The Police Brutality Thread

[wuapinmon]

You don't have to be exceptional, as many of your friends or my friends come from diverse ethnic groups. Economically neither of us is exceptional. You may be in the upper tier of teaching abilities but neither of us are billionaires.

but if you are locked into the lowest group or lowest quintile then, those are where the effects still exist and still exist. They exist in a multitude of ways.

Brother, I think you've got no idea what you're talking about. Not a clue. Have you ever lived east of the Mississippi? This rosy picture you paint of life in the middle and upper classes or for educated people being mostly good with diminishing incidents is illusory if you're not white. I grew up in a travel trailer, son of a beekeeper, broke-ass poor eating pork and beans like four nights a week, until I was 10. My parents worked beeyards in the day, ran a honey store and produce stall in the fall, and then managed a motel in the winter. Yet, we were poor by choice. My father finally gave up, went into the computer industry (he was a CPA), and in 1983 when he made like $18k, by 1986 he was making $100k. The change in my life was unlike anything I've ever experienced. We went on vacations, bought a house, new furniture, I had toys galore. We ate at McDonald's when it wasn't my birthday!

If my dad weren't white, even with that same education, no <redacted> way that happens the way it did. Fortune 500 Companies don't have (usually white) Directors of Supplier Diversity because it's as easy as you say it is. The sooner we start admitting that the deck is stacked, from birth, against almost all blacks in this country, due to tacit discrimination, the sooner we'll start to make real change. There is a problem and it's systemic.

http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html

How do you read this, as an African-American, and not hate the world you inhabit? How could you ever believe that you had the same chances as others? Why bother? Despondency and anger reside in the hearts of those who feel mistreated; it's the very basis of the Declaration of Independence.

To see how the credentials of job applicants affect discrimination, the authors varied the quality of the resumes they used in response to a given ad. Higher quality applicants were given a little more labor market experience on average and fewer holes in their employment history. They were also portrayed as more likely to have an email address, to have completed some certification degree, to possess foreign language skills, or to have been awarded some honors.
In total, the authors responded to more than 1,300 employment ads in the sales, administrative support, clerical, and customer services job categories, sending out nearly 5,000 resumes. The ads covered a large spectrum of job quality, from cashier work at retail establishments and clerical work in a mailroom to office and sales management positions.
The results indicate large racial differences in callback rates to a phone line with a voice mailbox attached and a message recorded by someone of the appropriate race and gender. Job applicants with white names needed to send about 10 resumes to get one callback; those with African-American names needed to send around 15 resumes to get one callback. This would suggest either employer prejudice or employer perception that race signals lower productivity.
The 50 percent gap in callback rates is statistically very significant, Bertrand and Mullainathan note in Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination (NBER Working Paper No. 9873). It indicates that a white name yields as many more callbacks as an additional eight years of experience. Race, the authors add, also affects the reward to having a better resume. Whites with higher quality resumes received 30 percent more callbacks than whites with lower quality resumes. But the positive impact of a better resume for those with Africa-American names was much smaller.
"While one may have expected that improved credentials may alleviate employers' fear that African-American applicants are deficient in some unobservable skills, this is not the case in our data," the authors write. "Discrimination therefore appears to bite twice, making it harder not only for African-Americans to find a job but also to improve their employability."

[Bo Diddley]

De-escalation is in order.

The difficulty is that there is not just one ethnic segment. Much of the disparity exists within the socioeconomic class of the indigent and the poor, the bottom twenty percent of society. On this board, we may have a few people who have climbed out of that group, but nobody who currently belongs to it. Most of us, who live outside Utah or Southern Idaho, have friends and neighbors of all ethnic groups. Have they experienced some awkward moments where somebody made assumptions about them on the basis of their ethnicity? Most likely, but their lives because of their education has been and is going to be mostly good with diminishing incidents. In the upper socioeconomic groups, society is mostly color blind. You wouldn't have a President, members of Supreme Court, or even our billionaire upper 1% contain members from all ethnic groups, even previously disadvantaged groups if this weren't true.

In the lowest of the socioeconomic groups, the effects of a discriminatory past still prevail. But I don't believe a President parading on tv these differences makes it better or will improve their conditions. The bottom 20% need a new focus how to create income mobility, regardless of ethnicity. It will disproportionately benefit certain ethnicities but should not focus on them.

