George Floyd riots: The myth of systemic police racism in US
George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis has revived the Obama-era narrative that law enforcement is endemically racist.
Former US president Barack Obama tweeted on Saturday (AEST) that for millions of black Americans, being treated differently by the criminal justice system on account of race is “tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal’.”
Obama called on the police and the public to create a “new normal”, in which bigotry no longer “infects our institutions and our hearts”.
Democrat presidential contender Joe Biden released a video the same day in which he asserted that all African-Americans fear for their safety from “bad police” and black children must be instructed to tolerate police abuse just so they can “make it home”.
That echoed a claim Obama made after the ambush murder of five Dallas officers in July 2016. During their memorial service, the president said African-American parents were right to fear that their children may be killed by police officers whenever they go outside.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz denounced the “stain ... of fundamental, institutional racism” on law enforcement on Saturday. He claimed blacks were right to dismiss promises of police reform as empty verbiage.
This charge of systemic police bias was wrong during the Obama years and remains so today. However sickening the video of Floyd’s arrest, it isn’t representative of the 375 million annual contacts that US police officers have with civilians. A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the criminal-justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution or sentencing. Crime and suspect behaviour, not race, determine most police actions.
Police officers fatally shot 1004 people last year, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53 per cent of known homicide offenders in the US and commit about 60 per cent of robberies, though they are 13 per cent of the population.
The police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites last year, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015. The Post defines “unarmed” broadly to include such cases as a suspect in Newark, New Jersey, who had a loaded handgun in his car during a police chase. In 2018 there were 7407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1 per cent of all African-Americans killed last year. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.
On Memorial Day weekend in Chicago alone, 10 African-Americans were killed in drive-by shootings. Such routine violence has continued — a 72-year-old Chicago man shot in the face on May 29 by a gunman who fired about a dozen shots into a residence; two 19-year-old women on the South Side shot to death as they sat in a parked car a few hours earlier; a 16-year-old boy fatally stabbed with his own knife that same day.
This past weekend, 80 Chicagoans were shot in drive-by shootings, 21 fatally, the victims overwhelmingly black. Police shootings are not the reason that blacks die of homicide at eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined; criminal violence is.
The latest in a series of studies undercutting the claim of systemic police bias was published in August last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers found that the more frequently officers encounter violent suspects from any given racial group, the greater the chance that a member of that group will be fatally shot by a police officer. There is “no significant evidence of anti-black disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police”, they concluded.
A 2015 Justice Department analysis of the Philadelphia Police Department found that white police officers were less likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot unarmed black suspects. Research by Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer Jr also found no evidence of racial discrimination in shootings. Any evidence to the contrary fails to take into account crime rates and civilian behaviour before and during interactions with police.
The false narrative of systemic police bias resulted in targeted killings of officers during the Obama presidency. The pattern may be repeating itself. Officers are being assaulted and shot at while they try to arrest gun suspects or respond to the growing riots. Police precincts and courthouses have been destroyed with impunity, which will encourage more civilisation-destroying violence.
If the Ferguson effect of officers backing off law enforcement in minority neighbourhoods is reborn as the Minneapolis effect, the thousands of law-abiding African-Americans who depend on the police for basic safety will once again be the victims.
The Minneapolis officers who arrested Floyd must be held accountable for their excessive use of force and callous indifference to his distress. Police training needs to double down on de-escalation tactics.
But Floyd’s death should not undermine the legitimacy of American law enforcement, without which we will continue on a path toward chaos.
I've tried looking online just now but haven't really seen anything directly rebutting the article. Maybe it's still too new? I'm seeing it was only published a day ago in the Wall Street Journal and two hours ago by The Australian.
It's titled "the myth of systemic police racism" so what it does is take all the evidence for systemic racism and claim that it proves the system isn't racist.
The overwhelming population of Black Americans in prison isn't proof of a judicial system that arrests, charges, and convicts them at disproportionately high rates, it's proof that they're just more criminal!
The idea that police officers are "no more likely" to shoot at white suspects than black suspects ignores the fact that Black Americans are stopped by police at much higher rates than white folk, which means that, no, actually!
Black-on-black crime statistics are a complete red-herring. Because this is about police violence.
