What kind of person was Stephon Clark?

[ruby sparks]

Except real-world shooting data doesn't support this. The police are slightly less likely to actually pull the trigger when they're pointing their guns at a black person.

I'd be interested to see the data on that.

 

[fast]

Except real-world shooting data doesn't support this. The police are slightly less likely to actually pull the trigger when they're pointing their guns at a black person.

I'd be interested to see the data on that.

I smell lexical ambiguity in the air. Accentuate "police", not "black."

 

[ruby sparks]

Except real-world shooting data doesn't support this. The police are slightly less likely to actually pull the trigger when they're pointing their guns at a black person.

I'd be interested to see the data on that.

I smell lexical ambiguity in the air. Accentuate "police", not "black."

Not following.

To put it another way, in the experiments posted earlier, it seemed that subjects more readily perceived a black person as more of a threat than a white person in identical circumstances. If Police are less likely to pull a trigger when faced with a black subject, that would suggest that some inhibiting or correcting factor is in play for Police.

 

[ruby sparks]

Well, at least we're not as bad as South Africa. Imagine how people reference victims' social media pages there.

It's not really a fair table. The police in the other countries are not routinely armed. Nor are the general civilian population. In a country where more civilians (especially criminals) are armed and/or one in which there is more gun crime, and police are routinely armed (and by and large 'allowed' to use lethal force in more circumstances and perhaps trained to do so) we would expect, I think, a much higher number of police shootings, as in the USA.

There might also be several reasons why black people (especially men) are shot at such a comparatively high rate (per head of black male population) and one reason might be that they are, actually, more of a threat. I don't know if this is the case or not. I suspect prejudice and stereotyping and bias would be factors nonetheless, but perhaps not as much as some suggest. A stereotype, for example, might have some basis in truth. Now I'm not assuming that is the case. Also, even if it were the case, we'd have to ask why it is the case. An historically disadvantaged, disenfranchised minority might be more likely to resort to antisocial or criminal behaviour, for example, especially if they live in segregated or partially segregated communities where it flourishes (even if just among the members of the communities). Or maybe black-skinned humans are inherently or culturally more predisposed to such things. I would doubt that one, I suppose.

 

[Frikki]

To further derail, all consumer goods are technically luxuries if we define luxury purely as a state of being superfluous to your continued survival. The notion that poor people should be discouraged entirely from consumer spending would not only destroy the economy but would reduce the standard of living for people back to something closer to serfdom.

I define luxury as items that are significantly more expensive than the usual price of that kind of an item. Cars by themselves are not luxuries. A Mercedes AMG S65 certainly is. A smart phone in itself is not a luxury, but an iPhone X is. And so on.
Nobody is begrudging people consumer goods, but there is a wide range of price points for almost all consumer goods.

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I work intimately with police and where I live and in most of the 1st world police rarely shoot people it is only one country where this is a common thing and that is the USA which suggests one of two things either the police in the rest of the world does not shoot enough people or the police in the US shoots too many.

I think it mostly has to do with high availability of guns and higher crime rate.

ANd that your police are badly trained and there is an institutional culture of racism.

 

[ruby sparks]

Surprising New Evidence Shows Bias in Police Use of Force but Not in Shootings
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/...police-use-of-force-but-not-in-shootings.html

"But police shootings are only part of the picture. What about situations in which an officer might be expected to fire, but doesn’t?

To answer this, Mr. Fryer focused on one city, Houston. The Police Department there let the researchers look at reports not only for shootings but also for arrests when lethal force might have been justified. Mr. Fryer defined this group to include encounters with suspects the police subsequently charged with serious offenses like attempting to murder an officer, or evading or resisting arrest. He also considered suspects shocked with Tasers.

Mr. Fryer found that in such situations, officers in Houston were about 20 percent less likely to shoot if the suspects were black. This estimate was not precise, and firmer conclusions would require more data. But in various models controlling for different factors and using different definitions of tense situations, Mr. Fryer found that blacks were either less likely to be shot or there was no difference between blacks and whites."