I don't think your group is as exclusive as you think it is.

[Topper]

I don't think your group is as exclusive as you think it is.

It wasn't intended to be. It is possible in many towns in Utah or Southern Idaho, and possibly other regions, to not know anybody of a different ethnic origin. In most middle sized or larger cities, that's no longer possible.

[Northwestcoug]

Michael Jordan donates 1 million each to 2 organizations working to build trust between law enforcement and their communities:

“As a proud American, a father who lost his own dad in a senseless act of violence, and a black man, I have been deeply troubled by the deaths of African-Americans at the hands of law enforcement and angered by the cowardly and hateful targeting and killing of police officers,” Jordan writes in a one-page letter released exclusively to The Undefeated. “I grieve with the families who have lost loved ones, as I know their pain all too well.”

http://theundefeated.com/features/jo...ricans-police/

Good for him.

[grapevine]

The town we beat for state championship in bball and Larry Craig lived there named after second word of boring church speaker sometime,s, several people served there donkt mean to mock them, however ranche lost his life when bull went in road and he had shoot out with police as car hit bull. Well Idah ag didn,t file charges against the cops that shot him. HeRd he was no saint, and cops not that experienced. Granted cops make quick life and death descisons so taking life nothing they want to do, and something they donkt want to be in position to do.

[Art Vandelay]

I posted a GQ article in the interesting to read thread about the Uber Killer in Michigan. One excerpt, that had little to do with the killer, I found interesting. It seems to show what happens when armed (presumably mostly) men get mentally prepared and amped up for a likely conflict.

The killer was arrested without incident:

After Dalton was put in a car and driven away, the officers who remained at the scene seemed surprised, and maybe disappointed, that such a violent and terrible situation could have ended so quietly. Snatches of their conversations could be heard on the police-car audio, the officers still adrenalized as they talked through what had happened:
“He had a bulletproof vest on. I can’t believe we didn’t have a fucking gun battle out here.”
“Oh man. Could you get a better fucking backdrop? Brick building…brick building…metal building…no residential.”
“Dude, I’m gonna tell you right now, I really wanted to… [mimes firing his gun several times] I was like, ‘You fucking piece of shit.’ ”
“When he stopped here, I was like: ‘Game on.’ ”
“We would’ve fucking obliterated his ass.”
“He didn’t say a single thing when we pulled him over. I can’t believe he didn’t go out in a blaze of glory.”
They also discussed whether more bodies would be found. Somebody mentioned that officers were checking all the other parking lots along Stadium Drive.
“He’s got to have killed his wife and everything,” said one.
“I would think so,” came the reply.
As the news came through that his wife had been successfully contacted—“She’s a 14”; Kalamazoo police code confirming she’s okay—they sounded perplexed. Cops at the Seelye scene were also surprised. Clearly this was not how they had anticipated the night would end:
“He didn’t fight us? I am surprised that he didn’t want to go at it—figured that would be suicide by cop.”
“Wow. What a fucking puss.”

[taekwondave]

Please, oh please tell me I'm the first to mention the Kaepernick story on CS. This seems like as good a thread as any to address it. Any takers on that?

[taekwondave]

Alright I'll start. I'm glad he did it. I'm glad he's going to keep doing it. I hope others will follow suit.

That said, I think most of the problems we are seeing with police brutality and with treatment of the black community and the dynamics within the black community (such as high incarceration rate, and 70% of black kids living without fathers at home) could all basically go away with one single policy change: end the war on drugs. As far as BLM and these high profile athletes and all of us desktop computer warriors are concerned, I hope that becomes the single thing we all push to change. I can't think of another thing we could do as a society that would help that situation more drastically or more quickly.

[creekster]

Alright I'll start. I'm glad he did it. I'm glad he's going to keep doing it. I hope others will follow suit.

That said, I think most of the problems we are seeing with police brutality and with treatment of the black community and the dynamics within the black community (such as high incarceration rate, and 70% of black kids living without fathers at home) could all basically go away with one single policy change: end the war on drugs. As far as BLM and these high profile athletes and all of us desktop computer warriors are concerned, I hope that becomes the single thing we all push to change. I can't think of another thing we could do as a society that would help that situation more drastically or more quickly.

