Some interesting data on police shootings

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Well that was a tremendous waste of time. Predictably.

 

[Metaphor]

That wording ends up ambiguous making it unclear if you are talking about the same thing as Politesse.

It seems the distinction being made is whether researchers are asking:
A: Here is the data we have gathered: what conclusions follow?
B: Here is the conclusion we need to reach: what evidence can we select to support that?

A doesn't preclude expecting a certain answer, but it certainly isn't the same as B.

Well, A and B are not the same, I agree, but how has Politesse concluded that this study was B, and not A, and what criterion does she use in general to distinguish between A vs B?

I'm not even suggesting it isn't B, I just want to know why Politesse is certain it is, beyond her own intuition.

Well, for one thing it's obvious that the numbers are cherry-picked to fit their agenda. For another, if they were employing a scientific methodology, they would have started by describing that methodology.

What would be a "scientific methodology" suitable to answer the question posed?

What set of numbers would you consider not "cherry picked"?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A company whose entire purpose is to defend police officers against legal challenges studied the issue and found that there aren't, in their opinion, too many police shootings. Shocking, really.

Is there any point in deconstructing the flawed argument in this article? The fact that almost none of the statistics they are comparing are, in fact, comparable? That even a working police officer would surely oppose the article's contention that being confronted with a deadly weapon automatically justifies a deadly response? That the causes and geographic centers of violent crimes are, as usual, being ignored in their "study"? I assume none of this will change anyone's mind, but we can go through it if you like.

You forget, in the courtroom the other side gets to try to dismantle your position. Thus if you're in the job of defending against legal challenges you're going to make your position solid.

If you think there's something wrong with their argument, point it out!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The data, of course, does not speak for itself, so what's to comment on? Their essential claim is that there isn't "too much" death, an inherently subjective determination, and they are not a neutral party, so... what would you expect them to find? If they ran the numbers a different way and realized police shootings were actually quite high even by their own subjective standards, they wouldn't publish those results, it would be obviously contrary to their business interests.Who's going to hire a bunch of lawyers to defend them against police brutality when their website seems to argue that it is a major problem? Indeed, they probably did play around with the statistics quite a bit before reaching the conclusion they were after.

1) They're showing that the number of dead suspects is a lot lower than the number of times the police clearly have justification to pull the trigger.

2) The reason I posted it was the big racial difference--blacks that do things that could get them shot are less likely to actually get shot than whites who do such things. Some of us have been pointing out that the racial disparity in deaths is due to blacks being more likely to do things that get them shot, not that the police are more likely to shoot blacks and this is yet another piece of evidence supporting this.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

??

What are you talking about? I didn't say anything one way or the other about Black Lives Matter.

I would be similarly surprised if that organization published a study universally exonerating police officers.

Loren's OP presented the results as a challenge to the idea that black people are shot or killed disproportionately by American police.

Now, if you are saying you don't believe that, then no study is needed to dispel something you don't believe.

So you admit that this isn't a "study", but rather an attempt to make a political argument with statistics? If it were a legitimate study, there would be plenty of good reasons to read it whether or not it conformed to your political opinions.

You fail to note that it can be both.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

No, it was collection of information done with the aim of providing a particular answer to a posed question.

Then that would be true of all research on social issues everywhere.

Dear god, no. Is that really the state of science education these days?

Most science is an attempt to prove some conjecture.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

The data, of course, does not speak for itself, so what's to comment on? Their essential claim is that there isn't "too much" death, an inherently subjective determination, and they are not a neutral party, so... what would you expect them to find? If they ran the numbers a different way and realized police shootings were actually quite high even by their own subjective standards, they wouldn't publish those results, it would be obviously contrary to their business interests.Who's going to hire a bunch of lawyers to defend them against police brutality when their website seems to argue that it is a major problem? Indeed, they probably did play around with the statistics quite a bit before reaching the conclusion they were after.

1) They're showing that the number of dead suspects is a lot lower than the number of times the police clearly have justification to pull the trigger.

Which is entirely subjective and therefore can't possibly be quantified. "Clearly have justification" according to whom and how is it measured? Let me illustrate; what you wrote is clearly justification for a cop to shoot you.

Because that is subjective--i.e., my opinion--it quantifies nothing and you can't argue against it. I believe that what you just wrote clearly justifies a police officer shooting you, therefore police officers are justified in shooting you. End of "study."

2) The reason I posted it was the big racial difference--blacks that do things that could get them shot are less likely to actually get shot than whites who do such things.

Also purely subjective. What constitutes "things that could get them shot" and who makes that call? The cops, not some objective god. But it would HAVE TO BE an objective god in order for there to be any kind of legitimate study conducted on such a subjective guess.

Some of us have been pointing out that the racial disparity in deaths is due to blacks being more likely to do things that get them shot, not that the police are more likely to shoot blacks and this is yet another piece of evidence supporting this.

