Giuliani Says BLM Is Racist

I see that sunmaster has already provided the numbers that show that a black person who has a violent encounter with police isn't anymore likely to end up dead than a white person. Those claiming that "a disproportionate number" of black men are killed by police - do you have different statistics that you think are better reflective of the situation?
 
Skeptical Greg said:
There are those who consider '1' to be a disproportionate number..
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Right, I get that there are those who believe that if police treat white and black people identically but some black people are mistreated, that means racism.

Those people don't understand what racism is. I would like to talk to more reasonable and/or informed people than that.
 
AdamSK said:
Right, I get that there are those who believe that if police treat white and black people identically but some black people are mistreated, that means racism.

Those people don't understand what racism is. I would like to talk to more reasonable and/or informed people than that.
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And then there are plenty of things that show that police escalate things more with blacks, turning incidents violent that they wouldn't with white but that isn't racism because you only care about violent incidents.

Nothing racist about people like this

"And I worked with people like the president of my police academy class, who sent out an email after President Obama won the 2008 election that included the statement, "I can't believe I live in a country full of ni**er lovers!!!!!!!!" He patrolled the streets in St. Louis in a number of black communities with the authority to act under the color of law."

http://www.vox.com/2015/5/28/8661977/race-police-officer

Or the targeting of minorities to increase revenue by departments, that isn't racist either.
 
sunmaster14 said:
I haven't done the count of unarmed people killed (whether or not they were shot) by police, let alone shot by police (whether or not they were killed). What I have done, by using statistics from the Guardian database and the FBI database is compute the percentage of people killed by police who were black in 2015 and year-to-date in 2016:

2015: 306/1146 = 26.7%
2016: 137/569 = 24.1%

The FBI database keeps track of police officers killed or seriously injured by assailants with weapons, and the race of their assailants (when known). The latest data available is for 2014.

2013: out of 26 known assailants who killed a police officer, 11 were black.
2013: out of 72 known assailants who seriously injured a police officer, 40 were black.

2014: out of 58 known assailants who killed a police officer, 13 were black.
2014: out of 80 known assailants who seriously injured a police officer, 26 were black.

So the percentage of police killers who were black in prior years were:

2013: 42.3%
2014: 22.4%

And the percentage of police serious attackers who were black in prior years were:

2013: 55.6%
2014: 32.5%

Personally, I think the best numbers to compare to are the above numbers, although we should wait for the data to accumulate so we can match up years. Although, there is not very much data to go by, it seems plausible that the percentage of people killed by police who are black is lower than the percentage of people who attack police who are black.

If that's true, I think that is evidence that, on average, police are responding with force to real risk in a roughly race-neutral way (maybe even under reacting to the statistical risk from people who are black).

Which is not to say that there isn't systematic discrimination against blacks in policing. It could be that police are seeking out more confrontations with blacks for racist reasons. Or are more aggressive in their confrontations for racist reasons. I don't think that's true, however. The confrontation rate and arrest rate, broken down by race, strike me as reasonable given the higher level of violent crime in black communities.

ETA: Links to FBI data for 2013 and 2014.

And the Guardian police shootings database.

ETAA: The Guardian does show unarmed shootings by police broken down by race. The percentage who were black in 2015 and year-to-date in 2016 are:

2015: 79/229 = 34.5%
2016: 24/82 = 29.3%

A little higher than killings over all, but within the statistical noise I bet.
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Those numbers don't quite follow. There's an order of magnitude difference between the ~1k people killed by police and the ~50 people who kill police annually. If you're really saying that the one follows from the other, that police only kill people in fear of their own lives, then the conclusion I reach is still that cops murder way too many people. This says that regardless of race it is MUCH more dangerous to be stopped by a cop than to stop someone as a cop.

To say more we'd need a more complete picture of the statistics. For example, at what rate are the various races stopped by cops (without anyone dying)? Raw percentages don't say as much as framing the death rate in terms of total incidents.


AdamSK said:
I see that sunmaster has already provided the numbers that show that a black person who has a violent encounter with police isn't anymore likely to end up dead than a white person.
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And the numbers don't show this at all, that's a complete fabrication.
 
Beelzebuddy said:
And the numbers don't show this at all, that's a complete fabrication.
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The numbers show that the percentage of black victim deaths is similar to the percentage of violent incidents with black civilians. So among those who attack police, the chance of getting killed is the same.

The difference is that blacks have a far higher rate of police encounters in the first place (which may be due to racism; that is almost certainly at least one factor). So the issue isn't racism when it comes to an encounter turning violent. The issue is racism in deciding what situations to pursue and make into encounters in the first place.
 
Myron Proudfoot said:
That’s right, blacks are killed at “three times as high” a rate “at the hands of police as white people” in this country.
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Again, this just compares the percentage of blacks in the population to the number of black deaths by cop. It doesn't control for the fact that blacks are three times as likely to have an encounter with the cops in the first place.

By the same logic, motorcycles in the 1970s were apparently sentient and discriminated based on the age of their driver, because young people were far more likely to die in motorcycle crashes. Fortunately, the motorcycles have become less ageist over time. (In reality, again, it has to do primarily with the demographics of motorcycle drivers.)
 
