Great post, @ChangeTheGame . Very touching, and IMO, the effective way to communicate feelings on this topic.
The tone too often gets preachy, like “white people, if you aren’t doing…”, which can come from people of any race. When I hear something like that, I stop listening.
Have been thinking a lot lately about solutions to the current dilemma.
I think as a nation, we need to go upstream and make education a priority, Make it so that even the poorest child has a chance to have the best education possible. With work, they can earn their way into a good job. This isn’t based on any race but for all Americans. This situation is economic. People who have good jobs don’t loot stores on Madison ave. People with dreams they are realizing don’t beat strangers. P
I would never speak for someone of color because I am not. That being said, people who tell the story through the lense of whatever term they like don’t really have solutions. They have a lot of anger but do nothing positive about it. Going to some parade with a sign doesn’t help your neighbor.
As a family, we have always done things. Don’t say Do. Don’t talk, do. The idea of marching to me is inane. Spending time weekly at a food shelter, sorting clothes, donating, and collecting furniture. Our kids don’t protest. They do things. My kids have many diverse friends as do we. One of my kids runs a STEM program for underfunded schools because there was a need. They don’t talk about good they are, they talk about how much need there is. They talk about how much more there is to be done.
I hope this nation can heal and people can stop thinking that talking is an action verb. It isn’t and never will be. Change happens because someone steps in and rolls up their sleeves and works to make things better.
We need to be Americans who take positive action to make this a better place for all people. And we need to educate our kids so no one films a murder when they could be stopping it.
Let’s not allow the US to become a nation that use violence as a release valve for the poor to engage with the rich. It doesn’t help a soul. But certainly will leave a lot of scars. I really hope the violence dies down and people can use their energy to make change by doing things, not talking about doing things.
I understand you mean well. But hopefully you can understand that other people also have experiences in this space, and sometimes it can feel like our experiences are not only being dismissed but suppressed because those opinions don’t re-enforce a pre-selected narrative. Like only the comfortable opinions of those that agree with us should be heard.
But that kind of echo chamber isn’t healthy for anyone, and at any rate it’s not fair to those, like me, that serve in law enforcement. If we’re going to be painted as callous and indifferent racist and killers, so we should at least be given the opportunity to cite studies and quote statistic in our defense, to provide some context.
At any rate, here is my opinion, stripped of all cites and statistics, welcome or not:
Policing dysfunctional communities is incredibly difficult. By “dysfunctional communities” I mean communities with grinding levels of poverty, unemployment, mental illness, substance abuse, barely functional schools and yes, crime. No one yet has figured out how to police those communities well. Some of our smartest people of every race are trying figure this out, but no one yet has came up with really good solutions. So if we’re not good at policing dysfunctional communities, believe me, it’s not because no one is trying. It’s because it’s really hard.
These communities have problems law enforcement was never designed to solve. Law enforcement is not a good tool to deal with schizophrenics, or making sure the children of absentee parents go to school instead of skipping class to steal or hang out at the park. We can’t solve the problems that predictable and naturally arise from substance abuse or teens with more free time than opportunities. But unfortunately no one else is available to deal with these problems so police have to either deal with them directly or indirectly in one manner or another.
To the extent African American’s disproportionately live in dysfunctional communities they will also disproportionately have problems with police. Those same police with the same training may work fine in middle and upper class neighborhoods, but in dysfunctional communities we are only dealing with different degrees of bad. Some of residual problems may spill over outside those communities to a lessor degree as well, because of the shared experiences of both police and minorities. But the epicenter of bad policing will be those dysfunctional communities, and most of the other problems indirectly radiate from the experiences developed there.
We will likely never fix the problems between African Americans and the police without first fixing the problems in those communities that many African American’s live in. While there still is room for improvement on the policing side, most of the low hanging fruit has already been picked. There’s not a lot of easy or obvious room for improvement left. Most of the purely policing changes to be made will likely have very little impact.
There is serious structural reform necessary, but most of that reform has little to do with the police. Until the problems that are causing the high levels of violence and other issues are addressed, there will always be problems between large segments of African American community and police. There is simply no way to avoid it that I can see.
