot of people I rememeber it having a big impact on my views, given that these were parents with children, people just wanting to live in a neighborhood without fear of violence, or people harassing their kids, parents, friends, etc. And they wanted that bad element out and their best hope was police.
That began to really change my perspective - not to the point that it means I think high patrols are necessarily good, but just that it does provide a degree of ambiguity. Perhaps if we were to address those concerns with limited use of the police it would be better? - and that is the hope that results from these protests and calls for defunding police.

It's very much a complicated subject. And everything is inter-related - policing policies, use of force policies, implicit bias, historical racism, institutional racism, crime, rehabilitation, education, and so on. I'm not sure you can address one part and expect great results.

I think the discussion and exchanging proposals is a good place to start.

I'm generally of the opinion that high incarceration rates does not prevent crime or preserve law and order. I also don't think it's the police's job to prevent future crime. I also think anytime a cop stops a private citizen it is a temporary (and lawful) suspension of civil rights, and is therefore a situation that can become very tense - so it should be used very sparingly. And then a very strict protocol needs to be followed when a cop is detaining someone.

There seems to be some research that funding community organizations instead of more patrols is more effective at lowering crime rates. I haven't read the paper though.

 

[Farb]

A short little anecdote: When I first started practicing criminal defense law I had the mentality of F-the police and they are the bad guys, etc. I did my own investigations at the time and I remember going to some projects to talk to residents about an incident that had happened involving my client. After talking with a lot of people I rememeber it having a big impact on my views, given that these were parents with children, people just wanting to live in a neighborhood without fear of violence, or people harassing their kids, parents, friends, etc. And they wanted that bad element out and their best hope was police.
That began to really change my perspective - not to the point that it means I think high patrols are necessarily good, but just that it does provide a degree of ambiguity. Perhaps if we were to address those concerns with limited use of the police it would be better? - and that is the hope that results from these protests and calls for defunding police.

It sometimes seems that the criminal element in a community calls for less policing but the residents in that high crime areas, want more police and want active police. Not sure how to bridge the gap but I will tend to always be more sympathetic to the residents than the criminal element.

 

[Tony1Sainstfan]

It would be fun tearing this list apart in another thread, but I'm not commenting on these any further on this thread, and I hope others don't. It would be better to start a separate thread about things you didn't like about Obama. I'm sure you will get plenty of responses to that.

You do understand that I was replying to dtc who asked me to name 5 things that I didn’t like about Obama. I thought it was odd in this thread but I answered his question.

 

[dtc]

You do understand that I was replying to dtc who asked me to name 5 things that I didn’t like about Obama. I thought it was odd in this thread but I answered his question.

And I appreciate it. I also completely agree with him that it's not the time nor the place and I apologize for the derail, but was curious. Another thread perhaps.

 

[Tony1Sainstfan]

And I appreciate it. I also completely agree with him that it's not the time nor the place and I apologize for the derail, but was curious. Another thread perhaps.

Sounds good to me. Let me also apologize to you for the things I said in the first thread to you.

 

[superchuck500]

 

[Tony1Sainstfan]

That whole exchange went really well

 

[DJ1BigTymer]

Gaetz is a joke.

He has consistently shown that he is all about tomfoolery and fake outrage about any legislation that doesn't fit trump's agenda.

 

[V Chip]

Can you show link some studies from non-biased sources that support that NCVS does a poor job or has problems?

Sure. I imagine you wouldn't consider me a "non-biased source" but IMO it should be obvious there are issues with the NCVS/PPCS to any casual observer with a critical eye. It is a survey -- not actual real statistics recorded by police or citizens on each interaction, and that depends on people not only telling the truth about police interactions, but correctly recalling any possible interaction that covers the survey timeframe. Second, it is a household survey, which I would think tends to hamper responses (say, a household with domestic violence, or a household with minors or other members who have a vested interest in hiding the truth about things in front of their whole household, etc.). Third, it's done as a household survey in the field, and leaves out certain people (homeless/itinerants, incarcerated persons or those in detention centers for juveniles, those in hospitals) and until recently was only offered in English. It doesn't seem to take into account that certain people are the target of calls for police, or targeted by profiling or police policy (stop and frisk, broken window policing, etc) much more often than other people, but the responses show these facts. But the biggest to me is that it is making up a "statistic" -- "police interactions" -- that I think is misunderstood and being used to discount actual crime statistics.

But I'm sure you don't want to just hear my take.

https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/area/workshop/leo/leo16_fryer.pdf

The PPCS also has important limitations. First, data on individual’s locations is not available to researchers. Second, the data on contextual factors surrounding the interaction with police or the officer’s characteristics are limited. Third, the survey omits individuals who are currently in jail. Fourth, the PPCS only includes the civilian account of the interaction which could be biased in its own way. In this vein, according to individuals in the PPCS data, only 4.18% of them have resisted arrests and only 11% of civilians argued when they were searched despite not being guilty of carrying alcohol, drugs or weapons.

