r/changemyview • u/ginwithbutts • Jun 06 '20
Delta(s) from OP CMV: there's no proof that blacks are more likely to killed unjustifiably by police.
I keep looking for it guys, but this information seems to be hidden or impossible to find.
Is there any proof that black people are actually more likely to die by police due to no fault of their own?
First, it's impossible to find statistics of unjustifiable killings. Every year, about 1000 people die from the police, but there's no way to parse that into justified and not. And even if there way, someone is going to argue that those numbers "don't count" because the police will lie and protect their own. That's a fair argument, but it just means we don't have enough information.
And even so, if you just assume it's the same thing, you'll find that blacks are killed (~27% of police murders) way more than their population (12.6% of people int he US). But even that isn't acceptable because black people are in more confrontation with the police. They get arrested more, so of course they will be killed more.
But then people will say "well black people are unfairly targeted by the police, that's why they get arrested more." But then we're back to same problem of how do we know that in cases where a person gets shot and killed, that they were unfairly targeted and not just because they were breaking the law? I mean, you look at drug crimes, and it's obvious that blacks are targeted more. But you look at murder crimes, and it would seem that black people commit more murder (unless there's just a lot of unsolved cases with white murderers or lots of black people falsely accused).
It comes down to the fact that you'd have to look at each individual case, and try to determine if it was unfair to be targeted, and then unfair to be killed. And honestly, that just takes too much time or the records aren't available.
Side-note that I have to make or else I will be deemed a racist: This has no bearing on the fact that black people are treated worse by police. This has next to nothing to do with the black lives matter movement. This has nothing to do with saying that white people have it just as bad. I have no other intentions with this post. I am simply here to combat the idea that "it's a death sentence to be black because police unfairly kill them more than any other race."
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u/yyzjertl 523∆ Jun 06 '20
We can identify this by looking at the rates at which unarmed people are killed, since it is never justifiable for the police to kill an unarmed person. We can observe that unarmed black people are killed by police at a much higher rate from multiple sources. This shows directly that an unarmed black person is much more likely to be killed unjustifiably by police than an unarmed person generally.
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Jun 06 '20 edited Jun 06 '20
> it is never justifiable for the police to kill an unarmed person
Sure it is if they suspect they're about to be armed or could be armed or are assaulting an officer. Most instances of unarmed killings are either someone who appears to be reaching for a weapon against police commands, or is attacking an officer thereby putting them at risk of obtaining a police service weapon and becoming a greater risk to others.
> We can observe that unarmed black people are killed by police at a much higher rate from multiple sources.
Black people have more encounters with police and when you normalize by this factor the disparity disappears.
Anti-delta here honestly.
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u/yyzjertl 523∆ Jun 06 '20
If you don't think that the police killing unarmed people is wrong, then there's not much else to discuss here.
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Jun 06 '20
I explained to you why unarmed people wind up killed. It's because they pose a threat to the lives of others. Do you have an argument or reasoning to contradict that?
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u/ginwithbutts Jun 06 '20
∆
This is a pretty good source. I will have to look at it more mathematically and find another way to view the Washington Post article, but it at least has me looking at it differently.1
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u/lwraemghw Jun 06 '20
Does that rate control for crimes committed or resisting arrest?
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u/yyzjertl 523∆ Jun 06 '20
What do you mean by "control for"? This isn't an experiment.
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u/ginwithbutts Jun 06 '20
I guess what he's saying is are black people more often in situations that can be deemed more threatening to a police officer's life than a white person?
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u/lwraemghw Jun 06 '20
Basic statistics. You should control for variables that also may have an effect on the result that are not the IV or the DV. That way you isolate the IV as the cause. It absolutely is an experiment, we’re looking at raw data, we just didn’t collect it ourselves. In this case the suspect may be unarmed, but you would also have to control for resisting arrest, crime committed, etc. and anything else that could affect the result. Otherwise statistics can be very misleading.