Police are neither the cause nor the solution to most of the underlying problems between themselves and the African American Community. Until we deal with those underlying issue, we are rearranging deck chairs. Fix the underlying issues, and the relationship between police and the African American community may then start to improve.
That’s opinions, for what it’s worth.
@Happytimes2001 , yes, and yes, to the education! This town where I live has abysmal schools. Anyone who can afford to do so either lives elsewhere or sends their kids to private school. I would do the same.
Sadly, this past year has been a huge step back educationally. When the schools closed here, there was a scramble to get work packs and lunches for the kids. Picking them up was a real challenge, given family structures here, lack of transportation available , draconian rules (had to have the kids with you to get the lunches) , COViD19, etc. somehow Chromebooks were finally distributed, but then came the limited internet and training to use them for school. Parents who still could work had the challenge of childcare. COVId restrictions and limitations hurts the economically challenged all the more drastically. So, yeah, these kids…I’m sure they are further behind this school year than ever.
A town where unemployment preCOVID has now hit alarming levels. A number of the unemployed cannot get benefits for a number of reasons. Did not get full stimulus checks, tax refunds debated, IRS voles, now service limited. Social Services overrun. I know because I’m right in the thick of those things here. The food pantries and other service very strict in give away here , not like NY where you can get food and help boxes by just showing up, no questions asked. Getting checks cashed means $4-8 each time. Thank you Walmart.
Jobs? For some reason there are large numbers of H1B visa holders these days as well as other groups of largely Eastern European and Hispanics who have a lot of the jobs that locals here used to have. Unemployment is high here, many unemployed for so long they don’t get benefits. We have Goodwill and Salvation Army barracks here as well as several churches to serve the homeless, but many are just vagrants, finding shelter when and where they can. Again, thanks to Walmart, for allowing use of their parking lot and adjacent areas, and use of their restrooms to all. Again COVID19 has hit those availabilities hard
Yes, first step, I’d like to see excellence in these schools. At this point, racial integration is gone—as is socioeconomic. How the heck we are behind where we were 40-50 years ago here after integration if the schools , I don’t know, but here we are.
Good news? The town was beginning to show some progress. Outside money flowing in with housing shortages and space a premium in nearby cities, and second home industry here beginning to boom. Well, boom is a bit of as an exaggeration. Some definite improvements in last 10 years, however. Some more outside money coming here other than from the government teat. But the COVID19 hit has been bad. Not the virus itself— we’ve been spared in terms of cases and death due to low population density. The Floyd demonstrations have remained small and non destructive. How can the next generation of kids do better than their parents here? How can this downward spiral in quality of life be slowed down and reversed? Education, yes. Also need to reduce the crime incidents. Theft, assault have big time numbers. Yes, the police tend to BE CALLED much more in certain parts of town than other. Drugs a huge problem as is domestic violence. I’d like to see focus on education and activities for the kids, counseling for those who can use it, and jobs, lots of jobs.
Yesterday, @Lindagaf and @MaineLonghorn shut down a thread sort of linked to the George Floyd protest because of increasingly bad behavior of some posters. Since that time, the rhetoric in this thread has increased as maybe some of the people whose messages resulted in that thread being shut down are now focusing their attention on this thread.
As those two mods ended that thread, they asked that no one transfer their corrosive posts elsewhere on CC. I would like to repeat that request.
This thread was started by the OP with great intentions and heartfelt emotion. It would be a shame to see it shut down.
Please. If some people want to continue certain off topic subjects, please start a new thread and allow us to save this great thread.
Please.
PS - I ask anyone who is not certain what the tenor of this thread should be to go back and read the OP’s very first post. That is the spirit of this thread.
Breaking news:
Charges upgraded to 2nd degree murder. The remaining officers charged with aiding and abetting.
I have always learned much from @ChangeTheGame and this thread is no different. But I think we are also fortunate in this thread to have a law enforcement perspective from @boxcar101 who has been very civil in presenting an his or her view. I certainly don’t see anything here that is beyond a normal spirited discussion.
