Race, or Gender - What Metric Drives Police Brutality?

[Nobel Hobos 2]

So what? If the "vast majority" of police killings were justified, those shouldn't be included when looking for racial bias in unjustified killings.

Furthermore "posing a threat to officers" is what the officers would obviously say, whether the person was armed or not. Just the fact that they were armed should not justify them being killed. How would you square that with the 2nd amendment?

Shootings have to be investigated before being deemed justified or not. You do realize this, right? They aren't going on the cop's word alone.

You've read the study then, and you know something I don't. Apparently all these brutal cops wore body cams ...

[Nobel Hobos 2]

You've read the study then, and you know something I don't. Apparently all these brutal cops wore body cams ...

Police departments have been pushing pretty heavily for body scams. It's typically the anti-police crowd who are opposed to them.

Why on earth would they do that? Sounds like total bullshit to me.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

Why on earth would they do that? Sounds like total bullshit to me.

Ask them.

That doesn't prove anything about what the "anti-police crowd" want.

I'm not going any further down your rabbit hole. Let's get back to the topic ... or you could take it to the Protests and Riots thread.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

Yeah, that could be the largest factor in how badly someone will be brutalized, although the other two contribute to it.

It might not be "class" so much on if the person is wearing cheap looking clothing, etc. If the person looks poor, regardless of if they are poor, they may face more violence.

Everyone saying "class" should pay attention to your post. How the person is dressed (or the car they're driving) gives the cop a strong first impression of the person's class. Just by dressing "above" their class a person could avoid having to interact with police at all.

But that might backfire. If the cop has some other reason to interact with them, like observing a driving infringement or being called out to their house, the first impression will be the car or the house. And then, speaking with the person, the cop will "class" them in more detail. If they're coming across as working class but they're dressed in a suit and tie, just the incongruity of that will seem suspicious to the cop.

How they dress is still a very important factor, but there's a bunch of other factors which go into ascribing class to a person.

[Atheris]

If theater's taught me anything, it's stealing a loaf of bread and breaking a window pane, and breaking your parole.

[Galloism]

What drives police brutality is the fact police exists at all. Police only defend capital and harm all others (police are a part of the capitalist system). While everyone is endangered by the police, the police often target those with the least power and who deviate from the norm that the people have been brainwashed into accepting (in the U.S.'s case cishet, white, able-bodied, protestant Christian, men).

Men tend to be targeted more.

It's worth note that white able bodied women are targeted the absolute least.

Maybe that's who has the most power that the people have been brainwashed into accepting.

[Mirjt]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-police-race/more-racial-diversity-in-us-police-departments-unlikely-to-reduce-shootings-study-idUSKCN1UI017

Crime.

"In the vast majority of cases, the person killed was armed and posed a threat or had opened fire on officers, Cesario said.

“We find no evidence of anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparities across shootings, and White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers,” the authors wrote.

Instead, the authors found variances between local crime rates played a key role in predicting who was most likely to be killed by police.

In areas with high rates of violent crime by blacks, police were more than three times more likely to shoot dead a black person than a white person, the study found."

So what? If the "vast majority" of police killings were justified, those shouldn't be included when looking for racial bias in unjustified killings.

Furthermore "posing a threat to officers" is what the officers would obviously say, whether the person was armed or not. Just the fact that they were armed should not justify them being killed. How would you square that with the 2nd amendment?

No police killings are ever justified.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

So what? If the "vast majority" of police killings were justified, those shouldn't be included when looking for racial bias in unjustified killings.

Furthermore "posing a threat to officers" is what the officers would obviously say, whether the person was armed or not. Just the fact that they were armed should not justify them being killed. How would you square that with the 2nd amendment?

No police killings are ever justified.

I work with what I've got, and it seems to be an assumption made by "researchers at Michigan State University and the University of Maryland at College Park" that shootings are justified when the police say they're justified.

The findings are just about useless if police lying about them is taken into account. But I'd have to read it: Reuters only reports news, and null hypotheses aren't news.

[Atheris]

So what? If the "vast majority" of police killings were justified, those shouldn't be included when looking for racial bias in unjustified killings.

Furthermore "posing a threat to officers" is what the officers would obviously say, whether the person was armed or not. Just the fact that they were armed should not justify them being killed. How would you square that with the 2nd amendment?

No police killings are ever justified.

Even if it threatens the officers or innocent people in the line of fire?

Sure, *some* police killings aren't justified, but I'd hardly say that the death of someone who murders someone and goes on to target civilians and the police isn't justified.

[Mirjt]

No police killings are ever justified.

Even if it threatens the officers or innocent people in the line of fire?

Sure, *some* police killings aren't justified, but I'd hardly say that the death of someone who murders someone and goes on to target civilians and the police isn't justified.

I am in favor of police abolition, however even if I wasn't, it is the police officer's job to put themselves in the line of fire to protect others (including aggressors, whose lives have just as much value). The police are suppose to do what they can to incapacitate aggressors without killing them, even if that means the police officer getting injured or dying, and only kill as the absolute last resort to an immediate threat and only after doing 4 or 6 or 10 other tactics first. If someone is unwilling to risk death (not saying they should expect to die, just realize it is a real possibility) then they should not be police officer and should not get a police paycheck. I consider a actual justified police killing to be so rare to be statistically impossible more than once or twice a year, otherwise the killing was unjustified, and I think there is a good argument to be made that killing is always unjustified no matter the circumstances.

P.S. I have always been against the death penalty. I became in favor of police and prison reform in 2010. I became in favor of banning lifetime incarceration and sentences longer than 20 years in 2015. I became aware of the police and prison abolition movement in 2016. I became in favor of total police and prison and penal abolition in 2018-2019. I was really excited about the protests in mid 2020 because I was hoping it would lead to greater acceptance of police and prison abolition, but I am uncertain of the result and am fearful I won't get the change I want.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

No police killings are ever justified.

Even if it threatens the officers or innocent people in the line of fire?

Sure, *some* police killings aren't justified, but I'd hardly say that the death of someone who murders someone and goes on to target civilians and the police isn't justified.

Rampage killings like that are extremely rare. Given how rarely police are present at a regular murder, it really stretches credulity to think that police killings stopped a great number of rampage killings.

I don't think police even use that "protection of other lives" explanation very often. Shootings are almost always justified as protecting their OWN lives. Which is fair enough, sometimes they genuinely have to do that. But I'd like there to always be a working camera per officer, because we simply can't take their word for it that they shot in self-defense.

Or even that the suspect was armed. Cops lie about that too.