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We don't even know the full case of why the cop needed to shoot him. Yet, people are burning down their city.
Fucking stupid.
THERE was a predictable chorus of criticism from civil rights groups last month when the New York Police Department released its data on stop-and-frisk interactions for 2009. The department made 575,000 pedestrian stops last year. Fifty-five percent involved blacks, even though blacks are only 23 percent of the citys population. Whites, by contrast, were involved in 10 percent of all stops, though they make up 35 percent of the citys population.
According to the departments critics, that imbalance in stop rates results from officers racial bias. The use of these stops, they say, should be sharply curtailed, if not eliminated entirely, and some activists are suing the department to achieve that end.
Allegations of racial bias, however, ignore the most important factor governing the Police Departments operations: crime. Trends in criminal acts, not census data, drive everything that the department does, thanks to the statistics-based managerial revolution known as CompStat. Given the patterns of crime in New York, it is inevitable that stop rates will not mirror the citys ethnic and racial breakdown.
CompStat embodies the iconoclastic idea that the police can stop violence before it happens. The department analyzes victim reports daily, and deploys additional manpower to the places where crime is increasing. Once at a crime hot spot, officers are expected to look out for, and respond to, suspicious behavior.
Such stops happen more frequently in minority neighborhoods because that is where the vast majority of violent crime occurs and thus where police presence is most intense. Based on reports filed by victims, blacks committed 66 percent of all violent crime in New York in 2009, including 80 percent of shootings and 71 percent of robberies. Blacks and Hispanics together accounted for 98 percent of reported gun assaults. And the vast majority of the victims of violent crime were also members of minority groups.
Non-Hispanic whites, on the other hand, committed 5 percent of the citys violent crimes in 2009, 1.4 percent of all shootings and less than 5 percent of all robberies.
Given these facts, the Police Department cannot direct its resources where they are most needed without generating racially disproportionate stop data, even though the departments tactics themselves are colorblind. The per capita rate of shootings in the 73rd Precinct which covers Brooklyns largely black Ocean Hill and Brownsville neighborhoods is 81 times higher than in the 68th Precinct in largely white Bay Ridge. Not surprisingly, the per capita stop rate in the 73rd Precinct is 15 times higher than that in the 68th.
Crime rates are not the only thing that drives police strategy so do requests for assistance from communities besieged by lawlessness. If residents of an apartment building ask their precinct commander to eliminate the drug dealing on their street, officers will likely question people hanging out around the building and step up their enforcement of quality-of-life laws, resulting in more stops. Requests for crackdowns on street sales come far more frequently from minority neighborhoods, because that is where most open-air drug dealing occurs.
Some critics charge that the more than half a million stops last year indicate that the department is out of control. But the ratios of stops to population and of stops to total arrests in New York are very close to those in Los Angeles, where last summer a judge lifted a federal consent decree under which the police department had operated for the last eight years. The police stop data in Los Angeles are as racially disproportionate as New Yorks, yet the judge deemed them consistent with civil rights.
For several years, the ratio of stops in New York that resulted in an arrest or summons about 12 percent of the total was identical for whites, blacks and Hispanics, suggesting that the police use the same measure of reasonable suspicion in stopping members of different racial and ethnic groups. Just because a stop does not result in an arrest or summons does not mean that it did not interrupt a crime. Someone who is casing a victim or acting as a lookout may not have inculpatory evidence on him on which to base an arrest.
No public policy change of the last quarter-century has done as much for the citys poor and minority neighborhoods as CompStat policing. More than 10,000 black and Hispanic males are alive today who would have been killed had homicide rates remained at the levels of the early 1990s.
Most minority-group members in the city recognize the enormous benefit from CompStat policing. A poll released last month by Quinnipiac University found that 68 percent of black respondents approve of the job Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly is doing, suggesting that the citys civil rights activists do not speak for their purported beneficiaries on this issue.
The attack on the Police Departments stop-and-frisk data is based on the false premise that police activity should mirror census data, not crime. If the critics get their way, it would strip police protection from the New Yorkers who need it most.
Heather Mac Donald is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of Are Cops Racist?
The police are always expected to be colorblind when it comes to how civilians are treated, but what do you do when one group according to statistics is consistently more likely to be involved with street crime ?
In this case, we'll just have to wait out the facts, before a reasonable conclusion to this case can be made. Maybe it will mean jail time for the cop, maybe a complete vindication.
We do know now that the victim was not the "gentle giant" that was portrayed early on, but that alone certainly doesn't mean he deserved to be shot and killed. Maybe we'll find out the cop was assaulted and lost his head and shot to kill. Maybe it will be murder, manslaughter, or maybe there are facts that will present a whole different light on the case.
As far as how blacks feel about the way police treat them, consider the other side, and think about WHY police view them differently.
Here's an op-ed with some stats involving New York City:
Fighting Crime Where the Criminals Are
Published: June 25, 2010
THERE was a predictable chorus of criticism from civil rights groups last month when the New York Police Department released its data on stop-and-frisk interactions for 2009. The department made 575,000 pedestrian stops last year. Fifty-five percent involved blacks, even though blacks are only 23 percent of the citys population. Whites, by contrast, were involved in 10 percent of all stops, though they make up 35 percent of the citys population.
According to the departments critics, that imbalance in stop rates results from officers racial bias. The use of these stops, they say, should be sharply curtailed, if not eliminated entirely, and some activists are suing the department to achieve that end.
Allegations of racial bias, however, ignore the most important factor governing the Police Departments operations: crime. Trends in criminal acts, not census data, drive everything that the department does, thanks to the statistics-based managerial revolution known as CompStat. Given the patterns of crime in New York, it is inevitable that stop rates will not mirror the citys ethnic and racial breakdown.
CompStat embodies the iconoclastic idea that the police can stop violence before it happens. The department analyzes victim reports daily, and deploys additional manpower to the places where crime is increasing. Once at a crime hot spot, officers are expected to look out for, and respond to, suspicious behavior.
