The Police Brutality Thread

[Uncle Ted]

How come you never mock Trump when he says stupid stuff like this?

Too much competition... y’all do that.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Pelado]

You didn't finish the paragraph:

Perhaps an even more recent edit.

[beefytee]

Too much competition... y’all do that.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Have we mentioned Tim Apple here?

[UVACoug]

Of course....

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle...-disband-chop/

Calfo Eakes LLP, the law firm representing the group, said in a statement the lawsuit is “not a step (their) clients have taken lightly,” adding that they stand with the Black Lives Matter movement and support demonstrators’ right to free speech and assembly. The plaintiffs include owners of apartment buildings in the area and local businesses such as Car Tender, Northwest Liquor and Wine, Sage Physical Therapy and Tattoos and Fortune. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.

[UVACoug]

I was curious, so I pulled up some data. Poverty and race appear to share responsibility for the problem between police officers and African Americans.

I began by questioning whether cops were targeting African Americans because of race or because the cops' experience had conditioned them to be more aggressive. Black men are 6 times more likely to commit homicides and 3 times more likely to commit violent crime than white men. This supports the theory cops that expect black men more likely to be criminals, and therefore cops are more likely to be on-guard/aggressive. As with most data, these statistics tell only part of the story.

Violent crime is more prevalent in poor and low-income neighborhoods, and the violent crime rate between black and non-black perpetrators is not statistically different after adjusting for income. So criminal behavior is correlated with low income, and low income areas are disproportionately populated by African Americans. This suggests cops are more likely to be suspicious of black men because cops inaccurately associate African Americans with crime based on their experience, the topline statistics, or both. The fact that Hispanic crime rates are much lower than African American crime rates, and the anecdotal observation that reports of excessive force by police against Hispanics is lower than excessive force against black men, leads me to believe cops (and probably the general population) in aggregate are guilty of racial profiling but they are not necessarily racist. Obviously, every group and rule has exceptions.

I think your analysis is spot on. Of course, the fact that black people make up a disproportionate share of those that are living in poverty is itself largely a legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. I think this problem is way more complicated than most people want to recognize or admit. It is going to take a lot more than "defunding the police" to truly fix it. Police reform is certainly appropriate and necessary, but if the focus is only on that, we are only addressing a symptom and not looking for an actual cure. I don't know if "reparations" is the right term to use, but I think a serious case can be made that the United States has a responsibility to implement serious policies that are targeted at eliminating the lingering effects of slavery, Jim Crow, and other racist policies of the past.

I think a big part of the problem, which there does not seem to be any political will to address, is residential and school segregation. I think there are a lot of reasons why segregated neighborhoods and schools continue to persist, but until white and black people learn to live together, work together, eat together, and go to school together, I think the divide between the races, and the lingering effects of the overt racism of the past, are going to continue to persist. One of my former law professors, who went on to be the Dean of the Harvard School of Education and is now the President of UVA, has written extensively on this subject in the field of education. If you are interested in this subject at all, I would highly recommend his book (linked below), which analyzes the divide between suburban school districts (which have schools with mostly white students) and urban school districts (which typically have a higher concentration of black and minority students). It's an interesting read that discusses the history of the school desegregation movement, and its successes and failures. One of his conclusions, which I think is very interesting, is that while funding is important, it doesn't explain the divide in performance between urban and suburban school districts. Many urban school districts are funded at the same or higher levels than suburban districts. His theory, which I think is correct, is that socio-economic segregation explains a large part of the educational divide.

https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=LZqeQbkX8lsC&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&dq=James+E.+Ryan&ots=6rkPZnp4sr&sig=XTDxjurrw66Q7TT_8UufsNId7p8#v=onepage&q=James%20E.%20Ryan&f=false

My view is that, if you concentrate a lot of poor minority kids in urban school districts, and middle-class/rich white kids in suburban districts, the kids in the urban schools will perform worse, regardless of the level of funding or the quality of the teachers. Studies have shown, however, that when poor minority kids attend integrated schools with middle-class/rich white kids, the poor minority students perform much better and the middle-class white kids perform about the same. When the schools are looked at as a whole, however, rather than on an individual student level, integrated schools do not perform as well as mostly white/middle class schools do. Our society is obsessed at the moment with the quality of education at the school level, rather than at the student level. One of the most significant factors that people with kids consider when deciding where to buy a home is the quality of schools. The result is that, people that are able to do so (i.e., the rich and the white) end up segregating themselves into neighborhoods and school districts that are mostly made up of the rich and the white. I think this is a big part of the explanation for "white flight," which continues to exist. Until white parents understand that their own kids can perform just as well in an integrated school as they could in a predominantly white school, even if the reputation of the school as a whole may be lower, I don't see an easy solution to the problem.