That same analysis has this quote later on:

Blacks are seventeen percent more likely to incur any use of force, accounting for all variables we can in the data. Hispanics are roughly twelve percent more likely. Both are statistically significant. Asians are slightly less likely, though not distinguishable from whites. These results have two potential takeaways: precincts matter and, accounting for a large and diverse set of control variables, black civilians are still more likely to experience police use of force. Of the 112 variables available in the data, there is no linear combination that fully explains the race coefficients.

9 Synopsis of Potential Errors in the National Crime Victimization Survey | Estimating the Incidence of Rape and Sexual Assault | The National Academies Press

Read chapter 9 Synopsis of Potential Errors in the National Crime Victimization Survey: The Bureau of Justice Statistics' (BJS) National Crime Victimizati...

www.nap.edu

Based on the potential errors in the NCVS discussed in Chapters 7 and 8 and summarized above, the panel identified four major obstacles for accurately estimating incidences of rape and sexual assault.

1. a sample design that is inefficient for measuring these low-incidence events,
2. the context of “crime” that defines the survey,
3. a lack of privacy for respondents in completing the survey, and
4. the use of words with ambiguous meaning for key measures in the questionnaire.
These obstacles form the basis for the panel recommendations in Chapter 10 to create a separate survey to measure rape and sexual assault.
...
Providing a respondent with privacy is an important prerequisite for any survey that deals with sensitive questions. Privacy, specifically from other household members, is critical for accurately responding to inquiries about rape and sexual assault, in part because the victim often knows the offender. In fact, the offender may be a household member. The current NCVS data collection protocols do not provide sufficient privacy (see Conclusion 8-8 in Chapter 8). Some privacy gains would be possible on the NCVS by switching to a self-administered mode of data collection. This switch would be a major change for the survey, and it would likely have both beneficial and detrimental effects on collecting information about other types of criminal victimizations.

Victims - Problems With The Victimization Survey

A shortcoming of the NCVS is that respondents may be inclined to report events that are not criminal, though they believe them to be. This has been particularly true in regard to minor assaults, which rarely capture the attention of law enforcement. Also, series incidents, matters such as spouse abuse, that often have no clearcut beginning or end, frustrate the NCVS since the survey focuses only on discrete events.
[...]
In addition, the NCVS fails to include the experiences of persons not anchored in fixed households, such as the homeless and transients.
[...]
Bias that intrudes into victim surveys is shown by the finding that persons with college degrees typically report more assaults than do persons with only an elementary school education (Gove, Hughes, and Geerken). Since it is likely that members of the latter group actually have been victimized by assaults at least as much and probably much more often than the college-educated group, it is reasonable to believe that behaviors that are regarded as routine and inconsequential by persons in the less well-educated group are taken much more seriously by those with more schooling.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2035/b78fa073c7c18dc7afd36124499ff049c83f.pdf

(This one is from 2018, but has language that indicates it is talking about the PPCS from pre-2015.)

Using the PPCS to estimate uses of force is problematic due to sampling issues, question revisions, and the inconsistent definition and measurement of force and arrest used across the various versions of the survey. The exclusion of non-English speakers (pre 2015), jailed offenders, and other persons not covered in the NCVS with proxy interviews skews the representativeness of the PPCS sample in ways not addressed by the statistical weights. The measurement of police public contacts and subsequent arrests vary substantially across waves of the PPCS further limiting use of the four waves of the PPCS to produce rates of force per police contact or per arrest. Lastly, just as victimization surveys cannot measure homicide, the PPCS cannot measure police use of lethal force.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10572

Every three years, in its Police Public Contact Survey (PPCS), the Bureau of Justice Statistics collects data on citizens’ interactions with police, including police use of force. While the PPCS produces reliable national estimates of police use of force,it is a survey, not a census of all such incidents. The most recent data available are from 2015.

I'd also be interested in links showing that blacks are killed disproportionately per police encounter?

Which would be very hard to do for a couple reasons. The most obvious, the PPCS does not include homicide or lethal force. The second is -- again, IMO -- the "per police encounter" is a made up statistic that doesn't accurately account for situations that would be more likely to result in use-of-force. The PPCS included police encounters such as talking to a neighbor/friend who is a police officer, asking directions, being asked by police after a crime was committed if you happened to notice anything, calling 911 to report a crime, calling about a community watch program, asking if your school can have a McGruff the Crime Dog meeting. An "encounter" doesn't really mean much unless it is police-initiated, and even then it doesn't really show much re: black deaths.

But I can absolutely show you the thing you don't want to see, for some reason. A black person is far more likely to be killed by police than a white person (per capita). That is without question. And for all it's faults, the NCVS shows quite clearly that blacks are targeted more in traffic stops, street stops, and are more likely to have use of force used against them than whites.