I am glad that the case has been moved over to someone who seems to be mutually acceptable to both sides, and is carefully going through the evidence and possible charges. I, for one, hope to look at what transpired with an open mind as the accused, and George Floyd through his family, deserve. Public outrage should not drive justice. The facts of the case should. In the Ferguson case, the end result was that the policeman who shot Michael Brown was not charged. Things are further along here in that charges are pending against the 4 officers involved in the George Floyd case.
Living a few miles from the site of the murder, I was unaware until this post that anyone was blaming the witnesses.
I initially thought this would be bad. Overcharging. Trayvon Martin all over again.
But Mohamed Noor, the Minneapolis cop that shot the Australian woman a few years ago, was acquitted of 2nd degree murder, but convicted of 3rd degree murder and 2nd degree manslaughter.
If you want to know what Minnesota law specifies as second or third degree murder (as well as other levels of homicide), you can look here:
https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/609
609.18 DEFINITION.
609.184 [Repealed, 1998 c 367 art 6 s 16]
609.185 MURDER IN THE FIRST DEGREE.
609.19 MURDER IN THE SECOND DEGREE.
609.195 MURDER IN THE THIRD DEGREE.
609.196 [Repealed, 1998 c 367 art 6 s 16]
609.20 MANSLAUGHTER IN THE FIRST DEGREE.
609.205 MANSLAUGHTER IN THE SECOND DEGREE.
Wow, interesting. Reports were suggesting that intent must be proved for 2nd degree murder, which I think would be very difficult, but MN has a clear provision for unintentional 2nd degree murder.
I looked for similar info for FL, thinking back to the Trayvon case. Florida’s statutes are harder to follow, but I do see where 2nd degree murder involves “depraved mind”, which is what Minnesota’s 3rd degree murder mentions. Very confusing.
@ChangeTheGame : Thank you a million times over for putting yourself out there. It must be exhausting. But we’re listening.
@Happytimes2001 :“The idea of marching to me is inane. Spending time weekly at a food shelter, sorting clothes, donating, and collecting furniture. Our kids don’t protest. They do things.”
Ever heard of the civil rights movement?
If for some reason you don’t believe the history of your own country, read/watch/listen to the work of Erica Chenoweth. She’s a Harvard political scientist who’s an expert on the psychology of how and why massive non-violent resistance is so effective. Here’s a brief summary: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/02/why-nonviolent-resistance-beats-violent-force-in-effecting-social-political-change/
She also has some great TED talks. Here’s one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSehRlU34w.
Re: protesting vs. “doing (other) things”: It’s not an either/or. Do both.
Update: my D21 went to another protest with her friends today, this time without me. She was completely safe.
Minnesota has a felony murder charge for 2nd degree murder, Felony murder is a killing in the connection with another felony… No specific intent required for this murder charge. Not sure what the law is in Florida.
This statistic is problematic for a number of reasons:
A. The actual percent of murder that were known to be committed by an African American was 37.4%, since in 31.1% of the cases, the race of the murderer wasn’t known
B. This is dependent entirely on the definition of “murder” by the police. As we saw in the case of Ahmaud Arbery, there are cases in which the murder of a Black man by White men is not classified as “murder” by the police. So I am extremely skeptical of that data.
C. When a White man kills a black man, it is much more likely to be ruled "justifiable homicide, than when a Black man kills a White man https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/08/14/killings-of-black-men-by-whites-are-far-more-likely-to-be-ruled-justifiable
In 2018, 23 police officers were killed by Black men - that was what those 41% represent. Over the same year, 240 Black men were killed by police. To me it seems to indicate that police are more dangerous to Black men than vice-versa. We should also remember that 43 officers died in road accidents, of those, 34 were in a moving vehicle.
So police officers are hardly in any serious danger from Black men, compared to driving.
Just to remind everybody that, in 2018, 55 police officers were feloniously killed in the line of duty. Over the same time, police killed 998 people.
https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/
Which were, as I wrote above, a grand total of 23.
As an aside, the total death rate in line of duty for police in 2017, as the result of violent crime, was about 5.75 per 100,000 (46 for around 800,000 police officers). The murder rate for the rest of the population of the same age range as police officers was about 7.4 per 100,000 (around 11,000 for around 150,000,000).