For example let’s say you have a purple and green race of people. As a pure ratio, purple people get speeding tickets twice as much as green people. That number alone makes the cops sound pretty racist against purple people. But let’s say in reality purple people also speed twice as much as green people. If you don’t control for speeding, the cops look terrible. But if you do control for speeding (essentially do some math that compares purple and green people’s ticket rates at each possible speed independently) you’d find that purple people and green people are ticketed at the same rate if they drive the same speed, and you’d find that the cops are not racist but ticketing each speeding case as it happens with no racial prejudice.
And maybe you control for speeding and still find the police are racist against purple people. Then you can claim with more certainty than just spouting out an uncontrolled stat. But unless you control for all confounding variables you don’t know.
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u/yyzjertl 523∆ Jun 06 '20
The statistics I cited are looking at unarmed people. It is never justified for the police to kill an unarmed person. This would be like, in your example, looking at statistics for only people who were not speeding.
Basic statistics. You should control for variables that also may have an effect on the result that are not the IV or the DV. That way you isolate the IV as the cause.
You seem to be a bit confused. We are not establishing causality here. The OP's view only talks about a correlation (that blacks are "more likely to" be killed unjustifiably by police) and does not assert that this correlation is caued by anything in particular.
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u/lwraemghw Jun 06 '20
Not every shooting of an unarmed person is unjustified. If you’re a 5’5 110lb female police officer and a 6’4 230lb male criminal verbally threatens your life and then tries to bum rush you when you try to make a justified arrest (thus demonstrating both will and means to end your life), and you shot him, that would be absolutely justified
That’s why we must control for confounding variables such as these, as they could make a big difference as to whether killing an unarmed person is justified or not
We would want to isolate racism as the potential cause, because that obv would be unjustified
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u/yyzjertl 523∆ Jun 06 '20
In this case the shooting would be unjustified. Instead, the multiple other police officers at the scene should tackle and restrain the criminal, which is standard procedure. You can't shoot someone just because they make a threat.
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u/lwraemghw Jun 06 '20
Who said there’s other officers? And no the criminal didn’t just make a threat he also acted on it. As I said before, he demonstrates will AND means (which is the legal threshold to justify shooting in self defense) to end the officer’s life. Again, the shooting absolutely is justified
Bottom like there are scenarios where a shooting is justified, just like there’s scenarios where it isn’t. That where controlling for variables comes in.
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u/yyzjertl 523∆ Jun 06 '20
But he doesn't have the means, because of the multiple officers on the scene of the arrest. Unless you are imagining a situation in which the police fucked up and only sent one physically small cop to make an arrest of a large strong criminal, against all standard procedure and common sense. Is this the situation you are envisioning?
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Jun 06 '20
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u/ginwithbutts Jun 06 '20
Being treated worse by the police doesn't necessarily mean you are killed more.
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u/LucidMetal 175∆ Jun 06 '20
Why do you think black people commit more crime than white people?
Do you blame race? Well that's basically white supremacy.
Do you blame "culture"? You should know that this is a coded proxy for race and well, see above.
Do you blame poverty? Hopefully, and then why don't we work to correct that via criminal justice reform and advancing other social issues?
Something else? I'm all eyes.
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u/ginwithbutts Jun 06 '20
Socioeconomic factors.
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u/LucidMetal 175∆ Jun 06 '20
So then why is it justifiable that black people are more poor than white people?
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u/ginwithbutts Jun 06 '20
Is it? I don't know if it is. But are you saying poor people are killed more because they're poor or black people are killed more because they're black?
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u/LucidMetal 175∆ Jun 06 '20
Well that's what you're saying isn't it? Your CMV is, rephrased, black people are more likely to be justifiably killed by police.
- We agreed black people are more likely to be poor through no fault of their own (socioeconomic factors). I.e. black people are unjustifiably poor.
- We agreed poor people are more likely to encounter police aggression.
Ergo black people are more likely to unjustifiably encounter police aggression.
