It's sad to see people trying to rationalize denial or obstruction of this issue, for example by throwing up endless questions using words like "correlation". You can always ask more questions but that really doesn't contribute, it only obstructs. I've never seen a serious assessment that doubts the general idea, that there is racism in law enforcement.
Police are in fact less likely to kill blacks than whites. Perhaps in absolute terms, but definitely when you factor in the varying behavior patterns of the two groups.
But also adjusted to take into account the racial breakdown in violent crime, the data actually show that police are less likely to kill black suspects than white ones.
"If one adjusts for the racial disparity in the homicide rate or the rate at which police are feloniously killed, whites are actually more likely to be killed by police than blacks," wrote Moskos. "Adjusted for the homicide rate, whites are 1.7 times more likely than blacks (to) die at the hands of police. Adjusted for the racial disparity at which police are feloniously killed, whites are 1.3 times more likely than blacks to die at the hands of police."
> This is likely the result of what is known as the "filter bubble."
Probably it's not useful to say things you have no idea about, such as to speculate on the experiences of people you don't know at all, such as me.
The details of course will be complex, but one study on one statistic (by an associate professor at CUNY reported on a partisan political site) doesn't challenge the phenomenon of racial discrimination by law enforcement and in our justice system, both of which are very well documeented.
>It's sad to see people trying to rationalize denial or obstruction of this issue, for example by throwing up endless questions
(I'm commenting on these issues in general, not necessarily this specific report)
It's not sad. It's understandable.
It's problematic that we're at a point where we predicate what should be objective discourse on emotion, rather than facts and observations.
There are those, such as yourself who we can charitably assume, mean well.
But on the other hand you have things like Ferguson, Mo. hijacking countless cognitive cycles, where from all the evidence it is clear that any sort of grave injustice was essentially invented out of whole cloth.
Then you have a seemingly constant drum beat of news reports of so-called 'hate crimes' that turn out to be hoaxes.[0]
All this is occurring in an environment of constant policing of the "facts that must not be named," which is that there are groups in the US that commit violent crimes at a rate that is widely disproportionate to the country as a whole. Those groups aren't poor whites, or rich whites.
People's skepticism and questions are quite understandable.
[0] http://fakehatecrimes.org/
What's interesting about these so-called hoaxes, is that they themselves are hate crimes. For example if a hoaxer invents a scenario where a white commits a 'hate-crime,' the hoaxer them self is committing a hate crime against whites by portraying whites as a whole in a despicable false light.
Racism is a product of its environment and culture. In a dangerous Black environment where crime rate are very high, and in a Black culture that embrace gangs and thugs and violence, cops have to be cautous against Blacks. And this bias leads to racism.
To solve this problem requires a culture and value change from the Black community.
The historical fact is that discrimination against black people (and many other people), including slavery, lynching, segregation, etc., long predates any of this.
> Black culture that embrace gangs and thugs and violence
What do you know about it? It's a little absurd to attach one static 'culture' to all black-skinned Americans, but despite what you see on TV that's not the 'culture' for most people as I know it personally. If you want to characterize it by data, it would be the exposion of education and social mobility to the middle class since black Americans obtained civil rights.
>The historical fact is that discrimination against black people (and many other people), including slavery, lynching, segregation, etc., long predates any of this.
Racism in those era, are again, a product of its environment at those time. For example, slavery.
>It's a little absurd to attach one static 'culture' to all black-skinned Americans
Now, you're speaking in absolute. And it's not good to speak in absolute.
>...but despite what you see on TV that's not the 'culture' for most people as I know it personally.
Cops are not worry about those good Black people. Cops are worry about the gang bangers, the thugs, the criminals. When cops pull these types of people over, they have to be cautious. These are the types that carried, illegally. Cops need to be careful when dealing with these, and hence, that's where the biased comes from. It did not come from nothing. It comes from the fact that their lives could end.
>If you want to characterize it by data, it would be the exposion of education...
