Whatever would Doctor King have said? Police brutality in the 21st century

~~Soulflower~~ · 04-17-2015, 05:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nameless

You said "outside minorities". Outside of minorities there is only the majority. The majority of people killed by police are part of the majority. But like I said, all about proportions, and the amount of racial minorities killed is still disproportionate. I am saying you making this primarily about race is not a good idea. What kind of race based solution is there? Why not just focus on the issue itself and how it impacts ALL of society instead of just cherry picking your own race? It's exclusionary. This is a problem that impacts everyone. Race has no real use in this discussion.

That statement implied that white people are mostly killed by police and that is not true.

Your thought could have been articulated better.

And likewise you minimizing the issue of race in this issue is just as ridiculous. Again, I never implied that was the ONLY factor that is rooted in police brutality. I have discussed other things as well.

Oriphiel · 04-17-2015, 05:54 PM

In all seriousness, it's a complicated issue, and nobody in this thread is really "right" or "wrong". Most experts agree that racial profiling definitely exists, however the data to prove just how widespread it has gotten is very difficult to obtain as information is often voluntarily granted by the police themselves (as in the case of the UCR). I think the real issue here is that information gathering is so sloppy, because it's difficult to create solutions when we can't even establish what the problems are. Still, of the valid studies that we do have, it's pretty well documented that African Americans are more likely to be killed by police than Caucasians.

Excessive or reasonable force by police? Research on*law enforcement and racial conflict

Quote:

A widely publicized report in October 2014 by ProPublica, a leading investigative and data journalism outlet, concluded that young black males are 21 times more likely to be shot by police than their white counterparts: “The 1,217 deadly police shootings from 2010 to 2012 captured in the federal data show that blacks, age 15 to 19, were killed at a rate of 31.17 per million, while just 1.47 per million white males in that age range died at the hands of police.”

Research has definitively established that “racial profiling” by law enforcement exists — that persons of color are more likely to be stopped by police. FBI Director James Comey’s 2015 comments are again relevant here:

"[P]olice officers on patrol in our nation’s cities often work in environments where a hugely disproportionate percentage of street crime is committed by young men of color. Something happens to people of good will working in that environment. After years of police work, officers often can’t help but be influenced by the cynicism they feel.

A mental shortcut becomes almost irresistible and maybe even rational by some lights. The two young black men on one side of the street look like so many others the officer has locked up. Two white men on the other side of the street—even in the same clothes—do not. The officer does not make the same association about the two white guys, whether that officer is white or black. And that drives different behavior. The officer turns toward one side of the street and not the other. We need to come to grips with the fact that this behavior complicates the relationship between police and the communities they serve."

While the cases of Rodney King in 1991 and Amadou Diallo in 1999 heightened the country’s awareness of race and policing, research has not uniformly corroborated the contention that minorities are more likely, on average, to be subject to acts of police force than are whites. A 2010 paper published in the Southwestern Journal of Criminal Justice reviewed more than a decade’s worth of peer-reviewed studies and found that while many studies established a correlation between minority status and police use of force, many other studies did not — and some showed mixed results.

Of note in this research literature is a 2003 paper, “Neighborhood Context and Police Use of Force,” that suggests police are more likely to employ force in higher-crime neighborhoods generally, complicating any easy interpretation of race as the decisive factor in explaining police forcefulness. The researchers, William Terrill of Northeastern University and Michael D. Reisig of Michigan State University, found that “officers are significantly more likely to use higher levels of force when encountering criminal suspects in high crime areas and neighborhoods with high levels of concentrated disadvantage independent of suspect behavior and other statistical controls.” Terrill and Reisig explore several hypothetical explanations and ultimately conclude:

"Embedded within each of these potential explanations is the influence of key sociodemographic variables such as race, class, gender, and age. As the results show, when these factors are considered at the encounter level, they are significant. However, the race (i.e., minority) effect is mediated by neighborhood context. Perhaps officers do not simply label minority suspects according to what Skolnick (1994) termed “symbolic assailants,” as much as they label distressed socioeconomic neighborhoods as potential sources of conflict."

