The point of the search is to find contraband. The relavant fact is that the police are more likely to search a black person even though the search is less likely to find anything.
Contraband is only found after the search, thus unless you believe the cops are time travelling, it cannot possibly play a causal role in whom they search.
Searches are determined/caused only by the factors that precede the actual search, which are all the ones I listed and which you (and the report) ignore, and which together could easily account for double search rates.
Cops might factor prior prob of finding something into a current situation,
But the prior prob of finding something is lower for the group that is searched at a higher rate.
Yes, and that is why I pointed this out, because I actually care about honestly rational discourse, so I acknowledge relevant facts that are not consistent with my overall argument. But at most this prior probability would play a tiny role compared to all the other immediate factors I mentioned and you have ignored as though they do not impact search probability.
but to the extent that found contraband is relevant, the particular type of contraband is more relevant. Most contraband is of the "half joint in ashtray" sort that cops don't care that much about, and that is the sort of which whites had more of. IIRC, from the prior report, blacks were more likely to have illegal weapons and evidence of drug trafficking.
If your recollection is true, does that justify searching blacks at nearly double the rate of whites even though the probably of finding something illegal is 26% less?
I don't know exactly how much that factor alone would matter, but it could easily counter the overall higher prob of finding minor drug use contraband among whites, making that whole statistic a "wash" and not relevant either way. Moreover, I gave you many other factors that together might easily account for the double rates of search. Bear in mind that even just prior convictions alone are 2-5 times more common among blacks, nationally, and similar rates for outstanding warrants.
Is this criterion not race-based? i.e. Cops believe that they have reasonable suspicion to search blacks because they percieve that the black that is stopped is more likely to have a weapon even if the end result is that a lot of innocent blacks are needlessly bothered/harrassed? If I was a law abiding black person I'd tend to hate the knuckleheads that happen to share my pigment but I'd also hate the cops that treat me like those knuckleheads. You can see how the cops behavior might create some animosity in such a situation.
First, remember that I gave you a list of many factors that are driver-specific that would lead to different search rates, and you ignored all of them.
Second, remember that this one factor of "probability of finding contraband based on prior found contraband" is your statistic that you (and the report) present as meaningful, and it can only be relevant if you think/expect that cops are using prior success rates to decide to search. That said, yes, it is race-based profiling to consider prior found contraband as relevant to future searches, whether they use the overall 26% less likely that you think should matter, or the % more likely to have weapons I referred to. With that stat, all I am saying is that if you want to figure the 26% less likely into how you think non-racists searches should look, then you have to factor in the higher rates of weapons as well. If you want the cops to ignore all of that, then great. That means your stat is irrelevant and what matters are all the differences in the factors I listed and you are ignoring.