Such stops happen more frequently in minority neighborhoods because that is where the vast majority of violent crime occurs and thus where police presence is most intense. Based on reports filed by victims, blacks committed 66 percent of all violent crime in New York in 2009, including 80 percent of shootings and 71 percent of robberies. Blacks and Hispanics together accounted for 98 percent of reported gun assaults. And the vast majority of the victims of violent crime were also members of minority groups.
Non-Hispanic whites, on the other hand, committed 5 percent of the citys violent crimes in 2009, 1.4 percent of all shootings and less than 5 percent of all robberies.
Given these facts, the Police Department cannot direct its resources where they are most needed without generating racially disproportionate stop data, even though the departments tactics themselves are colorblind. The per capita rate of shootings in the 73rd Precinct which covers Brooklyns largely black Ocean Hill and Brownsville neighborhoods is 81 times higher than in the 68th Precinct in largely white Bay Ridge. Not surprisingly, the per capita stop rate in the 73rd Precinct is 15 times higher than that in the 68th.
Crime rates are not the only thing that drives police strategy so do requests for assistance from communities besieged by lawlessness. If residents of an apartment building ask their precinct commander to eliminate the drug dealing on their street, officers will likely question people hanging out around the building and step up their enforcement of quality-of-life laws, resulting in more stops. Requests for crackdowns on street sales come far more frequently from minority neighborhoods, because that is where most open-air drug dealing occurs.
Some critics charge that the more than half a million stops last year indicate that the department is out of control. But the ratios of stops to population and of stops to total arrests in New York are very close to those in Los Angeles, where last summer a judge lifted a federal consent decree under which the police department had operated for the last eight years. The police stop data in Los Angeles are as racially disproportionate as New Yorks, yet the judge deemed them consistent with civil rights.
For several years, the ratio of stops in New York that resulted in an arrest or summons about 12 percent of the total was identical for whites, blacks and Hispanics, suggesting that the police use the same measure of reasonable suspicion in stopping members of different racial and ethnic groups. Just because a stop does not result in an arrest or summons does not mean that it did not interrupt a crime. Someone who is casing a victim or acting as a lookout may not have inculpatory evidence on him on which to base an arrest.
No public policy change of the last quarter-century has done as much for the citys poor and minority neighborhoods as CompStat policing. More than 10,000 black and Hispanic males are alive today who would have been killed had homicide rates remained at the levels of the early 1990s.
Most minority-group members in the city recognize the enormous benefit from CompStat policing. A poll released last month by Quinnipiac University found that 68 percent of black respondents approve of the job Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly is doing, suggesting that the citys civil rights activists do not speak for their purported beneficiaries on this issue.
The attack on the Police Departments stop-and-frisk data is based on the false premise that police activity should mirror census data, not crime. If the critics get their way, it would strip police protection from the New Yorkers who need it most.
Heather Mac Donald is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of Are Cops Racist?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/opinion/26macdonald.html?_r=0
No autopsy, no ballastics, no evidence released as to lighting, distance between the two when Brown was hit, etc. ........yet many conclusions. PASS.
The point of the thread was not about the crime or police response but more about the disconnect of the two factions.
I guess to boil down my point was if you have good dealings with police, you are normally going to side with the police. If you haven't, then you are going to be skeptical of the police.
That's why people will still protest. It's not that they condone crime, they want police to be held accountable for what they perceive to be excessive force not in relation to the crime.
No autopsy, no ballastics, no evidence released as to lighting, distance between the two when Brown was hit, etc. ........yet many conclusions. PASS.
The point of the thread was not about the crime or police response but more about the disconnect of the two factions.
I guess to boil down my point was if you have good dealings with police, you are normally going to side with the police. If you haven't, then you are going to be skeptical of the police.
That's why people will still protest. It's not that they condone crime, they want police to be held accountable for what they perceive to be excessive force not in relation to the crime.
Many people expect anything they do or say to be legally protected simply because they got away with doing it before.
You should not have anything to do with the police if you look or act like the criminals they are accustomed to dealing with.
And you absolutely shouldn't disrespect or disobey a direct order from the police.
And you should NEVER get into a physical altercation with the police.
And you should absolutely not punch a cop or push him back into his car while he is on duty and armed.
You are suicidally stupid if you do.
Too stupid to live.
Michael Brown is a Darwin Award contender.
Obviously with the news on Friday that Ferguson police believe Michael Brown committed "strong arm" robbery, some people have said this is a non-issue. That isn't the case.
The issue wasn't if he committed a crime, it was about the police officer's alleged response towards Michael Brown.
The police officer in question (Darren Wilson?) didn't know he was the suspect and having cigars in your hands doesn't mean you committed a crime. It about the assault that most witnesses agree was started by the officer and that after that altercation, when Michael Brown was surrendering, he shot him dead.
Think back 20 years, no one was claiming that Rodney King didn't do anything wrong, it was about the police response towards Rodney King. Similar situation here with the exception that Michael Brown died from his experience.
========================================
And therein lies the disconnect between the two parties.
Let's be honest, most white people haven't dealt with a cop outside of a traffic violation. I (white) have. Even in a traffic violation, I was dealt a pretty raw hand. Once I was put in handcuffs just because once the cop thought I was leaving a party and he slammed me up against the wall and put me in handcuffs. I didn't believe that was an acceptable use of force. Why couldn't he just say, can you please stay right here? Okay. But no, he didn't. I filed a complaint but the supervisor tried to make me feel guilty for doing nothing wrong. I was a bystander, over 21, at a house party. Yeah it was a noisy party but did I deserve that response? No. So of course I come to find out that he was exonerated and still had a clean record (heard that response before?).
That's the disconnect. If you have never dealt with the cops in that manner, you aren't going to think they are being dishonest but when you have, you are skeptical of what the cops are saying. So that's how we view things, in our experiences. Thus, when something like this happens, we view it through those prisms.
That is what I believe is the disconnect in talking about this situation. That situation for many people is the perceived egregious response by police officers and the lack of discipline of these officers for said responses by their superiors with no other recourse for the citizens. That's where the anger lies.
You started off correct but then went off the rails.
Original reason the officer stopped Mr. Brown was he and his friend were j-walking. During the physical altercation that followed, Mr. Brown commited a felony, assault on a police officer. From that moment onwards lethal force is authorized under Missouri state law.