On the other hand, for non-shooting situations:



How a controversial study found that police are more likely to shoot whites, not blacks

"On the one hand, the study shows that, nationwide, black and Hispanic civilians are indeed more likely to be manhandled, handcuffed or beaten by the police — even if they are compliant and law-abiding. Fryer writes that prejudice in law enforcement is real and harmful in many ways, causing cynicism and disillusionment especially among boys of color.

When it comes to police killings, though, Fryer has painstakingly reviewed evidence from Houston that suggests the police there are not racially biased in how they use lethal force. This is a surprising finding that challenges a widespread view that the police disproportionately shoot black suspects. In Houston, at least, that might not be the case."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...s-is-so-controversial/?utm_term=.f8b3cb14e7ad


The paper itself:
http://www.nber.org/papers/w22399.pdf

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

It's not really a fair table. The police in the other countries are not routinely armed. Nor are the general civilian population. In a country where more civilians (especially criminals) are armed and/or one in which there is more gun crime, and police are routinely armed (and by and large 'allowed' to use lethal force in more circumstances and perhaps trained to do so) we would expect, I think, a much higher number of police shootings, as in the USA.

and? why would this make the table unfair? that seems to have been the whole point, no?

 

[ruby sparks]

It's not really a fair table. The police in the other countries are not routinely armed. Nor are the general civilian population. In a country where more civilians (especially criminals) are armed and/or one in which there is more gun crime, and police are routinely armed (and by and large 'allowed' to use lethal force in more circumstances and perhaps trained to do so) we would expect, I think, a much higher number of police shootings, as in the USA.

and? why would this make the table unfair? that seems to have been the whole point, no?

It's not a like-for-like comparison.

I'm not sure what the 'whole point' was. If it was to show which country has more Police shootings, then it does that. But it doesn't cover the uneven whys of context.

For example, gun ownership is 16 times as high in the US compared to, say, the UK (112.6 guns per hundred persons in the former, 6.6 in the latter) and overall death rate per head of population from guns is a whopping 50 times as high in the US than in the UK, I read (10.2 per 100,000 as against 0.2). So the situation US Police face seems to be far more dangerous, because their suspects are much more likely to be armed and/or use a weapon, it seems, and I believe the number of police fatalities in the line of duty in the US is about 3 times higher than the UK (per policeperson), so a US Policeperson may be justified, to some extent, in reacting in a more self-protective way, I'm thinking.

It's also the case that black men (I read) commit almost 50% of all murders in the USA, despite making up only 13 per cent of the population, so there may be valid reasons for a policeperson to be particularly worried about a black suspect.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

It's not really a fair table. The police in the other countries are not routinely armed. Nor are the general civilian population. In a country where more civilians (especially criminals) are armed and/or one in which there is more gun crime, and police are routinely armed (and by and large 'allowed' to use lethal force in more circumstances and perhaps trained to do so) we would expect, I think, a much higher number of police shootings, as in the USA.

and? why would this make the table unfair? that seems to have been the whole point, no?

It's not a like-for-like comparison.

It was not intended to be

I'm not sure what the 'whole point' was.

Then, how can you claim it is unfair?

If it was to show which country has more Police shootings, then it does that.

Yes, it does.

But it doesn't cover the uneven whys of context.

People know the whys and some of the why is provided in context through discussion in the thread.

For example, gun ownership is 16 times as high in the US compared to, say, the UK (112.6 guns per hundred persons in the former, 6.6 in the latter) and overall death rate per head of population from guns is a whopping 50 times as high in the US than in the UK, I read (10.2 per 100,000 as against 0.2). So the situation US Police face seems to be far more dangerous, because their suspects are much more likely to be armed and/or use a weapon, it seems, and I believe the number of police fatalities in the line of duty in the US is about 3 times higher than the UK (per policeperson), so a US Policeperson may be justified, to some extent, in reacting in a more self-protective way, I'm thinking.

So basically if the populace and police had less guns, there'd be less police shootings. Do you think that the author of the post did not know that?

It's also the case that black men (I read) commit almost 50% of all murders in the USA, despite making up only 13 per cent of the population, so there may be valid reasons for a policeperson to be particularly worried about a black suspect.

