Poll: 1 in 5 blacks report 'unfair' dealings with police in last month

[Nice Squirrel]

http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/29/us/criminal-justice-racism-cnn-kff-poll/index.html

Terms such as "driving while black" and "walking while black" have been coined, with studies showing that blacks are pulled over, questioned or arrested by police at a disproportionately higher rate than white Americans.

A new poll by CNN and the Kaiser Family Foundation gets to the heart of how prevalent these types of experiences are: 1 out of 5 African-Americans said they were treated unfairly because of their race in dealings with the police in the past 30 days. By comparison, only 3% of whites said they'd been treated unfairly, according to the poll.

 

[Derec]

As I said in the other thread, "disproportionate" is a disingenuous term here. Blacks also tend to commit a disproportionate number of crimes. So why should their interactions with police be no more than their population proportion?

 

[RavenSky]

As I said in the other thread, "disproportionate" is a disingenuous term here. Blacks also tend to commit a disproportionate number of crimes. So why should their interactions with police be no more than their population proportion?

There goes Derec, blaming black people again (and torturing the field of statistics to do it)

 

[Derec]

There goes Derec, blaming black people again (and torturing the field of statistics to do it)

No, people who use "disproportionate" disingenuously are torturing statistics. Also those who pretend that absolute crime numbers, rather than crime rates, are important (like these idiots) without taking into account that there are many more whites than blacks in the US are really torturing statistics.

 

[ksen]

As I said in the other thread, "disproportionate" is a disingenuous term here. Blacks also tend to commit a disproportionate number of crimes. So why should their interactions with police be no more than their population proportion?

Do black people actually commit more crimes or are they just targeted more often by the legal system and so are caught more often?

 

[Derec]

Do black people actually commit more crimes or are they just targeted more often by the legal system and so are caught more often?

According to crime statistics they do. Something like 5-6 times as many murders and nonnegligent homicides per capita than whites for example.

 

[Rhea]

As I said in the other thread, "disproportionate" is a disingenuous term here. Blacks also tend to commit a disproportionate number of crimes. So why should their interactions with police be no more than their population proportion?

Do black people actually commit more crimes or are they just targeted more often by the legal system and so are caught more often?

Prepare for "if you ignore what you just said and pretend there is no effect on arrest rates from unequal interaction rates, we can conclude it's their own thug fault," in 3...2...1...

- - - Updated - - -

Whoops. Didn't even get past 3...

 

[Trausti]

Do black people actually commit more crimes or are they just targeted more often by the legal system and so are caught more often?

Prepare for "if you ignore what you just said and pretend there is no effect on arrest rates from unequal interaction rates, we can conclude it's their own thug fault," in 3...2...1...

- - - Updated - - -

Whoops. Didn't even get past 3...

Crime is higher in black neighborhoods; ergo, there will be more police interaction there. Do you blame the high black homicide rate in Chicago, Baltimore, etc. on the cops?

 

[Trausti]

This is a bit old, and newer data may be available, but:

In 2005 nearly half of all homicide victims were black
Blacks accounted for 49% of all homicide victims in 2005,
according to the FBI's UCR.*
Black males accounted for
about 52% (or 6,800) of the nearly 13,000 male homicide
victims in 2005. Black females made up 35% (or 1,200) of
the nearly 3,500 female homicide victims. The number of
black males murdered increased between 2004 and 2005,
while the number of black females murdered remained the
same (figure 3). A higher percentage of black homicide victims
(36%) than white victims (26%) were ages 13 to 24.
About half (51%) of black homicide victims were ages 17 to
29, compared to about 37% of white victims.
Homicides against blacks were more likely than those
against whites to occur in highly populated areas, including
cities and suburbs. About half (53%) of black homicides in
2005 took place in areas with populations of at least
250,000 people. A third (33%) of white homicides occurred
in places with that size population.
In 2005 most homicides involving one victim and one
offender were intraracial. About 93% of black homicide victims
and 85% of white victims in single victim and single
offender homicides were murdered by someone of their
race

http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/bvvc.pdf

Should the police just not care about black victims of crime? Avoid interaction, lest you be called a name?

 

[ksen]

I didn't realize murder is the only crime on the books.

 

[ronburgundy]

As I said in the other thread, "disproportionate" is a disingenuous term here. Blacks also tend to commit a disproportionate number of crimes. So why should their interactions with police be no more than their population proportion?

Do black people actually commit more crimes or are they just targeted more often by the legal system and so are caught more often?