It deflects to black-on-Black crime, “look at scary Chicago,” is basically built on the assumption that black people are more violent and that’s why they get shot more (it literally makes the case that since 60% of arrests are of black folks, why are we getting mad that only 23% of people fatally shot by cops are black...without the self-awareness to hear a record scratch at the “60% of arrests are of black folks”)
It’s gutter trash and anybody buying into it was looking for an excuse to ignore the protests anyway
It's whataboutism, pure and simple; and although a response would require good-faith interaction with a bad-faith opponent, the response would go something like: Yes, black-on-black violence is bad, and we can address that later, but please focus on the unaccountability of police, their frequently disproportionate response of violence, and statistical studies showing that they tend to, ceteris paribus, target black men
Also yes it pretty much openly states that black people are getting exactly what they deserve
Eddy on
"and the morning stars I have seen
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
Is it just me, or is today quieter? Is it just fatigue setting in on my end?
Some cities are getting smarter (I.e. KC not having curfew), but I feel like the protests are getting too big for the cops to mess with (at least not until enough people go home)
Is it just me, or is today quieter? Is it just fatigue setting in on my end?
Some cities are getting smarter (I.e. KC not having curfew), but I feel like the protests are getting too big for the cops to mess with (at least not until enough people go home)
this is what happened last night in seattle
cops had to wait until like 11 when the crowds were naturally, peacefully dispersing before they could start their riot
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Is it just me, or is today quieter? Is it just fatigue setting in on my end?
Yesterday felt quieter, too.
More locations (with some notable exceptions) had police just let the protestors protest. That, the first official arrests for looting being universally white supremacists, and all four cops being charged feels like some small amount of tension has eased.
Protests themselves are getting larger in the places police are still cracking down.
George Floyd riots: The myth of systemic police racism in US
George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis has revived the Obama-era narrative that law enforcement is endemically racist.
Former US president Barack Obama tweeted on Saturday (AEST) that for millions of black Americans, being treated differently by the criminal justice system on account of race is “tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal’.”
Obama called on the police and the public to create a “new normal”, in which bigotry no longer “infects our institutions and our hearts”.
Democrat presidential contender Joe Biden released a video the same day in which he asserted that all African-Americans fear for their safety from “bad police” and black children must be instructed to tolerate police abuse just so they can “make it home”.
That echoed a claim Obama made after the ambush murder of five Dallas officers in July 2016. During their memorial service, the president said African-American parents were right to fear that their children may be killed by police officers whenever they go outside.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz denounced the “stain ... of fundamental, institutional racism” on law enforcement on Saturday. He claimed blacks were right to dismiss promises of police reform as empty verbiage.
This charge of systemic police bias was wrong during the Obama years and remains so today. However sickening the video of Floyd’s arrest, it isn’t representative of the 375 million annual contacts that US police officers have with civilians. A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the criminal-justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution or sentencing. Crime and suspect behaviour, not race, determine most police actions.
Police officers fatally shot 1004 people last year, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53 per cent of known homicide offenders in the US and commit about 60 per cent of robberies, though they are 13 per cent of the population.
The police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites last year, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015. The Post defines “unarmed” broadly to include such cases as a suspect in Newark, New Jersey, who had a loaded handgun in his car during a police chase. In 2018 there were 7407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1 per cent of all African-Americans killed last year. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.
On Memorial Day weekend in Chicago alone, 10 African-Americans were killed in drive-by shootings. Such routine violence has continued — a 72-year-old Chicago man shot in the face on May 29 by a gunman who fired about a dozen shots into a residence; two 19-year-old women on the South Side shot to death as they sat in a parked car a few hours earlier; a 16-year-old boy fatally stabbed with his own knife that same day.
This past weekend, 80 Chicagoans were shot in drive-by shootings, 21 fatally, the victims overwhelmingly black. Police shootings are not the reason that blacks die of homicide at eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined; criminal violence is.
The latest in a series of studies undercutting the claim of systemic police bias was published in August last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers found that the more frequently officers encounter violent suspects from any given racial group, the greater the chance that a member of that group will be fatally shot by a police officer. There is “no significant evidence of anti-black disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police”, they concluded.
A 2015 Justice Department analysis of the Philadelphia Police Department found that white police officers were less likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot unarmed black suspects. Research by Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer Jr also found no evidence of racial discrimination in shootings. Any evidence to the contrary fails to take into account crime rates and civilian behaviour before and during interactions with police.