Obviously with the news on Friday that Ferguson police believe Michael Brown committed "strong arm" robbery, some people have said this is a non-issue. That isn't the case.
The issue wasn't if he committed a crime, it was about the police officer's alleged response towards Michael Brown.
The police officer in question (Darren Wilson?) didn't know he was the suspect and having cigars in your hands doesn't mean you committed a crime. It about the assault that most witnesses agree was started by the officer and that after that altercation, when Michael Brown was surrendering, he shot him dead.
Think back 20 years, no one was claiming that Rodney King didn't do anything wrong, it was about the police response towards Rodney King. Similar situation here with the exception that Michael Brown died from his experience.
========================================
And therein lies the disconnect between the two parties.
Let's be honest, most white people haven't dealt with a cop outside of a traffic violation. I (white) have. Even in a traffic violation, I was dealt a pretty raw hand. Once I was put in handcuffs just because once the cop thought I was leaving a party and he slammed me up against the wall and put me in handcuffs. I didn't believe that was an acceptable use of force. Why couldn't he just say, can you please stay right here? Okay. But no, he didn't. I filed a complaint but the supervisor tried to make me feel guilty for doing nothing wrong. I was a bystander, over 21, at a house party. Yeah it was a noisy party but did I deserve that response? No. So of course I come to find out that he was exonerated and still had a clean record (heard that response before?).
That's the disconnect. If you have never dealt with the cops in that manner, you aren't going to think they are being dishonest but when you have, you are skeptical of what the cops are saying. So that's how we view things, in our experiences. Thus, when something like this happens, we view it through those prisms.
That is what I believe is the disconnect in talking about this situation. That situation for many people is the perceived egregious response by police officers and the lack of discipline of these officers for said responses by their superiors with no other recourse for the citizens. That's where the anger lies.
You started off correct but then went off the rails.
Original reason the officer stopped Mr. Brown was he and his friend were j-walking. During the physical altercation that followed, Mr. Brown commited a felony, assault on a police officer. From that moment onwards lethal force is authorized under Missouri state law.
Unless you were there, how do you know what happened? Toxicology tests on neither Brown, nor the officer, have been released, nor witness testimony. From what do you draw your conclusions, tea leaves?
In any case, there is no reason to believe the officer had enough knowledge to imply a readiness to shoot; the anti-Constitution crows, in their droooling haste to dispage the young man who died, are fantasizing facts that hurt the officer. If he had extensive prior knowledge of the THEFT*, then it can be concluded he was ready to meet force with deadly force.
*Strong arm has elements, the two-three minutes of video do not meet the criteria. There may be more evidence, but the anti-Constitution crowd is accustomed to TV movies, and shows where everything is wrapped up neatly, in an hour or two. In reality, the justice system does not work in that manner.
The police are always expected to be colorblind when it comes to how civilians are treated, but what do you do when one group according to statistics is consistently more likely to be involved with street crime ?
In this case, we'll just have to wait out the facts, before a reasonable conclusion to this case can be made. Maybe it will mean jail time for the cop, maybe a complete vindication.
We do know now that the victim was not the "gentle giant" that was portrayed early on, but that alone certainly doesn't mean he deserved to be shot and killed. Maybe we'll find out the cop was assaulted and lost his head and shot to kill. Maybe it will be murder, manslaughter, or maybe there are facts that will present a whole different light on the case.
As far as how blacks feel about the way police treat them, consider the other side, and think about WHY police view them differently.
Here's an op-ed with some stats involving New York City:
Fighting Crime Where the Criminals Are
Published: June 25, 2010
THERE was a predictable chorus of criticism from civil rights groups last month when the New York Police Department released its data on stop-and-frisk interactions for 2009. The department made 575,000 pedestrian stops last year. Fifty-five percent involved blacks, even though blacks are only 23 percent of the citys population. Whites, by contrast, were involved in 10 percent of all stops, though they make up 35 percent of the citys population.
According to the departments critics, that imbalance in stop rates results from officers racial bias. The use of these stops, they say, should be sharply curtailed, if not eliminated entirely, and some activists are suing the department to achieve that end.
Allegations of racial bias, however, ignore the most important factor governing the Police Departments operations: crime. Trends in criminal acts, not census data, drive everything that the department does, thanks to the statistics-based managerial revolution known as CompStat. Given the patterns of crime in New York, it is inevitable that stop rates will not mirror the citys ethnic and racial breakdown.
CompStat embodies the iconoclastic idea that the police can stop violence before it happens. The department analyzes victim reports daily, and deploys additional manpower to the places where crime is increasing. Once at a crime hot spot, officers are expected to look out for, and respond to, suspicious behavior.
Such stops happen more frequently in minority neighborhoods because that is where the vast majority of violent crime occurs and thus where police presence is most intense. Based on reports filed by victims, blacks committed 66 percent of all violent crime in New York in 2009, including 80 percent of shootings and 71 percent of robberies. Blacks and Hispanics together accounted for 98 percent of reported gun assaults. And the vast majority of the victims of violent crime were also members of minority groups.
Non-Hispanic whites, on the other hand, committed 5 percent of the citys violent crimes in 2009, 1.4 percent of all shootings and less than 5 percent of all robberies.
Given these facts, the Police Department cannot direct its resources where they are most needed without generating racially disproportionate stop data, even though the departments tactics themselves are colorblind. The per capita rate of shootings in the 73rd Precinct which covers Brooklyns largely black Ocean Hill and Brownsville neighborhoods is 81 times higher than in the 68th Precinct in largely white Bay Ridge. Not surprisingly, the per capita stop rate in the 73rd Precinct is 15 times higher than that in the 68th.
Crime rates are not the only thing that drives police strategy so do requests for assistance from communities besieged by lawlessness. If residents of an apartment building ask their precinct commander to eliminate the drug dealing on their street, officers will likely question people hanging out around the building and step up their enforcement of quality-of-life laws, resulting in more stops. Requests for crackdowns on street sales come far more frequently from minority neighborhoods, because that is where most open-air drug dealing occurs.