They actually commit more crimes (of almost all types) and every relevant fact shows beyond reasonable doubt. The more blacks that live in an area, the higher the reported crimes. Suspects are more likely to be described as black by both victims and witnesses in crime reports, anonymous surveys that ask people about being victims of crime show that blacks people are much more likely to be victims of crime and their attackers are mostly black. In addition, there are very official records of crime rates within finite populations where the odds of getting caught do not come into play because everyone is "caught", such as the people who have received court orders to either appear in court, pay a fine, pay child support, etc.. Blacks are more likely to commit each of these crimes.

Then there is the mountain of indirect evidence showing that on countless other variables where blacks and whites differ, those variables strongly correlate with crime rates in the direction that predicts black would be committing more crimes, e.g., income, education level, education and SES of parents, single parent house, SES of neighborhood, and having a prior criminal record (and for the logically impaired, no, that is not circular).

While each of these alone is an imperfect measure, every one of them is far more valid than self-reported feelings of "unjust" treatment by police, and combined they all support the same conclusion and make it beyond reasonable doubt that blacks commit a highly disproportionate % of nearly all "street" crimes that would trigger interactions with the police (in contrast to crimes like tax evasion or white collar crimes that trigger interactions with other government agencies).

Plus, as Trautsi pointed out, it isn't just a matter of the person interacting with the cop having committed a crime. It is a matter of whether they live, work, or hang out in areas with high rates of reported crimes (which blacks unquestionably do). That will trigger more interactions with the police, even when they are not themselves under suspicion. And since many blacks presume extreme near constant racist motives by police, those people would presume that any interaction they every have with a cop was "unfair" and triggered only due to their race. IOW, the OP study is meaningless and measures nothing objective, only subjective perceptions of a vague variably defined "fairness" that is highly influenced by the respondents worldview and presumptions, which we already know differ between blacks and whites.

Oh, and it even worse than that. The study didn't even ask about "unfairness" in general but specifically and only "unfairness due to your race/ethnic background". IOW, they asked people to read the minds of the police they interacted with and infer their motives driving whatever subjectively perceived "unfairness" they thought was there. Not only would a priori presumptions determine the subjective perception of unfairness, but would be THE primary if not only determinant of whether that unfairness was attributed to the unobservable psychological motive of racism.

 

[laughing dog]

So what is an acceptable level of civilian feeling of being treated unfairly by the police regardless of the perceived reason?

And, instead of coming up with excuses on why black people cannot be trusted with their feelings of racism or why those feelings are misplaced or irrelevant, I think a better use of time and ingenuity is to come up with why black people come to view the world in that manner. Because, those perceptions (valid or invalid) do negatively affect police and community relations.

 

[Trausti]

So what is an acceptable level of civilian feeling of being treated unfairly by the police regardless of the perceived reason?

And, instead of coming up with excuses on why black people cannot be trusted with their feelings of racism or why those feelings are misplaced or irrelevant, I think a better use of time and ingenuity is to come up with why black people come to view the world in that manner. Because, those perceptions (valid or invalid) do negatively affect police and community relations.

Perhaps, as with all people, it's easier to blame a perceived outsider than admit that the problem is homegrown. Maybe that's why BLM protests seem only to erupt if the killer of a black person is non-black; when 300+ black people die in Chicago in six months at the hands of other black people, just shrugs. It ought to come as no surprise that police might act differently in a black neighborhood versus a non-black neighborhood, as one would smartly adjust behavior in a lion's den versus a cat cafe. To improve relations with the cops, black neighborhoods should give the cops little to police.

 

[laughing dog]

So what is an acceptable level of civilian feeling of being treated unfairly by the police regardless of the perceived reason?

And, instead of coming up with excuses on why black people cannot be trusted with their feelings of racism or why those feelings are misplaced or irrelevant, I think a better use of time and ingenuity is to come up with why black people come to view the world in that manner. Because, those perceptions (valid or invalid) do negatively affect police and community relations.

Perhaps, as with all people, it's easier to blame a perceived outsider than admit that the problem is homegrown. Maybe that's why BLM protests seem only to erupt if the killer of a black person is non-black; when 300+ black people die in Chicago in six months at the hands of other black people, just shrugs. It ought to come as no surprise that police mighty act differently in a black neighborhood versus a non-black neighborhoods, as one would smartly adjust behavior in a lion's den versus a cat cafe. To improve relations with the cops, black neighborhoods should give the cops little to police.

How about answering the actual question "So what is an acceptable level of civilian feeling of being treated unfairly by the police regardless of the perceived reason? " instead of repeating your kneejerk memes?