A. Police are more likely to shoot unarmed Black men: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0141854
B1. Fryer’s entire conclusion of police being less likely to shoot a Black man is based on the data from a single city (Houston)
B2. It is a comparison of the outcome of interactions between the police and a suspect in which the officers shot, and a random selection of similar interactions in which officers didn’t shoot. This is entirely based on the descriptions of the officers, and not on any unbiased outside observation. The basic rule of data analysis is GIGO. In this case, the reports are unreliable, and thus the data which Fryer analyzed is unreliable, and Fryer did not control for this, making it difficult to accept his results and conclusions.
B3. The conclusion as to whether the officer shot before being shot at is also problematic, since, again, it relies on the report of an unreliable narrator, who has every reason to lie.
That is assuming that there is somebody with a camera, who is brave enough to get close to the interaction to film it, AND is able to avoid having their camera confiscated. Imagine you are in Detroit, and every police patrol stops at least once during their shift, and randomly slaps somebody. Do you know how long it would take to get this on film?
You drive down the highway, and you see a two or three cars pulled over with a patrol car behind them. You aren’t going to stop on the highway and film. Police stop a Black man and pull him into the patrol car - what is the chance that a passer-by could actually get a film of what happened? Many of the acts happen at night or in lesser frequented locations, often in the houses of the victims of police brutality.
How long does it take police to actually catch a drug dealer in the act, despite this being something that the drug dealer does every day multiple times in public? Catching police brutality on video is far more difficult, since it is unpredictable, fast, and they try to avoid scrutiny.
However, now that the altercations are happening in full daylight in front of hundreds of witnesses, the numbers of cases caught of video is getting that high. There are dozens of them, all over Twitter.
I have no problem with peaceful protests and would let my kids go except for the fact that we are in the middle of a raging pandemic. Even with masks, with thousands of people marching shoulder to shoulder, chanting and yelling which propels respiratory droplets, with social distancing impossible, the virus is going to spread. And of course not everyone is wearing masks. The CDC has said that social distancing is the most important way to quell the spread, even more so than masks. You can’t social distance at a mass protest. So for those that say protests are safe, yes they can be safe from violence, they are absolutely not safe from Covid.
I’m a physician. I attended a webinar yesterday with Mike Osterholm, one of the world’s foremost pandemic experts. He was asked about how worried about he was about huge outbreak as a result of these protests, and his answer was: anything is possible, but not that much.
He said that the virus completely dissipates in even the most minimal breeze. Of the more than 300 cluster outbreaks that have been studied in China, only one occurred outside. And we just haven’t seen the mass outbreaks that everyone expected when the beaches re-opened in the South this spring. So, he was cautiously optimistic about all outdoor activities this summer, including protesting.
Also, at the protest I attended earlier this week, I didn’t see a single person without a mask. (Granted, this may not be the case at every protest since mask-wearing etiquette varies greatly from state to state). Also, there was much less yelling than at a usual protest. My kids know they must mask and stay at the periphery so that they can distance themselves (and get out quickly if necessary) when they go to protests.
The physicians in my state are organizing a silent, socially distanced protest at our state capitol this weekend. Protesting can be done safely.
Boxcar101 has been civil, but his posts have also tried to assign blame to the victims of police brutality, justify unjust treatment by using carefully selected statistics, and therefore dismiss the gist of what others in this thread are trying to discuss. There are others aligned with Boxcar’s opinion who are doing the same.
I fear that as they continue to repeatedly distract from what this thread was discussing (how historically systemic injustice led to the murder of George Floyd and how does America improve beyond it,) that the rhetoric will become more distracting. People will respond to the sideways distracting posts. And as the rhetoric rises, this thread will eventually be shut down by the mods.
This is not an idle needless worry. Look at the recent “Damage” thread that was shut down two days ago. Look at the other threads that touch on race related matters in the past. You will find that some of the same people raising the rhetoric in this thread, were very active in raising the rhetoric in those threads. I understand the mods may not want to block those posters from posting because those posters are being “civil”, but I also implore the mods to not end this thread if the mods continue to allow a small minority of people on this thread to raise the rhetoric.
