Hey @OhiBro, from what has been gathered so far, how do you see it? I believe the officers were at fault from what has been gathered so far, but could “the system” have helped the officers do a better job? That is a great question (the answer is probably yes). I have been looking at the police statistics of different municipalities with similar racial demographics and similar rates of violent and non-violent crimes and some areas just seem to do a better job at preventing police caused casualties. It would be nice to understand why this is happening.
I do believe that this point in time will be an inflection point for young people to galvanize around, but I am not as sure about the Generation X and older populations. I remember being in college and noticing how young the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement were and how a good amount of the most effective leaders were my age or not much older at the time of that struggle. I believe that the real “energy” and the true change agents will be with our youth again. But we can support and join our youth in trying making the world a better place.
That is the million dollar question.
I don’t have enough information to form an opinion yet. I am scouring, and find tidbits that I share in this forum, but most of the talk focuses on race, riots, etc.
It’s been reported that Chauvin’s maneuver is legal in Minnesota. The trial should shed more light on this. Are officers trained in MN to use this in certain circumstances? Was this the right circumstance? Answers to these types of questions will help figure out how much fault lies with the system, and how much with the officer(s).
I also think about what the ideal outcome would be. Many seem to want to assign 100% fault to the officer(s), and 100% fault to the system. It doesn’t work that way, and shouldn’t work that way. There is too much emotion driving opinions now.
If the officer is 100% at fault, vengeful people get the satisfaction of retaliation. But the system doesn’t change.
If there is a 90/10 system/officer split, the system changes, and the officer pays some level of penalty.
So, in the scheme of things, will people feel better if the officer sits in prison for 30 years vs 3 years?
I suspect it will be a difficult prosecution.
One of the most important lessons that any parent can impart to their children: police officers are just human beings too, they suffer from biases (often based on long experience), they can be fearful, jumpy, and sometimes they just make mistakes.
If an officer is trying to arrest you, COMPLY. The law gives the officer this power. If there is an error, let the lawyers sort it out later. It is not a perfect system, but do not risk your life on an imperfect human being if it can be helped.
Would you let your HS senior go to a protest? My suburban white 17 year old DD just left with her friends to go to a vigil/march in the city. I offered to drive them but they wanted to go on their own. I’m not thrilled with it. I want her to be able to express herself but at the same time I am scared for them. They are very well read on the issues but not very street smart.
No, I wouldn’t let my teen go. Unless…
At this point it might behoove protestors to consider getting a permit, close down a highway, and hold the protest up and down it instead of near downtown areas where stores and businesses and cars are (and hopefully clean up after themselves afterwards). Most folks will be willing to be inconvenienced by a detour or two if it can help police and the media distinguish between who is safely and peacefully protesting and who is looting & rioting.
My 18 year old protests. My 16 year old does not, but I would let her if she wanted to. She said she is fearful and I don’t begrudge her wanting to feel safe. She chooses to write letters, donate her money, and make phone calls.
Recent Monmouth University poll ( https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/documents/monmouthpoll_us_060220.pdf/ ) asked the following questions (rotated order):
B2. Have you or an immediate family member ever felt that you were being harassed by the police, or has this not happened?
B3. Have you or an immediate family member ever had an experience where a police officer helped keep you safe in a potentially dangerous situation, or has this not happened?
Percentages answering yes and no for several demographics:
Demographic B2 Y/N B3 Y/N
All 28/72 31/69
Male 31/69 28/72
Female 25/75 34/66
Age 18-34 34/66 36/64<br>
Age 35-54 29/71 33/66<br>
Age 55+ 21/79 24/76
White non-Hisp 24/76 33/67
Black alone 44/56 41/59
Hisp/Asn/Oth 28/72 21/78
Income <$50k 29/71 33/67
Income $50-100k 27/73 32/68
Income $100k+ 31/69 30/69
Black respondents reported the highest percentage of bad (B2) and good (B3) experiences with police, although the bad were slightly higher than the good (in contrast to the other way around overall). Female and white respondents had significantly more good than bad experiences with police. Hispanic/Asian/other respondents had an average level of bad experiences but a lower level of good experiences with police. Both bad and good experiences with police were reported at lower levels as age increased.