The false narrative of systemic police bias resulted in targeted killings of officers during the Obama presidency. The pattern may be repeating itself. Officers are being assaulted and shot at while they try to arrest gun suspects or respond to the growing riots. Police precincts and courthouses have been destroyed with impunity, which will encourage more civilisation-destroying violence.
If the Ferguson effect of officers backing off law enforcement in minority neighbourhoods is reborn as the Minneapolis effect, the thousands of law-abiding African-Americans who depend on the police for basic safety will once again be the victims.
The Minneapolis officers who arrested Floyd must be held accountable for their excessive use of force and callous indifference to his distress. Police training needs to double down on de-escalation tactics.
But Floyd’s death should not undermine the legitimacy of American law enforcement, without which we will continue on a path toward chaos.
I've tried looking online just now but haven't really seen anything directly rebutting the article. Maybe it's still too new? I'm seeing it was only published a day ago in the Wall Street Journal and two hours ago by The Australian.
It reads like the the typical conservative talking point of "but but Black-on-black violence". Those numbers for police killings may or may not be accurate, but while African Americans might "only" make up a quarter of killings, if you compare that to what percentage of total population that AAs make up, it quickly punches a bunch of holes in their narrative that they don't kill black people any more than any other races. African Americans only make up roughly 13% of the population but somehow make up a quarter of all police killings. That tells you something there.
George Floyd riots: The myth of systemic police racism in US
George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis has revived the Obama-era narrative that law enforcement is endemically racist.
Former US president Barack Obama tweeted on Saturday (AEST) that for millions of black Americans, being treated differently by the criminal justice system on account of race is “tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal’.”
Obama called on the police and the public to create a “new normal”, in which bigotry no longer “infects our institutions and our hearts”.
Democrat presidential contender Joe Biden released a video the same day in which he asserted that all African-Americans fear for their safety from “bad police” and black children must be instructed to tolerate police abuse just so they can “make it home”.
That echoed a claim Obama made after the ambush murder of five Dallas officers in July 2016. During their memorial service, the president said African-American parents were right to fear that their children may be killed by police officers whenever they go outside.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz denounced the “stain ... of fundamental, institutional racism” on law enforcement on Saturday. He claimed blacks were right to dismiss promises of police reform as empty verbiage.
This charge of systemic police bias was wrong during the Obama years and remains so today. However sickening the video of Floyd’s arrest, it isn’t representative of the 375 million annual contacts that US police officers have with civilians. A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the criminal-justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution or sentencing. Crime and suspect behaviour, not race, determine most police actions.
Police officers fatally shot 1004 people last year, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53 per cent of known homicide offenders in the US and commit about 60 per cent of robberies, though they are 13 per cent of the population.
The police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites last year, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015. The Post defines “unarmed” broadly to include such cases as a suspect in Newark, New Jersey, who had a loaded handgun in his car during a police chase. In 2018 there were 7407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1 per cent of all African-Americans killed last year. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.
On Memorial Day weekend in Chicago alone, 10 African-Americans were killed in drive-by shootings. Such routine violence has continued — a 72-year-old Chicago man shot in the face on May 29 by a gunman who fired about a dozen shots into a residence; two 19-year-old women on the South Side shot to death as they sat in a parked car a few hours earlier; a 16-year-old boy fatally stabbed with his own knife that same day.
This past weekend, 80 Chicagoans were shot in drive-by shootings, 21 fatally, the victims overwhelmingly black. Police shootings are not the reason that blacks die of homicide at eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined; criminal violence is.
The latest in a series of studies undercutting the claim of systemic police bias was published in August last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers found that the more frequently officers encounter violent suspects from any given racial group, the greater the chance that a member of that group will be fatally shot by a police officer. There is “no significant evidence of anti-black disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police”, they concluded.
A 2015 Justice Department analysis of the Philadelphia Police Department found that white police officers were less likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot unarmed black suspects. Research by Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer Jr also found no evidence of racial discrimination in shootings. Any evidence to the contrary fails to take into account crime rates and civilian behaviour before and during interactions with police.
The false narrative of systemic police bias resulted in targeted killings of officers during the Obama presidency. The pattern may be repeating itself. Officers are being assaulted and shot at while they try to arrest gun suspects or respond to the growing riots. Police precincts and courthouses have been destroyed with impunity, which will encourage more civilisation-destroying violence.