First, it isn't. At all. Second, what are the other pieces of evidence you're referring to with "yet another piece of evidence"? You have never presented ANY evidence (including this sophistry) that does or could objectively support such a subjective opinion.

Regardless and once again, "likely to do things that get them shot" is a purely subjective conditional that can't possibly be quantified in any meaningful sense, but if you are asserting this cherry-picked collection of statistics somehow objectively quantifies that, then by all means copy and paste exactly the stats that do so.

We'll wait.

 

[Politesse]

Dear god, no. Is that really the state of science education these days?

Most science is an attempt to prove some conjecture.

That's mathematics.

In the sciences, we are always trying to disprove a hypothesis. This is the fundamental premise of all experimental observation. Proof does not exist, only facts and explanations of facts, which we should always be ready to revise as needed to better explain new facts.

 

[laughing dog]

See above. The whole thing is ridiculous, if you want me to take it seriously as a social science study rather than an all-too-familiar rhetorical appeal.

Well, before you edited that response, you were willing to dismiss the conclusion because of the people who did the study. That isn't a good reason to dismiss a conclusion.

Well, it is whenever a feminist utters one.

The study is bogus. Besides the assumptions used to derive their numbers, I think this portion is truly indicative of the bias:
It is clear that people are far more likely to die at the hands of a criminal, an inattentive driver, their doctor, or themselves than they are to be killed by use of force from a law enforcement officer.

That is a meaningless statistic because the police are supposed to be trained professionals and are agents of the state, not civilians. The issue is not whether people are less likely to be killed by a police officer than ____ (you fill in the blank), but that whether police officers as representatives of the state are too trigger happy.

This "study" is just apologia for police shootings dressed up in "statistics".

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

https://www.llrmi.com/articles/legal_update/2015_johnson_useofforce/

They came at it from a different direction--comparing police shootings to deadly force (blades, guns) attacks on police.

Oops--now the supposed idea of police wantonly shooting blacks goes away, the numbers are strongly in the other direction.

(Note, however, that there is one hole in the data--the FBI data they are working from doesn't count car attacks on police.)

So the officers that shot unarmed people are justified in their use of force because other cops have been attacked with a weapon?

Officers in some situations need to use force, even use deadly force. This is understood. The trouble are in some cases where the victim was unarmed and we've seen cases of video existing showing officers planting weapons among dead people.

 

[ronburgundy]

So, they are claiming that only 429 people are killed by the police each year, when most other sources, including the BJS stats estimate three times that number (about 1200).

In addition, their analysis assumes that every single time an officer claims (usually w/o a shred of supporting evidence) that a suspect "assaulted" them with an "edged implement" or firearm, that the cops are justified in killing the suspect.

First, all sane people know that every time cops fire their weapon or use lethal force that they will claim that they were "assaulted" or threatened. Not only do they regularly embellish whether the suspect actually used the weapon, but often plant the weapon. And no, that ain't just Hollywood. Hollywood got the idea from the well known fact that cops do this. I personally have closely known two cops, and both told me the carrying an unmarked illegal gun is widespread among cops.

Second, cops are not supposed to kill suspects, even when threatened. They are supposed to merely eliminate the threat, which most times would not require killing the suspect, unless the cop is incompetent. These "researchers" are comparing every time cops are in any way "assaulted" no matter the objective resulting harm to them, to only the times the cops actually kill the suspect. The proper apples-to-apples comparison is every time cops ever use any force that could have potentially resulted in death of the suspect, which includes at minimum, every single time a cop fires their gun, even if the suspect is only injured, not even hit, or gets away. The cop is reporting a supposed "assault" in all those cases, so they all need to be counted as the cops attempts use lethal force. Sadly, since there is no such thing as real police oversight in the US, there are no reliable stats on that, but the number is easily 20-30 times higher than the number of actual deaths (1200), resulting in 24,000 to 36,000 incidents where cops attempt to use force that could kill the suspect. That is 7-11 times the number of incidents where cops claim they are assaulted with with a lethal weapon.

 

[J842P]

This is a bizarre contextualization. It's difficult to compare the number of deaths from those things to give a sense of how risky interactions with the police are. On a daily basis, millions of people are operating vehicles or near operating vehicles. Far fewer are interacting with the police in any way. Conversely, more people are likely exposed to law enforcement than lightning. I might even go so far as to say lightning is more dangerous than police officers in a direct encounter.

Yeah, I always hate these sorts of statistics, its almost a parody of abusing the frequentist take. People say all sorts of stupid shit, like "actually, mosquitoes are more dangerous than tigers because mosquitos kill X number of people per year but tigers only kill Y". Well, would you rather be stuck in a room with a mosquito or a tiger, then?.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Which is entirely subjective and therefore can't possibly be quantified. "Clearly have justification" according to whom and how is it measured? Let me illustrate; what you wrote is clearly justification for a cop to shoot you.