 

[ronburgundy]

So what is an acceptable level of civilian feeling of being treated unfairly by the police regardless of the perceived reason?

Gee, what a utterly meaningless question. The "reason" behind the feeling is everything and completely determines what the feeling reflects about the person, the cops, society, etc., and what it means to say it "acceptable". So, your question that actively disregards the importance of the source of this feeling is as meaningless a question as asking "What price for object is acceptable, regardless of what the object is or how much the buyer values it?"

And, instead of coming up with excuses on why black people cannot be trusted with their feelings of racism or why those feelings are misplaced or irrelevant,

The are not excuses, but rather logically relevant facts that completely determine the implications of the otherwise meaningless "data" in the OP. But I realize that relevant facts are highly unfamiliar to some. Also, it is purely your blind dogma that led you to misconstrue my argument as singling out "black people" whose feelings cannot be trusted. As a mountain of actual science (unlike the OP) shows, all people's feelings about the unobserved psychological motives of people they are interacting with cannot be trusted and are highly inaccurate, and likely to be strongly biased by their a priori general presumptions. The more vague and open to subjective interpretation the question, the more those biases will shape the response, and you cannot get much more subjectively vague than "unfairly due to your race".

I think a better use of time and ingenuity is to come up with why black people come to view the world in that manner. Because, those perceptions (valid or invalid) do negatively affect police and community relations.

That is precisely what I am doing and what you and the OP are not doing by blindly assuming that the OP data reflects actual rates of being treating unfairly when interacting with the police. Note that the OP survey did not even ask if people had any interactions with the police, only whether they had "unfair" interactions. If every person who interacted with the police felt it was "unfair" you could get the same result. IOW, the OP data are meaningless and tell us nothing about anything. They confound countless variables that make any interpretation or implications for community relations invalid. Only by bringing to bear all the other relevant data (that you dismiss as "excuses") can any rational thought about the subject be engaged in.

 

[Trausti]

Perhaps, as with all people, it's easier to blame a perceived outsider than admit that the problem is homegrown. Maybe that's why BLM protests seem only to erupt if the killer of a black person is non-black; when 300+ black people die in Chicago in six months at the hands of other black people, just shrugs. It ought to come as no surprise that police mighty act differently in a black neighborhood versus a non-black neighborhoods, as one would smartly adjust behavior in a lion's den versus a cat cafe. To improve relations with the cops, black neighborhoods should give the cops little to police.

How about answering the actual question "So what is an acceptable level of civilian feeling of being treated unfairly by the police regardless of the perceived reason? " instead of repeating your kneejerk memes?

Did you not see the bold of your quote that I was commenting to? Here it is again:

I think a better use of time and ingenuity is to come up with why black people come to view the world in that manner.

The kneejerk here, is you.

 

[Bronzeage]

Prepare for "if you ignore what you just said and pretend there is no effect on arrest rates from unequal interaction rates, we can conclude it's their own thug fault," in 3...2...1...

- - - Updated - - -

Whoops. Didn't even get past 3...

Crime is higher in black neighborhoods; ergo, there will be more police interaction there. Do you blame the high black homicide rate in Chicago, Baltimore, etc. on the cops?

Does a high crime rate indicate a greater number of criminals, or a greater number of crime victims?

 

[laughing dog]

How about answering the actual question "So what is an acceptable level of civilian feeling of being treated unfairly by the police regardless of the perceived reason? " instead of repeating your kneejerk memes?

Did you not see the bold of your quote that I was commenting to? Here it is again:

I think a better use of time and ingenuity is to come up with why black people come to view the world in that manner.

The kneejerk here, is you.

In other words, why bother trying to understand the underlying reasons and using reasong when you can simply make assume the problem away?

 

[ronburgundy]

Did you not see the bold of your quote that I was commenting to? Here it is again:

I think a better use of time and ingenuity is to come up with why black people come to view the world in that manner.

The kneejerk here, is you.

In other words, why bother trying to understand the underlying reasons and using reasong when you can simply make assume the problem away?

We are trying to understand the reasons with reasoning and facts, all of which you demand we ignore and presume on faith and dogma what the meaningless data in the OP mean.

 

[Trausti]

Crime is higher in black neighborhoods; ergo, there will be more police interaction there. Do you blame the high black homicide rate in Chicago, Baltimore, etc. on the cops?

Does a high crime rate indicate a greater number of criminals, or a greater number of crime victims?

Why not both?