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> For every 10,000 black people arrested for violent crime, 3 are killed This is a weird way to frame the issue. Are black people arrested for violent crime mo

> For every 10,000 black people arrested for violent crime, 3 are killed This is a weird way to frame the issue. Are black people arrested for violent crime more often? I don't know, but if they are, that changes the conclusion. This seems like an obvious thing I'd want to find out if I were posting that Twitter thread. > I am showing that when you control for violent crime rate, the disparity vanishes. No, arrest rate and crime rate are not the same. That's the whole point of the discussion about bias in policing. If you ask a more straightforward question, like "how often are people killed when they interact with police?", the statistics look different. Here's a study that says: > On average, there were large racial/ethnic inequities in the rates at which White and Black people were killed during police contact. Across all MSAs, Black people were 3.23 times more likely to be killed compared to White people (95% CI: 2.95, 3.54, p<0.001). - https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0229686 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

beaner 5y ago
Ok sure, but in turn your comment ignores/doesn't contain any data on the statistics of crimes committed by race or what behaviors that lead to escalation appear more among different races. The NYTimes however did research it and found that "this data does not prove that biased police officers are more likely to shoot blacks in any given encounter": https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/upshot/police-killings-of-blacks-what-the-data-says.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/upshot/police-killings-of...
- burkaman 5y ago
  I'll post the full quote for anyone that doesn't have NYT access: > The data is unequivocal. Police killings are a race problem: African-Americans are being killed disproportionately and by a wide margin. And police bias may be responsible. But this data does not prove that biased police officers are more likely to shoot blacks in any given encounter. Absolutely agreed: using the FBI data in that NYT article, there's no way to tell why Black people are killed more frequently. All it tells you is that deaths are disproportionate. Using other studies with further data, like the one I posted, gives us a clearer picture. > Ok sure, but in turn your comment ignores/doesn't contain any data on the statistics of crimes committed by race or what behaviors that lead to escalation appear more among different races. Correct, I am taking it as a given that skin color has no effect on a person's likelihood to commit crime or somehow provoke an officer to murder them during an arrest.
  - beaner 5y ago
    TBH I don't understand what you're saying. I'm having the same debate on 2 threads now so here's my quote to the other person who posted the same link: "I looked at it and the study doesn't account for anything. For example, if a certain demographic were 2x more likely to die in an encounter, but 4x more likely to respond to a benign pullover with violence, then they're actually 2x more likely to be treated with less force than their actions require. This is basic, the study (at least on my glance) appears to not account for anything like this at all."
    - burkaman 5y ago
      I agree with that. The study doesn't account for that because it doesn't make any sense, how could skin color make a person more likely to respond with violence? Can you explain the mechanism for how a racial demographic could be "more likely to respond to a benign pullover with violence"?
      - beaner 5y ago
        Oh, I see. You're arguing in bad faith. I don't even know how to account for that, really. Is it your honest interpretation of what I'm saying that black pignment is the literal cause of violent responses? Geez... I mean, I don't think this discussion will be fruitful now, but just in case: This is like logic 101. We're not debating that race causes behavior - it does not. But that doesn't mean there isn't an overlap between demographic and behavior. For example, there is an overlap between being black and being lower-income in this country. There is a relationship between low-income/poverty and violence. Do you understand that? Skin color is not the cause. I'm completely happy to ignore it. You could equally say "people who respond aggressively are 3x likely to be shot." It is you making the racial connection, not me.
        dang 5y ago
        Flamewar comments like this will get you banned on HN. Please review the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and please don't post like this in the future. This is obviously particularly important on provocative and divisive topics, where allowing your comments to degenerate in this way amounts to vandalism if not arson. That's seriously not cool. Edit: there are two other problems: (1) It looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's not allowed, regardless of which ideology the account is battling for or against. Why? Because HN is supposed to be for curious conversation, and ideological battle is the antithesis of that. We ban accounts that are using HN primarily for this, so if you'd please stop doing that, we'd appreciate it. (2) Given your arguments in this thread and your commenting history, I'm remembering that someone complained to us about your username being an ethnic slur (https://www.google.com/search?q=%22beaner https://www.google.com/search?q=%22beaner). I emailed you about this on June 24 and you never replied. At a minimum, the username is trollish given these associations, and trollish usernames are not allowed on HN. I'm not going to ban your account for this right now because I think it's fair to give you a chance to course-correct your account to conform to the site guidelines. At the same time, I think you should be using a different username. If you want to pick a different username, we can rename it for you.
- Larrikin 5y ago
  So your conclusion is that black people should be killed more often by police because black people are convicted more often when looking at percentages by race?
  - NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
    It's because the mix of crimes they commit relative to non-black Americans is different, which drives the differences in convictions too of course
    - Larrikin 5y ago
      When someone is killed by police they are not convicted of anything. You're also ignoring statistics regarding bias in arrest and conviction. You're effectively saying that random people deserve to die because random people get convicted because they share a skin color.
      - NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
        No I think you misunderstand. There's a data-generating process: people commit crimes. For a given set of people, the mix of crimes they commit will drive both convictions and killings. For instance, if the mix of crimes a particular group commits has more murder in it than for other groups, we would expect both more police-shootings of those people (because police can intervene with deadly force when lives are at stake) and more convictions for murder. You're right that people who are shot by police don't get convicted of anything, of course.
  - dang 5y ago
    Please don't post like this to HN, regardless of how wrong another commenter is or you feel they are. You break several of the site guidelines when you do so: "Don't be snarky." "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." "Eschew flamebait." "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

