5 ms·

Chicago Police Dept. Plagued by Systemic Racism, Task Force Finds

39 points by Nelkins 11y ago

kyleblarson 11y ago
And in other shocking news, the sun will rise in the East and set in the West today.
hnamazon123 11y ago
This is racism iff in fact blacks in Chicago don't disproportionally commit the type of crimes/infractions that they are arrested for.
- jbondeson 11y ago
  "Black people were targeted in 72 percent of thousands of investigative street stops that did not lead to arrests during a recent summer." If that's not racial profiling, I don't know what is.
  - cb18 11y ago
    What is the percentage breakdown by race in the arrests that these sweeps produced? What is the breakdown by race of the perpetrators of the crimes that these sweeps are aimed at? If blacks are the arrestees in greater than 72% of these sweeps that result in arrests, would you say that blacks are being under-profiled?
    - hackuser 11y ago
      Lots of hypotheticals, but how about something real? What if the sun doesn't rise tomorrow?
      - cb18 11y ago
        What are you talking about 'hypotheticals'? I'm asking that data be consulted to test whether the assumptions and assertions being made are accurate. As to the rest of your comment, they're words, grammatically correct. But they make zero sense, both in context of this discussion, and in the sequence you've presented them. The "sun rising" isn't real, it's an artifact of the rotation of the earth. And the 'what if' of it not occurring isn't 'real' because all historical evidence shows that your hypothetical of the sun 'not rising' on April 14, 2016 has virtually zero chance of occurring.
    - lern_too_spel 11y ago
      That's not how statistics works. If 1% of blacks and 1% of non-blacks should be arrested (both rates equal) and 72% of stops are for blacks, then 72% of arrests will be for blacks.
tysonjennings 11y ago
The only things I saw of substance in the article were a few anecdotes alleging the police are targeting innocent "people of color" which may be true but needs some hard data to back up. Then the article brought up some actual statistics pointing out how blacks are more often involved in police confrontations of various types which is presumably true but this does not even begin to prove any racist intent. Are blacks committing more crimes? The justice department seems to believe so. It appears the article was juxtaposing the former with the latter as a way to imply that the latter is some kind of proof of the former but it isn't. Not even close. The thing is, just because something effects a racial group in a disparate way doesn't mean it is motivated by racist intent. There was a study in New Jersey that illustrates this quite well. People were up in arms because blacks were 25 percent or so more likely to be pulled over for speeding. The study found that blacks make up 25 percent more of people who speed. Disparate impact? Yes. Racist? Obviously not. Now it would be extremely naive to pretend racism is a solved problem but to just throw our hands up and say it's "systemic" is a cop-out. How do you fight that. It's a vague notion. Show us some data of how blacks are actually being victimized and then lets do something. Otherwise maybe check the presumptions.
nxzero 11y ago
>> "Coincidentally, it was released as city leaders were installing a new, permanent superintendent for the Chicago Police Department." ^^ Sounds like a stretch to believe that was coincidental.
mindslight 11y ago
Promises of ambiguous reform are simply the system placating and preserving the status quo. The fundamental problem isn't racism - it is the lack of justice in every individual case. If police officers were actually held accountable for their improper actions (civil and criminal liability for false imprisonment, battery, lost time, etc), the racist thoughts of individual cops would not matter as much.
- hackuser 11y ago
  > Racism isn't the fundamental problem - it is the lack of justice in each individual case. If police officers were actually held accountable for their improper actions (civil and criminal liability for false imprisonment, battery, lost time, etc), the racism of individual cops would hardly matter as much. This is not realistic; we can't monitor and hold accountable all police actions. We can't even do it when there is widespread evidence of abuse. Racism is the fundemetal cause of many of these problems; until that's dealt with, they will just keep coming back.
  - mindslight 11y ago
    Your argument is similar to saying "We can't monitor and hold accountable all people's actions." Enforcement of all crime is based on post-facto complaints. We just need to stop giving cops a free pass to break the law, and stop the justice system exporting its externalities onto innocent people in a weird reverse-lottery.
    - hackuser 11y ago
      > Your argument is similar to saying "We can't monitor and hold accountable all people's actions." Do you disagree with that? Think of it like quality in engineering: We can't do it effectively by detecting problems post-facto and fixing them (and in engineering our ability to detect them is far greater than in human behavior); quality must be built in. We couldn't arrest our way out of the drug problem, we couldn't kill/capture our way out of terrorism - these aren't solutions, but partial remediation of failed policies. We need to address the root of problems.
capote 11y ago
Major edit: I was wrong. I've read parts of the report quoted around other places on the internet and now see that it does in fact give large substantiation to arguments of police being racists. Primarily the statistics having to do with situations that do not involve an arrest because of no wrongdoing found are really irritating.
- hackuser 11y ago
  > the "report" does not give validation to this Are you talking about the report (have you read it?) or just the newspaper article?
  - capote 11y ago
    I haven't read the report. But what can the report possibly say that will survive the "black people commit disproportionately more crime" argument? This is the argument we need to figure out how to combat. No cop is ever going to admit he did something because he's a racist, and that's really the only way to find out if one is racist or not; isn't it?
    - hackuser 11y ago