What does that have to do with guns except to say that there are too many among different populations?

 

[RavenSky]

It's really cheap in the grand scheme of life, but you derail an entire thread because you begrudge a young black man even that much.

That applies even more to a $10 cup of coffee, but that is clearly luxury coffee.

So again, it is your position that that you begrudge a person an occasional "luxury" "$10 cup of coffee" because you think poor people (or black people) should never have a single nice thing in their lives.

As I said before, that says everything about you and nothing about Stephon or his brother.

 

[RavenSky]

Saying that poor people can't have any luxury items is crazy talk. Of course poor people have to survive--to have food, water, shelter, clothing, but those are not the only needs a person has. A person also needs at least a little compassion from others and at least a little happiness, otherwise things are unbearable. Babies without compassion from an adult fail to thrive. Adults without compassion get depressed. There is no real magic formula for how much property a poor person ought to have, except that if they have enough property and happiness, then they are no longer poor, but instead middle class. All this talk is really besides the point, it's like a derail on a derail on a derail.

Did I miss something? How do we know the guy with the headphones is poor?

Derec and Loren assumed so because Stephon and his brother are black, and it went from there (as per the usual course)

 

[ruby sparks]

But it doesn't cover the uneven whys of context.

People know the whys and some of the why is provided in context through discussion in the thread.

If true, that's good. But a table comparing simple numbers of deaths (per head of population) by police shooting in the USA with places such as for example the UK is not a fair comparison because it's not like for like in several ways. Most notably, police here aren't routinely armed. That will skew the UK totals by comparison.

For example, gun ownership is 16 times as high in the US compared to, say, the UK (112.6 guns per hundred persons in the former, 6.6 in the latter) and overall death rate per head of population from guns is a whopping 50 times as high in the US than in the UK, I read (10.2 per 100,000 as against 0.2). So the situation US Police face seems to be far more dangerous, because their suspects are much more likely to be armed and/or use a weapon, it seems, and I believe the number of police fatalities in the line of duty in the US is about 3 times higher than the UK (per policeperson), so a US Policeperson may be justified, to some extent, in reacting in a more self-protective way, I'm thinking.

So basically if the populace and police had less guns, there'd be less police shootings. Do you think that the author of the post did not know that?

Possibly. Not exactly what I was saying though. I was saying that US Police seem to have to face a very different situation than, say, UK Police.

It's also the case that black men (I read) commit almost 50% of all murders in the USA, despite making up only 13 per cent of the population, so there may be valid reasons for a policeperson to be particularly worried about a black suspect.

What does that have to do with guns except to say that there are too many among different populations?

It wasn't necessarily about numbers of guns. For all I know, other demographics might have as many guns (or other lethal weapons) per head of population but not use them for crimes.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

If true, that's good. ...

I invite you to read the chain of posts leading up to the final one you responded to.

But a table comparing simple numbers of deaths (per head of population) by police shooting in the USA with places such as for example the UK is not a fair comparison because it's not like for like in several ways. Most notably, police here aren't routinely armed. That will skew the UK totals by comparison.

See above.

 

[ruby sparks]

I invite you to read the chain of posts leading up to the final one you responded to.

My bad. Ok, so, on googling I have now found this:

http://www.railtechnologymagazine.c...ign-calls-for-public-to-lose-your-headphones-

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I smell lexical ambiguity in the air. Accentuate "police", not "black."

Not following.

To put it another way, in the experiments posted earlier, it seemed that subjects more readily perceived a black person as more of a threat than a white person in identical circumstances. If Police are less likely to pull a trigger when faced with a black subject, that would suggest that some inhibiting or correcting factor is in play for Police.

Or that the modelling in the lab isn't good enough.

Or perhaps even rigged--a while back I ran into a website that had a shoot/don't-shoot simulation. The objective was to figure out if the guy in the picture was holding a weapon or not. They had a collection of people and a collection of objects "in" (photoshop, not actual models) their hands.

