Having said that, a lot of criminal violence happens if you're mixed up in that world or frequenting a bad area as opposed to just random violence. There's something different about police violence where it has that random quality and can affect you anywhere, sometimes just minding your own business.
Plus it's doubly egregious because the police are supposed to protect you, not hurt you. Even before this became an issue, and as a white person, I get nervous with police interactions. You just don't know what kind of mood they're in or how they're interpreting the situation.
It's irrelevant to the real issue, but not to the upthread claim that blacks view police as the greatest threat. In the latter context, it is not irrelevant to point out that such a view does not seem to be in line with the evidence.
If only folks would listen to Black voices, they wouldn't be gumming up the conversation with irrelevance.
White on white crime is also much more prevalent than crime across racial boundaries. A priori you are much more likely to be a victim of crime by someone you know or in your immediate community. Because America is so segregated still, the conclusion follows pretty immediately.
This is, of course, as true as it is irrelevant. Because police can be 1/7th as likely to kill black people as non-police, and that's still far, far too many and a completely different category of murder (because the murderers are rarely punished, and are protected by the power of the state). Even if cops were 1/70th as likely to be the murderer of a black person, it's too many.
Some kinds of death are both avoidable and morally reprehensible for a society to allow or condone.
This page is a good summary of the relevant statistics: https://beehivemedia.com/dataviz/when_police_kill_in_black_a...
As you point out yourself, it doesn't necessarily if you consider the average black person. The average black person is not a gang member, not a criminal and doesn't hang out with those groups. It may very well be that for such a person the police are a bigger risk than criminals. It's simply that the massively higher violence amongst criminals shifts the overall numbers.
Polices are using unnecessarily lethal force indiscriminately for offenses and in situations that don't require in the least. They have been getting positive reinforcement by being not prosecuted and being protected by their force and the system in general.
Also, a number of cases have come out recently of police were disciplined, including dismissals, for reporting or intervening against excessive use of force by other cops, so there is negative reinforcement for good cops as well as positive reinforcement for the bad ones.
"Positive" and "negative" in reinforcement don't mean "good, pleasant, desired" and "bad, unpleasant, not desired". They mean "something was added" and "something was taken away". Better names would be "additive" and "subtractive".
The term for "good, pleasant, desired" is "reinforcement", for "bad, unpleasant, not desired" is punishment.
So:
Positive reinforcement --> Behaviour leads to addition of pleasurable stimulus. Eg. Press button, receive food.
Negative reinforcement --> Behaviour leads to removal of unpleasant stimulus. Eg. Press button, persistent loud noise is muted.
Positive punishment --> Behaviour leads to addition of unpleasant stimulus. Eg. Press button, loud noise begins.
Negative punishment --> Behaviour leads to removal of pleasant stimulus. Eg. Press button, food is taken away.
Yes, the world is not perfect in many ways.
That does not remove the logical fallacy of implying that because police are (wrongly, as you say) a mortal threat to those who resist arrests, therefore police are one of the biggest threats (if not the threat) in an average black persons life. The recent two cases do not offer convincing evidence for the latter (although other cases may do so).
Of course this (particular topic) isn't really a place for arguing for an argument's sake. Rather, it's for showing your compassion.
I don't think they have to be the biggest threat to acknowledge that the police are out of control and above the law. Fix them, or abolish them and recreate them if they can't be fixed.
This issue goes well beyond racism. Blacks feel it the most, but this problem affects everybody. Nobody wants police that can steal from you (civil forfeiture) or assault or even kill you without sufficient reason or consequences.
The US treats its outliers poorly. We have the highest rate of incarceration and a disquieting likelihood of police interactions ending in violence against suspects relative to other countries.
Sometimes, they are police themselves:
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/nyregion/27shoot.html?aut...
Also FYI, in the case of Rayshard Brooks (the victim who took the officer's Taser), the District Attorney said that the Taser "had already been fired twice and was thus empty and no longer a threat". https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-nw-atlanta-ra...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnHecVdUysQ
The officer starts reaching for his gun between seconds 4 and 5, Brooks fires the tazer in second 5 and then is shot at the end of second 6.
And regardless, let's not move the goalposts to consider only the time after Brooks fired the Taser. After all, it's not like that was the first opportunity the officer had to calculate how many shots it had left.
>He made the decision to draw his gun in the first place already knowing
Which is different from the gun being drawn. You can clearly see the officer pass his tazer from his right to left hand and then reach for his gun prior to the tazer shot.
>And regardless, it's not like the moment that Brooks fired the Taser was the first opportunity the officer had to calculate how many shots it had left.