      > what can the report possibly say that proves there is racism? Systematic racism isn't a novel idea that has been impossible to substantiate, but a widespread, well-documented phenomenon in many different circumstances. Was there systematic racism when blacks weren't allowed in many restaurants and hotels? What if all black prisoners are treated one way and whites another? EDIT: I think my response addresses your updated comment.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
    - jonlucc 11y ago
      If the Ferguson report is any indicator, it will show disproportion at every step, not just at arrest.
cb18 11y ago
tysonjennings, Your past 6 comments, going back 1167 days ago, are all marked [dead]
hackuser 11y ago
Why now and why in Chicago are political institutions saying these things? Most people have known about theses problems all over the country and for decades. I watched a the history of the issue and the same issues were being examined one commission after another going back, IIRC, to the 1920s. The report says the problems have gone on for decades. My guess is that it is due to political pressure. IMHO most corruption and injustice happens because there is no pressure on political leaders to fix it, while they face a lot of pressure from vested interests (the police, prosecutors, etc.). On most issues, the public pays no attention and if they do, it's only for a short time. As they say, 'all that is needed for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing'. But still, why now and why in Chicago would this kind of political pressure finally arise? (And it remains to be seen if anything changes, which I would guess depends on whether the pressure can be sustained.)
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  It's not just in Chicago; in fact, the pressure on Chicago comes in part from the Federal investigations recently elsewhere in the country.
  - hackuser 11y ago
    What other governmental institutions have released reports like this one?
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      Externally, there have been several federal investigations of.local agencies (notably, Ferguson, which also came with an enforcement effort resulting in a consent decree); that's actually probably a big part of the reason for Chicago to do, and be seen doing, it's own internal effort.
ebfe 11y ago
Have we ruled out the possibility that African-Americans disproportionately engage in the actions we consider an acceptable reason for deadly force (aiming a gun at, charging towards, etc. police officers)?
hackuser 11y ago
It's sad to see people trying to rationalize denial or obstruction of this issue, for example by throwing up endless questions using words like "correlation". You can always ask more questions but that really doesn't contribute, it only obstructs. I've never seen a serious assessment that doubts the general idea, that there is racism in law enforcement.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- cb18 11y ago
  >It's sad to see people trying to rationalize denial or obstruction of this issue, for example by throwing up endless questions (I'm commenting on these issues in general, not necessarily this specific report) It's not sad. It's understandable. It's problematic that we're at a point where we predicate what should be objective discourse on emotion, rather than facts and observations. There are those, such as yourself who we can charitably assume, mean well. But on the other hand you have things like Ferguson, Mo. hijacking countless cognitive cycles, where from all the evidence it is clear that any sort of grave injustice was essentially invented out of whole cloth. Then you have a seemingly constant drum beat of news reports of so-called 'hate crimes' that turn out to be hoaxes.[0] All this is occurring in an environment of constant policing of the "facts that must not be named," which is that there are groups in the US that commit violent crimes at a rate that is widely disproportionate to the country as a whole. Those groups aren't poor whites, or rich whites. People's skepticism and questions are quite understandable. [0] http://fakehatecrimes.org/ http://fakehatecrimes.org/ What's interesting about these so-called hoaxes, is that they themselves are hate crimes. For example if a hoaxer invents a scenario where a white commits a 'hate-crime,' the hoaxer them self is committing a hate crime against whites by portraying whites as a whole in a despicable false light.
  - hackuser 11y ago
    > People's skepticism and questions are quite understandable. No they are not, no more than climate change denial. As I said, you can always come up with more obstructionism but that is meaningless.
michaelbuddy 11y ago
Yet another claim of racism with the assumption that races and cultures behave the same way. BLACKS commit MORE crime per capita than whites or asians. And that's not just the United States. Check the prison populations in other countries. And the criminals make it hard for the innocent to get the presumption of innocence for even the most mundane situations. Many many many examples come to mind. What people want to call systemic racism are patterns revealing the best truths that policeman can go by, which is experience of reality in their domain. Yes there are bad cops, however there's one more thing you MUST account for when you try to understand why blacks might be treated differently than whites in neighborhods. Different cultures, different types of people will respond differently to deterrents. So police may find that the harder they are during encounters with some types of people means they keep the peace better. And with others, a different approach is what makes more sense. A big problem is people read this, they're gonna want citations or they'll just say I'm being racist. Thing is, I don't take any kind of pleasure in these facts. I find it pretty depressing. If you want citations, here's a thought, go on about 3 or 4 ride-alongs with cops in areas of varied populations. It will open your eyes. That's the way to know reality. Be there in it.
chrisfromwork 11y ago
The validity of anything headed by rahm Emmanuel in Chicago should really be questioned. The same mayor who covered up the murder of an unarmed black male during his reelection, is now leading a team to prove systemic racism in Chicago. Where is the accountability for this guy. No one should be able to champion both sides.