Edit: Here's a review of the book I mentioned above that I think cogently summarizes the issues I'm talking about:

https://newrepublic.com/article/79210/the-nixon-obama-compromise-education-reform

[Uncle Ted]

Dumb Dem Logic... "Even If We Got Every Thing We Want [in the police reform bill] It's Still Not Enough'"

You can't always get what you want... But if you try sometimes, well, you might find you get what you need.

[BigFatMeanie]

I think your analysis is spot on. Of course, the fact that black people make up a disproportionate share of those that are living in poverty is itself largely a legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. I think this problem is way more complicated than most people want to recognize or admit. It is going to take a lot more than "defunding the police" to truly fix it. Police reform is certainly appropriate and necessary, but if the focus is only on that, we are only addressing a symptom and not looking for an actual cure. I don't know if "reparations" is the right term to use, but I think a serious case can be made that the United States has a responsibility to implement serious policies that are targeted at eliminating the lingering effects of slavery, Jim Crow, and other racist policies of the past.

I think a big part of the problem, which there does not seem to be any political will to address, is residential and school segregation. I think there are a lot of reasons why segregated neighborhoods and schools continue to persist, but until white and black people learn to live together, work together, eat together, and go to school together, I think the divide between the races, and the lingering effects of the overt racism of the past, are going to continue to persist. One of my former law professors, who went on to be the Dean of the Harvard School of Education and is now the President of UVA, has written extensively on this subject in the field of education. If you are interested in this subject at all, I would highly recommend his book (linked below), which analyzes the divide between suburban school districts (which have schools with mostly white students) and urban school districts (which typically have a higher concentration of black and minority students). It's an interesting read that discusses the history of the school desegregation movement, and its successes and failures. One of his conclusions, which I think is very interesting, is that while funding is important, it doesn't explain the divide in performance between urban and suburban school districts. Many urban school districts are funded at the same or higher levels than suburban districts. His theory, which I think is correct, is that socio-economic segregation explains a large part of the educational divide.

https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=LZqeQbkX8lsC&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&dq=James+E.+Ryan&ots=6rkPZnp4sr&sig=XTDxjurrw66Q7TT_8UufsNId7p8#v=onepage&q=James%20E.%20Ryan&f=false

My view is that, if you concentrate a lot of poor minority kids in urban school districts, and middle-class/rich white kids in suburban districts, the kids in the urban schools will perform worse, regardless of the level of funding or the quality of the teachers. Studies have shown, however, that when poor minority kids attend integrated schools with middle-class/rich white kids, the poor minority students perform much better and the middle-class white kids perform about the same. When the schools are looked at as a whole, however, rather than on an individual student level, integrated schools do not perform as well as mostly white/middle class schools do. Our society is obsessed at the moment with the quality of education at the school level, rather than at the student level. One of the most significant factors that people with kids consider when deciding where to buy a home is the quality of schools. The result is that, people that are able to do so (i.e., the rich and the white) end up segregating themselves into neighborhoods and school districts that are mostly made up of the rich and the white. I think this is a big part of the explanation for "white flight," which continues to exist. Until white parents understand that their own kids can perform just as well in an integrated school as they could in a predominantly white school, even if the reputation of the school as a whole may be lower, I don't see an easy solution to the problem.

Edit: Here's a review of the book I mentioned above that I think cogently summarizes the issues I'm talking about:

https://newrepublic.com/article/7921...ucation-reform

People self segregate. It's an innate human (primate) characteristic. At work, the Chinese developers all sit with each other at a specific table during lunch, the Indian developers all sit with each other. If I call an "all-hands" meeting and have 50 people in the room, people naturally segregate themselves into their teams. All the forced integration, unconscious bias training, diversity and inclusion and cultural awareness training, and any other reeducation program in the world will not make a bit of difference. Trying to get humans to not segregate is essentially trying to make humans not be human.