If the Ferguson effect of officers backing off law enforcement in minority neighbourhoods is reborn as the Minneapolis effect, the thousands of law-abiding African-Americans who depend on the police for basic safety will once again be the victims.
The Minneapolis officers who arrested Floyd must be held accountable for their excessive use of force and callous indifference to his distress. Police training needs to double down on de-escalation tactics.
But Floyd’s death should not undermine the legitimacy of American law enforcement, without which we will continue on a path toward chaos.
I've tried looking online just now but haven't really seen anything directly rebutting the article. Maybe it's still too new? I'm seeing it was only published a day ago in the Wall Street Journal and two hours ago by The Australian.
Everyone knows the WSJ editorial page is and has always been batshit. It has so little respect that the paper’s news employees frequently announce that there is no connection between the journalism and editorial side.
So, it is not credible enough to worth rebutting even in the industry.
Yeah, it's noticeable that certain statistics quoted in that editorial aren't referenced. There's some glaring red flags too, like this entire paragraph.
Police officers fatally shot 1004 people last year, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53 per cent of known homicide offenders in the US and commit about 60 per cent of robberies, though they are 13 per cent of the population.
Are police shootings a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects? I doubt it. Also basically any editorial that falls back on the now classic conservative meme of referencing Chicago gun deaths is basically DOA from a standpoint of whether or not the author is making a good faith argument.
George Floyd riots: The myth of systemic police racism in US
George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis has revived the Obama-era narrative that law enforcement is endemically racist.
Former US president Barack Obama tweeted on Saturday (AEST) that for millions of black Americans, being treated differently by the criminal justice system on account of race is “tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal’.”
Obama called on the police and the public to create a “new normal”, in which bigotry no longer “infects our institutions and our hearts”.
Democrat presidential contender Joe Biden released a video the same day in which he asserted that all African-Americans fear for their safety from “bad police” and black children must be instructed to tolerate police abuse just so they can “make it home”.
That echoed a claim Obama made after the ambush murder of five Dallas officers in July 2016. During their memorial service, the president said African-American parents were right to fear that their children may be killed by police officers whenever they go outside.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz denounced the “stain ... of fundamental, institutional racism” on law enforcement on Saturday. He claimed blacks were right to dismiss promises of police reform as empty verbiage.
This charge of systemic police bias was wrong during the Obama years and remains so today. However sickening the video of Floyd’s arrest, it isn’t representative of the 375 million annual contacts that US police officers have with civilians. A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the criminal-justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution or sentencing. Crime and suspect behaviour, not race, determine most police actions.
Police officers fatally shot 1004 people last year, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53 per cent of known homicide offenders in the US and commit about 60 per cent of robberies, though they are 13 per cent of the population.
The police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites last year, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015. The Post defines “unarmed” broadly to include such cases as a suspect in Newark, New Jersey, who had a loaded handgun in his car during a police chase. In 2018 there were 7407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1 per cent of all African-Americans killed last year. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.
On Memorial Day weekend in Chicago alone, 10 African-Americans were killed in drive-by shootings. Such routine violence has continued — a 72-year-old Chicago man shot in the face on May 29 by a gunman who fired about a dozen shots into a residence; two 19-year-old women on the South Side shot to death as they sat in a parked car a few hours earlier; a 16-year-old boy fatally stabbed with his own knife that same day.
This past weekend, 80 Chicagoans were shot in drive-by shootings, 21 fatally, the victims overwhelmingly black. Police shootings are not the reason that blacks die of homicide at eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined; criminal violence is.
The latest in a series of studies undercutting the claim of systemic police bias was published in August last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers found that the more frequently officers encounter violent suspects from any given racial group, the greater the chance that a member of that group will be fatally shot by a police officer. There is “no significant evidence of anti-black disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police”, they concluded.
A 2015 Justice Department analysis of the Philadelphia Police Department found that white police officers were less likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot unarmed black suspects. Research by Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer Jr also found no evidence of racial discrimination in shootings. Any evidence to the contrary fails to take into account crime rates and civilian behaviour before and during interactions with police.
The false narrative of systemic police bias resulted in targeted killings of officers during the Obama presidency. The pattern may be repeating itself. Officers are being assaulted and shot at while they try to arrest gun suspects or respond to the growing riots. Police precincts and courthouses have been destroyed with impunity, which will encourage more civilisation-destroying violence.