39 points by Nelkins 11y ago

And in other shocking news, the sun will rise in the East and set in the West today.

This is racism iff in fact blacks in Chicago don't disproportionally commit the type of crimes/infractions that they are arrested for.

jbondeson 11y ago
"Black people were targeted in 72 percent of thousands of investigative street stops that did not lead to arrests during a recent summer." If that's not racial profiling, I don't know what is.
- cb18 11y ago
  What is the percentage breakdown by race in the arrests that these sweeps produced? What is the breakdown by race of the perpetrators of the crimes that these sweeps are aimed at? If blacks are the arrestees in greater than 72% of these sweeps that result in arrests, would you say that blacks are being under-profiled?
  - hackuser 11y ago
    Lots of hypotheticals, but how about something real? What if the sun doesn't rise tomorrow?
    - cb18 11y ago
      What are you talking about 'hypotheticals'? I'm asking that data be consulted to test whether the assumptions and assertions being made are accurate. As to the rest of your comment, they're words, grammatically correct. But they make zero sense, both in context of this discussion, and in the sequence you've presented them. The "sun rising" isn't real, it's an artifact of the rotation of the earth. And the 'what if' of it not occurring isn't 'real' because all historical evidence shows that your hypothetical of the sun 'not rising' on April 14, 2016 has virtually zero chance of occurring.
  - lern_too_spel 11y ago
    That's not how statistics works. If 1% of blacks and 1% of non-blacks should be arrested (both rates equal) and 72% of stops are for blacks, then 72% of arrests will be for blacks.