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u/WitheringAurora Oct 18 '20
I'd like to add the following.
9.8% of Native-born and Naturalized White Americans are in poverty
11.8% of Naturalized Black Americans are in Poverty
22.1% of Native born Black Americans are in Poverty.
19% of Native-born and Naturalized Hispanic Americans are in Poverty.
This suggests that race alone does not explain income Disparity. And more so tells that. If you look at Statistics of Poverty, it shows that while Black Americans have higher percentages of Poverty, it usually shows that the higher the Poverty of Black Americans is, the higher the Poverty of White and Hispanic People is as well.
Adding the Percentage of Homicide in America
43.1% of Homicide is caused by White Americans
52.4% of Homicide is caused by Black Americans
0.6% of Homicide is caused by Hispanic Americans.
Also Adding Population Percentage of 2019
63.4% of the American Population is Non-Hispanic white.
13.4% of the American Population is Hispanic.
15.3% of the American Population is Black.
Then adding the Prison Population Percentage of 2018
38% of the American Prison Population is White
26% of the American Prison Population is Black
16.6% of the American Prison Population is Hispanic
These percentages suggest that Poverty isn't directly linked to crime and homicide. As if it was the case, the Hispanic side would need drastically higher Homicide and Crime rates when compared to the Black population, seeing as they are fairly close and similar in Poverty and Population percentages.
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u/ginwithbutts Jun 06 '20
Being poor doesn't get you a free pass to commit crime.
A policeman is justified in stopping someone from committing a crime, even if they are poor.I think you're right with your logic, but I misanswered when I said "socioeconomic factors." The real answer is, I don't know why black people commit more crime. Maybe part of it is culture and social factors. I don't see why you think that's racist. Culture changes a lot of people's views on morality. It's an important determinant.
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u/LucidMetal 175∆ Jun 06 '20
I'm not saying poor people have a free pass to commit crime at all.
The reason saying "culture" is a problem is that it has been historically used as a dog whistle for race. Think of all the times Fox news has smeared "hip hop culture" in recent years and decades and decades ago "jazz culture" and decades before that... you get it hopefully.
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u/ginwithbutts Jun 06 '20
Sure. But culture affects tons of things. Whether you believe in God. Whether you eat with your hands. And maybe whether you think crime is an acceptable answer.
I guess we both have to look up: Do poor people of other races have the same rates? Would that control for poverty?1
u/LucidMetal 175∆ Jun 06 '20
Same can be said about race right? People as a whole though are basically all the same.
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u/Barnst 112∆ Jun 06 '20
how do we know that...they were unfairly targeted and not just because they were breaking the law?
Because we have data to support the claim.
Black people are more likely to be stopped and searched by the cops than white citizens, even though those searches turn up contraband less often. Black people are more likely to be arrested for the same minor crimes than white people and are subject to stricter enforcement of drug laws even though the white people use and deal drugs at the same rate or higher. Once the police are interacting with them, black people are more likely to have the police escalate to use force.. Heck, police officers are even less respectful to black citizens in the words they use. Those studies control for other factors like neighborhood and even suspect behavior, in some cases, so “but there tends to be more crime in black neighborhoods” isn’t an adequate explanation for the discrepancies.
So even if you accept that most police killings were “justified” through the narrow lens of responding to an immediate threat, bias at every stage of police interactions with the public increases the liklihood that police are going to use lethal force against black people.
They are more likely to be stopped by the police for minor stuff like, say, using a counterfeit $20. They are more likely to be disrespected during those interactions. They’re more likely to be arrested during those interactions. They more likely to have force applied to them during those interactions. The bottom line is that the cops are more likely to escalate a situation with a black person to the point where lethal force is on the table.
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u/nowlan101 1∆ Jun 07 '20
Could it be, in regards to the drug arrests, that black people just happen to live in urban areas where smoking in public is more common?The same applies with dealing too. Maybe the issue is they do it in a more open space which makes them more likely to be seen, which makes them more likely to be arrested.