If the Ferguson effect of officers backing off law enforcement in minority neighbourhoods is reborn as the Minneapolis effect, the thousands of law-abiding African-Americans who depend on the police for basic safety will once again be the victims.
The Minneapolis officers who arrested Floyd must be held accountable for their excessive use of force and callous indifference to his distress. Police training needs to double down on de-escalation tactics.
But Floyd’s death should not undermine the legitimacy of American law enforcement, without which we will continue on a path toward chaos.
I've tried looking online just now but haven't really seen anything directly rebutting the article. Maybe it's still too new? I'm seeing it was only published a day ago in the Wall Street Journal and two hours ago by The Australian.
Everyone knows the WSJ editorial page is and has always been batshit. It has so little respect that the paper’s news employees frequently announce that there is no connection between the journalism and editorial side.
So, it is not credible enough to worth rebutting even in the industry.
This is true of a lot of editorial pages in major newspapers sadly.
George Floyd riots: The myth of systemic police racism in US
George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis has revived the Obama-era narrative that law enforcement is endemically racist.
Former US president Barack Obama tweeted on Saturday (AEST) that for millions of black Americans, being treated differently by the criminal justice system on account of race is “tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal’.”
Obama called on the police and the public to create a “new normal”, in which bigotry no longer “infects our institutions and our hearts”.
Democrat presidential contender Joe Biden released a video the same day in which he asserted that all African-Americans fear for their safety from “bad police” and black children must be instructed to tolerate police abuse just so they can “make it home”.
That echoed a claim Obama made after the ambush murder of five Dallas officers in July 2016. During their memorial service, the president said African-American parents were right to fear that their children may be killed by police officers whenever they go outside.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz denounced the “stain ... of fundamental, institutional racism” on law enforcement on Saturday. He claimed blacks were right to dismiss promises of police reform as empty verbiage.
This charge of systemic police bias was wrong during the Obama years and remains so today. However sickening the video of Floyd’s arrest, it isn’t representative of the 375 million annual contacts that US police officers have with civilians. A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the criminal-justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution or sentencing. Crime and suspect behaviour, not race, determine most police actions.
Police officers fatally shot 1004 people last year, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53 per cent of known homicide offenders in the US and commit about 60 per cent of robberies, though they are 13 per cent of the population.
The police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites last year, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015. The Post defines “unarmed” broadly to include such cases as a suspect in Newark, New Jersey, who had a loaded handgun in his car during a police chase. In 2018 there were 7407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1 per cent of all African-Americans killed last year. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.
On Memorial Day weekend in Chicago alone, 10 African-Americans were killed in drive-by shootings. Such routine violence has continued — a 72-year-old Chicago man shot in the face on May 29 by a gunman who fired about a dozen shots into a residence; two 19-year-old women on the South Side shot to death as they sat in a parked car a few hours earlier; a 16-year-old boy fatally stabbed with his own knife that same day.
This past weekend, 80 Chicagoans were shot in drive-by shootings, 21 fatally, the victims overwhelmingly black. Police shootings are not the reason that blacks die of homicide at eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined; criminal violence is.
The latest in a series of studies undercutting the claim of systemic police bias was published in August last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers found that the more frequently officers encounter violent suspects from any given racial group, the greater the chance that a member of that group will be fatally shot by a police officer. There is “no significant evidence of anti-black disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police”, they concluded.
A 2015 Justice Department analysis of the Philadelphia Police Department found that white police officers were less likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot unarmed black suspects. Research by Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer Jr also found no evidence of racial discrimination in shootings. Any evidence to the contrary fails to take into account crime rates and civilian behaviour before and during interactions with police.
The false narrative of systemic police bias resulted in targeted killings of officers during the Obama presidency. The pattern may be repeating itself. Officers are being assaulted and shot at while they try to arrest gun suspects or respond to the growing riots. Police precincts and courthouses have been destroyed with impunity, which will encourage more civilisation-destroying violence.
If the Ferguson effect of officers backing off law enforcement in minority neighbourhoods is reborn as the Minneapolis effect, the thousands of law-abiding African-Americans who depend on the police for basic safety will once again be the victims.
