[Pants-of-dog]

If anyone wants to look at the section of the cited paper where they speculate on which interactions are limited, please go to section 6.

It is titled Potential Mechanisms. The word “potential” clearly indicates that these are possible reasons for the lack of policing. In this section, they describe how interactions decrease but give no indication if this is all interactions or if brutal interactions declined first. They simply do not measure that.

Section begins at the bottom of page 24 of the PDF for those who wish to verify by reading the actual study.

[wat0n]

If anyone wants to look at the section of the cited paper where they speculate on which interactions are limited, please go to section 6.

It is titled Potential Mechanisms. The word “potential” clearly indicates that these are possible reasons for the lack of policing. In this section, they describe how interactions decrease but give no indication if this is all interactions or if brutal interactions declined first. They simply do not measure that.

Section begins at the bottom of page 24 of the PDF for those who wish to verify by reading the actual study.

As an example police interactions in Chicago decreased by a whopping 90% the month after the murder of Laquan McDonald. It makes more sense to conclude cops simply stopped performing their jobs than assuming they were all that selective about how they went about it. Possibly, they remained in the safest/richest neighborhoods and virtually stopped showing up in the more dangerous/poorer ones (because, yes, income has a lot to do with this. Let's not fool ourselves here).

And yes, your logical assumption (which I actually agree with) is just that, an assumption.

[Pants-of-dog]

Cops in the US apparently decide to not do their job at all if they are caught shooting unarmed black people and it is publicised.

Is that the argument?

[wat0n]

Yes, that's what research would suggest at least.

[MadMonk]

Cops in the US apparently decide to not do their job at all if they are caught shooting unarmed black people and it is publicised.

Is that the argument?

Well, right or wrong, the argument would be that police avoid areas were they belive a violent altercation would be more likely to happen and any violent altercation would either leave them dead, wounded or be painted as the villain.

That is the argument. They are afraid. They have been the biggest, baddest gang on the block for so long, they can't handle possibly being the bad guys.

[Julian658]

Please note that the cited paper does not say that all police interactions are reduced. In fact, it only speculates about which police interactions are reduced.

Since the cause is apparently media scrutiny of police brutality, it is logical to assume that police are self limiting their most brutal behaviours first.

Having said that, there is obviously a problem with policing in the USA if cops stop doing their job every time the media or public openly monitor the police.

POD

The large cities of America have a lot of violent crime. Being a cop in some areas is not an easy job.
Did you see the man kicking the head of a woman like a football even though the cop was there standing in front of him with gun in hand? Who in the world does that? How come the woman with knife in hand tried to stab the other lady when the cop was there?

I suspect these people go into full primitive brain mode (limbic system) when they are in rage mode or stressed. I suspect the cops also go into full primitive brain and shoot.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is a calm astrophysicist with a soothing voice. Whenever he is stoped by the police he is calm and cordial and never has trouble. I am not trying to excuse the behavior of cops with violent people, but lets's face it, the cops are also stressed.

POD

You once again avoid answering simple questions:

If you are the cop: Do you shoot the woman with knife in hand? Yes or no?

[Julian658]

Well, right or wrong, the argument would be that police avoid areas were they belive a violent altercation would be more likely to happen and any violent altercation would either leave them dead, wounded or be painted as the villain.

That is the argument. They are afraid. They have been the biggest, baddest gang on the block for so long, they can't handle possibly being the bad guys.

I have to add that the morale of the cops in the USA is very low. This is sad because most cops are actually good. However, they are tarnished by the actions of the few and the last thing they want is to be involved in a situation where they may have to pull a gun.

[late]

In the 1800s, if you were a Black dad, and a White guy shot one of your kids for the fun of it... and you reported him to the police... you would be the one arrested, charged, convicted and possibly sent to jail.

The reason Arthur Conan Doyle wrote Sherlock Holmes was because he hoped for a future in which police not only concentrated on stopping crime, they would be good at it. This is not at all the way it was back then.

At heart, this is a fight between Old School policing, and the New School which is professionals fighting crime.

Over the years, things have gotten better. But we still have a long ways to go.

