12 ms·
> the probability of being {black, unarmed, and shot by police} is about 3.49 times the probability of being {white, unarmed, and shot by police} on average Wh
by akud 10y ago
> the probability of being {black, unarmed, and shot by police} is about 3.49 times the probability of being {white, unarmed, and shot by police} on average
What they really need to do is factor in the probability of encounters with police gI've race. That is, we want to know, out of all encounters with police, are they more likely to be fatal if the victim is black?
Without factoring in the rate of police encounters, the conclusion could just be indicating that black people are more likely to encounter the police, which is a problem in itself but is slightly different. That would point more to socioeconomic factors determining the rate of policing in neighborhoods, rather than police racism.
- holdenk 10y agoI'm not sure I agree with you - having a higher encounters rate need not be limited to simple neighborhood selection for policing (although there is likely bias there too) - rather simply choosing who to interact with may exhibit bias (e.g. is the police officer more likely to have an encounter with a black person even in a predominantly white neighborhood)?
- CWuestefeld 10y agoI'd have to agree with the GP. To your point, a bias in the encounter rate (assuming it exists) is a significant problem, and one that would need to be addressed. But it's also a distinct problem, and there's no reason to believe that the violence problem and the disproportionate-encounter problem would be amenable to the same solution.
- loco5niner 10y agoJust to clarify... GP = GrandParent (comment) = akud's comment ?
- CWuestefeld 10y agoYes, sorry if I was cryptic.
- loco5niner 10y agoNo problem. I just haven't picked up on the local lingo yet. Thanks for verifying.
- woodchuck64 10y agoAnd why isn't prevalence of guns factored in as well?
- zbyte64 10y agoIs your hypothesis that the prevalence of guns increases the likelihood that police will treat a situation as a possible armed conflict? They are comparing the ratios of armed suspects to unarmed suspects being shot by police, so perhaps they thought that was sufficient in factoring in the prevalence of guns.
- jcoffland 10y agoIf you can't back this up with evidence and sources then you just sound like a racist.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- RHSeeger 10y agoThe fact that the officer believes the person he's dealing with is (more) likely to have a firearm can have an impact on the outcome of the interaction. The fact that the person doesn't have one doesn't mean the officer doesn't have to worry that they do, it just hasn't come into play yet.
- zbyte64 10y agoI think we could answer that question with the data they have: > County-level race-specific crime rates (1. aggravated assault, and 2. weapons possession)? So they are categorizing weapons possession into race-specific crime rates. > There is no relationship between county-level racial bias in police shootings and crime rates (even race-specific crime rates) Which is to say crimes related to weapons possession does not correlate with racial bias.
- woodchuck64 10y ago
- selectron 10y agoA study from the NYT addresses this, and finds that if arrest rates is a good proxy for police interactions (a reasonable assumption) the data supports the theory that the reason black people are more likely to be killed by police is because they are more likely to interact with police: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/upshot/police-killings-of-blacks-what-the-data-says.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fupshot&action=click&contentCollection=upshot®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=5&pgtype=sectionfront http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/upshot/police-killings-of-...: > This in turn suggests that removing police racial bias will have little effect on the killing rate. Suppose each arrest creates an equal risk of shooting for both African-Americans and whites. In that case, with the current arrest rate, 28.9 percent of all those killed by police officers would still be African-American. This is only slightly smaller than the 31.8 percent of killings we actually see, and it is much greater than the 13.2 percent level of African-Americans in the overall population.
- zasz 10y agoBut there could be a racial bias that causes police to be more likely to stop black Americans.
- marmaduke 10y agoCould be is an understatement in certain places in the US
- marcoperaza 10y agoPerhaps it has something to do with the crime rate in the black community being through the roof.
- zbyte64 10y ago> There is no relationship between county-level racial bias in police shootings and crime rates (even race-specific crime rates), meaning that the racial bias observed in police shootings in this data set is not explainable as a response to local-level crime rates.
- selectron 10y agoCan you ELI5 this sentence. I don't understand it despite staring at it for a while.
- zbyte64 10y agoWell Timmy, an unarmed black person is more likely to be shot by the police then that of another skin color. Some people are saying this is because the crime rate for blacks is much higher, and it may indeed be higher. But what we see is that regardless of the crime rate, some counties are just more likely to shoot blacks then others. So one part of America might have a lower crime rate then another but is still more likely to have the police shoot an unarmed black person.
- Swizec 10y agoI liked Trevor Noah's take on this: "This isn't a black problem, this is a US police problem. Why is the US police shooting people who are already subdued? Why are people getting shot in the back?" To support his claim, he shows both a video of police killing black people and a video of police killing white people. Each time the perp was already on the ground and immobilized. Then shot. At this point I'm terrified of ever interacting with the US police in any way for any reason.Starting to think it's time to vote with my feet and move to a different country again.
- CWuestefeld 10y agoI don't know why you seem to be getting downvoted - this seems to me to be the most important question. Perhaps one of the downvoters can provide some explanation. In particular, why is it wrong (and, I assume, perceived as racist) to ask whether the problem can be described as "those in power are abusing that power"?