But then the overall level of bad experiences with police (28% of all respondents) is not a good thing generally. To the extent that people have negativity bias (the tendency to remember bad things more than good things generally), that can have a negative impact on relations between police and the community it is supposed to protect and serve.
Hmmm, interesting, @ucbalumnus. (#67)
The Monmouth document was too long to read, but a couple of things that stand out:
- income level had no effect
- the questions, as posed, asked if the respondents had “ever” experienced XYZ. The results by age are either saying things are getting worse, or older people tend to forgive and forget.
My two teenagers went to the protest at our state capitol today, each with separate groups of friends. I was more worried about COVID-19 spread than their safety, but I also went separately with a friend to monitor both.
I shouldn’t have worried: there were tens of thousands of people and I don’t think I saw a single person without a mask. The organizers were handing out sunscreen and water. It was completely safe, peaceful, and very positive. Next time I’ll just let them go and I won’t worry at all. As I said upthread, don’t conflate the peaceful daytime protestors with the nighttime looters and burners. Totally different crowd.
My 16 year old did go to a planned peaceful protest but left when it was clear that the next step was to take over the highway. She and the friend weren’t sure about shutting down the highway and they both had a science project due the next day.
The new news in MN is that a graduate student was hit in the eye with a rubber bullet and that eye was too damaged to save.
My daughter attended a protest today that was peaceful and permitted, and police were still arresting people and grabbing people who were just walking and protesting legally. My daughter was almost run over by a cop car. I can’t say that the problem lies with the protestors, at least in this small city.
Not at this particular moment in time due to COVID-19. Having thousands of people packed tightly together and not social distancing will facilitate the transmission of COVID-19. Yelling, screaming, and chanting magnifies the risk of transmission.
Could also be changing attitudes as the same person ages. Someone who, as a 19-year-old, saw a police encounter as police harassment may later, as a 59-year-old, no longer consider consider that same police encounter to be police harassment because s/he now finds what s/he did as a 19-year-old back then as worthy of police attention (and may be the one calling the police when seeing others doing the exact same thing).
Consider it this way: there are lots of things that parents do not want their teenage kids or young adults doing, but which they themselves did (out of view of their parents) when they were teenage kids or young adults.
Honestly, I would have said of course until I watched the live feed of downtown. During the day, the protests were peaceful and the crowd seemed reasonable. After that was over, though-well, it looks like every crazy person comes out by 5pm, and I would want my kid far away from them. Just watching the feed, one man was walking around naked. Several were high and or drunk. Some woman seemed mentally ill and was shouting unintelligibly. Another held a sign with a religious slur. A teen waved a baseball bat around.
I am sure there were many normal people present, but the crazy ratio was way too high for my comfort.
I’m not sure about that. The data isn’t nearly as clear as many people think, least of all the shooting data, in my opinion. In fact, the evidence of bias tends to disappears when you control for the rates of lethal violence used against police.
For example, African Americans make up around 13% of all Americans.
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/IPE120218
African Americans make up about 23% of the people killed by police.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/
Overall African Americans committ about 54% of the murders in the U.S.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/topic-pages/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-3.xls
And African Americans make up around 41% of the people that feloniously kill police.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/leoka/2018/topic-pages/tables/table-43.xls
Now whether the police kill too many people is a seperate (but important) issue. None-the-less, police involved shootings are not disproporionate to what one would expect if police were using force in self-defense.
In other words, one could explain the high percentage of African Americans shot by police entirely by the rate at which African Americans attempt to kill police. (We don’t have attempted murder data, only completed police deaths.)
There have been studies both ways on this. https://www.npr.org/2019/07/26/745731839/new-study-says-white-police-officers-are-not-more-likely-to-shoot-minority-suspe
In my personal opinion, I think the evidence is stronger in non-lethat use of force cases than lethal use of force cases.
There’s actually a lot about this subject that is counter intuitive. It’s not as clear as most people think.
A lot of the problems with policing is that they are dealing with issues that law enforcement was never designed to handle. Povery, drug abuse, mental illness. But Police are the only hammer we have for those nails, so we send them in anyway.