AdamSK said:
Again, this just compares the percentage of blacks in the population to the number of black deaths by cop. It doesn't control for the fact that blacks are three times as likely to have an encounter with the cops in the first place.
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Why are we controlling for that? Isn't it part of the problem?
 
Myriad said:
"Racist" has become code for "lower-class and therefore not worth any consideration."

Black Lives Matter protestors are racist.

Brexit voters are racist.

Trump supporters are racist.

If Louis XVI were around today, he'd be complaining "the peasants are racist." (In French, though.)
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Apres moi, Les Deluge!!!
 
Myron Proudfoot said:
here is a page with some linked FBI stats.
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I said "unarmed", which was the claim I was responding to.

the money shot>>> That’s right, blacks are killed at “three times as high” a rate “at the hands of police as white people” in this country. Any further questions?
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Yes: what's the difference in criminality rate between the two ethnic groups?
 
Tale said:
Why are we controlling for that? Isn't it part of the problem?
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If blacks are encountering police much more often than whites but are thereafter being treated exactly the same, that is a very different problem than if blacks are being treated differently during the encounters. Do you agree?
 
AdamSK said:
The numbers show that the percentage of black victim deaths is similar to the percentage of violent incidents with black civilians. So among those who attack police, the chance of getting killed is the same.

The difference is that blacks have a far higher rate of police encounters in the first place (which may be due to racism; that is almost certainly at least one factor). So the issue isn't racism when it comes to an encounter turning violent. The issue is racism in deciding what situations to pursue and make into encounters in the first place.
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That's still not right - the two percentages come from two different populations, so they can't be compared directly. Additionally, the higher rate of encounter is your assertion. We don't have the numbers at hand for that.
 
Beelzebuddy said:
Those numbers don't quite follow. There's an order of magnitude difference between the ~1k people killed by police and the ~50 people who kill police annually. If you're really saying that the one follows from the other, that police only kill people in fear of their own lives, then the conclusion I reach is still that cops murder way too many people.
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Well, if you're thinking about kill ratios, then the cops have an advantage of 20:1. I don't think this is a sensible way of thinking about things, however. Cops are being asked to put themselves in dangerous situations routinely in order to keep the vast majority of citizens safe from crime. If we demanded symmetry in kill ratios, I think we'd have far fewer cops, or we would have to pay them a heck of a lot more. We might also end up with less rational people being willing to become cops. Furthermore, the high kill ratio has a beneficial deterrent effect. Societies are probably more stable and civil if there is a strong incentive for its citizens to not attack law enforcement officers. There are other mechanisms available to fight bad cops besides trying to kill them, and people should be encouraged to use those mechanisms instead.

This says that regardless of race it is MUCH more dangerous to be stopped by a cop than to stop someone as a cop.
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No doubt, but many cops are stopping a dozen civilians a day, and most civilians are stopped by cops maybe a handful of times in their entire lives. Even young black men have far more important things to worry about than being killed by a cop. Furthermore, there are simple ways to reduce your risk of being killed by a cop by several orders of magnitude versus the typical person killed by a cop. Chris Rock explained a few in a video a while back.

To say more we'd need a more complete picture of the statistics. For example, at what rate are the various races stopped by cops (without anyone dying)? Raw percentages don't say as much as framing the death rate in terms of total incidents.
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There's an interesting article about this in the NY Times today. I haven't had a chance to digest it yet.
 
sunmaster14 said:
Well, if you're thinking about kill ratios, then the cops have an advantage of 20:1. I don't think this is a sensible way of thinking about things, however. Cops are being asked to put themselves in dangerous situations routinely in order to keep the vast majority of citizens safe from crime. If we demanded symmetry in kill ratios, I think we'd have far fewer cops, or we would have to pay them a heck of a lot more. We might also end up with less rational people being willing to become cops. Furthermore, the high kill ratio has a beneficial deterrent effect. Societies are probably more stable and civil if there is a strong incentive for its citizens to not attack law enforcement officers. There are other mechanisms available to fight bad cops besides trying to kill them, and people should be encouraged to use those mechanisms instead.
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The point that I was trying to make was that the wide disparity belied any simple explanation. Aside from "cops kill more civilians than civilians kill cops," there's too much noise and too many other factors to attribute anything further.

No doubt, but many cops are stopping a dozen civilians a day, and most civilians are stopped by cops maybe a handful of times in their entire lives. Even young black men have far more important things to worry about than being killed by a cop. Furthermore, there are simple ways to reduce your risk of being killed by a cop by several orders of magnitude versus the typical person killed by a cop. Chris Rock explained a few in a video a while back.
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The math works out the same. At any given moment, any given cop is twenty times more likely to kill the civilian he's interacting with than vice versa. And sure, you can reduce your odds of getting killed - generally by treating the cop like he's a wild animal who might kill you at the slightest provocation, which is a problem in its own right - but you never know when you get pulled over or stopped on the street if this cop is the one with your name on it.


There's an interesting article about this in the NY Times today. I haven't had a chance to digest it yet.
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That is interesting. Although it only looks at ratios of incidents which have occurred, not their rate of occurrence.
 
Of all of the former mayors of large U.S. cities, why did they choose to interview Rudy Giuliani?
 
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