Agreed. That's why I said it can only be solved through a change in values and culture from the Black community. Education must be emphasis. Kids must stop dropping out. Kids must go to school and learn the necessary skills required to get a jobs.
>...and social mobility to the middle class since black Americans obtained civil rights.
Getting a great job is the thing that will help Black move into the middle class. Again, the values and culture of the Black community must change to emphasis on getting a better job in order to move up into the middle class. And away from the ghetto. As the ghetttos disappeared or changed into higher claass, cops become more trusting as the crime rates goes down, and that will reduce the racism.
Why now and why in Chicago are political institutions saying these things? Most people have known about theses problems all over the country and for decades. I watched a the history of the issue and the same issues were being examined one commission after another going back, IIRC, to the 1920s. The report says the problems have gone on for decades.
My guess is that it is due to political pressure. IMHO most corruption and injustice happens because there is no pressure on political leaders to fix it, while they face a lot of pressure from vested interests (the police, prosecutors, etc.). On most issues, the public pays no attention and if they do, it's only for a short time. As they say, 'all that is needed for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing'.
But still, why now and why in Chicago would this kind of political pressure finally arise?
(And it remains to be seen if anything changes, which I would guess depends on whether the pressure can be sustained.)
Externally, there have been several federal investigations of.local agencies (notably, Ferguson, which also came with an enforcement effort resulting in a consent decree); that's actually probably a big part of the reason for Chicago to do, and be seen doing, it's own internal effort.
Major edit: I was wrong. I've read parts of the report quoted around other places on the internet and now see that it does in fact give large substantiation to arguments of police being racists. Primarily the statistics having to do with situations that do not involve an arrest because of no wrongdoing found are really irritating.
I haven't read the report. But what can the report possibly say that will survive the "black people commit disproportionately more crime" argument? This is the argument we need to figure out how to combat. No cop is ever going to admit he did something because he's a racist, and that's really the only way to find out if one is racist or not; isn't it?
> what can the report possibly say that proves there is racism?
Systematic racism isn't a novel idea that has been impossible to substantiate, but a widespread, well-documented phenomenon in many different circumstances. Was there systematic racism when blacks weren't allowed in many restaurants and hotels? What if all black prisoners are treated one way and whites another?
EDIT: I think my response addresses your updated comment.
And not just disproportion, there will also be more direct evidence of racist intent as well as disproportionate impact, if the model of Ferguson is repeated.
I'm asking that data be consulted to test whether the assumptions and assertions being made are accurate.
As to the rest of your comment, they're words, grammatically correct. But they make zero sense, both in context of this discussion, and in the sequence you've presented them.
The "sun rising" isn't real, it's an artifact of the rotation of the earth.
And the 'what if' of it not occurring isn't 'real' because all historical evidence shows that your hypothetical of the sun 'not rising' on April 14, 2016 has virtually zero chance of occurring.
That's not how statistics works. If 1% of blacks and 1% of non-blacks should be arrested (both rates equal) and 72% of stops are for blacks, then 72% of arrests will be for blacks.
The validity of anything headed by rahm Emmanuel in Chicago should really be questioned. The same mayor who covered up the murder of an unarmed black male during his reelection, is now leading a team to prove systemic racism in Chicago. Where is the accountability for this guy. No one should be able to champion both sides.
Have we ruled out the possibility that African-Americans disproportionately engage in the actions we consider an acceptable reason for deadly force (aiming a gun at, charging towards, etc. police officers)?
Yet another claim of racism with the assumption that races and cultures behave the same way. BLACKS commit MORE crime per capita than whites or asians. And that's not just the United States. Check the prison populations in other countries. And the criminals make it hard for the innocent to get the presumption of innocence for even the most mundane situations. Many many many examples come to mind.