The Minneapolis officers who arrested Floyd must be held accountable for their excessive use of force and callous indifference to his distress. Police training needs to double down on de-escalation tactics.
But Floyd’s death should not undermine the legitimacy of American law enforcement, without which we will continue on a path toward chaos.
I've tried looking online just now but haven't really seen anything directly rebutting the article. Maybe it's still too new? I'm seeing it was only published a day ago in the Wall Street Journal and two hours ago by The Australian.
Everyone knows the WSJ editorial page is and has always been batshit. It has so little respect that the paper’s news employees frequently announce that there is no connection between the journalism and editorial side.
So, it is not credible enough to worth rebutting even in the industry.
This is true of a lot of editorial pages in major newspapers sadly.
WSJ’s is special even in that context. The degree of insane WTF? has always been off the charts in a way that goes beyond printing too many conservative cranks.
I just wish newspapers around the globe would institute a mandatory cite your references requirement to get editorials published. You can spout your batshit opinions sure, but readers have a right to know where you're cherry picking your data from.
George Floyd riots: The myth of systemic police racism in US
George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis has revived the Obama-era narrative that law enforcement is endemically racist.
Former US president Barack Obama tweeted on Saturday (AEST) that for millions of black Americans, being treated differently by the criminal justice system on account of race is “tragically, painfully, maddeningly ‘normal’.”
Obama called on the police and the public to create a “new normal”, in which bigotry no longer “infects our institutions and our hearts”.
Democrat presidential contender Joe Biden released a video the same day in which he asserted that all African-Americans fear for their safety from “bad police” and black children must be instructed to tolerate police abuse just so they can “make it home”.
That echoed a claim Obama made after the ambush murder of five Dallas officers in July 2016. During their memorial service, the president said African-American parents were right to fear that their children may be killed by police officers whenever they go outside.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz denounced the “stain ... of fundamental, institutional racism” on law enforcement on Saturday. He claimed blacks were right to dismiss promises of police reform as empty verbiage.
This charge of systemic police bias was wrong during the Obama years and remains so today. However sickening the video of Floyd’s arrest, it isn’t representative of the 375 million annual contacts that US police officers have with civilians. A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the criminal-justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution or sentencing. Crime and suspect behaviour, not race, determine most police actions.
Police officers fatally shot 1004 people last year, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53 per cent of known homicide offenders in the US and commit about 60 per cent of robberies, though they are 13 per cent of the population.
The police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites last year, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015. The Post defines “unarmed” broadly to include such cases as a suspect in Newark, New Jersey, who had a loaded handgun in his car during a police chase. In 2018 there were 7407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1 per cent of all African-Americans killed last year. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.
On Memorial Day weekend in Chicago alone, 10 African-Americans were killed in drive-by shootings. Such routine violence has continued — a 72-year-old Chicago man shot in the face on May 29 by a gunman who fired about a dozen shots into a residence; two 19-year-old women on the South Side shot to death as they sat in a parked car a few hours earlier; a 16-year-old boy fatally stabbed with his own knife that same day.
This past weekend, 80 Chicagoans were shot in drive-by shootings, 21 fatally, the victims overwhelmingly black. Police shootings are not the reason that blacks die of homicide at eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined; criminal violence is.
The latest in a series of studies undercutting the claim of systemic police bias was published in August last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers found that the more frequently officers encounter violent suspects from any given racial group, the greater the chance that a member of that group will be fatally shot by a police officer. There is “no significant evidence of anti-black disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by police”, they concluded.
A 2015 Justice Department analysis of the Philadelphia Police Department found that white police officers were less likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot unarmed black suspects. Research by Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer Jr also found no evidence of racial discrimination in shootings. Any evidence to the contrary fails to take into account crime rates and civilian behaviour before and during interactions with police.
The false narrative of systemic police bias resulted in targeted killings of officers during the Obama presidency. The pattern may be repeating itself. Officers are being assaulted and shot at while they try to arrest gun suspects or respond to the growing riots. Police precincts and courthouses have been destroyed with impunity, which will encourage more civilisation-destroying violence.
If the Ferguson effect of officers backing off law enforcement in minority neighbourhoods is reborn as the Minneapolis effect, the thousands of law-abiding African-Americans who depend on the police for basic safety will once again be the victims.
