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> 1 in 1000 young black men is killed by a cop Given that ~300 black men are killed by police each year, I don't think that math checks out. Agree with police

> 1 in 1000 young black men is killed by a cop Given that ~300 black men are killed by police each year, I don't think that math checks out. Agree with police reform, although we probably need more funding in many places, not less.

ceejayoz 6y ago
300/year * an average lifespan of 78 years = 23400. Multiply that by 1,000 and you get 23M. There are 38M Black and African Americans in the USA, approximately half of which are male. The math checks out fine.
- GhostVII 6y ago
  Yea that makes sense, surprising to me that it works out
  - torstenvl 6y ago
    It doesn't work out. A 78 year old is not a "young black man."
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      I would suspect the ages of people shot by police are weighted fairly heavily in the younger category. https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793 https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793 > Risk peaks between the ages of 20 y and 35 y for all groups. For young men of color, police use of force is among the leading causes of death.
torstenvl 6y ago
300/19740000 = 0.0000152 → 0.999984802431611 chance of not-being-killed-by-police per year. pow(0.999984802431611, 69) = 0.998951909443727 chance of never being killed by police. → 0.001048090556273 chance of at some point being killed by police → just over 1/1000 over a lifetime. The math checks out... if we ignore the "young" part.
- anchpop 6y ago
  It still works out if we assume young people are just as likely as old men to be killed by police. Restricting us to young people would probably reduce the denominator of "300/19740000" enough to counteract the fact that the exponent of "69" is reduced. In fact, if you assume that people are young for x% of their lives, and x% of black people are young, this exactly cancels out and you still get `0.001048` odds of being killed by police.
throwaway201103 6y ago
Criminality among young black men is also disproportionaly higher. This is for many troubling reasons, but in the moment of a police confrontation, the reasons why a particular person is engaging in some crime is irrelevant.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Criminality among young black men is also disproportionaly higher. Is it? Or are young black men just disproportionately more likely to be held accountable for their “Three felonies a day”?
- GhostVII 6y ago
  The violent crime rate for black men is roughly equal to the portion of police shooting victims which are black. Violent crime rate (excluding murder) is roughly 2x the average, and so is the death rate to police. That's why I think we need to be focusing on why black people have a higher crime rate, and how we can fix the societal problems that lead to that. Reducing the number of police shootings is a great goal, but so long as there is a racial (and gender) divide in the crime rate there is going to be a divide in the police shooting rate.

ceejayoz 6y ago

300/year * an average lifespan of 78 years = 23400. Multiply that by 1,000 and you get 23M. There are 38M Black and African Americans in the USA, approximately half of which are male. The math checks out fine.

GhostVII 6y ago
Yea that makes sense, surprising to me that it works out
- torstenvl 6y ago
  It doesn't work out. A 78 year old is not a "young black man."
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    I would suspect the ages of people shot by police are weighted fairly heavily in the younger category. https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793 https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16793 > Risk peaks between the ages of 20 y and 35 y for all groups. For young men of color, police use of force is among the leading causes of death.

torstenvl 6y ago

300/19740000 = 0.0000152 → 0.999984802431611 chance of not-being-killed-by-police per year. pow(0.999984802431611, 69) = 0.998951909443727 chance of never being killed by police. → 0.001048090556273 chance of at some point being killed by police → just over 1/1000 over a lifetime. The math checks out... if we ignore the "young" part.

anchpop 6y ago
It still works out if we assume young people are just as likely as old men to be killed by police. Restricting us to young people would probably reduce the denominator of "300/19740000" enough to counteract the fact that the exponent of "69" is reduced. In fact, if you assume that people are young for x% of their lives, and x% of black people are young, this exactly cancels out and you still get `0.001048` odds of being killed by police.

throwaway201103 6y ago

Criminality among young black men is also disproportionaly higher. This is for many troubling reasons, but in the moment of a police confrontation, the reasons why a particular person is engaging in some crime is irrelevant.

dragonwriter 6y ago
> Criminality among young black men is also disproportionaly higher. Is it? Or are young black men just disproportionately more likely to be held accountable for their “Three felonies a day”?
GhostVII 6y ago
The violent crime rate for black men is roughly equal to the portion of police shooting victims which are black. Violent crime rate (excluding murder) is roughly 2x the average, and so is the death rate to police. That's why I think we need to be focusing on why black people have a higher crime rate, and how we can fix the societal problems that lead to that. Reducing the number of police shootings is a great goal, but so long as there is a racial (and gender) divide in the crime rate there is going to be a divide in the police shooting rate.