I noticed a problem with it--they had multiple small black objects that were very had to distinguish in black hands, but no weapons close to the skin color of the white images. I e-mailed the webmaster about that, he had noticed exactly the same problem but had been assured that the images were fair.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Surprising New Evidence Shows Bias in Police Use of Force but Not in Shootings
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/...police-use-of-force-but-not-in-shootings.html

This doesn't surprise me at all. It's what I've observed from these complaints. The problem isn't bad shootings, it's the inappropriate use of fairly minor force.

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Saying that poor people can't have any luxury items is crazy talk. Of course poor people have to survive--to have food, water, shelter, clothing, but those are not the only needs a person has. A person also needs at least a little compassion from others and at least a little happiness, otherwise things are unbearable. Babies without compassion from an adult fail to thrive. Adults without compassion get depressed. There is no real magic formula for how much property a poor person ought to have, except that if they have enough property and happiness, then they are no longer poor, but instead middle class. All this talk is really besides the point, it's like a derail on a derail on a derail.

Did I miss something? How do we know the guy with the headphones is poor?

Derec and Loren assumed so because Stephon and his brother are black, and it went from there (as per the usual course)

Not because he's black, but because his brother is poor.

Also, Stephen living at his grandmother's makes it quite likely the parents aren't decent parents--which also means he's likely poor.

 

[laughing dog]

Also, Stephen living at his grandmother's makes it quite likely the parents aren't decent parents--which also means he's likely poor.

There are a myriad of reasons why a 22 year old would not be living with his parents that have absolutely nothing to do with the adequacy of the parents or his income. So where in the world do your claims come from?

 

[Toni]

This doesn't surprise me at all. It's what I've observed from these complaints. The problem isn't bad shootings, it's the inappropriate use of fairly minor force.

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L

Saying that poor people can't have any luxury items is crazy talk. Of course poor people have to survive--to have food, water, shelter, clothing, but those are not the only needs a person has. A person also needs at least a little compassion from others and at least a little happiness, otherwise things are unbearable. Babies without compassion from an adult fail to thrive. Adults without compassion get depressed. There is no real magic formula for how much property a poor person ought to have, except that if they have enough property and happiness, then they are no longer poor, but instead middle class. All this talk is really besides the point, it's like a derail on a derail on a derail.

Did I miss something? How do we know the guy with the headphones is poor?

Derec and Loren assumed so because Stephon and his brother are black, and it went from there (as per the usual course)

Not because he's black, but because his brother is poor.

Also, Stephen living at his grandmother's makes it quite likely the parents aren't decent parents--which also means he's likely poor.

FFS, a former classmate of one of my kids was 29, had a degree in engineering, was working as an engineer and starting his own business—and living with his grandmother. It is a close knit family and having the grandson live with the grandmother helped her continue to live in her home independently with someone on sight for company, and to do yard work and help with the heavy stuff. Quit with the assumptions! Quit with assuming the worst because it’s a black family.

 

[ruby sparks]

Issue 1. Responses of white participants apparently seeing black subjects as more of a threat:

Or that the modelling in the lab isn't good enough. Or perhaps even rigged......

Issue 2. Police apparently being less likely to shoot a black person:

This doesn't surprise me at all.

Well.....there were, I think 8 separate studies in relation to the first issue (with a 9th embedded in the article on the study for the second issue) and the second issue was in only one paper which dealt, I think, with only one city (Houston) as regards the 'decision to shoot' issue and was based on what the police officers had said about the incidents.

But hey, your willingness to readily accept stuff-u-like and question stuff-u-don't-like is again noted, for about the thousandth time in the last 10 years.

Albeit that in the second one, the conclusions included that the prevalence of the non-lethal force on blacks (not sure if tasing qualifies as fairly minor) had discrminination as a likely factor, but I guess you won't be extending your 'not surprise' to that, it being the stuff-u-don't-like part of a study which has a stuff-u-like part that u-like.

 

[RavenSky]

Did I miss something? How do we know the guy with the headphones is poor?

Derec and Loren assumed so because Stephon and his brother are black, and it went from there (as per the usual course)

Not because he's black, but because his brother is poor.

Also, Stephen living at his grandmother's makes it quite likely the parents aren't decent parents--which also means he's likely poor.

A lot of racist assumptions going on in there. Care to back any of them up with anything approaching facts?