Mavorpen wrote:DnalweN acilbupeR wrote:
If this is not what has been essentially implied, or that racial profiling extends to lethal use of force, explain to me why I have been contradicted so many times, and the argument of "racial profiling" continuously shouted about as if I had not already acknowledged it or was trying to disprove it, when I very clearly was not.
The latter claim is what is being made, not "COPS GO PATROLLING FOR BLACKS TO KILL ALL DAY!" I suspect I know the issue here, but I'd need to explain that in a different post once I get access to a computer. Because, the evidence you're looking for doesn't exist in the form you want it. The evidence indirectly supports their claim rather than directly. That doesn't mean It Isn't valid.
Okay, I want to expand on this. There is one fundamental problem with discussing the role of racism with respect to innocent black people being killed by cops: there's no direct data on that. Really. Neither the federal government, nor local police have gathered data on how many people total are killed by the police. Also, neither of them gather any data as to how many "unjustified killings" are committed by the police.
And it's not like the reason they don't is because they can't. They absolutely can, as they keep track of two sets of information: the number of people justifiably killed by the police, and the weapon used in them. There's NO legitimate reason for them to not also keep track of how many unjustified killings or total amount of killings in general conducted by the police. Some people, such as Kyle Wagner from Deadspin, have tried to independently gather this data. After two years, he reached the following conclusion:
The biggest thing I've taken away from this project is something I'll never be able to prove, but I'm convinced to my core: The lack of such a database is intentional. No government—not the federal government, and not the thousands of municipalities that give their police forces license to use deadly force—wants you to know how many people it kills and why.
It's the only conclusion that can be drawn from the evidence. What evidence? In attempting to collect this information, I was lied to and delayed by the FBI, even when I was only trying to find out the addresses of police departments to make public records requests. The government collects millions of bits of data annually about law enforcement in its Uniform Crime Report, but it doesn't collect information about the most consequential act a law enforcer can do.
I've been lied to and delayed by state, county and local law enforcement agencies—almost every time. They've blatantly broken public records laws, and then thumbed their authoritarian noses at the temerity of a citizen asking for information that might embarrass the agency. And these are the people in charge of enforcing the law.
The second biggest thing I learned is that bad journalism colludes with police to hide this information. The primary reason for this is that police will cut off information to reporters who tell tales. And a reporter can't work if he or she can't talk to sources. It happened to me on almost every level as I advanced this year-long Fatal Encounters series through the News & Review. First they talk; then they stop, then they roadblock.
So, we have to look to more indirect evidence here, which there is plenty of. One of my favorite sources on this topic is this one. One data table that should be noted is this one:
Data can be further broken down to reveal some disturbing pieces of information:
- 47% of these killings happened with the claim not that the victims brandished a weapon or a gun, but that they "felt threatened," "feared for their life," or “were
forced to shoot to protect themselves or others.” - 44% of those killed had no weapon at all.
- 27% were alleged to have possessed a gun
- Only 20% were actually confirmed to have had a gun.
- A whopping 8% had actually fired or used a weapon that wounded or killed a police officer while on the scene.
On its own though, that's not enough for me to reach a conclusion. We can do even more than that.
One project conducted found that in New York, San Diego and Las Vegas
the percentage of black people killed by police was at least double that of their share of the city’s total population.
Another report by the BJS, studied contacts with the police. One notable data table is this one:
Where blacks are three times more likely than whites to have force used or threatened against them. That's not just being profiled by a police officer. That's being profiled, stopped, and then threatened with force or having force used against you.
And the absolute most insulting thing about this is that there's one thing missing from the data table on what types of force is used by the police:
That's right: excessive use of deadly force. The very thing that people are upset about. And what's even worse is that there's a Federal law requiring the government to gather data for excessive force that's been ignored for 20 years (yes, the BJS report does provide some information about excessive force, but again, it isn't comprehensive, and deadly force isn't there, and that's partly because the government, for whatever reason, feels that conducting a survey is preferable to requiring this information to be reported and gathered).
But there's one report that's even more damning, and an article summing up its key findings was published only yesterday. The most jarring piece of information at first look is obviously the fact that young black men are 21 times more likely to be fatally shot. But for me, the biggest "what the fuck?" moment came when I read
There were 151 instances in which police noted that teens they had shot dead had been fleeing or resisting arrest at the time of the encounter. 67 percent of those killed in such circumstances were black. That disparity was even starker in the last couple of years: of the 15 teens shot fleeing arrest from 2010 to 2012, 14 were black.
This is fucking ridiculous. It would be equally ridiculous for ANYONE to claim that this isn't clear evidence that something is dangerously fucking wrong here. And it has nothing, utterly nothing to do with "profiling." That's not an excuse, nor does it in any way dismiss the conclusion that racial bias played a significant part in the decision to kill these individuals. This is AFTER they may have been racially profiled. This is AFTER the cop may have tried to arrest them. And I'm fully aware that this includes cases where the victim had been resisting arrest. And I'm fully aware that the police often reported that they had a legitimate fear for their life. But what about those 14 years and younger?
The black boys killed can be disturbingly young. There were 41 teens 14 years or younger reported killed by police from 1980 to 2012 ii. 27 of them were black iii; 8 were white iv; 4 were Hispanic v and 1 was Asian vi.
That's 65% of individuals under 14 killed by cops being black. In order to convince me that this was entirely because of legitimate fear for their life, I'd have to accept that these black boys either had weapons or were physically threatening enough to pose a risk to the life of the cops. And I'm willing to accept that. But I'll need more than "what ifs."