Humans segregate by race, socio-economic status, common interests and a zillion other characteristics. How many times have you been walking around in Vegas during an MWC or WCC tourney and you notice BYU fans? How many times when you're walking around UVA, or New York City, or Disneyland, or some random place in Europe do you look for and notice people of your "tribe"? Whatever the tribe may be?

Heck, even at a large family reunion, where everyone is of the same ethnic, socio-economic, religious, and political background, where everyone pretty much is of the same tribe, people will still sit with their immediate family members.

EDIT: I'm not disagreeing with anything you said, basically noting that it's not just a difficult, but an impossible, problem to solve.

[Bo Diddley]

People self segregate. It's an innate human (primate) characteristic. At work, the Chinese developers all sit with each other at a specific table during lunch, the Indian developers all sit with each other. If I call an "all-hands" meeting and have 50 people in the room, people naturally segregate themselves into their teams. All the forced integration, unconscious bias training, diversity and inclusion and cultural awareness training, and any other reeducation program in the world will not make a bit of difference. Trying to get humans to not segregate is essentially trying to make humans not be human.

The military's done pretty well with this. Still a ways to go, and still some self segregating going on, but I've had tremendous experiences with diversity--too many to count.

[Pelado]

People self segregate. It's an innate human (primate) characteristic. At work, the Chinese developers all sit with each other at a specific table during lunch, the Indian developers all sit with each other. If I call an "all-hands" meeting and have 50 people in the room, people naturally segregate themselves into their teams. All the forced integration, unconscious bias training, diversity and inclusion and cultural awareness training, and any other reeducation program in the world will not make a bit of difference. Trying to get humans to not segregate is essentially trying to make humans not be human.

Humans segregate by race, socio-economic status, common interests and a zillion other characteristics. How many times have you been walking around in Vegas during an MWC or WCC tourney and you notice BYU fans? How many times when you're walking around UVA, or New York City, or Disneyland, or some random place in Europe do you look for and notice people of your "tribe"? Whatever the tribe may be?

Heck, even at a large family reunion, where everyone is of the same ethnic, socio-economic, religious, and political background, where everyone pretty much is of the same tribe, people will still sit with their immediate family members.

EDIT: I'm not disagreeing with anything you said, basically noting that it's not just a difficult, but an impossible, problem to solve.

Just need to intermarry enough that we can't tell what tribe everyone is from.

[All-American]

The military's done pretty well with this. Still a ways to go, and still some self segregating going on, but I've had tremendous experiences with diversity--too many to count.

I think what makes that work is the fact that you are all in the military.

Bottom line is that you overcome natural segregation only by focusing on something else that makes a person who is different in one way on the same team as you.

[frank ryan]

i don't disagree with much of what you say here, but that is a distinction without a difference.



put another way, black men are more likely to be arrested, charged and convicted of homicides and violent crime. there are no clean inputs at any level of the criminal justice system--the outcomes are much worse for black men across the board. black men are the victims of much harsher sentencing outcomes. i think this is more symptomatic of a major problem than it is illuminating exculpatory evidence of cop behavior.



i don't necessarily disagree with this, and i agree that the explanation is much more nuanced than "cops hate black people." the real answer probably has something to do with the fact that cops are more comfortable using force and acting aggressively towards populations that they view to be marginalized and less likely to have the ability and resources to be able to seek a remedy for unauthorized/unwarranted force and aggression. for my money, that is the root of the problem: because internal accountability mechanisms are broken or inadequate (or, at least, cops view them to be), police officers potentially view the risk of acting outside the scope of how he or she should act as low in situations with marginalized subjects. that is bad. the prevalence of surveillance cameras, cell phone cameras, bodycams and dashcams has illuminated the problems attendant to that. there is also a huge problem with shitty cops leaving departments under auspicious circumstances and being swiftly hired by other departments due to a large shortage in experienced law enforcement labor.