What people want to call systemic racism are patterns revealing the best truths that policeman can go by, which is experience of reality in their domain. Yes there are bad cops, however there's one more thing you MUST account for when you try to understand why blacks might be treated differently than whites in neighborhods. Different cultures, different types of people will respond differently to deterrents. So police may find that the harder they are during encounters with some types of people means they keep the peace better. And with others, a different approach is what makes more sense.
A big problem is people read this, they're gonna want citations or they'll just say I'm being racist. Thing is, I don't take any kind of pleasure in these facts. I find it pretty depressing. If you want citations, here's a thought, go on about 3 or 4 ride-alongs with cops in areas of varied populations. It will open your eyes. That's the way to know reality. Be there in it.
Promises of ambiguous reform are simply the system placating and preserving the status quo.
The fundamental problem isn't racism - it is the lack of justice in every individual case. If police officers were actually held accountable for their improper actions (civil and criminal liability for false imprisonment, battery, lost time, etc), the racist thoughts of individual cops would not matter as much.
> Racism isn't the fundamental problem - it is the lack of justice in each individual case. If police officers were actually held accountable for their improper actions (civil and criminal liability for false imprisonment, battery, lost time, etc), the racism of individual cops would hardly matter as much.
This is not realistic; we can't monitor and hold accountable all police actions. We can't even do it when there is widespread evidence of abuse.
Racism is the fundemetal cause of many of these problems; until that's dealt with, they will just keep coming back.
Your argument is similar to saying "We can't monitor and hold accountable all people's actions."
Enforcement of all crime is based on post-facto complaints. We just need to stop giving cops a free pass to break the law, and stop the justice system exporting its externalities onto innocent people in a weird reverse-lottery.
> Your argument is similar to saying "We can't monitor and hold accountable all people's actions."
Do you disagree with that? Think of it like quality in engineering: We can't do it effectively by detecting problems post-facto and fixing them (and in engineering our ability to detect them is far greater than in human behavior); quality must be built in.
We couldn't arrest our way out of the drug problem, we couldn't kill/capture our way out of terrorism - these aren't solutions, but partial remediation of failed policies. We need to address the root of problems.
So, instead of arresting people for murder we should attempt to audit their thoughts preemptively? That's the general problem they're pretending to tackle.
I mean at some level, how can a cop be disqualified by having private racist thoughts? They're even likely to pick up such thoughts from the job itself.
But then how do you determine whether those thoughts influenced a specific action or not? This is the ultimate problem with all attempts to police thoughtcrime - you're effectively past the demarc point, with ambiguous enforcement that just ends up eroding respect for the rule of law ("haha Joe the idiot got written up by the racism inquisitor again").
You're essentially saying "we can't arrest our way out of the murder problem". The Scandinavian approach of rehabilitation does make a lot of sense - the sheer majority of murders are prevented via societal values. But the ultimate check is still that criminals are arrested and punished. This feedback loop has been broken for police themselves, which has allowed their culture to degrade into absolute shit.
I like hackuser's analogy of "Building quality into the process" vs. playing whack-a-bug.
I don't have any idea how to fix the process but here's some stories that we can throw in the backlog:
- As a homeless individual, I'd like stable shelter
- As a low income individual, I'd like higher quality housing opportunities
- As a mentally ill individual, I'd like support and treatment to manage my illness
- As an unemployed individual, I'd like a job where I can earn enough income to support myself and family
- As a member of a victimized population, I'd like my peers to refrain from perpetuating a cycle of violence among ourselves
- As a parent with limited means, I'd like my child to attend a high quality school
- As a working parent with limited means, I'd like quality child care
- As an hourly wage-earner, I'd like consistent full time hours so I can better plan my schedule, finances, and future
- As a working individual, I'd like affordable, reliable, and timely transportation options to travel between my home, work, and school
It's a good analogy, but the general push for engineering quality comes from larger feedback cycles (say root cause analysis, or even economics itself). The "omg racists" take on this topic is hoping that checking the schematics more will guarantee a good outcome.
