I know that. But sometimes you can fall into possible truths you weren't even expecting. I wasn't looking at all for numbers concerning Hispanics being discriminated by police, yet I remember when I did my statistical deep dive numbers kept showing up indicating this, and I tend to think there is likely some meat on that bone.

Of course the problem with doing statistics with "Hispanics" is that there is so much variance how this identity group is identified, and often they are still left out completely and just lumped in with whites.

Your position isn't making up dumb provocative stats like Heather Mac Donald did? Weird, because you just did:

Did George Floyd commit a violent offense, let alone a murder? And more importantly, what on earth does the share of a specific 0.1% of crimes done by black people have to do with any of this?

49 police officers were killed in the line of duty last year and you think whatever number of those were at the hands of black people is the reason for like every disproportionate police violence incident, 99.999% of which are in situations where a black person did not kill a police officer? Hahahahahahaahahahahaha

What your implying here is that the police killings of black people are justified because they prevent more homicides. The logic I see is "police are ok killing more blacks, as blacks are more likely to commit murder, thereby the killings we can assume as justified as preventing more black homicides"

Is that right?

If that's the case then the American solution to this problem is crazy and clearly not working- there the american homicide and police killing rates are wildly higher than most other wealthy western countries!

Secondly, it implies that those killings were justified and related to the murder rate. But anecdotally, lots of the police killings have nothing to do with preventing homicide; George Floyd as a perfect example. The numbers would he more aligned if the evidence showed what you said it does. Until it does its bullshit.

Finally- you say this:
The other may element is the police behaviour. There is clear well cited academic research that demonstrates black people are more likely to be stopped without suspicion or in general police activity. This is actual evidence of racism.

Given the disproportionate response of american police to any crime, which leads to homicide (as you agree with itt so I dont feel I need to cite,) it seems fair to say that a good way to bring fairness in policing would be to attack the base racism leading to differences in the initiating of police proceedings. Secondly, it then makes sense given the innate racism at the base level of policing, it makes complete sense to then target the wildly out of proportion aggression of police activity.

Finally, there is something innately racist about saying "we understand that context and group matter" if you can then use that group matter to justify proceeding actions to the initial behaviour. Its using group based information to make judgements and take action on individual levels. That's systemic racism right there.

So by this logic we are horribly sexist as a society and have horrible systemic sexism against men, and we should all be marching in the streets right now to correct it. Try comparing policing stats against white men vs black women some time and then tell me your showing any internal consistency in your argument.

I know the educational system has failed you don't have the capacity to connect these dots, and your emotional state won't let you accept what is plain to see for some of us, but that doesn't mean your logic doesn't have giant craters that must be crossed to make any sense at all.

No that is a relevant fact. And now to complete the analysis why don’t you look into another relevant piece of data - violent crime statistics however you wish to define and see how they are distributed. Come back when you have the answer.

Its not right. I don't think anyone has ever started a sentence that started "So what you are saying (technically you used implying, but same thing)..." and ever made a good faith argument, and this example is not an exception to that rule. Basically, "So your saying.." is an admission you are about to say something completely dishonest.

Anyways, in the paragraph below you kind of own yourself. You admit there is an alignment between police homicide and overall homicide, then decide based on your feelings (and at least one anecdotal example) that this alignment doesn't pass the muster for you.

Clearly, comparing countries (including non western countries, which have higher violence rates) we see a general pattern where the countries with the most police brutality have the most overall brutality, so it would be very dishonest to just decide there is nothing there.

The truth is any understanding of basic human pyschology would allow you to cross the logical crater you have made and understand that repeated negative interactions with an identifiable group would create proportionally worse outcomes for that group, and some innocents will suffer.

The irony is that I know you can intuitively grasp this when it comes to understanding outcome disparity between men vs. women, but when it comes to identities that don't fit your preferred narrative, it is time to turn intuition off.

I am all for sensible policing reform, and maybe this is something that should have been done a long time ago, to correct police abuse against EVERYONE.