[Julian658]

At heart, this is a fight between Old School policing, and the New School which is professionals fighting crime.

Over the years, things have gotten better. But we still have a long ways to go.

Thank you for the part in bold. It has been frustrating to see people that are stuck in the past. Fighting racism in this era is a new ball game that requires a new paradigm.

[late]

Thank you for the part in bold. It has been frustrating to see people that are stuck in the past. Fighting racism in this era is a new ball game that requires a new paradigm.

Which Dems are already using...

[Pants-of-dog]

Mr. Floyd’s killer had an easy job.

He was able to kill Mr. Floyd without even taking his sunglasses off his head or breaking a sweat. Nor was he in any danger.

So the argument that cops kill people because their job is hard or that cops are in danger is questionable.

[Julian658]

Which Dems are already using...

Nope, that strategy suggests we are still in the 19th century. There is no acknowledgement of improvement. Furthermore, no one talks about the issue of self responsibility. As i said above: Why was a man kicking the head of a woman on the ground while there was a cop in front of him with a gun in hand? Why did a child got shot yet once again this last weekend in DC? Please do not cry racism because I mention facts.

Why is the new anti-racism philosophy becoming a religion? How come not being racist is not good enough? This gestapo tactics are not the way to go.

[Julian658]

Mr. Floyd’s killer had an easy job.

He was able to kill Mr. Floyd without even taking his sunglasses off his head or breaking a sweat. Nor was he in any danger.

So the argument that cops kill people because their job is hard or that cops are in danger is questionable.

POD
AN anecdote is not evidence.
Furthermore, no one denies we have a police problem. In fact they kill more whites than blacks.

[Wellsy]

POD
AN anecdote is not evidence.
Furthermore, no one denies we have a police problem. In fact they kill more whites than blacks.

There is interesting research which relates demographics of race to the proxy of class based on neighborhoods which better captures how whites who are poor are shot at a significant rate based on that fact while blacks being shot isn’t fully accounted for by their economic class.
https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2020/06/23/class-and-racial-inequalities-in-police-killings/
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/06/police-killings-black-white-poverty

Feldman found that “the rate of police killings increased as census tract poverty increased,” with the level of police killings in the highest-poverty quintile more than three times that of the lowest-poverty quintile. In layman’s terms, you’re overall more likely to be killed by a police officer if you’re working-class or poor. Given this country’s long and continuing history of intense racial oppression, it’s little surprise that black and Latino people are more likely to live in high-poverty areas than white people: Feldman observes that “median census tract poverty was 9.4% for whites compared to 18.7% for black and 16.8% of Latino individuals.”

The paper then examines the relationship between poverty quintile and police killings across racial demographics. What Feldman finds is notable: the correlation between poverty and susceptibility to fatal police violence that exists for white people is much stronger than for black and Latino people. In other words, white people who live in the poorest neighborhoods are at high risk of getting killed by a police officer, but black people are at high risk everywhere.

Feldman concludes by entertaining “a counterfactual scenario in which the distribution of poverty quintiles among black people is equal to that of whites” and found that black people would still be killed by police at much higher rates than white people. The same was not true for Latinos according to his analysis — if they had roughly the same wealth distribution as whites, the rates of death by police would look similar.

We can extrapolate two things from this study. First, a lot of white Americans are killed by police, and class plays a major role in determining which white people are at risk of fatal police violence. Second, while class also accounts in large part for people of color’s susceptibility to fatal police violence, it doesn’t account for the massively disproportionate rates of police killings of black people in particular — only 28 percent.

So in absolute numbers yeah whites are killed more but the significance of such a fact is left unexplained in your point as can just easily retort that the majority of Americans are considered white. The point to emphasize is whether there is a significant disparity when one makes comparisons and a raw or absolute number isn’t very controlled for to make such a comparison.

[Pants-of-dog]

POD
AN anecdote is not evidence.

You should tell that to the guy who keeps asking je about some video of a stabbing.

My anecdote, however, is about the thread topic. So you seem to be agreeing that the danger and difficulty of the job does not apply in the case of the murder of Mr. Floyd.

Furthermore, no one denies we have a police problem. In fact they kill more whites than blacks.