Mondo Bungle · 04-17-2015, 05:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Soulflower

That statement implied that white people are mostly killed by police and that is not true.

Your thought could have been articulated better.

And likewise you minimizing the issue of race in this issue is just as ridiculous. Again, I never implied that was the ONLY factor that is rooted in police brutality. I have discussed other things as well.

proportions

~~Soulflower~~ · 04-17-2015, 05:59 PM

Thanks Opriel for being the sane one here...but just want to comment on the last bolded.

The reasons why the statistics probably don't accurately reflect this hidden problem is because in the past these issues have not been caught on camera like it is...now.

Minorities have been the target for police brutality for years but it has not been caught on camera. Its been hush hush and a lot of these police academies and stations are corrupted and corrupt the stats. I don't trust any of them to be honest especially after what went down in Ferguson it was revealed the police were covering up evidence.

~~Soulflower~~ · 04-17-2015, 06:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mondo Bungle

proportions

It doesn't matter its false.

Waiting for you to prove my statement false with statistics.

Opriel just came with receipts and pretty much proved your statement wrong.

Mondo Bungle · 04-17-2015, 06:05 PM

I didn't make any statement, certainly nothing that could be proven wrong.
I dunno if Namelesl is right or not, but if he is he's just saying more white people have been killed by police, because they are the majority, there's more of them. The killing of minorities is statistically higher because it's a smaller group.

Nameless · 04-17-2015, 06:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Soulflower

That statement implied that white people are mostly killed by police and that is not true.

Your thought could have been articulated better.

And likewise you minimizing the issue of race in this issue is just as ridiculous. Again, I never implied that was the ONLY factor that is rooted in police brutality. I have discussed other things as well.

I mean by blank numbers from the data available most people killed by police are white, just to try and point out to you that this is an issue for everyone, not just black people. How is me not making this primarily about race ridiculous? There is no solution in "this is racism". That's just blame. To solve the problem you have to address the central issue which is excessive use of force, not racism. I never implied that you implied that race was the only factor, it's just practically all you are talking about. We haven't even been able to get to any discussion of what could or should be done because you keep talking about white privilege lol. I am not "minimizing" the issue of race, I am saying it is useless to harp on it because any solution to this would need to be for everyone.

~~Soulflower~~ · 04-17-2015, 06:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mondo Bungle

I didn't make any statement, certainly nothing that could be proven wrong.

You said that it was false when I said minorities have mostly been the target of police brutality.

The only OTHER race is white people and they are not the target of racial profiling or police brutality.

Do you want me to quote you?

Chula Vista · 04-17-2015, 06:09 PM

Good lord.

Nameless · 04-17-2015, 06:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Soulflower

The only OTHER race is white people and they are not the target of racial profiling or police brutality.

Look, if you're just going to make stuff up then I am too.

04-17-2015, 05:59 PM	#54 (permalink)
~~Soulflower~~ Account Disabled Join Date: Apr 2009 Posts: 2,304	Thanks Opriel for being the sane one here...but just want to comment on the last bolded. The reasons why the statistics probably don't accurately reflect this hidden problem is because in the past these issues have not been caught on camera like it is...now. Minorities have been the target for police brutality for years but it has not been caught on camera. Its been hush hush and a lot of these police academies and stations are corrupted and corrupt the stats. I don't trust any of them to be honest especially after what went down in Ferguson it was revealed the police were covering up evidence. Last edited by Soulflower; 04-17-2015 at 06:05 PM.

04-17-2015, 06:09 PM	#59 (permalink)
Chula Vista Toasted Poster Join Date: Oct 2014 Location: SoCal by way of Boston Posts: 11,332	Good lord. __________________ “The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

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