- TylerE 10y agoUltimately, it can be traced back to the war on drugs, as can many of our societal ills.
- Swizec 10y ago> (and, I assume, perceived as racist) Funnily Trevor Noah is both black and recently immigrated from South Africa. Doesn't get more african-american than that.
- ZeroGravitas 10y agoThis statement doesn't make any sense to me? A fair bit of his early stand up concerns the complexities of being a mixed race child in South Africa and then the extra layers of complexity that occur when transplanted into the US. From watching that I think he'd disagree with your conclusion.
- drumdance 10y agoI don't understand why, when they do shoot, it's often five or more times. Why not just once or twice, then get out of the way?
- powertower 10y agoAnother point is how do you factor out the possibility that blacks are significantly more likely to resist arrest and fight with the police officer in a manner that would justify a shooting such as grabbing at the officers' weapons, beating the cop with his own equipment, etc? From the last time I checked into it, blacks where on the order of 10 times more likely to resist arrest than whites, and 4 times more likely to kill a cop.
- josephd 10y agoAnd where did you get your "facts" from? Source?
- powertower 10y agoThese are not hidden facts. You can find them quite easily with simple queries... http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/African-Americans-cited-for-resisting-arrest-at-6229946.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/African-Americans-cite... "African Americans in San Francisco are cited for resisting arrest at a rate eight times greater than whites even when serious crimes are not involved, according to statistics drawn from court records." Here is also a good overall source (but the author has a label on him). http://www.colorofcrime.com/2016/03/the-color-of-crime-2016-revised-edition/ http://www.colorofcrime.com/2016/03/the-color-of-crime-2016-...
- pc86 10y agoYou can be arrested for resisting arrest, without being charged with any other crime. If the entire crux of this debate is a systemic racial bias on the part of law enforcement, it stands to reason that you shouldn't use statistics from law enforcement to argue against law enforcement's bias, doesn't it?
- weberc2 10y agoThe report explains why the law enforcement statistics are trustworthy, and specifically why arrest rates (especially for violent crimes) are likely to be particularly accurate. The report itself is very thorough.
- Shivetya 10y agoWhat are the numbers for being a policeman being shot by a black person? The PC crowd won't like those numbers but its higher than the reverse. We have a police violence problem but it is no where on the scale of the crime rate of one community whose statistics blow everything out of proportion. We need a culture change. We need politicians not afraid of using the truth. Instead it benefits politicians to exploit the issue for political gain. The real crime is that political manipulation leads to more minorities deaths because they will not act on the real damage and instead go for the sensationalist side.
- ry_ry 10y agoAre those statistics available? Does the probability per-encounter increase? I don't know the answer to those questions, but if the original bias comes from the elevated amount of interactions (rather than the percentage that ended in shootings) in the original case I would be surprised if it there was a statistically significant deviation here either. Disclosure: I have no idea what I'm talking about.
- micahbright 10y agoI've seen some stats for racial breakdown of perpetrators firing on police - for example, for NYC 2011, it was 72% black, 67% hispanic - No white.
- modoc 10y agoIt's approximate 4:1. A police officer (of any race) is 4x more likely to be killed by a black person than a white person.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ACow_Adonis 10y agoThis is one of those "awkward statistical analysis" moments where the outcome of the analysis should be...well...as an analyst, i think, ridiculously obvious before its even carried out... if you have any familiarity with the topic/history/culture. But I also can respect its a topic that needs careful interpretation and isn't likely to go down well in everyday english. So what we'd expect to see is: 1) A bias is present: any study based on american society at large that DOESN'T find a bias in its behaviours/outcomes involving the black community, in terms of either wealth, incarceration, shootings, education, employment, etc etc etc must be so off you'd be more likely to disregard the evidence collected rather than believe the study/conclusion. 2) This is because, not surprisingly, all those things are so highly correlated and historically caused. 3) While I respect that it MIGHT be an interesting question to study whether, controlling for all confounding cultural and obviously explanatory variables, police are more likely to shoot black people in america, and you might even find a very very very weak effect there explained by the low pay, the correlation between low pay/racism/education, and the tendency of police as a career to attract authoritarian personalities, this is in many ways a politically pointless conclusion, because I'd bet good money that you both need to have quite sophisticated statistical understanding to really "get" what such a study is saying, it would be a horrendously complicated statistical study to almost swamp any practical implications and raise very valid questions about its methodological valididty, and I think any effect you may find will likely be swamped statistically by all other factors of black bias in american society. 4) It does no practical good to be able to go up to black groups and say "No no no, its not that police are particularly biased against you because you're black and police are racists, its just that because the higher-order causes of racism and racial history in american society: i.e. you're poor, uneducated, encounter the police more often, commit more crimes, american historical wealth disparities and racial wealth disparities, americans are more likely to carry and be afraid of guns, etc, means that you're just more likely to encounter them and therefore they're more likely to shoot you...so just go home and chill." That socioeconomic/historical/political factors are the main determinant of things here strikes me as both: a) Statistically and historically obvious b) Totally irrelevant to the actual question of whether institutional bias is outrageous/real/needs to be fixed/the reality of black experiences on the other side of that equation.
- 10y ago