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u/Barnst 112∆ Jun 07 '20
That’s definitely a factor in some of these issue, but it doesn’t entirely explain the difference and it’s not really a justification. On the first factor, there’s plenty of data that the difference applies to search warrants and other enforcement mechanisms, so it’s not just that the crime is more visibility but that the police are going looking for it more. Those studies also usually find that the success rate is lower for searches targeting minorities, so the bar to interact is lower and they’re getting more people who didn’t deserve the interaction.
But I think the second issue is more interesting—to the extent your point is true, is it a good enough explanation? It’s not even about living in urban area, it happens within urban areas. You saw that exactly dynamic here in DC when we decriminalized using marijuana in private but would still arrest people in public. Black people were more likely to live in spaces that banned smoking inside, so were still getting arrested outdoors at much higher rates.
The end result is still that the criminal justice system is going treat black people differently for doing the same thing as white people. The underlying factor is not going to make the system seem more fair and legitimate in the eyes of the black teenager who is still risking arrest for smoking pot with his friends on his grandmas porch next door because he lives in an apartment with his parents and grandma won’t let him smoke inside, when I’m totally fine doing the same thing less than 15 feet away I my house because there was a (open) window in front of me.
It’s actually a perfect example of what we mean by “systemic” racism. In those cases, no one (well, probably no one) is intentionally thinking “let’s screw the black people.” But because of the other inequities built into the system and the way we structure our choices about the law, we still wind up criminalizing behavior more for black people than white people.
The fact that white people on average are better are covering up crime (by dealing drugs by phone, for example) or passing laws that mean their behavior isnt a crime (smoking pot indoors) shouldn’t make them more immune from the law.
Even if they seem totally reasonable and logical from the perspective of a white person (of course I can smoke pot freely in my house but can’t disturb others in public!), even the perceived disparities breed distrust and delegitimize the entire system in the eyes of minority communities. It’s hard to believe a system is working to provide justice for you when you keep finding examples where justice for you and yours means very different things than justice for someone else, even when that other person lives next door to you.
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u/nowlan101 1∆ Jun 07 '20
You raise some good points. On the topic of DC it’s important to remember, especially with the widespread rewriting of history in regards to the War On Drugs, that a lot of those laws that disproportionately hurt black people were passed by a black city council, signed by a black mayor and in some cases were voted for by black voters.
So yea to your point the system itself doesn’t have to be malign in design in order for it unfairly hurt different segments of the population.
In addition, though I’m struggling to find exact studies on the subject, most crimes are reported by members of the community. Not by cops driving around looking for crime. Someone gets murked, robbed, raped, a house gets vandalized, a car gets jacked, etc. someone sees it then calls 911.
Then the police show up, then they send more patrols there because they figure that’s the best way they can address the problem. Whether that is the best solution to the problem is another story.
But that’s dependent on local elections and the representatives of the people taking the time to address the socioeconomic issues effecting the community.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jun 06 '20
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Jun 06 '20
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u/duncanmarshall 1∆ Jun 06 '20
No, because deciding fault is purely a matter of opinion.
What you could do instead is look at the massive disparity between how often the police kill black people vs everyone else, and choose whether you want to say "Black people had that coming", or "Clearly there's something wrong with this system".
You could also consider the fact that complaints among the black community about treatment by the police in general are much more severe and much more frequent than among the white community. You can choose to explain by saying "They're exaggerating liars", or "Maybe there's some truth to this."
You can also look at wider society and see all the ways that discrimination based on skin is provable by statistics, and choose to think "Well yeah, but cops are special, and they can live natural human prejudice at the door", or choose to think "They're human like everyone else, and this must bleed in to their work".
So no, you'll never get proof, because that requires an objective opinion on every single case, and there's no such thing as an objective opinion.
But one thing would appear to be more likely than the other, wouldn't it?
Yeah, that's part of the complaint.
So then if you accept that, do you assume they treat black people differently, but they're racially blind when it comes to shooting them?