Get back to me when he (or you for that matter) can articulate some rational relationship between the object of his protest (which is apparently something about minorities being killed unjustly, as though anyone would be in favor of that) and the subject of his protest, which is the American flag.

[Bo Diddley]

Alright I'll start. I'm glad he did it. I'm glad he's going to keep doing it. I hope others will follow suit.

That said, I think most of the problems we are seeing with police brutality and with treatment of the black community and the dynamics within the black community (such as high incarceration rate, and 70% of black kids living without fathers at home) could all basically go away with one single policy change: end the war on drugs. As far as BLM and these high profile athletes and all of us desktop computer warriors are concerned, I hope that becomes the single thing we all push to change. I can't think of another thing we could do as a society that would help that situation more drastically or more quickly.

Welcome to the Libertarian Party. There's plenty of room on the wagon. However, I think you overstate how this change would help the black community. It's a good start. Problems in Ferguson stemmed from government overreach, and was a combination of judicial/legislative/and executive (police).

Overall, I think a large part of the problem is rooted in the police culture, and it should be on them to fix. But to really be successful, we need to be willing to pay more for law enforcement and associated costs (training).

[old_gregg]

at least he'll have an excuse when he gets cut

[wuapinmon]

Welcome to the Libertarian Party. There's plenty of room on the wagon. However, I think you overstate how this change would help the black community. It's a good start. Problems in Ferguson stemmed from government overreach, and was a combination of judicial/legislative/and executive (police).

Overall, I think a large part of the problem is rooted in the police culture, and it should be on them to fix. But to really be successful, we need to be willing to pay more for law enforcement and associated costs (training).

I don't follow your antecedent. Is your "them" the police themselves? I don't think that some police departments can fix themselves.

To your other point, I disagree with you completely. Living in the South, I don't think you can overstate how much ending the War on Drugs would help the black community with regard to the impoverished segment of it. The black middle class might not see much difference, but the black lower class's lives would be greatly changed.

Now, as for paying more for law enforcement, yes absolutely. You know that I'm on record that I'm willing to up my taxes to give cops sabbatical and increased pay. But, I want increased civilian oversight and a professionalized, college-educated police force in return. I think sabbatical for cops should be a guaranteed job requirement. Six months of training followed by six months of paid vacation every seven years.

[Commando]

Get back to me when he (or you for that matter) can articulate some rational relationship between the object of his protest (which is apparently something about minorities being killed unjustly, as though anyone would be in favor of that) and the subject of his protest, which is the American flag.

I thought it was probably just a convenient nexus, but based on all the racist memes and commentary I've seen in response, I'd say he nailed it. That said, I have no problem with him not saluting the flag during the nat'l anthem. Doesn't bother me a bit. It's America, protest is allowed, and it seems like a worthy cause toward which he's using his platform to instigate dialogue.

[Bo Diddley]

I don't follow your antecedent. Is your "them" the police themselves? I don't think that some police departments can fix themselves.

To your other point, I disagree with you completely. Living in the South, I don't think you can overstate how much ending the War on Drugs would help the black community with regard to the impoverished segment of it. The black middle class might not see much difference, but the black lower class's lives would be greatly changed.

Now, as for paying more for law enforcement, yes absolutely. You know that I'm on record that I'm willing to up my taxes to give cops sabbatical and increased pay. But, I want increased civilian oversight and a professionalized, college-educated police force in return. I think sabbatical for cops should be a guaranteed job requirement. Six months of training followed by six months of paid vacation every seven years.

Yes, when I say them, I mean that police need to change their culture. Even the small departments mirror the overall culture. That's just one factor in the overall problem.

[Jeff Lebowski]

I'll say it again: the War on Drugs is a disaster. Absolute tragedy for poor Americans, especially the black community. Shame on Reagan and Clinton and for everyone who ever supported mandatory minimum sentencing, three-strikes laws, and ridiculous penalties for drug use and possession. It all needs to be repealed and we need to start correcting all the damage we have done.

That being said, Kaep is a moron who is already doing far more damage than good.