tysonjennings 11y ago

The only things I saw of substance in the article were a few anecdotes alleging the police are targeting innocent "people of color" which may be true but needs some hard data to back up. Then the article brought up some actual statistics pointing out how blacks are more often involved in police confrontations of various types which is presumably true but this does not even begin to prove any racist intent. Are blacks committing more crimes? The justice department seems to believe so. It appears the article was juxtaposing the former with the latter as a way to imply that the latter is some kind of proof of the former but it isn't. Not even close. The thing is, just because something effects a racial group in a disparate way doesn't mean it is motivated by racist intent. There was a study in New Jersey that illustrates this quite well. People were up in arms because blacks were 25 percent or so more likely to be pulled over for speeding. The study found that blacks make up 25 percent more of people who speed. Disparate impact? Yes. Racist? Obviously not. Now it would be extremely naive to pretend racism is a solved problem but to just throw our hands up and say it's "systemic" is a cop-out. How do you fight that. It's a vague notion. Show us some data of how blacks are actually being victimized and then lets do something. Otherwise maybe check the presumptions.

nxzero 11y ago

>> "Coincidentally, it was released as city leaders were installing a new, permanent superintendent for the Chicago Police Department." ^^ Sounds like a stretch to believe that was coincidental.

mindslight 11y ago

Promises of ambiguous reform are simply the system placating and preserving the status quo. The fundamental problem isn't racism - it is the lack of justice in every individual case. If police officers were actually held accountable for their improper actions (civil and criminal liability for false imprisonment, battery, lost time, etc), the racist thoughts of individual cops would not matter as much.

hackuser 11y ago
> Racism isn't the fundamental problem - it is the lack of justice in each individual case. If police officers were actually held accountable for their improper actions (civil and criminal liability for false imprisonment, battery, lost time, etc), the racism of individual cops would hardly matter as much. This is not realistic; we can't monitor and hold accountable all police actions. We can't even do it when there is widespread evidence of abuse. Racism is the fundemetal cause of many of these problems; until that's dealt with, they will just keep coming back.
- mindslight 11y ago
  Your argument is similar to saying "We can't monitor and hold accountable all people's actions." Enforcement of all crime is based on post-facto complaints. We just need to stop giving cops a free pass to break the law, and stop the justice system exporting its externalities onto innocent people in a weird reverse-lottery.
  - hackuser 11y ago
    > Your argument is similar to saying "We can't monitor and hold accountable all people's actions." Do you disagree with that? Think of it like quality in engineering: We can't do it effectively by detecting problems post-facto and fixing them (and in engineering our ability to detect them is far greater than in human behavior); quality must be built in. We couldn't arrest our way out of the drug problem, we couldn't kill/capture our way out of terrorism - these aren't solutions, but partial remediation of failed policies. We need to address the root of problems.

capote 11y ago

Major edit: I was wrong. I've read parts of the report quoted around other places on the internet and now see that it does in fact give large substantiation to arguments of police being racists. Primarily the statistics having to do with situations that do not involve an arrest because of no wrongdoing found are really irritating.

hackuser 11y ago
> the "report" does not give validation to this Are you talking about the report (have you read it?) or just the newspaper article?
- capote 11y ago
  I haven't read the report. But what can the report possibly say that will survive the "black people commit disproportionately more crime" argument? This is the argument we need to figure out how to combat. No cop is ever going to admit he did something because he's a racist, and that's really the only way to find out if one is racist or not; isn't it?
  - hackuser 11y ago
    > what can the report possibly say that proves there is racism? Systematic racism isn't a novel idea that has been impossible to substantiate, but a widespread, well-documented phenomenon in many different circumstances. Was there systematic racism when blacks weren't allowed in many restaurants and hotels? What if all black prisoners are treated one way and whites another? EDIT: I think my response addresses your updated comment.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - jonlucc 11y ago
    If the Ferguson report is any indicator, it will show disproportion at every step, not just at arrest.

cb18 11y ago

tysonjennings, Your past 6 comments, going back 1167 days ago, are all marked [dead]

hackuser 11y ago

Why now and why in Chicago are political institutions saying these things? Most people have known about theses problems all over the country and for decades. I watched a the history of the issue and the same issues were being examined one commission after another going back, IIRC, to the 1920s. The report says the problems have gone on for decades. My guess is that it is due to political pressure. IMHO most corruption and injustice happens because there is no pressure on political leaders to fix it, while they face a lot of pressure from vested interests (the police, prosecutors, etc.). On most issues, the public pays no attention and if they do, it's only for a short time. As they say, 'all that is needed for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing'. But still, why now and why in Chicago would this kind of political pressure finally arise? (And it remains to be seen if anything changes, which I would guess depends on whether the pressure can be sustained.)