Some critics charge that the more than half a million stops last year indicate that the department is out of control. But the ratios of stops to population and of stops to total arrests in New York are very close to those in Los Angeles, where last summer a judge lifted a federal consent decree under which the police department had operated for the last eight years. The police stop data in Los Angeles are as racially disproportionate as New Yorks, yet the judge deemed them consistent with civil rights.
For several years, the ratio of stops in New York that resulted in an arrest or summons about 12 percent of the total was identical for whites, blacks and Hispanics, suggesting that the police use the same measure of reasonable suspicion in stopping members of different racial and ethnic groups. Just because a stop does not result in an arrest or summons does not mean that it did not interrupt a crime. Someone who is casing a victim or acting as a lookout may not have inculpatory evidence on him on which to base an arrest.
No public policy change of the last quarter-century has done as much for the citys poor and minority neighborhoods as CompStat policing. More than 10,000 black and Hispanic males are alive today who would have been killed had homicide rates remained at the levels of the early 1990s.
Most minority-group members in the city recognize the enormous benefit from CompStat policing. A poll released last month by Quinnipiac University found that 68 percent of black respondents approve of the job Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly is doing, suggesting that the citys civil rights activists do not speak for their purported beneficiaries on this issue.
The attack on the Police Departments stop-and-frisk data is based on the false premise that police activity should mirror census data, not crime. If the critics get their way, it would strip police protection from the New Yorkers who need it most.
Heather Mac Donald is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of Are Cops Racist?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/opinion/26macdonald.html?_r=0
We do know now that the victim was not the "gentle giant" that was portrayed early on, but that alone certainly doesn't mean he deserved to be shot and killed.
Obviously with the news on Friday that Ferguson police believe Michael Brown committed "strong arm" robbery, some people have said this is a non-issue. That isn't the case.
The issue wasn't if he committed a crime, it was about the police officer's alleged response towards Michael Brown.
The police officer in question (Darren Wilson?) didn't know he was the suspect and having cigars in your hands doesn't mean you committed a crime. It about the assault that most witnesses agree was started by the officer and that after that altercation, when Michael Brown was surrendering, he shot him dead.
Think back 20 years, no one was claiming that Rodney King didn't do anything wrong, it was about the police response towards Rodney King. Similar situation here with the exception that Michael Brown died from his experience.
========================================
And therein lies the disconnect between the two parties.
Let's be honest, most white people haven't dealt with a cop outside of a traffic violation. I (white) have. Even in a traffic violation, I was dealt a pretty raw hand. Once I was put in handcuffs just because once the cop thought I was leaving a party and he slammed me up against the wall and put me in handcuffs. I didn't believe that was an acceptable use of force. Why couldn't he just say, can you please stay right here? Okay. But no, he didn't. I filed a complaint but the supervisor tried to make me feel guilty for doing nothing wrong. I was a bystander, over 21, at a house party. Yeah it was a noisy party but did I deserve that response? No. So of course I come to find out that he was exonerated and still had a clean record (heard that response before?).
That's the disconnect. If you have never dealt with the cops in that manner, you aren't going to think they are being dishonest but when you have, you are skeptical of what the cops are saying. So that's how we view things, in our experiences. Thus, when something like this happens, we view it through those prisms.
That is what I believe is the disconnect in talking about this situation. That situation for many people is the perceived egregious response by police officers and the lack of discipline of these officers for said responses by their superiors with no other recourse for the citizens. That's where the anger lies.
You started off correct but then went off the rails.
Original reason the officer stopped Mr. Brown was he and his friend were j-walking. During the physical altercation that followed, Mr. Brown commited a felony, assault on a police officer. From that moment onwards lethal force is authorized under Missouri state law.
The police are always expected to be colorblind when it comes to how civilians are treated, but what do you do when one group according to statistics is consistently more likely to be involved with street crime ?
In this case, we'll just have to wait out the facts, before a reasonable conclusion to this case can be made. Maybe it will mean jail time for the cop, maybe a complete vindication.
We do know now that the victim was not the "gentle giant" that was portrayed early on, but that alone certainly doesn't mean he deserved to be shot and killed. Maybe we'll find out the cop was assaulted and lost his head and shot to kill. Maybe it will be murder, manslaughter, or maybe there are facts that will present a whole different light on the case.
As far as how blacks feel about the way police treat them, consider the other side, and think about WHY police view them differently.
Here's an op-ed with some stats involving New York City:
Fighting Crime Where the Criminals Are
Published: June 25, 2010
THERE was a predictable chorus of criticism from civil rights groups last month when the New York Police Department released its data on stop-and-frisk interactions for 2009. The department made 575,000 pedestrian stops last year. Fifty-five percent involved blacks, even though blacks are only 23 percent of the citys population. Whites, by contrast, were involved in 10 percent of all stops, though they make up 35 percent of the citys population.
According to the departments critics, that imbalance in stop rates results from officers racial bias. The use of these stops, they say, should be sharply curtailed, if not eliminated entirely, and some activists are suing the department to achieve that end.
Allegations of racial bias, however, ignore the most important factor governing the Police Departments operations: crime. Trends in criminal acts, not census data, drive everything that the department does, thanks to the statistics-based managerial revolution known as CompStat. Given the patterns of crime in New York, it is inevitable that stop rates will not mirror the citys ethnic and racial breakdown.
CompStat embodies the iconoclastic idea that the police can stop violence before it happens. The department analyzes victim reports daily, and deploys additional manpower to the places where crime is increasing. Once at a crime hot spot, officers are expected to look out for, and respond to, suspicious behavior.
Such stops happen more frequently in minority neighborhoods because that is where the vast majority of violent crime occurs and thus where police presence is most intense. Based on reports filed by victims, blacks committed 66 percent of all violent crime in New York in 2009, including 80 percent of shootings and 71 percent of robberies. Blacks and Hispanics together accounted for 98 percent of reported gun assaults. And the vast majority of the victims of violent crime were also members of minority groups.
Non-Hispanic whites, on the other hand, committed 5 percent of the citys violent crimes in 2009, 1.4 percent of all shootings and less than 5 percent of all robberies.