We do know some cops - more than most want to admit - do hate black people. The explanation is more complicated, but that's a part of it.

[Uncle Ted]

The Beverly Hills Antifa kids... "Eat the rich [liberals]!"

Embedded Tweet

CHshLouupCRPlpHKucizsDdEOsZpydHW.jpg

I wonder what the rich taste like... chicken?


Someone please give these kids a flag they like and won't be ripping down and burning...

Embedded Tweet

Maybe they would like this one:

[swampfrog]

People self segregate. It's an innate human (primate) characteristic. At work, the Chinese developers all sit with each other at a specific table during lunch, the Indian developers all sit with each other. If I call an "all-hands" meeting and have 50 people in the room, people naturally segregate themselves into their teams. All the forced integration, unconscious bias training, diversity and inclusion and cultural awareness training, and any other reeducation program in the world will not make a bit of difference. Trying to get humans to not segregate is essentially trying to make humans not be human.

Humans segregate by race, socio-economic status, common interests and a zillion other characteristics. How many times have you been walking around in Vegas during an MWC or WCC tourney and you notice BYU fans? How many times when you're walking around UVA, or New York City, or Disneyland, or some random place in Europe do you look for and notice people of your "tribe"? Whatever the tribe may be?

Heck, even at a large family reunion, where everyone is of the same ethnic, socio-economic, religious, and political background, where everyone pretty much is of the same tribe, people will still sit with their immediate family members.

EDIT: I'm not disagreeing with anything you said, basically noting that it's not just a difficult, but an impossible, problem to solve.

I agree with this. Especially the edit. Though I will point out that culture can and does mitigate to some extent at least the worse outcomes.

https://bigthink.com/videos/robert-s...ope-for-us-yet

Humans invent "Us" and "Them" groups wherever they look, whether it's on the basis of sex, race, nationality, class, age, religion, hair color—there's nothing we won't discriminate against, and we do it within a twentieth of a second of seeing someone. Are they an "Us" or are they a "Them"? The flaw in this hardwired thinking reflex is also its silver lining: it is ridiculously easy to manipulate. A racial bias can be duped by something so simple as putting a cap with your favorite sports team's logo on someone's head, for example. You can overthrow your brain's most primal reactions in this way but, as history shows, other people can also get in your head and manipulate the Us versus Them reflex to tragic and catastrophic results.

[Bo Diddley]

I think what makes that work is the fact that you are all in the military.

Bottom line is that you overcome natural segregation only by focusing on something else that makes a person who is different in one way on the same team as you.

Whatever the reasons, it's been very enriching to me. I wish everyone could experience that.

[UVACoug]

People self segregate. It's an innate human (primate) characteristic. At work, the Chinese developers all sit with each other at a specific table during lunch, the Indian developers all sit with each other. If I call an "all-hands" meeting and have 50 people in the room, people naturally segregate themselves into their teams. All the forced integration, unconscious bias training, diversity and inclusion and cultural awareness training, and any other reeducation program in the world will not make a bit of difference. Trying to get humans to not segregate is essentially trying to make humans not be human.

Humans segregate by race, socio-economic status, common interests and a zillion other characteristics. How many times have you been walking around in Vegas during an MWC or WCC tourney and you notice BYU fans? How many times when you're walking around UVA, or New York City, or Disneyland, or some random place in Europe do you look for and notice people of your "tribe"? Whatever the tribe may be?

Heck, even at a large family reunion, where everyone is of the same ethnic, socio-economic, religious, and political background, where everyone pretty much is of the same tribe, people will still sit with their immediate family members.

EDIT: I'm not disagreeing with anything you said, basically noting that it's not just a difficult, but an impossible, problem to solve.

I agree that it is natural for people to self segregate, but I don't agree that desegregation in schools (and maybe eventually in neighborhoods, although that will take some time and concerted effort) is impossible or an unworthy goal. There are some examples of it working in some cities, although not a lot of great ones. And I just don't see how this country overcomes its race problem without addressing segregation. Anything short of that will just be putting a bandaid on a gaping wound. Instead of spending millions of dollars renaming airports and colleges, or moving meaningless statutes to museums or the garbage heap, why not direct that money to the root of the problem?