FWIW user stories inherently passivize the user. The thinking that makes sense for a singularly-designed product most likely does not work for decentrally-emergent society.
Silliness? I'm talking about something quite fundamental - to get desired behavior, should we punish actions or control ideology?
I assert that the latter is the path to madness. It should not really matter whether individual cops are racist or not, iff they're actually subject to the law they purport to uphold. I cannot kidnap someone for four hours, say I'm "dropping charges", and then consider the matter closed.
The police/justice system insist that while they've created a culture that did something very bad (racism), they'll promise to reform internally. But if this were possible, then how did it get to this point? And is the reform we want really just getting the "correct" number of white people unjustly hassled and arrested?
You can't fix policing without aligning incentives - as I said, stop externalizing the collateral damage from policing by a low-probability reverse lottery. In a just society, we would expect to see underemployed people insulting cops while smoking oregano, hoping to get incorrectly arrested and earn money for their wasted time.
Another problem is people will simply lie about it in an encounter. How can justice be served when lies were told? And every lie told means the people telling the truth have a harder time. It's the "dindu nuffin" phenomenon. Holds true for false rape claims and really everything like that. It hurts the real victims more than anything. And if you're wondering if people will lie about encounters with the police, plenty of examples. A MASSIVE one that destroyed a town was Dorian Johnson, the friend of Michael Brown. He lied and that a huge catalyst of the ferguson firestorm. Later on he recanted because well forensics and other, more credible witness testimony.
If you want to believe Dorian Johnson, Michael Brown and he were just skipping along from market talking about Jesus when the cop grabbed Michael Brown from the inside of the car, then got out, and shot Michael in the head when his hands were up (or running away)
At what point did anyone expect people to be honest? That's not how our system of justice works. Police and prosecutors lie too; the question is how to build a justice systems for people, not one for saints. If everyone was honest, we wouldn't need judges and juries (heck, we wouldn't have crime).
Do you know any cops? Because you'll find they are a hell of a lot more honest per capita than the people on the street, especially in the case of moving violations, stops, criminal investigations. Most of them are MUCH more saintly. Which is why they get the benefit. it goes both ways. Lying criminals make the innocent bystander more vulnerable, and the reputation of the majority of great cops add layers of protection for the bad ones that don't deserve it. It's gonna go down like that as long as there are humans living and humans policing.
For a long time, you've been using Hacker News primarily for political talking points and ideological rants. That's an abuse of this site. HN is for thoughtful discussion, not rote flamewars in which every position is predetermined.
If you want to use HN the way it's intended, that'd be great. But if you keep violating that, we're going to ban you.
> they are a hell of a lot more honest per capita than the people on the street
My experience is that police are people much like others, including "people on the street" (who does that refer to?). Like everyone, most generally are honest but when they are under stress or have something at stake, especially the approval or loyalty of their peers, they often will pursue other priorities. For example, what is the difference between 'don't snitch' and the 'Thin Blue Line'?
I think a great challenge for police is this expectation that they are superhuman: That they will manage dangerous, stressful situations day after day, year after year, with equinamity and without it taking a huge toll. That they are knights in shining armor who will charge at the bad guys without fear or PTSD. That they have supernatural integrity and the massive systemic problems that clearly affect police throughout the U.S. somehow won't affect them.
Whoever is reading this, if you were a cop - working in a toxic organization with highly toxic customers (criminals), dealing daily with situations so bad they had to call the police (how many times have you been in situations like that in your life?) - you'd probably behave similarly to the rest.
Our criminal justice system is based on "beyond a reasonable doubt", not "preponderance of the evidence". So the relative amount of lying by cops versus suspects should hardly matter.
It's this kind of erosion of the rule of law that has directly caused our current situation. Cops have ostracized themselves from their communities by enforcing top-down social engineering (eg drug criminalization), and then further compounded that resentment by doubling down into a combative us-vs-them mentality.
I've no doubt that most cops are good people, but they need to start policing the criminals in their ranks rather than defending them.
