4 Responses to “Some links related to race and police work”

1. RR Says:
   October 14th, 2014 at 12:47 am

   Of course, Gabrielson, Grochowski, and Sagara leave out the fact that black men are MUCH more likely to encounter the police to begin with because of our outsized crime rate. Blacks are 8 times more likely to commit homicide than their white counterparts. Also, black cops are as likely to kill blacks as white cops. And black criminals are more likely to be armed than white criminals.

   Black mayors do lead to more black police, but that isn’t necessarily a good thing. At best, the black cops perform as well as white cops, consequently shooting about the same number of blacks. At worst, they are more prone to corruption, as shown in the case of the New Orleans police under Ray Nagin, who himself was indicted on corruption charges. The culture of black crime must change before we see a decrease in the number of black men dying by homicide.

2. Sappho Says:
   October 14th, 2014 at 9:25 pm

   Black men are not 21 times more dangerous than white men, and they are not 21 times more likely to commit any crime. They are indeed MUCH more likely to encounter the police, because, besides whatever their legitimate share of police encounters (the ones that come their way because they’re actually committing crimes), they’re more likely to have the cops called on them by scared citizens when they’re going about their business (like John Crawford), and much more likely to be subject to “stop and frisk.” Unarmed black men are also MUCH more likely to be killed by police, trigger happy neighborhood watch guys, homeowners who mistake people knocking on their door for help for intruders, and random people in public places who report that they thought they were defending themselves. And it’s not likely that black men are THAT much more predisposed to suicidally rush armed men when they, themselves, are unarmed.

   Are black men more likely than white men to commit some (not all) crimes? Sure. Do black men commit more homicide per capita than white men? Sure. (Though not more of certain versions of homicide, like mass shooting, where, of all people, Asian-American men outnumber black men, though white men still make up the majority of mass shooters. The relationship between race and crime appears to be complex.) But mistrust of the police is part of the *reason* for this disparity. Compare the Scots-Irish and other Border People wave of immigration described in _Albion’s Seed_; they were considerably more prone to resort to violence than New Englanders in large part because they came from more lawless border regions where they had to fend for themselves when it came to self-protection. (This is also why, independent of any issues of racial disparity, I’m wary of Stand-your-ground laws.) The main factors fueling such crime disparities as there are include disparities in poverty, disparities in which neighborhoods host the drug trade, and the fact that young men in neighborhoods where trust of the police is low tend to band together for self-protection (an approach that doesn’t make for as much public safety as having a community where people can trust the cops and are willing to report stuff to them). Add maybe a touch of Southern redneck culture (Southerners, white or black, have always had more machismo about violence than Yankees), which got carried to certain neighborhoods outside the South during the Great Migration.

   Regardless, though, the degree of difference between white people’s *fear* of black men and white people’s *fear* of white men way outpaces any actual difference in crime rates. And the resulting over-targeting and profiling of black men of all varieties and levels of good citizenship, besides being lethal to some innocent black men, fuels the vicious circle in which young black men don’t trust police to protect them, and therefore in certain neighborhoods rely on their own street toughness, while cops respond to that street culture with further profiling of young black men.

3. RR Says:
   October 15th, 2014 at 3:20 am

   Black men are not 21 times more dangerous than white men, and they are not 21 times more likely to commit any crime.

   The authors of the study you cite admit that the study does not distinguish between “good shoots” (where a person is shot by a police officer because the person poses an imminent threat to the officer or a threat to another person) and “bad shoots” (where a person is shot under dubious circumstances). The study also doesn’t take into account the fact that black criminals are much more likely to be armed than whites. Thus the correlation between the likelihood of committing a crime and the likelihood of being shot by a cop isn’t necessarily linear. And what of the finding that black cops are just as likely to shoot blacks as white cops? If the shootings are racially motivated as you seem to think, why would black cops be as likely to shoot blacks as white cops? Are black cops self-hating? Perhaps cops, both black and white, are just as likely to encounter dangerous criminals, a disproportionately large percentage of whom are black, making the likelihood of a violent outcome that much higher.

   If the causes of crime are related to poverty and a lack of trust of the police as you state, then why was the black crime rate so much lower in the 1950s, when the black poverty rate was much higher and mistrust of the virtually all white police forces of that time was also much higher, as compared to the present? Having lived in an all black neighborhood for a good portion of my life and having witnessed black crime first hand, it is my experience that mistrust of the police has very little to do with the prevalence of black crime. It is my opinion that the high level of black crime in itself is the cause of the mistrust of the police. Even if we could wave our magic wands and make police forces in black neighborhoods all black and magically endow the black cops with the ability to execute their duties flawlessly and without bias, this would still result in a disproportionately large amount of young black men either shot by cops or arrested and put in prison by cops. This disparity in itself would have a tendency to make blacks suspicious of the police.

   Regardless, though, the degree of difference between white people’s *fear* of black men and white people’s *fear* of white men way outpaces any actual difference in crime rates.

   Perhaps, but why shouldn’t people error on the side of caution, especially people with families? What of black people’s fear of black men? 70% of cases which involved a citizen either brandishing or firing a gun at an assailant involved black victims. And what of black flight:

   http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/black-flight

   White AND black people who flee black crime are not being irrational or delusional. It is the pervasive reality of black crime that drives the fear.

4. Sappho Says:
   October 15th, 2014 at 9:50 pm

   Honestly? People should err on the side of caution *when it comes to running away from people they are scared of*, even if it should turn out later that their fears were in part fueled by prejudice. They should also err on the side of caution when it comes to accepting help from strangers of whom they are scared, opening doors to people of whom they are scared, etc.

   People should *not* err on the side of “caution,” if “caution” means packing heat, following unarmed guys in a threatening fashion, or being trigger happy with a gun and winding up shooting someone who was in fact minding his own business in a public place.

   I’m in favor of being lenient with people’s “flight” responses, not so much with unwarranted “fight” responses.