Distorting the Truth About Crime and Race

The following is from the recent Heather Mac Donald article which I recommend for reading:


"The New York Times’s front page story this week on the New York Police Department and its allegedly racist stop-and-frisk practices follows a well-worn template: give specific racial breakdowns for every aspect of police behavior, but refer to racial crime rates only in the most attenuated of terms. Disclosing crime rates—the proper benchmark against which police behavior must be measured—would demolish a cornerstone of the Times’s worldview: that the New York Police Department, like police departments across America, oppresses the city’s black population with unjustified racial tactics.

This week’s story, written by Al Baker, began with what the Times thinks is a shocking disparity: “Blacks and Latinos were nine times as likely as whites to be stopped by the police in New York City in 2009, but, once stopped, were no more likely to be arrested.” (The fact that blacks, Hispanics, and whites are arrested at the same rate after a stop undercuts, rather than supports, the thesis of racially biased policing, but more on that later.)

The Times’s story includes a graphic breakdown of police stops by race: blacks made up 55 percent of all stops in 2009, though they’re only 23 percent of the city’s population; whites accounted for 10 percent of all stops, though they’re 35 percent of the city’s population; Hispanics made up 32 percent of all stops, though 28 percent of the population, and Asians, 3 percent of all stops and 12 percent of the population. The article details a host of other police actions by specific racial numbers, including arrests, frisks, and use of force.

Here are the crime data that the Times doesn’t want its readers to know: blacks committed 66 percent of all violent crimes in the first half of 2009 (though they were only 55 percent of all stops and only 23 percent of the city’s population). Blacks committed 80 percent of all shootings in the first half of 2009. Together, blacks and Hispanics committed 98 percent of all shootings. Blacks committed nearly 70 percent of all robberies. Whites, by contrast, committed 5 percent of all violent crimes in the first half of 2009, though they are 35 percent of the city’s population (and were 10 percent of all stops). They committed 1.8 percent of all shootings and less than 5 percent of all robberies. The face of violent crime in New York, in other words, like in every other large American city, is almost exclusively black and brown. Any given violent crime is 13 times more likely to be committed by a black than by a white perpetrator—a fact that would have been useful to include in the Times’s lead, which stated that “Blacks and Latinos were nine times as likely as whites to be stopped.” These crime data are not some artifact that the police devise out of their skewed racial mindset. They are what the victims of those crimes—the vast majority of whom are minority themselves—report to the police.

Given the vast disproportion in the city’s crime rates, you can either have policing that goes after crime and saves minority lives, or you can have policing that mirrors the city’s census data. You cannot have both."
Distorting the Truth About Crime and Race by Heather Mac Donald, City Journal 14 May 2010

 

You can really manipulate statistics to prove opposite conclusions. One thing I've noticed in my area is that violent crime by Hispanic (Mexican or Mexican American) thugs is always against other Hispanics. Probably other types of crime cross cultural lines, but gang bangers definitely target people in their own community, and there is a lot of crime in that community. You don't ever hear of gang violence in the Anglo community.

 

My suggestion to reverse the pattern of profiling is stop breaking the law.

Everyone needs to focus on the law-breakers....teach them a respect for the law and for other folks rights first and watch the statistics begin to crater.

Just throwing out accusations of racism isn't helping the problem...it's making it worse.

Many of the law-breakers feel they have a support system now because of opportunists like Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton.

 

Welcome to the board.

I read Heather Mac Donald as often as I can, as she is able to provide stats that puncture the spin that the NYTimes provides.

While your post tends to agree with the direction of Ms. Mac Donald's exposition, you don't seem ready to comment on the bigger subject, that is the slander of the police, and American society in general.

While 'Probably other types of crime cross cultural lines,..." appears to be true, the point of the article is that the stop-and-frisk strategy is based on logic and not any kind of invidious attitudes on the part of police.

 

The important thing is that blacks and Latinos are most often the victims of crime. Blacks and Latinos are more likely to get shot than whites. Blacks and Latinos are most likely to be robbed and raped. It is one of the facts of life that makes nastier, more brutal and shorter that because of stories like this, minorities are less well protected.

 

My anecdotal observations tell me that the Black and Hispanic communities have more crime. Call me a racist, but I think it's true.

 

I don't understand the import of above, as nobody would argue with your point. You can easily find evidence to support it in the OP.

The point of the OP is that the left wing media attacks the police for stoping minorities...even though it is the minority community that is benefiting from the program for the reason you post.

 

As far as I'm concerned, racial profiling will ALWAYS be something that takes place - it's the nature of the beast.....but.....when it is NOT taking place, there are those who will ALWAYS say it has!!! That too is the nature of the beast.

 

The American media does seem to generally have a left-winged bias. And, victimology popular these days. Some minority leaders have carved out lucrative careers fueling and exploiting these feelings of resentment and victimization. They have contacts in the press who promote their rationalizations.

 

The percent of crime that is committed by persons who happen to fit your demographic is in no way a justification for violating your rights.

If you want racial profiling, amend the Constitution to allow it. Problem solved.