But I suspect even sensible reform that has a positive effect will not move the needle much as far as systemic injustice against black men specifically, because it is such a small rock in the grand scheme of things, and the problem is being highly exaggerated to begin with. As long as a small identity group through behavior has proportionally higher negative interactions with police, the outcomes are going to be proportionally worse too. There really is no way to hand waive this truth away. I mean you can hand waive it away, but the problem will still be there long after your hand is too tired to move.

If you want to claim that systemic racism is the cause for the behavior that will invariably lead towards poor outcomes, and work towards solutions to address this, then I think this can lead you towards meaningful improvements in outcome. But it doesn't seem like you (or anyone else) is too interested at the moment. Maybe when the moral panic is subsided.

To your first point, actually around 1/4 of all police arrests are against blacks, and they account for (wait for it, drumroll) 1/4 of all those killed by police. Maybe there is something there after all, and numbers aren't completely meaningless?

And yes, even if it doesn't move the needle for you, police officers are probably aware at who is disproportionately putting their own safety in danger, and this is probably part of the problem, although it is not the entire part. And as for the highlighted, take off a couple 9's at the end and you can make the exact same argument where a police officer did not kill a black man.

The amusing thing is that you yourself are running on pure emotion when it comes to how you approach this issue, and yet you expect police officers to be Mentats. So the highly educated data scientist has much higher expectations for completely rational thought and behavior from uneducated blue collar workers than he does for himself. Sounds about right.

I was saying that you said "context and group behaviour matters" as if that makes police killing an acceptable correlation for when the police murder people. It doesn't. The police shouldn't use racial profiling as a reason to kill people, or, assess them as more dangerous and kill them based on it.

I could get police treating men as more dangerous than women based purely on a size + muscle mass analysis, but, police are trained to overcome this and are given the tools to respond to it.

Yes, loads and loads of people are killed in America, at wildly disproportionate rates.

I was saying that the statistic that more African Americans are killed by police shouldn't relate to how many police kill African Americans. Thats correlation and not a meaningful statistic.

I read this as "having negative reactions you associate with certain races creates racists." I think this is true for people, unless they can be trained to see that its not the race that's the problem, but the life they've lived up till that point.

Police officers more than anyone should be trained to not associate race with negative interactions, instead looking at other characteristics. It requires a lot of empathy, and treating people as the humans they are not by the colour of their skin.

Yes agreed

Chosing to group people by the colour of their skin, and associating people's expected behaviour with that grouping, is racist and if its something the police do then they are racist.

They should be trained to not rely on any racist instincts they may have, use empathy to understand more about the situation, and recognise any innate biases they have.

I'm very in for this. I don't think you can effectively change bias in the short term, especially when things are this charged. People take it so personally.

Short term, if you started testing people for racial bias in the interview process, and checked it regularly you could address it- alongside lots of other smalll measures.

Then you could look at controlled trials and checks to ensure that police intervene at equal rates & with equal proportionality in cases regardless of race.

Longer term you can put pressure on powerful institutions, turn them in to allies, and have them use their power to change perspectives on race. Its worked well in Western Europe with sexuality, less so gender and race (all three of which are definitely works in progress.) But its a slow process requiring cultural transition.

So, what in your completely non analytical, unfalsifiable belief system is the reason men are overrepresented in police killings (much much much m much much much moreso than blacks)?

Because men threaten the lives of police officers more than women

Then we have set the bar for racism so low that it is a useless concept. That is just grouping, which is an innate human behavior. Ironically, when lawyers (on both sides) are deciding the jury makeup the racial composition is probably the most important tool in the toolkit (because of its proven high utility), and no one is outraged.

In response to the highlighted that isn't creating an ally, that is taking a hostage. But anyways, most powerful, capitalistic US institutions are perfectly fine with race based identity focus, because they know focus on this doesn't address or threaten inequality at all, which would actually be inconvenient for them.

I suspect that any system to train or detect for racial bias is actually completely useless, because it makes incorrect a priori assumptions innate racial bias is a prime motivating factor for police behavior, and it seems what data there is on this supports this suspicion.

