I agree we can’t measure racism using a yardstick dipped in bias.

It's worth reflecting on the fact that videos of black people getting shot by cops have a 100% chance of going viral and monopolizing public discussion for days at a time while, for videos that are counter narrative, the odds are basically zero.

Putting race aside, has anyone thought about the unintentional damage we could do by focusing so much emotional energy on these edge cases? This 0.001%?

God help us if we start believing our own narrative.


Levels of policing have tradeoffs. There might be a few 'free lunches' out there - changes we can make which have benefits but no costs - but there can't be that many. Maybe banning choke holds might be one, I don't know. Or eliminating asset forfeiture (which I don't hear anyone talking about these days).

But is society really in a position today to look at this broad issue as a seres of tradeoffs, rather than just a problem of reigning in the police?


Underpolicing has real costs, and that cost is measured in body counts. And they fall disproportionately on the very people that today's protesters are concerned about. Do you see any signs that these city councils are giving that real consideration?

I'm not hopeful.

Right. The insidious part is that intelligent people who believe they are thinking carefully are focusing their careful thought in areas that ignore the tradoffs. It's what is known as magical thinking and it is a symptom of a certain form of privilege.

quote:

Originally posted by jon-nyc:
I agree we can’t measure racism using a yardstick dipped in bias.

It's worth reflecting on the fact that videos of black people getting shot by cops have a 100% chance of going viral and monopolizing public discussion for days at a time while, for videos that are counter narrative, the odds are basically zero.

I have seen viral videos of white people being mistreated. These are also tragic. There is a particularly horrible one involving the Mesa AZ police who shot a white man after he followed their instructions to lie face down on the ground and as he told them he was unarmed and begged them not to hurt him. Google it to hear how nasty the officers were before they shot him.

They are, in my experience, much less frequent.

Remember, the outrage is not only about the black people shot in the back. There are also instances of police losing their minds in non-shooting situations. Google the black family in Phoenix who were mistreated when the young child allegedly shoplifted at a dollar store.

There was also a Stanford study of the Oakland police department showing police officers are more likely to address a white driver as sir and address a black driver as bro or use some other term that indicates less respect.

Black people are treated more harshly in many places across the continuum of types of encounters. That is why people are so upset.

I do get it. For that reason I'm a proponent of taking these protesters seriously, just not literally.


I do think that there's a very high risk that city councils will take the protesters literally, though, and legislate accordingly. I fear those reforms will result in a significant loss of lives, mostly in minority communities.

Re the videos of the white guys - they exist. I've never seen them but I've read about them. John McWhorter described the one you're talking about - apparently that guy even called 911 himself because he has mental issues.

But yeah, we see them less frequently and they certainly don't go viral. We can all name a dozen or so black victims of police misconduct, or we've heard the names even if we can't come up with them ourselves. But none of us can name any of the white victims, despite their being more numerous. I know I can't name any.

But the difference has far more to do with media narrative than police behavior.

It sounds like you don't really think there is any element of racism in the way police officers view or treat black people. Specifically, that police officers on the whole are more likely to use force more often, use force more quickly, and use higher levels of force with black people than white people?

Is that true?

I didn’t say that, I said the opposite of that more than once. It’s lethal force against unarmed suspects (the proximate cause of the protests) where the valence of disproportionality aims toward whites. Other forms of rough handling/violence disproportionately effect black suspects.

It’s not a matter of belief, it’s a matter of paying attention to the data and (crucially) knowing what denominator makes sense for which analysis.

quote:

Originally posted by ShiroKuro:
You (i.e., the police) can't say tasers aren't dangerous, and then use the fact that someone has one as an excuse for escalating to deadly force.

Ran across this today:

quote:

The criminal charges against six Atlanta officers accused of assaulting two protesters on May 30 describe the Taser as "a deadly weapon."

To your point quoted above, SK, *if* the Fulton County prosecutor is consistent then he’ll view the officer as responding to deadly force.

quote:

To your point quoted above, SK, *if* the Fulton County prosecutor is consistent then he’ll view the officer as responding to deadly force.

Oh yeah, I have my eye on this. I think the regular use of tasers is problematic and consistency in these rulings is absolutely crucial.

One of the problems with the higher %-age statistics regarding lethal force against whites is the issue of bias, once again.

