I have absolutely no idea what you’re trying to say here.
I am sure Officer Herzog’s relatives wished he used his gun… Instead, he was gunned down with his own gun by the man he was trying to subdue with pepper spray.
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20020623&slug=deputy23m0
Without knowing the facts that the jury heard, I would withhold my judgment.
@BunsenBurner What happened to Herzog is unfortunate. Pulling one example of a cop who should’ve used lethal force doesn’t negate the hundreds of cases where cops shouldn’t have used it.
Most on here don’t traffic in black media. You hear about the one case which might make national news meanwhile it happens far too often. There are hundreds of cases before the advent of body/dash cams where we were unarmed and shot.
^If you want data, according to the Washington Post database, the number of unarmed blacks killed in police shootings was
this year - 7
2016 - 17
2015 -38
For whites, the comparable numbers are:
2017 - 11
2016 - 22
2015 - 32
This is out of approximately 1000 fatal police shootings each year. So it appears the number of unarmed whites killed in police shootings each year is comparable to the number off unarmed blacks killed in police shootings each year.
I don’t know if your numbers are correct since you didn’t provide a link. Assuming they are, you can never say the numbers are comparable when we are only 13% of the population.
I can one up you all day on stats. They also say we are stopped more than any other group. Anytime you are profiled you up the risk of a negative outcome.
@ post #56;
My point is that an unarmed civilian took down a suspect; the civilian had every reason to suspect that the perp might have been carrying a weapon. Unlike the Tulsa trigger-happy policewoman, the civilian took a split second to assess the situation and didn’t kill anybody.
Not only that @partyof5, but most of those killed are black men, who only make up 6% of the population.
I just listened to an episode of the NPR show/podcast 1A where this was discussed in detail. Very much worth listening to. Discussion went beyond the stats into the legal process as it pertains to cops, etc.
We’re probably approaching OT, but in 2016 there were 7 unarmed blacks not fleeing the scene who were killed in police shootings. Of those 7, 1 was mentally ill, 3 assaulted the police officer or others, 1 was killed in a drug bust, 1 was being served outstanding warrants, and the 1 remaining was Terence Crutcher. While police undoubtedly use excessive force sometimes, it’s pure fantasy to think that’s a greater risk for the Obama kids than getting struck by lightning.
This cop should be convicted but I won’t hold my breath.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/17/us/texas-cop-indicted-jordan-edwards-death/index.html
I just listened to a podcast that addressed the case that some may remember of a black man who crashed his car in the wee hours of the morning, then went to a nearby house and started pounding on the door and yelling. He was looking for help–although I don’t know that he actually used the word “help.” He was possibly inebriated, as well as in a state of shock from the accident. (There was no indication that a blood alcohol test was ever done on him.) The resident, a white woman who was home alone with her small child, was understandably terrified, her alarm was going off, the guy was continuing to pound and yell “Turn off your alarm.” She was on the phone with 911, and you can hear all of this. I think any of us would we terrified. I don’t think this shooting was her fault.
3 cops responded. The man was unarmed, and this was evident to the officers. They had enough force to subdue him physically. Instead one of them shot him repeatedly. The POLICE CHIEF and panel determined that this was a completely unnecessary shooting, and recommended prosecution.
Listen to it if you want to find out what happened in court. The episode is entitled A Police Video from Charlotte.
As Mark Twain said, there are lies, damn lies and statistics. It is very easy to try and manipulate statistics to prove, for example, that blacks aren’t killed or shot by cops are a rate higher than whites, but citing absolute numbers like @roethlisburger did for example, is a classic example of comparing apples and oranges. Blacks make up around 13% of the population, compared to whites who still are a bit over 50%, so based on that statistics to normalize it you would expect to see a lot more than the 11 whites presented, you would expect it to be almost 4 times as much, but it is equal.
More importantly, if you look at statistics on things like traffic stops and the like, blacks make up a disproportionate amount of these. You put a young black guy in a fancy car and have him drive around and a young white guy, and statistically it is a lot more likely for the young black guy to get pulled over (known as ‘driving when black’), especially if this was in an area that is predominantly white and upscale (though in poorer areas, they often get pulled over on the suspicion they must be a drug dealer). My boss at work is black, and his kids have faced that, as had he. There was a report where Florida states attorney was pulled over, not for speeding or a broken tail light or traffic violation, but according to the cops they ran her plate and didn’t get anything (her information is kept blank in the system to stop someone from tracking her via her plate, because she is a states attorney) and that is why they pulled her over…but can’t answer why they ran her plate in the first place, since she otherwise didn’t exhibit any bad behavior…but at least one news source said she drives a fairly expensive car and said it could be likely the cops ran the plate seeing a black person driving an expensive car and wondering if it was stolen. I would give credence to this, since they otherwise didn’t have probable cause it seems even to run the plate.
IMO opinion a lot of these shootings are like the kind of subtle assumptions that underlie race. They see a black woman driving an expensive car and somewhere deep down think “hmm, blacks are all these poor people, so how could a black woman be driving an expensive car”. Likewise, deep down, there are ideas that somehow assumes that blacks are a lot more likely to be a threat, especially a young black male, so they approach them already on high alert and are more likely to panic. Amadou Diallo was killed in a bad area of the Bronx when he reached for his wallet in the vestibule of his building by cops sheltered by a cops car, because the cops involved didn’t know the area, were inexperienced, didn’t have a supervisor, and panicked because the area was a)a poor area of the Bronx b)was a hub of drug activity and drug associated crime and c)the person they told to halt was a young black guy (african immigrant), and when he reached for his wallet some idiot yelled “he is going for a gun” (again, they were not in an exposed position) and the rest is history. When you deep down assume someone is a criminal or will be violent because of who they are, the chances of you panicking is much higher, but many cops are in areas they don’t know well, they don’t live there, don’t know the terrain, and quite frankly are often scared, and it is what is behind more than a few of these shootings I suspect; it isn’t them thinking “oh, good, I get to kill one of those people” it is more like they feeling “OMG, he is black [most victims being black men] and he is likely going to try and kill me” because they associate being black with crime or violence and that puts them on alert to the point where they panic far too easily, and the real problem is having cops who have deep down bias or fears of the people they are supposed to protect. I don’t think all cops are Bull Connor racists or Frank Rizzo or the LAPD or Chicago PD in the ‘good old days’, I think the real problem is the cops involved don’t understand the people they are protecting or challenge the idea that being a cop is the wild west, us against them stuff (and by the way, it isn’t all about white racism, statistics show that black cops are as likely or even more likely to use their weapons, and black cops can have the same attitude about the people they are supposed to protect).
I suggest you reread posts #63 and #67. Whatever, you think of the relative odds , the absolute odds of an unarmed person, regardless of race, dying in a police shooting is near zero, statistically not even a rounding error when adding up causes of death.