I’d like to know who will be held accountable for how the brothers were treated after he died. That was a massive failure by the police department as well.
A restaurant that was sort of our hangout down the shore just started flying a Blue Lives Matter flag. They can call it just support, but I’m sorry; that it is a political statement. We don’t think we can go there anymore.
You’re cherry picking the data. That same study found:
^Not cherrypicking. So black officers are less than five times as likely to shoot a black teen as a white teen. Still awfful, though not nearly as bad as 21 times. Either way, it shows that police shoot and kill black teens at an unacceptable rate.
You’re committing a math error. You can’t compare 5 to 21. There’s a difference between the probability someone killed by the police will be of a given race and the probability someone of a given race will be killed by police.
If black police officers kill blacks at a higher rate, it’s not police bias. It’s that blacks are more likely to be in a situation where the police would be justified in using lethal force.
Nope. all officers shoot and kill black teens at a rate of 95% as an aggregate. But black officers shoot and kill black teens at a rate of 78%. That’s 5 (actually more like 4) times more often, versus 21 times more likely.
So yes, black police shoot black teens too often, too. That they’re black, doesn’t make it not discrimination. They’re acting as police, and police shoot and kill black teens more readily than they do white teens. That’s all you can get out of that.
Umm I don’t think blacks are more likely to be in a car, playing in a park, …
What about the DOJ’s investigation into the death of Eric Garner? I heard they were going to not file charges there either but it was considered a hot potato and got sent back for more investigation. This was before Jeff Sessions.
Yup, that says it all right there. If BLACK police kill blacks, then it is all fine and dandy, nothing is wrong. and white folks are absolved of all responsibility.
How convenient.
I’ve always thought part of the problem is the way police are TRAINED in this country. Why shoot to kill? Why not shoot to disable? That’s the way it’s done in most civilized societies. When you have this type of police mentality coupled with racism, community anger and suspicion you get Jordan Edwards every.flippin’.week.
I am in no way at all an expert, but it is my understanding that “shooting to disable” is really, really hard even if you are an expert shot. The idea that if you are actually threatened enough to shoot that you should aim for the center body mass and keep firing until the target is down makes a lot of sense, IF you are genuinely in a life-threatening situation. The big problem seems to be that too many cops pull their guns and shoot when it is not even remotely necessary. Once you’ve pulled your gun, the slightest twitch can be interpreted as a threat. And if you have been socialized to automatically think of black males as threatening and dangerous… Look at Philando Castile. Insane. Look at Tamir Rice. The dispatcher didn’t tell the cops that the caller said it might be a TOY gun. And that guy shot a kid dead within seconds of pulling up on the scene. NO effort to handle it any other way.
@katiamom
@Consolation is correct. Shooting to wound is much harder even for firearms experts. Add stress-induced situations and accuracy potential drops sharply.
Though my father received high marks for his rifle/pistol marksmanship while serving his mandatory 2 years as a conscripted platoon commander, he felt the idea to shoot to wound, especially in a stressful situation such as armed combat on the battlefield to be absurd.
In light of all that, the better policy is to train officers to regard drawing their weapons as a drastic last resort rather than the immediate first option unless the situation has escalated to the point non-lethal methods/restraints aren’t viable due to rapidity of situation escalation(THAT’S NOT PERPETUATED BY THE COP).
Your 95% number appears nowhere in Snowball City’s study. What is said in the study is:
So if you want to use 4:1 for black police officers, the comparable ratio for white police officers is 0.85:1, not 21:1.
Have you ever seen an airsoft gun? If you remove the orange cap, some of them look nearly identical to a real gun. Simulated weapon might be a more accurate description than toy.
From Wikipedia:
I am aware that the toy gun looked like a real one. But the cascading incompetence of the dispatcher and the trigger-happy officer resulted in the death of a 12 year old boy with a toy gun.
Should I gather that you think that this was acceptable because it looked like a real gun, even though no shots were fired at any time?
Not addressing that particular case because that officer acted with such apparent haste (and a former job evaluation showed he had a history of acting with reckless speed and excessive force), but in cases of guns which appear real, aren’t the responding officers supposed to conclude that it is in fact real, particularly if said gun is pointed at them? They don’t have to wait to respond until after shots are fired if a person points what appears to be a real gun at them. I could well imagine that those kinds of incidents are tricky in many cases. Aren’t people who use toy guns which look authentic in crimes given the same sentences as armed robbers threatening people using real ones?
I don’t view the dispatcher is incompetent. Suppose you’re a 911-dispatcher. Someone calls and says there’s someone with a visible gun at a school. The caller then continues that it could be a toy gun or a real gun with the firing pin removed or a functional firearm with an empty magazine or the student just intends to show it off to his friends and not hurt anyone. Should the dispatcher be required to relay all the caller’s speculative theories to the responding police officers? If the caller is just making random guesses, even if some of them later prove to be correct, how is that relevant information to the responding police officers?
Local news is reporting that the officer involved in Jordan Edwards’ death is being charged with murder:
Good.
My heart breaks for parents like partyof5. When Mr R and I first started talking about adoption, the prospect of raising a Black or Brown child stopped me in my tracks because I know gun violence (and other forms of violence- physical, emotional, mental) too well.
**This is not to say we wouldn’t adopt a non-white child at all. It was just something that came to mind whereas it would never, ever come to mind when thinking of adopting a white child.
And yes, to whomever talked about stress up thread, we have actual public health data showing how just the stress of being non-white increases health problems and reduces lifespans… and it goes across all income brackets.
@roethlisburger Sigh. Forget the what-ifs. Address the actual situation and its results. That will answer your questions. On this thread, you could at least have the decency to acknowledge the murder of Jordan Edwards and mistreatment of his family. Unless you want to come up with a theory about how that was just fine and dandy too.
On the other hand, please spare us.
I’m glad he has been charged but we’ve seen this rodeo before. An officer gets charged and either there is a hung jury or he is acquitted.
This Dallas News story is eye opening. This officer just two weeks before drew his gun on a woman.
"Two weeks before the shooting, Oliver, while off-duty, pulled out his gun after his truck was rear-ended along South Cockrell Hill Road in Dallas.
“As soon as I put my gear into park, he was already out of his truck, and he was at my window,” said Monique Arredondo, 26. “He pulled out his gun on me.”