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People get VERY nervous about police with a track record of murdering unarmed people waving guns at them, and they are human beings just like everyone else look

People get VERY nervous about police with a track record of murdering unarmed people waving guns at them, and they are human beings just like everyone else looking down the barrel of a gun. Maybe that opinion is unpopular because it puts more expectations on the victims of unjustified violence than the theoretically-trained perpetrators.

jtms 8y ago
I am just being pragmatic. If she had just done what was asked instead of angrily protesting she would have gotten a traffic ticket which could have been fought in court and not have gone to jail and would still be alive
- pwinnski 8y ago
  This is a reasonable belief, but incorrect. Philando Castile did everything he was asked to do, and was still murdered in front of his partner and child. There are many, many, many cases in which compliance gains nothing at all, and quite a few counter-cases in which protesting and waving a camera is likely (impossible to know for sure) the only reason people who are the subjects of police aggression are still alive. Many people are not aware of these things off the top of their heads, but most black people--who are statistically six times more likely per capita to be killed by cops--definitely are aware.
- mannykannot 8y ago
  You seem to have a naive idea of what 'fight it in court' means. When you enter the court system, especially as as a defendant, it is not as if you have been teleported into a domain where enlightened rationality rules, no matter what the constitutional theory says is supposed to happen. Even if the law is nominally on the defendant's side, there is a good chance that she will be threatened with charges carrying significant penalties, possibly backed up by nothing more than the testimony of the officer who violated her rights in the first place, and offered a plea deal. Accepting the plea deal forecloses on any chance of righting a wrong.
- 3hoss 8y ago
  you seem pretty confident in predicting that outcome - why?
tzs 8y ago
(In the following, I'll break out the numbers for black people separately from non-blacks or general population, since black people are killed by police at a higher rate, and those killings get a lot more attention) We should of course be trying to reduce police killing, especially police killing of unarmed people, and seriously looking at the factor of two difference between the rates for blacks and non-blacks (factor of three for unarmed killings) to see if it is due to racism by police and fix that if it is. But we probably also should not overstate the risk. Getting killed by police in the US is way down on the list of things that are likely to get you killed, even if you not white. An unarmed random person is about as likely to be killed by lighting as killed by police. An unarmed black person is 3 times as likely to be killed by police as killed by lighting, and 3 times as likely to be injured by lighting as killed by police. Here are the numbers. There are typically around 1000 police killings in the US per year, and about 200 of those are black people. The black population is around 37 million, out of a total of around 330 million. That gives a black killed by police rate of 0.54 per 100k, and a general population rate of 0.30 per 100k. About 10% of the black people killed were unarmed, and about 5% for the killed population in general, bringing the unarmed killed rate to about 0.05 per 100k for blacks and 0.015 per 100k for the general population. About 500 people are injured by lighting every year in the US, giving a lighting injury rate of 0.15 per 100k, and about 10% of those are killed, giving a killed by lighting rate of about 0.015 per 100k.

jtms 8y ago

I am just being pragmatic. If she had just done what was asked instead of angrily protesting she would have gotten a traffic ticket which could have been fought in court and not have gone to jail and would still be alive

pwinnski 8y ago
This is a reasonable belief, but incorrect. Philando Castile did everything he was asked to do, and was still murdered in front of his partner and child. There are many, many, many cases in which compliance gains nothing at all, and quite a few counter-cases in which protesting and waving a camera is likely (impossible to know for sure) the only reason people who are the subjects of police aggression are still alive. Many people are not aware of these things off the top of their heads, but most black people--who are statistically six times more likely per capita to be killed by cops--definitely are aware.
mannykannot 8y ago
You seem to have a naive idea of what 'fight it in court' means. When you enter the court system, especially as as a defendant, it is not as if you have been teleported into a domain where enlightened rationality rules, no matter what the constitutional theory says is supposed to happen. Even if the law is nominally on the defendant's side, there is a good chance that she will be threatened with charges carrying significant penalties, possibly backed up by nothing more than the testimony of the officer who violated her rights in the first place, and offered a plea deal. Accepting the plea deal forecloses on any chance of righting a wrong.
3hoss 8y ago
you seem pretty confident in predicting that outcome - why?

tzs 8y ago

(In the following, I'll break out the numbers for black people separately from non-blacks or general population, since black people are killed by police at a higher rate, and those killings get a lot more attention) We should of course be trying to reduce police killing, especially police killing of unarmed people, and seriously looking at the factor of two difference between the rates for blacks and non-blacks (factor of three for unarmed killings) to see if it is due to racism by police and fix that if it is. But we probably also should not overstate the risk. Getting killed by police in the US is way down on the list of things that are likely to get you killed, even if you not white. An unarmed random person is about as likely to be killed by lighting as killed by police. An unarmed black person is 3 times as likely to be killed by police as killed by lighting, and 3 times as likely to be injured by lighting as killed by police. Here are the numbers. There are typically around 1000 police killings in the US per year, and about 200 of those are black people. The black population is around 37 million, out of a total of around 330 million. That gives a black killed by police rate of 0.54 per 100k, and a general population rate of 0.30 per 100k. About 10% of the black people killed were unarmed, and about 5% for the killed population in general, bringing the unarmed killed rate to about 0.05 per 100k for blacks and 0.015 per 100k for the general population. About 500 people are injured by lighting every year in the US, giving a lighting injury rate of 0.15 per 100k, and about 10% of those are killed, giving a killed by lighting rate of about 0.015 per 100k.