Having a second potentially valid argument doesn't change the accuracy of the one made.
>The NYTimes has a good breakdown: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/14/us/videos-rayshard-brooks....
Perhaps you should read it again since they agree with me:
>In seconds, Officer Rolfe passes his Taser from his right hand to his left hand, and reaches for his handgun.
>While being chased, and in full stride, Mr. Brooks looks behind him, points the Taser
Reaching for a holstered handgun and deciding to draw it are two separate things.
> Having a second potentially valid argument doesn't change the accuracy of the one made.
I'm making exactly one argument: the officer who killed Rayshard Brooks did so knowing that the Taser in his hand was useless. You've yet to offer any evidence to the contrary.
What I actually implied was that I hardly think these two are very good examples of “average” persons, or “average” black persons, which should be taken into consideration in parent's logic.
Especially the 2 minutes after another officer checked for and could not find a pulse.
To evaluate whether or not that is true, we just need two numbers: (1) how many black people a year are killed by the police, and (2) how many black people a year are killed by random criminals.
It's hard to think of a good reason one would narrow #2 to just "black-on-black" crime if the goal is to show that the original statement is wrong.
It's also kind of irrelevant in another sense. People have been working on stopping crime for millennia and are still nowhere near figuring it out.
Police killings are something we might actually be able to do something about, so it makes sense to concentrate on them even if they are not actually the biggest immediate danger to individuals.
The race of the murderer was irrelevant to my point, and the difference between police killing versus getting murdered would have been even more pronounced had I included all murders.
I'm a little confused about your point about stopping crime. Surely it can't be stopped completely, but just as surely, some policies are more effective than others. For instance, ending the war on drugs would likely dry up funding for gangs.
Lack of police accountability and oversight is the problem - regardless of color combinations of the murder and the victim.
The portrayal of black people as prone to violence and incorrigibly dangerous goes beyond fiction and well into the past to the founding of the United States.
For one example, consider the United States' nominal newspaper of record, the New York Times.
Do an internet search using the following terms (no quotes) "NYTimes Giant Negro".
Stereotypes of blacks as intimidating and dangerous go beyond fiction and the end of the Twentieth Century into the domain of "reported facts" and well into the past.
Black people. "Blacks" sounds totally dehumanising.
As a black person, I'm grateful for this feedback. Thank you.
Sure, but pop culture in large part expresses and transmits preexisting stereotypes (and even when it doesn’t, it is perceived through the lens of those stereotypes.)
I'm not saying it's not involved, just that it's not the source.
Urban black communities had (and have) a lot of violence. That's a fact, not a stereotype.
The stereotype is that this is due to the inherently violent, unintelligent, morally inferior nature of Blacks.
You can choose to fear who you want to fear, I guess. But the numbers seem to suggest pretty much everyone should be more concerned about being murdered than being killed by police.
Being killed by police is more of a betrayal, for sure. For that reason it might be worse in some sense. But I'm not sure why that should result in disproportionate fear on the order of 20X.
Also, I should say that it's much harder to pin down how many murders police prevent.
Because if you successfully defend yourself from a murderer you have a rightful plea to self defense.
If you successfully defend yourself from a cop trying to murder you. You will be lucky with life without the possibility of parole. There is an implicit cannot flee cannot fight in an interaction with a law enforcement officer. So pretty much your natural fight or flight is neutralized and that is a hell of a situation to be in.
Society is disquietingly tolerant of murder when the murderer is wearing a badge and executing a suspect "In the line of duty."
If not for the nationwide protests, it is extremely likely the murderers of George Floyd would still be employed by their police departments, forget arrested.
I agree.
But the original post seemed to be saying that it was rational for blacks to be carefree about criminals and afraid of police, which just doesn't seem in line with the data.
And it's also disquieting how little people seem to care about murder victims, who are much more numerous and also disproportionately black (by a greater factor than the disproportionate killings by police). Those black lives matter, too.
Police officers are instantly recognizable. If you're statistically more likely to be harmed by the police than by a regular person then it is completely rational to be concerned when you see one.
It's part of the story, though. The incident in the linked article started because a group of teens jumped another and stole his phone. If that's happening 10x as often then innocent kids in that neighborhood are going to be 10x as likely to be swept up in police action.
https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/126846376828518809...