The argument can be made that police have a higher threshold when pulling over, questioning, or otherwise detaining a white suspect. In other words, the white suspect has to behave in a clearly criminal fashion before the cops will intervene. The higher threshold for interacting means that the likelihood of bad behavior that might result in lethal force (justified in this example) is higher for whites than for non-whites.

If you are routinely stopping and questioning non-white suspects at a higher rate--your threshold for making the decision to intervene is lower--it stands to reason that many of the events and behaviors that resulted in the police interaction do not warrant lethal force. It's possible that those very same behaviors would not have even resulted in an interaction had the suspect been white.

quote:

Originally posted by Nina:
One of the problems with the higher %-age statistics regarding lethal force against whites is the issue of bias, once again.

The argument can be made that police have a higher threshold when pulling over, questioning, or otherwise detaining a white suspect. In other words, the white suspect has to behave in a clearly criminal fashion before the cops will intervene. The higher threshold for interacting means that the likelihood of bad behavior that might result in lethal force (justified in this example) is higher for whites than for non-whites.

If you are routinely stopping and questioning non-white suspects at a higher rate--your threshold for making the decision to intervene is lower--it stands to reason that many of the events and behaviors that resulted in the police interaction do not warrant lethal force. It's possible that those very same behaviors would not have even resulted in an interaction had the suspect been white.

Right. That's exactly what I meant when I talked about using a yardstick dipped in racism.

Jon, I'm afraid I have to disagree with you on the idea that [paraphrase] whites are disproportionately the victims of unjustified deadly force, whereas non-whites are disproportionately the victims of non-lethal force.

There is a factor that you haven't possibly considered: Racism/implicit bias affects officer threat assessments.

By that, I mean that many people in this country of all races are more likely to be afraid of a black person, to think they are a threat, to think they may be violent. This has been proven in many studies, and it manifests itself all the way down to studies showing that people tend to overestimate the ages of black children (therefore able to see them as more threatening). The way that would play out is if Tamir Rice is 12 and black and playing with a toy gun, the responding officers see him as more of a threat and guess that he is older than if he were a white boy.

quote:

Originally posted by jon-nyc:

quote:

Originally posted by ShiroKuro:
You (i.e., the police) can't say tasers aren't dangerous, and then use the fact that someone has one as an excuse for escalating to deadly force.

Ran across this today:

quote:

The criminal charges against six Atlanta officers accused of assaulting two protesters on May 30 describe the Taser as "a deadly weapon."

To your point quoted above, SK, *if* the Fulton County prosecutor is consistent then he’ll view the officer as responding to deadly force.

Meh.

Could be a mistake by a prosecutor, possibly an inexperienced or sloppy one.

Or it could be that the charging prosecutor is trying to say a taser can be a deadly weapon if used in a particular way, which is true.

Take a baton. A baton is not considered a deadly weapon. But if you strike someone in the head with it as hard as you can, that is considered deadly force. So non-deadly weapons can be used in deadly ways.

Well, if you take a taser and zap someone enough times in quick succession, or if multiple people tase someone at the same time, you can kill them for sure. Maybe that is what happened that the prosecutor is charging as a deadly weapon. I don't know.

In this situation with Brooks, though, where a guy is running and there is no chance he is going to deploy multiple tasers against the pursuing officer, the taser is not a deadly weapon, and Brooks could not possibly use it as an instrument of deadly force.

And if a taser is routinely considered a deadly weapon, then the incidence of police using lethal force will balloon. Are you justified in using lethal force via taser on an obnoxious drunk, for example? The guy had been asked to leave a bar, and refused to go. The police were called, talked to him for a few minutes, watched the guy become more obnoxious and aggressive, so they tasered him. I'm not sure it wasn't warranted under the circumstances, precisely because it wasn't a lethal weapon.

You can't have it both ways.

quote:

Originally posted by Cindysphinx:

Take a baton. A baton is not considered a deadly weapon. But if you strike someone in the head with it as hard as you can, that is considered deadly force. So non-deadly weapons can be used in deadly ways.

Yes.

This reminds me of Lizzie Borden folklore. She's supposed to have been an ax murder. In fact, she murdered her father and stepmother with a hatchet. Neither is considered a deadly weapon. Yet they can certainly be used to kill.