Anyways, up to a point through sheer brute force totalitarianism I am sure we can bend society to the "will" of progressivism, and it seems that is your solution. And then once we have surrendered all free will we will truly be free.

A. Goofy has made the argument the number of police officers killed is so low, this isn't a valid argument at all. Do you agree?

B. So men threaten the lives of police officers more than women, but black men don't, despite the fact statistics indicate they do?

Actually, racial biases in voir dire and jury selection are pretty well studied, because people are outraged by it.

They are outraged when it is convenient to be, and not outraged when it isn't. I know most people will unabashedly be demanding Chauvin and the officers have a high black representation in the jury composition of their criminal cases for exactly this reason.

In Chauvin's criminal trial if the jury wasn't significantly black, I would actually expect that to be a cause for major protesting.

I think at this point we all accept there is no way we are going to have a "fair and impartial" jury at least by theoretical judicial standards, nor do we even desire it. Maybe you could argue the justice system was compromised to begin with, so who cares, but at this point I think we all have to admit this isn't going to be a trial by jury, this is going to be a trial by public inquisition.

The media has spent zero time focusing on the other officers (except a little for the Asian officer with an alleged history of misconduct) for clear ideological reasons, but based off pictures it looks like one of the officers is actually black.

Just for curiosities sake I would love to be a fly on the wall when the prosecution is picking out and excluding jurors to see how they want to play that dynamic.

As usual, you just seem to assume way too much about everyone else's desires.

Clearly jury selection is problematic in high profile cases, in general. I'm not sure that there's a really great solution for that problem, but it's not a problem that almost anyone desires to create. There's probably no way to make the jury trial system completely immune to other problems related to jury selection either. But in many cases we could succeed at having fair and impartial juries more than we currently do. That's the goal.

I am more skeptical than you about this. I think this is the goal when it is convenient towards some other end, and isn't when it isn't. We will have to just agree to disagree I think.

Jury picking based on race isn't something I was even aware about in the UK, and if it does happen...then I would consider it racist & kick up a fuss about it.

In the UK, everything I described, and the bar I set is commonly accepted and what people use in hiring decisions, discrimination cases, and as a standard for racism, e.g. its considered racist to make decisions on insurance & housing based on race regardless of prior evidence.

The innate human behaviour is fought against, and despite having some racist elements to our society & policing, it seems much more equal than in America.

There is lots of innate human behaviour which we don't want in modern day society, and innate grouping leading to racism is one of them, at least one that people fight against.

The pressure I meant includes protest, persuasion and education- not just threats of violence. It worked well with sexuality, where pressure applied to business, government, judiciary, and through journalism together turned the UK from a hugely homophobic country in to one thats a lot more accepting.

You suggested that police acted on this bias when you said that they react to the groups behaviour. So you suggested its a motivating factor not me.

I don't think the UK or Scandinavian countries are called particularly totalitarian despite being very progressive.

Per the data you linked yesterday, they also commit 53% of the country's homicides and 60% of robberies. More than 4 times their "fair share."

Statistics can tell whatever story you want them to.

Non violent blacks get murdered like they are in a shooting gallery. People need to stop acting like police are murdering violent black felons.

A. From interviews I've watched, speaking to police officers I'm friends with, and the reports, police violence and killing is almost always a result of a perception from police that there is threat to their life. In America, the bar may be set lower.

B. My belief is police feel threatened more often by men than women, so they kill more men. My belief is police feel more threatened by black men than white men. The statistics definitely back them up.

Whether the police are justified in what they do is the problem, and again, from statistics, police are more aggressive to black people.

This data from the government shows that. In the same scenario, black people face more violence than hispanic people, who in turn face more violence than white people.

So in the same scenario's black people are the most harshly judged. It doesn't matter whether black people commit more offences, that is irrelevant to the excessive force that black people face in specific scenarios

There were 9 unarmed black men killed last year by police.

I couldn't find data for total black homicides in 2019, but the 2018 number was 7,407.

Is it relevant to the excessive force that men in general receive from police?

I believe you are earnest in this belief. But I would definitely enjoy the magic show of you trying to support this argument using actual numbers/statistics.