Given these facts, the Police Department cannot direct its resources where they are most needed without generating racially disproportionate stop data, even though the departments tactics themselves are colorblind. The per capita rate of shootings in the 73rd Precinct which covers Brooklyns largely black Ocean Hill and Brownsville neighborhoods is 81 times higher than in the 68th Precinct in largely white Bay Ridge. Not surprisingly, the per capita stop rate in the 73rd Precinct is 15 times higher than that in the 68th.
Crime rates are not the only thing that drives police strategy so do requests for assistance from communities besieged by lawlessness. If residents of an apartment building ask their precinct commander to eliminate the drug dealing on their street, officers will likely question people hanging out around the building and step up their enforcement of quality-of-life laws, resulting in more stops. Requests for crackdowns on street sales come far more frequently from minority neighborhoods, because that is where most open-air drug dealing occurs.
Some critics charge that the more than half a million stops last year indicate that the department is out of control. But the ratios of stops to population and of stops to total arrests in New York are very close to those in Los Angeles, where last summer a judge lifted a federal consent decree under which the police department had operated for the last eight years. The police stop data in Los Angeles are as racially disproportionate as New Yorks, yet the judge deemed them consistent with civil rights.
For several years, the ratio of stops in New York that resulted in an arrest or summons about 12 percent of the total was identical for whites, blacks and Hispanics, suggesting that the police use the same measure of reasonable suspicion in stopping members of different racial and ethnic groups. Just because a stop does not result in an arrest or summons does not mean that it did not interrupt a crime. Someone who is casing a victim or acting as a lookout may not have inculpatory evidence on him on which to base an arrest.
No public policy change of the last quarter-century has done as much for the citys poor and minority neighborhoods as CompStat policing. More than 10,000 black and Hispanic males are alive today who would have been killed had homicide rates remained at the levels of the early 1990s.
Most minority-group members in the city recognize the enormous benefit from CompStat policing. A poll released last month by Quinnipiac University found that 68 percent of black respondents approve of the job Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly is doing, suggesting that the citys civil rights activists do not speak for their purported beneficiaries on this issue.
The attack on the Police Departments stop-and-frisk data is based on the false premise that police activity should mirror census data, not crime. If the critics get their way, it would strip police protection from the New Yorkers who need it most.
Heather Mac Donald is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of Are Cops Racist?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/opinion/26macdonald.html?_r=0
True but males must be treated as females are, despite the fact MALES commit many times the amount of crime than their representation in the population.
The police are always expected to be colorblind when it comes to how civilians are treated, but what do you do when one group according to statistics is consistently more likely to be involved with street crime ?
In this case, we'll just have to wait out the facts, before a reasonable conclusion to this case can be made. Maybe it will mean jail time for the cop, maybe a complete vindication.
We do know now that the victim was not the "gentle giant" that was portrayed early on, but that alone certainly doesn't mean he deserved to be shot and killed. Maybe we'll find out the cop was assaulted and lost his head and shot to kill. Maybe it will be murder, manslaughter, or maybe there are facts that will present a whole different light on the case.
As far as how blacks feel about the way police treat them, consider the other side, and think about WHY police view them differently.
Here's an op-ed with some stats involving New York City:
Fighting Crime Where the Criminals Are
Published: June 25, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/opinion/26macdonald.html?_r=0
True but males must be treated as females are, despite the fact MALES commit many times the amount of crime than their representation in the population.
If a convienience store is robbed, and it's called out to a cop (yes I know in the Brown case the cop didn't know) without even knowing the sex, the cop is automatically going to assume it's a male. Can you blame the cop for feeling that way ?
I sure the hell don't.
Oh my. Somebody went and spent their allowance on pot again. Better run upstairs from the basement your in and grab some cheese puffs. Excessive force. Police are already trying to fight crime with one hand tied behind their back.No autopsy, no ballastics, no evidence released as to lighting, distance between the two when Brown was hit, etc. ........yet many conclusions. PASS.
The point of the thread was not about the crime or police response but more about the disconnect of the two factions.
I guess to boil down my point was if you have good dealings with police, you are normally going to side with the police. If you haven't, then you are going to be skeptical of the police.
That's why people will still protest. It's not that they condone crime, they want police to be held accountable for what they perceive to be excessive force not in relation to the crime.
The only thing lost is you...gather all the facts before you pronounce your truth.Obviously with the news on Friday that Ferguson police believe Michael Brown committed "strong arm" robbery, some people have said this is a non-issue. That isn't the case.
The issue wasn't if he committed a crime, it was about the police officer's alleged response towards Michael Brown.
The police officer in question (Darren Wilson?) didn't know he was the suspect and having cigars in your hands doesn't mean you committed a crime. It about the assault that most witnesses agree was started by the officer and that after that altercation, when Michael Brown was surrendering, he shot him dead.
Think back 20 years, no one was claiming that Rodney King didn't do anything wrong, it was about the police response towards Rodney King. Similar situation here with the exception that Michael Brown died from his experience.
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And therein lies the disconnect between the two parties.
Let's be honest, most white people haven't dealt with a cop outside of a traffic violation. I (white) have. Even in a traffic violation, I was dealt a pretty raw hand. Once I was put in handcuffs just because once the cop thought I was leaving a party and he slammed me up against the wall and put me in handcuffs. I didn't believe that was an acceptable use of force. Why couldn't he just say, can you please stay right here? Okay. But no, he didn't. I filed a complaint but the supervisor tried to make me feel guilty for doing nothing wrong. I was a bystander, over 21, at a house party. Yeah it was a noisy party but did I deserve that response? No. So of course I come to find out that he was exonerated and still had a clean record (heard that response before?).
That's the disconnect. If you have never dealt with the cops in that manner, you aren't going to think they are being dishonest but when you have, you are skeptical of what the cops are saying. So that's how we view things, in our experiences. Thus, when something like this happens, we view it through those prisms.
That is what I believe is the disconnect in talking about this situation. That situation for many people is the perceived egregious response by police officers and the lack of discipline of these officers for said responses by their superiors with no other recourse for the citizens. That's where the anger lies.