Of course, there are a million uniformed police officers in America, and they are almost all on camera all the time. If just 1/10 of 1% of them behave badly, that’s 20 videos a week you’ll find on youtube. Guys like the ones killed Floyd deserve to go to prison, but they are no more representative of law enforcement than the brutish thugs that are rioting are representative of all protestors.
That’s my opinion anyway.
A 77 year-old, retired police Captain David Dorn was murdered by rioters in St Louis last night.
He was trying to help protect a pawn shop business his friend owned.
Four other officers were shot.
I didn’t hear his name mentioned once today on CNN. Or ABC news during dinner. I checked MSNBC and there wasn’t anything at all.
So I’m putting it here. David Dorn.
Someone live-streamed his dying moments on Facebook instead of trying to help him.
An African American hero killed in front of a little pawn shop.
He spent his life trying to help disadvantaged youth, in the articles I could find tonight. Larger than life and a fine captain, The NY Times said.
While that is possible, it doesn’t look likely and the source you cite doesn’t really provide much evidence.
Be advised that there are some stomach turning videos out there which depict people that are clearly not white supremacists violently assaulting people during these riots. These videos are hardening the opinions against the BLM movements in the same way the Floyd video affected people, but the other direction.
I only bring that up in case you are in an echo chamber and don’t know what other people are consuming.
(I know they don’t represent all protestors any more than the cops in Floyd represent all police.)
Both sides are selectively viewing anecdotes that incite rage.
Thank you, @Boxcar101, for beginning an essential conversation, and looking to a few of the basic statistics.
Careful data are kept by many cities. NYC, in particular, is meticulous and still willing to make them public. I’d rather not risk being banned by discussing the actual odds ratios and multiples per capita of black arrestees relative to white baseline (or Hispanic), but if people truly want to understand what is happening out there on the streets of American cities, and what the police are truly dealing with, I would urge some review of these data, 12 years of which are collected here by NYC: https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/stats/reports-analysis/crime-enf.page
I am happy to provide links to other cities’ data; we can see they are all relatively consistent to the extent they are made public. And if people believe that blacks are being arrested disproportionately, I would urge some understanding of the NIBRS databases.
The real question is whether it is better to work on finding solutions for the unfortunate and tragic instances of unjustified police shootings and killings, or whether it is better to distort their prevalence to further a political narrative. I know which side I come down on.
In the first post of this thread the OP stated, “I have not seen any threads on CC speaking to the George Floyd tragedy, but my social media platforms have been overwhelmed with anger, cries for justice, and outright rage within my “village” of family and friends. This one hurt.”
Since then, there has been a persistent push by some to not wish to allow this thread to be a platform where we speak of how tragic the murder was, or of how much it hurt, or how the systemic injustices that allowed this specific murder and thousands like it over the years might be changed.
Those of us on College Confidential who feel crushed, depressed, afraid for our children, and oppressed by George Floyd’s murder felt like maybe this thread might be the one place to cautiously share our thoughts with each other. Yet, that persistent push remains to alter this discussion.
The distraction grenades are continually tossed. Now, sadly unsurprisingly, somehow this thread has been shifted from grieving over the senseless murder of another black man at the hands of law enforcement and sharing our pain and sharing our hopes for a better future, we are expected to debate that maybe law enforcement is justified in whatever treatment is rained upon African-Americans because apparently African-Americans are naturally the most violent, criminal group of people in the country. Stats will hapily be provided to prove this.
Really? Really? Is this where this discussion is heading? Really?
I’ll call out what I see, where I see it. What’s happening through this thread is wrong. We shouldn’t have to defend our grief. I won’t defend my grief. I won’t play that lame, pernicious game of blame flipping, and comparative sins, and the flinging and twisting of meaningless statistics.
I will not be distracted.
A handcuffed black man was murdered on camera, in front of witnesses, by one policeman while three other armed policemen protected his actions. Seemingly hundreds of thousands of Americans have spent the past week marching in hope of a change to the systemic injustices that allow these murders and usually allow the murderers to never be charged with a crime.
I see this thread as an opportunity to come together. Please stop peddling those seeds of division here. This is not the game of one-upmanship some seem to think it is. Most of us here want to have an honest, civil, productive , heartfelt discussion.