task0778
Diamond Member
Activists and their media enablers present racial disparities in police activity—be it stops, arrests, or officer use of force—as prima facie evidence of police bias. They generate those racial disparities by comparing policing data to population ratios. In New York City, for example, a little over 50% of all pedestrian stops conducted by the New York Police Department have a black subject. But blacks are slightly less than a quarter of the city’s population. Voilà! Proof of racism, declare the mainstream media, Democratic politicians, and virtually the entirety of academia.
Census data is the wrong benchmark for evaluating police behavior, however. The proper benchmark is crime rates, because policing today is data-driven, deploying officers to where criminals prey on their victims. Blacks in New York City commit over 70% of all drive-by shootings, according to the victims of, and witnesses to, those shootings, who are overwhelmingly minority themselves. Add Hispanic shootings to black shootings and you account for nearly 100% of all shootings in New York City.
These numbers mean that virtually every time an officer gets a “shots fired” call over his radio, he is being called to a minority neighborhood, on behalf of a minority victim, and being given the description of a minority suspect, if anyone is cooperating with the police for once. The cops don’t wish this reality into being. It is forced upon them by the facts of crime. Such disparities exist in every American city. In Chicago, blacks commit about 80% of all shootings and murders, and whites less than 2%, though both blacks and whites are each a little less than a third of the population. In St. Louis, blacks commit up to 100% of all homicides, though they are less than 50% of the population.
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The biggest predictor of officer behavior is civilian behavior. If a civilian resists arrest, an officer will escalate his own use of force until he gains compliance. If a civilian threatens an officer or bystanders with potentially lethal force, an officer is legally justified in using lethal force in return. Blacks resist arrest at four times the rate of whites, according to one study; a decade’s worth of data show that black males make up over 40% of all cop-killers, though they are 6% of the national population.
The press touts the fact that blacks are two and a half times more likely to be fatally shot by the police than whites. Predictably, that favored statistic uses the irrelevant population benchmark. Substitute a homicide benchmark, and the ratio reverses. When homicide rates are taken into account, whites are three times more likely than blacks to be fatally shot by an officer.
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Police Depts should disclose data on resisting arrest and assaults on officers. To test the broader narrative that blacks are under lethal threat from generalized white supremacy, police departments should publish data on interracial victimization, comparing black-on-white with white-on-black crime. Nationally, blacks commit 88% of all interracial victimization between blacks and whites, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Local statistics would usefully flesh out the picture.
The American public is clueless about how disproportionate violent street crime is. Even hearing the numbers makes many well-meaning whites uncomfortable, though no one seems to cringe when law enforcement is accused of a reign of racist terror. No matter what the color of his/her skin is, every cop wants to go home after their shift is over. Certainly there bad cops out there, no denying that. But when a civilian resists and does anything threatening to the officer, then the officer has a right to defend himself, and he cannot wait until he/she is certain that the civilian has a weapon. Because if he/she does, then they become a victim. The truth is that if you don't resist then you don't get shot or die some other way. Not by the cops anyway. And it doesn't matter what color you are either.
Census data is the wrong benchmark for evaluating police behavior, however. The proper benchmark is crime rates, because policing today is data-driven, deploying officers to where criminals prey on their victims. Blacks in New York City commit over 70% of all drive-by shootings, according to the victims of, and witnesses to, those shootings, who are overwhelmingly minority themselves. Add Hispanic shootings to black shootings and you account for nearly 100% of all shootings in New York City.
These numbers mean that virtually every time an officer gets a “shots fired” call over his radio, he is being called to a minority neighborhood, on behalf of a minority victim, and being given the description of a minority suspect, if anyone is cooperating with the police for once. The cops don’t wish this reality into being. It is forced upon them by the facts of crime. Such disparities exist in every American city. In Chicago, blacks commit about 80% of all shootings and murders, and whites less than 2%, though both blacks and whites are each a little less than a third of the population. In St. Louis, blacks commit up to 100% of all homicides, though they are less than 50% of the population.
.
.
The biggest predictor of officer behavior is civilian behavior. If a civilian resists arrest, an officer will escalate his own use of force until he gains compliance. If a civilian threatens an officer or bystanders with potentially lethal force, an officer is legally justified in using lethal force in return. Blacks resist arrest at four times the rate of whites, according to one study; a decade’s worth of data show that black males make up over 40% of all cop-killers, though they are 6% of the national population.
The press touts the fact that blacks are two and a half times more likely to be fatally shot by the police than whites. Predictably, that favored statistic uses the irrelevant population benchmark. Substitute a homicide benchmark, and the ratio reverses. When homicide rates are taken into account, whites are three times more likely than blacks to be fatally shot by an officer.
.
.
Police Depts should disclose data on resisting arrest and assaults on officers. To test the broader narrative that blacks are under lethal threat from generalized white supremacy, police departments should publish data on interracial victimization, comparing black-on-white with white-on-black crime. Nationally, blacks commit 88% of all interracial victimization between blacks and whites, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Local statistics would usefully flesh out the picture.
The American public is clueless about how disproportionate violent street crime is. Even hearing the numbers makes many well-meaning whites uncomfortable, though no one seems to cringe when law enforcement is accused of a reign of racist terror. No matter what the color of his/her skin is, every cop wants to go home after their shift is over. Certainly there bad cops out there, no denying that. But when a civilian resists and does anything threatening to the officer, then the officer has a right to defend himself, and he cannot wait until he/she is certain that the civilian has a weapon. Because if he/she does, then they become a victim. The truth is that if you don't resist then you don't get shot or die some other way. Not by the cops anyway. And it doesn't matter what color you are either.