The police are always expected to be colorblind when it comes to how civilians are treated, but what do you do when one group according to statistics is consistently more likely to be involved with street crime ?
In this case, we'll just have to wait out the facts, before a reasonable conclusion to this case can be made. Maybe it will mean jail time for the cop, maybe a complete vindication.
We do know now that the victim was not the "gentle giant" that was portrayed early on, but that alone certainly doesn't mean he deserved to be shot and killed. Maybe we'll find out the cop was assaulted and lost his head and shot to kill. Maybe it will be murder, manslaughter, or maybe there are facts that will present a whole different light on the case.
As far as how blacks feel about the way police treat them, consider the other side, and think about WHY police view them differently.
Here's an op-ed with some stats involving New York City:
Fighting Crime Where the Criminals Are
Published: June 25, 2010
THERE was a predictable chorus of criticism from civil rights groups last month when the New York Police Department released its data on stop-and-frisk interactions for 2009. The department made 575,000 pedestrian stops last year. Fifty-five percent involved blacks, even though blacks are only 23 percent of the citys population. Whites, by contrast, were involved in 10 percent of all stops, though they make up 35 percent of the citys population.
According to the departments critics, that imbalance in stop rates results from officers racial bias. The use of these stops, they say, should be sharply curtailed, if not eliminated entirely, and some activists are suing the department to achieve that end.
Allegations of racial bias, however, ignore the most important factor governing the Police Departments operations: crime. Trends in criminal acts, not census data, drive everything that the department does, thanks to the statistics-based managerial revolution known as CompStat. Given the patterns of crime in New York, it is inevitable that stop rates will not mirror the citys ethnic and racial breakdown.
CompStat embodies the iconoclastic idea that the police can stop violence before it happens. The department analyzes victim reports daily, and deploys additional manpower to the places where crime is increasing. Once at a crime hot spot, officers are expected to look out for, and respond to, suspicious behavior.
Such stops happen more frequently in minority neighborhoods because that is where the vast majority of violent crime occurs and thus where police presence is most intense. Based on reports filed by victims, blacks committed 66 percent of all violent crime in New York in 2009, including 80 percent of shootings and 71 percent of robberies. Blacks and Hispanics together accounted for 98 percent of reported gun assaults. And the vast majority of the victims of violent crime were also members of minority groups.
Non-Hispanic whites, on the other hand, committed 5 percent of the citys violent crimes in 2009, 1.4 percent of all shootings and less than 5 percent of all robberies.
Given these facts, the Police Department cannot direct its resources where they are most needed without generating racially disproportionate stop data, even though the departments tactics themselves are colorblind. The per capita rate of shootings in the 73rd Precinct which covers Brooklyns largely black Ocean Hill and Brownsville neighborhoods is 81 times higher than in the 68th Precinct in largely white Bay Ridge. Not surprisingly, the per capita stop rate in the 73rd Precinct is 15 times higher than that in the 68th.
Crime rates are not the only thing that drives police strategy so do requests for assistance from communities besieged by lawlessness. If residents of an apartment building ask their precinct commander to eliminate the drug dealing on their street, officers will likely question people hanging out around the building and step up their enforcement of quality-of-life laws, resulting in more stops. Requests for crackdowns on street sales come far more frequently from minority neighborhoods, because that is where most open-air drug dealing occurs.
Some critics charge that the more than half a million stops last year indicate that the department is out of control. But the ratios of stops to population and of stops to total arrests in New York are very close to those in Los Angeles, where last summer a judge lifted a federal consent decree under which the police department had operated for the last eight years. The police stop data in Los Angeles are as racially disproportionate as New Yorks, yet the judge deemed them consistent with civil rights.
For several years, the ratio of stops in New York that resulted in an arrest or summons about 12 percent of the total was identical for whites, blacks and Hispanics, suggesting that the police use the same measure of reasonable suspicion in stopping members of different racial and ethnic groups. Just because a stop does not result in an arrest or summons does not mean that it did not interrupt a crime. Someone who is casing a victim or acting as a lookout may not have inculpatory evidence on him on which to base an arrest.
No public policy change of the last quarter-century has done as much for the citys poor and minority neighborhoods as CompStat policing. More than 10,000 black and Hispanic males are alive today who would have been killed had homicide rates remained at the levels of the early 1990s.
Most minority-group members in the city recognize the enormous benefit from CompStat policing. A poll released last month by Quinnipiac University found that 68 percent of black respondents approve of the job Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly is doing, suggesting that the citys civil rights activists do not speak for their purported beneficiaries on this issue.
The attack on the Police Departments stop-and-frisk data is based on the false premise that police activity should mirror census data, not crime. If the critics get their way, it would strip police protection from the New Yorkers who need it most.
Heather Mac Donald is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of Are Cops Racist?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/opinion/26macdonald.html?_r=0
We do know now that the victim was not the "gentle giant" that was portrayed early on, but that alone certainly doesn't mean he deserved to be shot and killed.
victim?? The victim was not Michael Brown. The victim was the store clerk, The suspect was Michael Brown.
It may turn out that the Police Officer was another victim of Brown's.
The point of the thread was not about the crime or police response but more about the disconnect of the two factions.
I guess to boil down my point was if you have good dealings with police, you are normally going to side with the police. If you haven't, then you are going to be skeptical of the police.
That's why people will still protest. It's not that they condone crime, they want police to be held accountable for what they perceive to be excessive force not in relation to the crime.
Many people expect anything they do or say to be legally protected simply because they got away with doing it before.
Big Mike looked like he was used to using his size and strength to intimidate and if necessary, enforce his will upon others. And many folks who've seen the video agree that Mike should have gotten away with this crime because he was so well practiced at it that it just seemed natural. It may have been natural. but it was also a crime.
You should not have anything to do with the police if you look or act like the criminals they are accustomed to dealing with. But whether he stole the cigars or not, whether he felt as though the cops were onto him for that crime and he was trying to be proactive in resisting arrest or not, when you KNOW you are a poster child for racial profiling, it's best to stay as far away from PoPo as you can so as to not be a suspect of convenience or a target of opportunity.