The Minneapolis officers who arrested Floyd must be held accountable for their excessive use of force and callous indifference to his distress. Police training needs to double down on de-escalation tactics.
But Floyd’s death should not undermine the legitimacy of American law enforcement, without which we will continue on a path toward chaos.
I've tried looking online just now but haven't really seen anything directly rebutting the article. Maybe it's still too new? I'm seeing it was only published a day ago in the Wall Street Journal and two hours ago by The Australian.
Everyone knows the WSJ editorial page is and has always been batshit. It has so little respect that the paper’s news employees frequently announce that there is no connection between the journalism and editorial side.
So, it is not credible enough to worth rebutting even in the industry.
This is true of a lot of editorial pages in major newspapers sadly.
WSJ’s is special even in that context. The degree of insane WTF? has always been off the charts in a way that goes beyond printing too many conservative cranks.
Yeah, it's super weird if folks don't really pay attention. The WSJ is generally a pretty solid newspaper with an absolutely batshit editorial board.
Is it just me, or is today quieter? Is it just fatigue setting in on my end?
Some cities are getting smarter (I.e. KC not having curfew), but I feel like the protests are getting too big for the cops to mess with (at least not until enough people go home)
From the sound of things in San Diego last night the protest just kinda...ended. Crowd thinned out so cops backed off and...that was that. We haven't been doing curfews in SD proper, though police had been declaring "unlawful assembly." But last night I guess they decided not to.
I actually had hope for a minute that Seattle might go that route last night. It got late, curfew was long past, and I kinda hoped that the police would just let it thin out, thin their own line out, and let it just peter out with the hour. Nope!
Is it just me, or is today quieter? Is it just fatigue setting in on my end?
There's a good chance things go real bad in Seattle tonight. Last night they waited until the crowd went down and then stormed the protesters and that won't work twice.
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Hi I'm Vee!Formerly VH; She/Her; Is an E X P E R I E N C ERegistered Userregular
Okay, so if I'm understanding this correctly, the main points of rebuttal are that:
- The given statistics only say who is arrested for crime. Even if more African-Americans are arrested for given crimes that doesn't mean there isn't a large number of people in other demographics getting away with those crimes.
- Certain statistics aren't referenced.
- It claims we know more data about police fatalities than we actually do.
LAPD to LA is wack, but SPD seems just more recklessly violent (LA cops more likely to frame you vs SPD cop will kick your teeth out and piss on your dog)
On the opposite end, Eastern Michigan’s cops are making way less news than I would have expected
LAPD to LA is wack, but SPD seems just more recklessly violent (LA cops more likely to frame you vs SPD cop will kick your teeth out and piss on your dog)
On the opposite end, Eastern Michigan’s cops are making way less news than I would have expected
LAPD to LA is wack, but SPD seems just more recklessly violent (LA cops more likely to frame you vs SPD cop will kick your teeth out and piss on your dog)
On the opposite end, Eastern Michigan’s cops are making way less news than I would have expected
Seattle PD will punch you directly in the face for jaywalking. I wish I was kidding.
I also suspect it's so that violence can't be pinned back on the administration who says..we didn't hire em, apparently a bunch of prison guards just randomly decided to take a vacation and defend the capitol out of a sense of patriotism.
Columbus PD is super fucking bad- according to mappingooliceviolence, the highest rate of fatal shooting of black folks per capita of any big city in the US AND the force that brought you the framing and arrest of Stormy Daniels to help Trump
But the badness of the PD isn’t as far out of line with the badness of the city
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It's titled "the myth of systemic police racism" so what it does is take all the evidence for systemic racism and claim that it proves the system isn't racist.
The overwhelming population of Black Americans in prison isn't proof of a judicial system that arrests, charges, and convicts them at disproportionately high rates, it's proof that they're just more criminal!
The idea that police officers are "no more likely" to shoot at white suspects than black suspects ignores the fact that Black Americans are stopped by police at much higher rates than white folk, which means that, no, actually!
Black-on-black crime statistics are a complete red-herring. Because this is about police violence.