Besides, I would argue that being “civil” or polite while espousing damaging rhetoric is not actually being civil at all.
For instance: Saying African-Americans disproportionently suffer brutal treatment from law enforcement because African-Americans disproportionently live in dysfunctional neighborhoods without going back further in history to explain why African-Americans live in those neighborhoods is being very shortsighted. Whether this is deliberate shortsightedness or ignorant shortsightedness, I can’t say. I don’t even want to consider it because it distracts from the fine beautiful conversation that was previously going on here, and that is still attempted to be carried out here while dancing around the deflections and distractions.
And calling those neighborhoods “dysfunctional” could be viewed as an insult in itself, if one goes back to consider that the people living in those neighborhoods didn’t get to choose those neighborhoods any more than their parents got to choose where TPTB drew the red lines that decided where they could live 50 years ago. Yeah, the argument could be made that the words are civil at face value, but the result is a thoughtless insult. You can’t lock me in a pigpen, then insult me for living in a pigpen, then beat me for responding to your insults about living in a pigpen.
And let me be very clear, I am not calling any neighborhood a pigpen. But when someone labels a neighborhood as “dysfunctional”, saying “pigpen” is not far off. Rhetoric counts.
Again, I am begging that those who want to continue that sort of rhetoric to initiate a new thread. Say all you want to say here, but say it there. Use whatever rhetoric you want over there. But please please please allow this thread to flourish. Participate if you wish. But Allow the fine decent nice smart people to have their discussion without repeatedly trying to tell them why they are wrong to grieve and hope.
Please.
While’s true that we don’t know who the perpetrator of every homicide is, those unknown cases hardly call into question the well established fact that there is an extraordinary concentration of intraracial homicides in the black community.
A good faith, objective reading of the data can only support that conclusion. But you’re free to disagree. I will say I don’t know anyone, whether they are police, criminologist, or people that live in those communities, that agrees with you.
On your second point, you conflate felonious murder of police with police shootings regardless of criminality. Be that as it may, there is no question that when a violent confrontation between police and civilians occurs, the police usually win. This should come as no surprise since police are typically the ones wearing the body armor and have had more firearms training. Given that, it should be expected that police win the violent confrontation at about a 10-1 ratio, (which is roughly the ratio of African Americans that are killed by police to African Americans that feloniously murder police.) Bear in mind, neither one of us have the data for attempts. We only know that when the death occurs, the police survive at about a 10-1 ratio.
But that misses the point of those statistics. The point is that, by race, the “percentage of people that police kill” is similar to the “percentage of people that kill the police.” One would expect that if a group never attempted to kill police, they would never be shot by police. On the other hand, if another group made up 100% of the attempted murders of police, they would make up close to 100%s of the people shot by police.
For the question, “do police disproportionately kill blacks,” we have to look not only at the percentage of black people in the community, but also how often black people try to kill police. Because African Americans disproportionately murder police, it should not be a surprise that they are disproportionately killed by police.
That is the reason I brought both those statistics out. Police have a high number of violent interaction with african americans primarily because african americans make a disproportionate amount of lethally violent crime, both against police and civillians.
Three caveats:
(1) There is a legitimate question whether lethal force is used by police to often in general, but that isn’t connected to race.
(2) There may be better evidence for non-lethal force being race related. Here we are only talking about lethal violence.
(3) Even though African Americans make up a disproportionate number of murders, murder is still very rare even among african americans. When comparing homicide rates by race, it is a question of 20 murders per 100K, versus 5 murders per 100K. So while one group’s murder rate may be 4 times higher than the other, it still the case that 999,980 of the people didn’t murder anyone, vs 999,996.
So even though the violent homicide rate in the African American community is incredibly high, it’s still only a very very small percentage of African Americans that are involved. The vast majority are just innocent civilians like anyone else, in both cases.
That’s all the time I have for now.
Regards.
EDIT: One more thing I should mention: there’s not just one or two studies examining police use of force and police shootings. There are hundreds. They have found both ways. There isn’t a consensus in the academic literature that race does or does not play a role in police shootings.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: A reminder that CC is not a debate site. Please move on.