Commit, yes. For serious crimes like murder and A & B there's a victim.

The causes are irrelevant from the standpoint of police officers. Cops have to deal with the situation in which they find themselves.

That's assuming there's an officer involved at all. I also didn't have a specific definition of "serious crimes" in mind, whether it would only include violent crimes or also non-violent ones like burglary or fraud (of significant value).

By "serious" I meant violent. The statistics line up for non-violent crimes, too, but cops don't get amped up when they arrest shoplifters, and I thought I would preempt the whole "but cops don't arrest white people for drugs" line of argument.

Okay. I return to my earlier point, "black people commit more serious crimes" suggests there's a genetic or cultural explanation while economic status is likely more relevant; i.e. poor people commit more serious crimes.

I don't understand the relationships between SES, culture, and crime, but I'm baffled that we pretend that veneration of gang life in inner city communities can't possibly factor into the equation even in a small way. To head off the stupid "white people listen to rap too!" false equivalence, crime worship can't be reduced to music selection, it's (by definition of "worship") a way of life. I guess I don't think we should rule out a cultural cause; it's not like we need to say "every black person worships criminals" or "no white people worship criminals"--if culture plays a role, I hope we can be mature enough to recognize that it's not a binary proposition, and can engage it earnestly and compassionately.

>I return to my earlier point, "black people commit more serious crimes" suggests there's a genetic or cultural explanation...

Does it? Not that I can see, particularly in response to the assertion black people are shot disproportionately by police.

As I understand it, there's no real question about whether or not black Americans commit more crime than other races (the data are all consistent, including that collected from victims and witnesses), but SES alone doesn't explain the gap IIRC. I suspect it has to do with the relative concentration of poverty, but that's just a hunch and I doubt it's all down to one simple factor anyway.