beaner 5y ago

Ok sure, but in turn your comment ignores/doesn't contain any data on the statistics of crimes committed by race or what behaviors that lead to escalation appear more among different races. The NYTimes however did research it and found that "this data does not prove that biased police officers are more likely to shoot blacks in any given encounter": https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/upshot/police-killings-of-blacks-what-the-data-says.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/upshot/police-killings-of...

burkaman 5y ago
I'll post the full quote for anyone that doesn't have NYT access: > The data is unequivocal. Police killings are a race problem: African-Americans are being killed disproportionately and by a wide margin. And police bias may be responsible. But this data does not prove that biased police officers are more likely to shoot blacks in any given encounter. Absolutely agreed: using the FBI data in that NYT article, there's no way to tell why Black people are killed more frequently. All it tells you is that deaths are disproportionate. Using other studies with further data, like the one I posted, gives us a clearer picture. > Ok sure, but in turn your comment ignores/doesn't contain any data on the statistics of crimes committed by race or what behaviors that lead to escalation appear more among different races. Correct, I am taking it as a given that skin color has no effect on a person's likelihood to commit crime or somehow provoke an officer to murder them during an arrest.
- beaner 5y ago
  TBH I don't understand what you're saying. I'm having the same debate on 2 threads now so here's my quote to the other person who posted the same link: "I looked at it and the study doesn't account for anything. For example, if a certain demographic were 2x more likely to die in an encounter, but 4x more likely to respond to a benign pullover with violence, then they're actually 2x more likely to be treated with less force than their actions require. This is basic, the study (at least on my glance) appears to not account for anything like this at all."
  - burkaman 5y ago
    I agree with that. The study doesn't account for that because it doesn't make any sense, how could skin color make a person more likely to respond with violence? Can you explain the mechanism for how a racial demographic could be "more likely to respond to a benign pullover with violence"?
    - beaner 5y ago
      Oh, I see. You're arguing in bad faith. I don't even know how to account for that, really. Is it your honest interpretation of what I'm saying that black pignment is the literal cause of violent responses? Geez... I mean, I don't think this discussion will be fruitful now, but just in case: This is like logic 101. We're not debating that race causes behavior - it does not. But that doesn't mean there isn't an overlap between demographic and behavior. For example, there is an overlap between being black and being lower-income in this country. There is a relationship between low-income/poverty and violence. Do you understand that? Skin color is not the cause. I'm completely happy to ignore it. You could equally say "people who respond aggressively are 3x likely to be shot." It is you making the racial connection, not me.
      - dang 5y ago
        Flamewar comments like this will get you banned on HN. Please review the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and please don't post like this in the future. This is obviously particularly important on provocative and divisive topics, where allowing your comments to degenerate in this way amounts to vandalism if not arson. That's seriously not cool. Edit: there are two other problems: (1) It looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. That's not allowed, regardless of which ideology the account is battling for or against. Why? Because HN is supposed to be for curious conversation, and ideological battle is the antithesis of that. We ban accounts that are using HN primarily for this, so if you'd please stop doing that, we'd appreciate it. (2) Given your arguments in this thread and your commenting history, I'm remembering that someone complained to us about your username being an ethnic slur (https://www.google.com/search?q=%22beaner https://www.google.com/search?q=%22beaner). I emailed you about this on June 24 and you never replied. At a minimum, the username is trollish given these associations, and trollish usernames are not allowed on HN. I'm not going to ban your account for this right now because I think it's fair to give you a chance to course-correct your account to conform to the site guidelines. At the same time, I think you should be using a different username. If you want to pick a different username, we can rename it for you.
Larrikin 5y ago
So your conclusion is that black people should be killed more often by police because black people are convicted more often when looking at percentages by race?
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
  It's because the mix of crimes they commit relative to non-black Americans is different, which drives the differences in convictions too of course
  - Larrikin 5y ago
    When someone is killed by police they are not convicted of anything. You're also ignoring statistics regarding bias in arrest and conviction. You're effectively saying that random people deserve to die because random people get convicted because they share a skin color.
    - NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
      No I think you misunderstand. There's a data-generating process: people commit crimes. For a given set of people, the mix of crimes they commit will drive both convictions and killings. For instance, if the mix of crimes a particular group commits has more murder in it than for other groups, we would expect both more police-shootings of those people (because police can intervene with deadly force when lives are at stake) and more convictions for murder. You're right that people who are shot by police don't get convicted of anything, of course.
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't post like this to HN, regardless of how wrong another commenter is or you feel they are. You break several of the site guidelines when you do so: "Don't be snarky." "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." "Eschew flamebait." "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html