It's all garbage that's been stale for decades.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
It's whataboutism, pure and simple; and although a response would require good-faith interaction with a bad-faith opponent, the response would go something like: Yes, black-on-black violence is bad, and we can address that later, but please focus on the unaccountability of police, their frequently disproportionate response of violence, and statistical studies showing that they tend to, ceteris paribus, target black men
Also yes it pretty much openly states that black people are getting exactly what they deserve
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
Some cities are getting smarter (I.e. KC not having curfew), but I feel like the protests are getting too big for the cops to mess with (at least not until enough people go home)
this is what happened last night in seattle
cops had to wait until like 11 when the crowds were naturally, peacefully dispersing before they could start their riot
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Yesterday felt quieter, too.
More locations (with some notable exceptions) had police just let the protestors protest. That, the first official arrests for looting being universally white supremacists, and all four cops being charged feels like some small amount of tension has eased.
Protests themselves are getting larger in the places police are still cracking down.
It reads like the the typical conservative talking point of "but but Black-on-black violence". Those numbers for police killings may or may not be accurate, but while African Americans might "only" make up a quarter of killings, if you compare that to what percentage of total population that AAs make up, it quickly punches a bunch of holes in their narrative that they don't kill black people any more than any other races. African Americans only make up roughly 13% of the population but somehow make up a quarter of all police killings. That tells you something there.
Everyone knows the WSJ editorial page is and has always been batshit. It has so little respect that the paper’s news employees frequently announce that there is no connection between the journalism and editorial side.
So, it is not credible enough to worth rebutting even in the industry.
A whole bunch of cities suddenly embraced de-escalation as they figured out what we knew night one - their police are the problem.
Also why Durham’s police chief was on Good Morning America this morning.
Are police shootings a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects? I doubt it. Also basically any editorial that falls back on the now classic conservative meme of referencing Chicago gun deaths is basically DOA from a standpoint of whether or not the author is making a good faith argument.
This is true of a lot of editorial pages in major newspapers sadly.
obtaining complex and multilayered statistics is super easy when you either make them up out of whole cloth or take what the police tell you as gospel
WSJ’s is special even in that context. The degree of insane WTF? has always been off the charts in a way that goes beyond printing too many conservative cranks.
Yeah, it's super weird if folks don't really pay attention. The WSJ is generally a pretty solid newspaper with an absolutely batshit editorial board.
From the sound of things in San Diego last night the protest just kinda...ended. Crowd thinned out so cops backed off and...that was that. We haven't been doing curfews in SD proper, though police had been declaring "unlawful assembly." But last night I guess they decided not to.
I actually had hope for a minute that Seattle might go that route last night. It got late, curfew was long past, and I kinda hoped that the police would just let it thin out, thin their own line out, and let it just peter out with the hour. Nope!
Deadline Hollywood is apparently a news agency
E: if rando replies are to be believed, this is in the ballpark of 5% of their budget.
There's a good chance things go real bad in Seattle tonight. Last night they waited until the crowd went down and then stormed the protesters and that won't work twice.
H-uh....really? This is kind of shocking to me, considering how shitty Garcetti has been throughout this whole thing.
- The given statistics only say who is arrested for crime. Even if more African-Americans are arrested for given crimes that doesn't mean there isn't a large number of people in other demographics getting away with those crimes.
- Certain statistics aren't referenced.
- It claims we know more data about police fatalities than we actually do.
Thanks!
LAPD to LA is wack, but SPD seems just more recklessly violent (LA cops more likely to frame you vs SPD cop will kick your teeth out and piss on your dog)
On the opposite end, Eastern Michigan’s cops are making way less news than I would have expected
https://www.governing.com/gov-data/safety-justice/law-enforcement-police-department-employee-totals-for-cities.html
Data is from 2010 but should give you a good idea
We've heard from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (not his account, but someone posted a copy of the letter) and the heads of the Navy, Air Force, Marines and National Guard.
That leaves the Army Chief of Staff, the Coast Guard Commandant, and (lolz) the Chief of Space Operations.
Anyone heard anything yet about them saying anything?
Coast Guard too, but seriously what crazy space weapon policing is Trump gonna ask for
Seattle PD will punch you directly in the face for jaywalking. I wish I was kidding.
Source?
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
Just found this (Seattle CPC is the seattle Community Police Commission )
But the badness of the PD isn’t as far out of line with the badness of the city
I can’t even say he’s a protester, just a random guy riding his bike and they descend on him.
Not sure if you know, but wall street journal is also a fucking Murdoch rag
The WSJ is the WSJ first and a Murdoch rag second, I think; it's its own kind of awful with the current ownership being the rancid gravy on top.