When police initiated the contact, blacks (5.2%) were more likely to experience the threat or use of physical force than whites (2.4%)

Blacks (9.8%) were more likely than whites (8.6%) and Hispanics (7.6%) to be the driver in a traffic stop.

A higher percentage of blacks (1.5%) experienced street stops than whites (0.9%) and Hispanics (0.9%)

 

[Ayo]

One of the most tedious things about combating assumptions on social media is the very narrow definitions of police brutality - to killings or shootings - and the use of 'data' as if the numbers create some reality.

As someone who spent a decade in these numbers, it's frustrating. As someone who has worked with and researched and developed research inquiry and taught qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods it can be infuriating.

I'm not even sure where to begin with my objections to the way it's (ab)used in this thread and social media.

So I'll just list a few things and try to keep it brief.

1. It's not just about shootings or killings.

You can point to all of the statistics - relative to population, blacks are shot four times more frequently than whites using 2019 data. The numbers - based on what's available - are about the same for 2020 thus far. But, even that isn't an argument I'd hang my own hat on. It's about harassment. It's about abuses. It's about over-policing. It's about historic, generational mistrust. It's about deception, badgering, and lies. When we talk about 'systemic discrimination' and we *only* talk about shootings, then we're missing the point.

The same goes for taking every police encounter documented and coming up with "only 0.00014% of people are shot, so it's not significant." That's a weak argument, imo. People say, "You are more likely to be struck by lightning than shot by a cop of you are black."

Also dumb.

Lightning won't pull you over. Scare your children. Lock you up. Harass you. Stalk you in a retail store. Expel you from school for the same offense a white kid gets to stay. It's a stupid comparison.

But people use it because it diminishes the actual systemic nature of the oppression.

2. Arrest rates =/= incidence.

People point to stats as some sort of infallible, inarguable entity. They aren't - this is Criminology 101 level stuff. And anytime I see someone make these assumptions, I know I'm not dealing with someone who really knows what they are talking about.

I'll use an example I used before. But I think it effectively highlights my point. If you look at the kids who are locked up, you'll see most of them are black. And most of them are locked up on drug-related charges (this can vary by state according to juvenile treatment laws, so it is a bit of a generalization).

When I was working in Louisiana, more than 80% of the kids locked up in the system were black despite the fact that they make up about a third of the population. Many of them for drugs.

If you look at those arrest or incarceration numbers, you'd come to the conclusion that black kids are more likely to be drug users than white kids, but they aren't. Statistics show that kids - across ethnicities - are about as likely to use as any other. Weed. Prescription drugs. Alcohol. These are the most common.

This was found in a study in California, that showed Black kids were 600% more likely and Hispanic kids 200% more likely to be disciplined, arrested, etc than white kids.

3. Violent Crime stats

Two of the most - likely the two most - common 'violent' acts are sexual assault and domestic abuse. These are also the most underreported. So, when people point to the stat that "Blacks are more violent" we don't have the entire picture.

People will claim "Blacks make up XX% of the population but XX% of arrests." That's problematic, because of point 2 above, as well as the nature of data collection around these crimes that are also violent and also underreported.

Is the actual 'truth' that I am arguing for is that blacks commit a certain % or not - no. I'm saying - we don't really know. So citing this data and using it as some de facto proof of a point is problematic at best.

4. Ignorance of the ghettoization

I see a lot of people talk about crime in the ghettos and how prevalent it is. it's been dropping, but it's still a problem. I would add that you need some context.

For example, population density. If you look at population density in a lot of places that are correlative with poor education, inferior infrastructure, poor healthcare, minimal social supports, poverty, etc then we can predictably discuss some of the things we see.

And this was *done to them.* Now, is there some element of personal accountability? Sure. People will say, "But I know this kid that got out!" and they point to a single example. And they fail to see the very inherent problem of the infrequency of that.

"1 out of 100 kids can get out - so that's proof you can!" is such a weird, bizarre way to frame it.

I would ask, "Then what about the other 99?" But that means we have to examine systems and selves. It's a lot easier for us to point to the one and forget about the rest - and just assume that they are lazy or shiftless or want to fail or whatever.

City planners designed their urban spaces to confine blacks. They were cordoned off in ghettos and the problems that exist in these places are, in large part, the responsibilities of the people that created these strictures. And those of us who turn a blind eye to them.

So if you want to point to 'crime in these communities' you gotta take a step back and consider how it evolved in the first place. Because it has a very clear genealogy.

There's a lot more I want to add, but I realize I've already written a ton, so I'll stop.

Point is, using such narrow, de-contextualized data is very, very problematic. And people seem to put this faith in numbers of being indicative of something that they are *NOT*