- "Locking Up Our Own", James Foreman, an analysis by a black attorney discussing black crime, black recidivism and black involvement as attorneys and judges in the criminal justice system
- "In Contempt", Christopher Darden, an autobiography written by one of the attorneys in the OJ Simpson trial where swaths of the book are dedicated to Darner's views and interactions with other attorneys who tackled "black on black crime" in LA during the 90's prior to his time as a District Attorney
- "The Man Not" (the most recent publication in this non-exhaustive list), Tommy Curry, explorations on the victimization of black men by their black guardians, with some focus on sexual abuse and exploitation of their bodies as the lens through which Curry focuses a larger critique
- "Negroland", Margo Jefferson, a memoir of the black elite class of Chicago and ramifications of black success experienced sometimes at the expense of lower-class black Americans, perpetuated sometimes by upper-class black Americans
I'm a bit fatigued by the insinuation that black America is shirking a responsibility to tackle these in-group issues, because it's not as if there's a lack of poignant critical theory emerging from our group on the topic. It's all there and readily available, and the names and reference content I provided here isn't an exhaustive list either.
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Caveat lector: If we agree.
I don't agree with this idea that the statistics of criminality in the black community is a proxy for anything, and more that it is a result of multiple compounding issues that snowballed throughout generations of peoples bringing us to where we are today. In your mind what is this a proxy for? I'd like to hear this notion unpacked.
Those questions are varied and nuanced and their answers are equally varied and nuanced, and against the backdrop of exactly how certain members of the constabulary execute (pun most certainly and deliberately intended) violence in response to violence are people like me trying to desperately point at as this the topic we want to discuss when we say "Black Lives Matter", yet time and time again we have to stop and have the "black people commit more crimes" discussion with people who are focused on the math of crimes committed while black at the expense of just about any other valid variable in the equation.
So if we take the "black people commit more crimes" framework on its face, does that mean they deserve to die for all of them? Did Sandra Bland really need to be shot because she didn't want to put out a cigarette at a traffic stop or could the officer have written her the moving citation she probably actually deserved, and gone about his policing elsewhere?[0] Did Eric Garner need asphyxiation for a civil citation when he was stopped for selling illegal cigarettes? Did George Floyd need to have a knee on his neck for nearly 10 minutes for a counterfeit $20?
I challenge us all to think beyond just "well they committed a crime" and start asking some hard goddamn questions about what we're saying if that's going to be the response to critical theories of criminal justice-because many (not all) of the names commonly shouted out in discussion about police brutality committed petty offenses that should have received citations but instead received death sentences; highlighting a severely disproportionate view of policing scofflaws that breaks "well they broke the law" down into "contempt of cop"[1].
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[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/07/2...
Criminality, like I said.
I don't see anywhere in your post where you actually addressed the point I made. Again, that is if Black people commit X times as many crimes we should expect X times as many negative police interactions. Whether that be excessive violence or innocents being swept up in police action or anything else.
From this, allow me to make my position more clear:
No, we shouldn't "expect" an increase in police violence in response to black criminality, because it assumes violence is the appropriate and proportionate State response to deviant criminal behavior when often it is neither appropriate nor proportionate nor even necessary. Again, Sandra Bland: died during a traffic stop; George Floyd and Eric Garner died during Terry[0] stops. Breonna Taylor died while she was asleep. Cite for me the case law that admonishes an escalation of physical force to issue civil citations and I will consider the point earnestly and openly.
Furthermore, we need to narrow the scope and find an actionable definition for "officer safety" as many LEOs use as a defense against misconduct charges.
Resisting arrest should not be a death sentence, officers should be trained better and dealt with far more swiftly (it took nearly three months for an officer who blind-fired into Breonna Taylor's house to even be disciplined by his precinct and still has not faced charges[1]). If I blind fired my weapon onto the streets and bullets went into someone's home, I'd be arrested and charged. If I blind fired my weapon unprovoked as a member of the armed services, as I formerly was, I'd be court marshaled faster than the SR-71 can fly for failure to follow rules of engagement.
Public peace officers shouldn't be held to any lesser of a standard.
Your premise is therefore addressed, but rejected on merits.
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[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_stop
[1] https://blavity.com/officer-brett-hankison-will-be-fired-fro...
I understand the concepts well, I just disagree with the premise as you've framed it, and I'd like to think I've done as much without making any insinuations about your intellect or ability to comprehend them or resorting any other form of red-herring personal attack.
Let's do better.
Why do you consider it okay for police to stop and harass innocent people with no evidence simply because they live in a certain neighborhood?
Bring up racism and police brutality though and people strongly deny it's a problem.
Everything else is beneath notice of the wider society. It's talked about, but no one outside of the community is listening. Which is fine, except when they base their response to the issues on which they do pay a little attention to assumption that what they aren't hearing on other issues is because it's not being talked about.