And you absolutely shouldn't disrespect or disobey a direct order from the police.
And you should NEVER get into a physical altercation with the police.
And you should absolutely not punch a cop or push him back into his car while he is on duty and armed.
You are suicidally stupid if you do.
Too stupid to live.
And IF Big Mike did these things then Michael Brown should be considered a Darwin Award contender.
Without autopsy or investigation results......he did X/Y/Z. Your country may be different, but in the United States, there is a CONSTITUTION, one is presumed innocent until proven guilty, it may be an inconvienence during your stay.
So is that "perception" based on current reality or emotional disturbance? Where is the current evidence that police routinely harass minorities who "live on the 'right' side of the law?" Why are the only examples young black thugs? Why do we canonize them?
historical and current reality. Lots of studies and statistics on the harrassment of minorities while they are about their lawful business are available. The literature is extensive and undeniable. Prejudicial action against people of color can be driven by even the mildest forms of unconscious racism. It is not just "young black thugs" who experience this. Did you read my comment on Clarence Thomas? His autobiography has a number of examples of times he experienced this kind of prejudiced behavior simply because he was Black.
Where is the current evidence that police routinely harass minorities who "live on the 'right' side of the law?" Why is this not covered by the media? Sorry, "lots of studies" doesn't cut it. Can you give me some current examples? How long are you going to live in the past?
A February 2009 study of traffic stops and searches in West Virginia found a similar pattern of racial profiling. The data reveal that African-American motorists were 1.64 times more likely to be stopped than White drivers. Hispanics were 1.48 times more likely to be stopped. After the traffic stop, non-Whites were more likely to be arrested, yet police in West Virginia obtained a significantly higher contraband hit rate for White drivers than minorities.24
In Minnesota, a statewide study of racial profiling during 2002 found that African-American, Hispanic, and Native American drivers were all stopped and searched more often than Whites, yet contraband was found more frequently in searches of White drivers cars. Had all drivers been stopped at the same rates in the 65 local jurisdictions reporting data, 22,500 more Whites would have been stopped, while 18,800 fewer African Americans and 5,800 fewer Hispanics would have been stopped.25
In Illinois, data collected after the 2003 passage of the Illinois Traffic Stops Statistics Act, sponsored by then-Illinois State Senator Barack Obama, shows similar patterns of racial profiling by law enforcement authorities. The number of consent searches after traffic stops of African-American and Hispanic motorists was more than double that of Whites. The consent searches found White motorists were twice as likely to have contraband.26
A 2005 study analyzing data gathered statewide in Texas reveals disproportionate traffic stops and searches of African Americans and Hispanics, even though law enforcement authorities were more likely to find contraband on Whites.27
A study in Arizona shows that during 2006-2007, the state highway patrol was significantly more likely to stop African Americans and Hispanics than Whites on all the highways studied, while Native Americans and persons of Middle Eastern descent were more likely to be stopped on nearly all the highways studied. The highway patrol was 3.5 times more likely to search a stopped Native American than a White, and 2.5 times more likely to search a stopped African American or Hispanic.2
Home > Publications > Reports > Restoring a National Consensus > The Reality of Racial Profiling
The Reality of Racial Profiling
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The U.S. Supreme Court has held that racial profiling violates the constitutional requirement that all persons be accorded equal protection of the law.19 The "Guidance Regarding the Use of Race By Federal Law Enforcement Agencies" that was issued by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2003 states:
"Racial profiling" at its core concerns the invidious use of race or ethnicity as a criterion in conducting stops, searches and other law enforcement investigative procedures. It is premised on the erroneous assumption that any particular individual of one race or ethnicity is more likely to engage in misconduct than any particular individual of another race or ethnicity.
Racial profiling in law enforcement is not merely wrong, but also ineffective. Race-based assumptions in law enforcement perpetuate negative racial stereotypes that are harmful to our rich and diverse democracy, and materially impair our efforts to maintain a fair and just society.20
Notwithstanding the fact that racial profiling is unconstitutional, and despite the emphatic declaration from the federal government that the practice is "invidious," "wrong," "ineffective," and "harmful to our rich and diverse democracy," quantitative and qualitative evidence collected at the federal, state, and local levels confirms that racial profiling persists. Moreover, as the evidence also shows, racial profiling is often encouraged by misguided federal programs and policies that incentivize law enforcement authorities to engage in the practice.
In this section of the report, we consider the use of racial profiling in each of the three contexts referenced above, i.e., street-level crime, counterterrorism, and immigration law enforcement. To be sure, this breakdown is to some extent artificial, and there are obvious points of overlap among the contextsas, for example, when Hispanics who are targeted by law enforcement authorities for engaging in drug trafficking or other street-level crimes are also profiled as suspected undocumented immigrants, or when Arabs or Muslims who are targeted as potential terrorists are also questioned about whether they are in the country without authorization. Despite these and other points of overlap, it is helpful to discuss racial profiling in each of the three contexts separately inasmuch as this allows for a more context-specific analysis.