Many people deny it. For example, many right wing news sources portray criticism of police as “being anti-police”.

Unfortunately, very few of those of us who criticise the police are actually anti-police.

[late]

Nope, that strategy suggests we are still in the 19th century.

That was pure fiction.

[Saeko]

If you were the cop: Would you allow the stabbing?

If my only choices are shooting the stabby girl or let her stab the other one, then I wouldn't shoot. What's the argument here?

[Julian658]

If my only choices are shooting the stabby girl or let her stab the other one, then I wouldn't shoot. What's the argument here?

I originally ask POD the same question and he could not answer. I am not sure I could shoot her. Perhaps I would have tackled her. Or shoot a couple of shots to the sky. I shoot firearms at the range and that is not an easy shot.

[Julian658]

There is interesting research which relates demographics of race to the proxy of class based on neighborhoods which better captures how whites who are poor are shot at a significant rate based on that fact while blacks being shot isn’t fully accounted for by their economic class.
https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2020/06/23/class-and-racial-inequalities-in-police-killings/
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/06/police-killings-black-white-poverty

So in absolute numbers yeah whites are killed more but the significance of such a fact is left unexplained in your point as can just easily retort that the majority of Americans are considered white. The point to emphasize is whether there is a significant disparity when one makes comparisons and a raw or absolute number isn’t very controlled for to make such a comparison.

It was not my intention to prove absence of racism when I stated more whites get killed than blacks. I stated that because many people do not know that whites also get shot . A lot of uninformed people somehow assume that it is mostly black people getting shot by the police. The media and black leaders "stay mum" about the subject because they like to stoke racism to get ratings and to get elected to office.

Many crimes are more common among the poor and hence the poor come in contact with the police more often. However, it is not only poverty what increases the chances of being shot by the police. These issues are almost never univariate. Your researcher assumes that black and white poverty are the same and hence any difference in the rate of killings among the poor must be due to racism. I am not trying to deny racism, but black and white poverty are not the same. There are many other variables that were ignored. Let me give you an example: ON the average women earn less than men. Most assume is this is due to sexism. That would be a simplistic univariate analysis. However, the difference in pay is multifactorial and difference in gender is one among many reasons why women earn less than men.

I believe the overwhelming majority of these shootings are related to very poor outdated police training and the fact that America is so violent that the cops themselves are running scared. I am always puzzled as to why some black people put up a fight during arrest. In which planet do they live? One would think a black (or whatever color) person should know by now that it is best to be cooperative with cops. Neil DeGrass Tyson, the famous physicists knows this and is very calm and polite when in contact with the police. If I am stopped by a cop I am incredibly polite, it works every time. I think there is a lot of PTSD in black America regarding the police. This causes the limbic system to take over and at that point there is no reasoning. It is nothing but "fight or flight". And to make matters worse the cops are also in panic mode. The decision to shoot happens in an instant.

A Harvard professor Roland G. Fryer, Jr. published a study on police brutality: He found out that blacks and Hispanics are brutalized much more often than whites------------yes there is racism. However, he found no racial differences with regards to shootings. By the way Roland G. Fryer, Jr is a black gentleman.

An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force (abstract)

This paper explores racial differences in police use of force. On non-lethal uses of force, blacks and Hispanics are more than fifty percent more likely to experience some form of force in interactions with police. Adding controls that account for important context and civilian behavior reduces, but cannot fully explain, these disparities. On the most extreme use of force –officer-involved shootings – we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account. We argue that the patterns in the data are consistent with a model in which police officers are utility maximizers, a fraction of which have a preference for discrimination, who incur relatively high expected costs of officer-involved shootings.

Citation:
Roland G. Fryer J. An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force. Journal of Political Economy. Forthcoming.
https://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publi ... -use-force


In conclusion, on a proportional basis with regards to population blacks get shot more often. However, blacks come in contact with cops more often for a large variety of reasons and poverty is but one among many.

[Drlee]

@Julian658

In conclusion, on a proportional basis with regards to population blacks get shot more often. However, blacks come in contact with cops more often for a large variety of reasons and poverty is but one among many.

What are the others?