dragonwriter 11y ago
It's not just in Chicago; in fact, the pressure on Chicago comes in part from the Federal investigations recently elsewhere in the country.
- hackuser 11y ago
  What other governmental institutions have released reports like this one?
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    Externally, there have been several federal investigations of.local agencies (notably, Ferguson, which also came with an enforcement effort resulting in a consent decree); that's actually probably a big part of the reason for Chicago to do, and be seen doing, it's own internal effort.

ebfe 11y ago

Have we ruled out the possibility that African-Americans disproportionately engage in the actions we consider an acceptable reason for deadly force (aiming a gun at, charging towards, etc. police officers)?

hackuser 11y ago

It's sad to see people trying to rationalize denial or obstruction of this issue, for example by throwing up endless questions using words like "correlation". You can always ask more questions but that really doesn't contribute, it only obstructs. I've never seen a serious assessment that doubts the general idea, that there is racism in law enforcement.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
cb18 11y ago
>It's sad to see people trying to rationalize denial or obstruction of this issue, for example by throwing up endless questions (I'm commenting on these issues in general, not necessarily this specific report) It's not sad. It's understandable. It's problematic that we're at a point where we predicate what should be objective discourse on emotion, rather than facts and observations. There are those, such as yourself who we can charitably assume, mean well. But on the other hand you have things like Ferguson, Mo. hijacking countless cognitive cycles, where from all the evidence it is clear that any sort of grave injustice was essentially invented out of whole cloth. Then you have a seemingly constant drum beat of news reports of so-called 'hate crimes' that turn out to be hoaxes.[0] All this is occurring in an environment of constant policing of the "facts that must not be named," which is that there are groups in the US that commit violent crimes at a rate that is widely disproportionate to the country as a whole. Those groups aren't poor whites, or rich whites. People's skepticism and questions are quite understandable. [0] http://fakehatecrimes.org/ http://fakehatecrimes.org/ What's interesting about these so-called hoaxes, is that they themselves are hate crimes. For example if a hoaxer invents a scenario where a white commits a 'hate-crime,' the hoaxer them self is committing a hate crime against whites by portraying whites as a whole in a despicable false light.
- hackuser 11y ago
  > People's skepticism and questions are quite understandable. No they are not, no more than climate change denial. As I said, you can always come up with more obstructionism but that is meaningless.

michaelbuddy 11y ago

Yet another claim of racism with the assumption that races and cultures behave the same way. BLACKS commit MORE crime per capita than whites or asians. And that's not just the United States. Check the prison populations in other countries. And the criminals make it hard for the innocent to get the presumption of innocence for even the most mundane situations. Many many many examples come to mind. What people want to call systemic racism are patterns revealing the best truths that policeman can go by, which is experience of reality in their domain. Yes there are bad cops, however there's one more thing you MUST account for when you try to understand why blacks might be treated differently than whites in neighborhods. Different cultures, different types of people will respond differently to deterrents. So police may find that the harder they are during encounters with some types of people means they keep the peace better. And with others, a different approach is what makes more sense. A big problem is people read this, they're gonna want citations or they'll just say I'm being racist. Thing is, I don't take any kind of pleasure in these facts. I find it pretty depressing. If you want citations, here's a thought, go on about 3 or 4 ride-alongs with cops in areas of varied populations. It will open your eyes. That's the way to know reality. Be there in it.

chrisfromwork 11y ago

The validity of anything headed by rahm Emmanuel in Chicago should really be questioned. The same mayor who covered up the murder of an unarmed black male during his reelection, is now leading a team to prove systemic racism in Chicago. Where is the accountability for this guy. No one should be able to champion both sides.