A. Street-Level Crime
Empirical evidence confirms the existence of racial profiling on America's roadways. At the national level, the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that for the year 2005, the most recent data available, "[p]olice actions taken during a traffic stop were not uniform across racial and ethnic categories." "Black drivers (4.5%) were twice as likely as White drivers (2.1%) to be arrested during a traffic stop, while Hispanic drivers (65%) were more likely than White (56.2%) or Black (55.8%) drivers to receive a ticket. In addition, Whites (9.7%) were more likely than Hispanics (5.9%) to receive a written warning, while Whites (18.6%) were more likely than Blacks (13.7%) to be verbally warned by police." When it came to searching minority motorists after a traffic stop, "Black (9.5%) and Hispanic (8.8%) motorists stopped by police were searched at higher rates than Whites (3.6%)." The "likelihood of experiencing a search did not change for Whites, Blacks, or Hispanics from 2002 to 2005."21
Quantitative evidence reported in several states confirms this nationwide data:
A study in Arizona shows that during 2006-2007, the state highway patrol was significantly more likely to stop African Americans and Hispanics than Whites on all the highways studied, while Native Americans and persons of Middle Eastern descent were more likely to be stopped on nearly all the highways studied. The highway patrol was 3.5 times more likely to search a stopped Native American than a White, and 2.5 times more likely to search a stopped African American or Hispanic.22
The Arizona study also shows that racial profiling is counterproductive and a misallocation of scarce law enforcement resources. Although Native Americans, Hispanics, Middle Easterners, and Asians were far more likely to be stopped and searched than Whites on Arizona's highways, Whites who were searched were more likely to be transporting drugs, guns, or other contraband. While African Americans were twice as likely as Whites to be stopped and searched, the rates of contraband seizures for the two groups were comparable.23
A February 2009 study of traffic stops and searches in West Virginia found a similar pattern of racial profiling. The data reveal that African-American motorists were 1.64 times more likely to be stopped than White drivers. Hispanics were 1.48 times more likely to be stopped. After the traffic stop, non-Whites were more likely to be arrested, yet police in West Virginia obtained a significantly higher contraband hit rate for White drivers than minorities.24
In Minnesota, a statewide study of racial profiling during 2002 found that African-American, Hispanic, and Native American drivers were all stopped and searched more often than Whites, yet contraband was found more frequently in searches of White drivers cars. Had all drivers been stopped at the same rates in the 65 local jurisdictions reporting data, 22,500 more Whites would have been stopped, while 18,800 fewer African Americans and 5,800 fewer Hispanics would have been stopped.25
In Illinois, data collected after the 2003 passage of the Illinois Traffic Stops Statistics Act, sponsored by then-Illinois State Senator Barack Obama, shows similar patterns of racial profiling by law enforcement authorities. The number of consent searches after traffic stops of African-American and Hispanic motorists was more than double that of Whites. The consent searches found White motorists were twice as likely to have contraband.26
A 2005 study analyzing data gathered statewide in Texas reveals disproportionate traffic stops and searches of African Americans and Hispanics, even though law enforcement authorities were more likely to find contraband on Whites.27
At the local level, studies of data collected in Sacramento County, California,28 and DuPage County, Illinois,29 also report disproportionate traffic stops and searches of African Americans and Hispanics.
Although the foregoing studies confirm the reality of the "Driving While Black or Brown" phenomenon, statistical analysis does not reflect the human cost of racial profiling. For that purpose, we offer the following examples:
In Newark, New Jersey, on the night of June 14, 2008, two youths aged 15 and 13 were riding in a car driven by their football coach, Kelvin Lamar James. All were African American. Newark police officers stopped their car in the rain, pulled the three out, and held them at gunpoint while the car was searched. James stated that the search violated his rights. One officer replied in abusive language that the three African Americans didnt have rights and that the police "had no rules." The search of the car found no contraband, only football equipment.30
In May 2009, in Hinds County, Mississippi, Hiran Medina, a Hispanic, was pulled over for crossing the center line of the highway, one of several potentially subjective pretexts for "Driving While Black or Brown" traffic stops. Medina consented to the county deputy's request to search the vehicle. Upon discovering $5,000 in cash in the car, the deputy handcuffed Medina, seized the money, and issued Medina a forfeiture notice that would require Medina to sue the county for the return of the money within 30 days or forfeit the cash to the Sheriff's Department. Eventually, after much laughter on the scene among the gathered deputies, Medina was released but his cash was kept because, they claimed, it smelled of marijuana, even though no drugs were found in Medina's vehicle. Only after Medina retained the American Civil Liberties Union, which threatened a lawsuit, did he get his money back.31
Just as minority motorists are subject to racial profiling, so too are minority pedestrians. This is especially true following the adoption of community-based policing strategies that often provide street-level law enforcement authorities with wide discretion to "clean up" the communities they patrol. Professor Angela Davis has noted, "[t]he practical effect of this deference [to law enforcement discretion] is the assimilation of police officers' subjective beliefs, biases, hunches, and prejudices into law."32 As is the case in the "Driving while Black or Brown" motorist context, such discretion in the pedestrian context is often exercised to racially profile minorities who are perceived to pose a threat to public safety even if they have done nothing wrong. Harvard Law School Professor Charles Ogletree, who is African American, has stated, "If I'm dressed in a knit cap and hooded jacket, I'm probable cause."33 These anecdotal assessments are supported by statistical analysis.
In 2008, as the result of a discovery request in Floyd v. City of New York, a lawsuit filed against the New York City Police Department ("NYPD") alleging racial profiling and suspicion-less stops-and-frisks against law-abiding New York City residents,34 the Center for Constitutional Rights received and analyzed data collected by the NYPD for the years 2005 to mid-2008. The Center found that:
In 2005, the NYPD made fewer than 400,000 stops in comparison to a projected more than 500,000 stops in 2008. Over a period of three and one half years, the NYPD has initiated nearly 1.6 million stops of New Yorkers.
From 2005 to mid-2008, approximately 80 percent of total stops made were of Blacks and Latinos, who comprise 25 percent and 28 percent of New York Citys total population, respectively. During this same time period, only about 10 percent of stops were of Whites, who comprise 44 percent of the citys population.
From 2005 to mid-2008, Whites comprised 8 percent and Blacks comprised 85 percent of all individuals frisked by the NYPD. In addition, 34 percent of Whites stopped during this time period were frisked, while 50 percent of Blacks and Latinos stopped were frisked.
A significant number of stops resulted in the use of physical force by the NYPD. Of those stops, a disproportionate number of Blacks and Latinos had physical force used against them. Between 2005 and mid-2008, 17 percent of Whites, compared to 24 percent of Blacks and Latinos, had physical force used against them during NYPD-initiated encounters.
Of the cumulative number of stops made during the three and one-half year period, only 2.6 percent resulted in the discovery of a weapon or contraband. Although rates of contraband yield were minute across all racial groups, stops made of Whites proved to be slightly more likely to yield contraband.
Arrest and summons rates for persons stopped between 2005 and mid-2008 were low for all racial groups, with between 4 and 6 percent of all NYPD-initiated stops resulting in arrests and 6 and 7 percent resulting in summons being issued during this period.35