Because that is subjective--i.e., my opinion--it quantifies nothing and you can't argue against it. I believe that what you just wrote clearly justifies a police officer shooting you, therefore police officers are justified in shooting you. End of "study."

Nothing subjective about it--it would take a rather unusual situation where somebody could be guilty of attacking you with a knife or gun and you can't legally shoot them. Using this as the measurement will produce an undercount, not an overcount.

2) The reason I posted it was the big racial difference--blacks that do things that could get them shot are less likely to actually get shot than whites who do such things.

Also purely subjective. What constitutes "things that could get them shot" and who makes that call? The cops, not some objective god. But it would HAVE TO BE an objective god in order for there to be any kind of legitimate study conducted on such a subjective guess.

Assault with a knife or gun. Are you saying those charges are subjective??

Some of us have been pointing out that the racial disparity in deaths is due to blacks being more likely to do things that get them shot, not that the police are more likely to shoot blacks and this is yet another piece of evidence supporting this.

First, it isn't. At all. Second, what are the other pieces of evidence you're referring to with "yet another piece of evidence"? You have never presented ANY evidence (including this sophistry) that does or could objectively support such a subjective opinion.

Regardless and once again, "likely to do things that get them shot" is a purely subjective conditional that can't possibly be quantified in any meaningful sense, but if you are asserting this cherry-picked collection of statistics somehow objectively quantifies that, then by all means copy and paste exactly the stats that do so.

We'll wait.

Just because you dismiss the yardstick as subjective doesn't make it so.

 

[ronburgundy]

This is a follow up to my prior post that should be read first . Note my prior post only deals with the fact that the OP research grossly over-estimates assaults on cops while ignoring all the times cops use lethal force on suspects but fail to kill them. The conclusion is that cops are in fact often using criminal excessive lethal force when no real threat exists.

That does not address the race issue of whether this criminal violence by cops is disproportionately directed at black men. The article claims that given the % of violent assaults against cops by black men, they are the targets of police lethal force less often than expected.

There are glaring flaws with their methods. They don't have any race data on who assaults police officers. They only know who kills police officers and they assume that this is the same. They state "Assuming that attacks by African-American males are no more or less lethal than attacks by persons of other races and sexes..." That's massive and implausible assumption. Given that merely holding knife of gun would often be reported as "assault with a weapon", it's near certain that women would "assault" far more often than they would actually attempt to or succeed in killing in officer. As for race, 500 years of history gives blacks far more rational basis to fear for their lives from cops, and especially to assume they will be killed if they put up any resistance. Thus, if they are going to bother to assault an officer, they would be more likely to try and kill them to ensure their own survival. IOW, white people and women generally know that they can get away with brandishing a knife of gun against a cop and live, so they are likely to represent a higher % of assaults with a weapon than their % of actual killing of cops. That makes the researhers assumption invalid and an overestimate of the % of assaults on cops by black men.

 

[laughing dog]

Nothing subjective about it--it would take a rather unusual situation where somebody could be guilty of attacking you with a knife or gun and you can't legally shoot them. Using this as the measurement will produce an undercount, not an overcount.

Bullshit. Depends on what the officer reports as an "attack".

<<snip>>

Just because you dismiss the yardstick as subjective doesn't make it so.

Just because you say it is objective, does not make it so.

 

[ronburgundy]

Assault with a knife or gun. Are you saying those charges are subjective??

Completely subjective, rarely based upon anything but the subjective emotional opinion of an officer who just caused injury or death to a civilian and thus will go to prison if they do not claim that they were "assaulted with a knife or gun".

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Nothing subjective about it

Horseshit and you know it. This is beyond pathetic, Loren, even for you.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Assault with a knife or gun. Are you saying those charges are subjective??

Completely subjective, rarely based upon anything but the subjective emotional opinion of an officer who just caused injury or death to a civilian and thus will go to prison if they do not claim that they were "assaulted with a knife or gun".

Exactly.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Dear god, no. Is that really the state of science education these days?

Most science is an attempt to prove some conjecture.

That's mathematics.

In the sciences, we are always trying to disprove a hypothesis. This is the fundamental premise of all experimental observation. Proof does not exist, only facts and explanations of facts, which we should always be ready to revise as needed to better explain new facts.

Basic sciences I agree, but most research is more applied.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Officers in some situations need to use force, even use deadly force. This is understood. The trouble are in some cases where the victim was unarmed and we've seen cases of video existing showing officers planting weapons among dead people.

And those are extremely rare--and often involve the person going for the cop's gun. Note, also, that when the bad guy is "armed" with a simulated weapon it will be counted as unarmed, but the police will respond as if the weapon was real.