Why do people think that police shoot black people for racist reasons?

IDL said:
There has been a large political and media backed promotion of said narrative. So much so that we even see people saying 'In America the cops are out hunting and killing black people', who aren't even American (they are in foreign countries consuming media)

The numbers don't back the narrative, but numbers are boring. A good controversial and emotion inducing narrative sells better.
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It's that + the history of blacks in this country as well. Let's not pretend blacks have never been treated unfairly by the police in this country. So it's not out of left field for them to believe it's still happening today.

I don't agree with it and I've had nothing but nice encounters with cops. In fact my white friends have had the worst experiences. Hell I had a white cop let me go when he flat out knew I was high as a fucking kite. I also had an ounce in my glove compartment.

Made up some excuse about how I just woke up (it was 3am) and was headed to the BM's house to give her diapers. He saw the car seat and diapers and said I was lucky he was headed to a house party to break it up and told me to go home.
 
panamaican said:
Which is exactly the crux of the problem. There have been several reports about how some police departments overly targeted the black communities they were policing so it's not just a Ferguson thing (Baltimore and San Francisco are 2 off the top of my head).

And while the Michael Brown's of the world aren't exemplary citizens, there are years of targeting that go unaddressed just because no one got killed or the killing didn't make national news.

And for people who are raising children in those environments, you have to prepare your children for that eventuality of treatment. Thus even if someone isn't a criminal and doesn't associate with criminals, they still have to think and parent as if the police will treat them and their children as criminals. Because failing to do so has large, irreversible consequences.
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I mentioned the FPD because I've read some of the report on it but I imagine there are similarities between it and the other PDs that target blacks; institutional incentives to target the citizenry(ticket and arrest quotas) combined with discretion leading to the disproportionate targeting of blacks which leads to their disproportionate incarceration which then reinforces the disproportionate targeting of blacks.
panamaican said:
And unfortunately we have knowledge that people will report crimes as being committed by black males even when they weren't (sometimes intentionally misreporting). Which will increase the amount of times that the stopped individuals will come away from with very negative impressions (because they were truly uninvolved), even if the police were just acting on someone else's statement.
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I remember that one lady who drowned her kids by leaving them in her car and rolling it into a lake initially blamed a young black male. That's a high profile case but how many lower profile ones see the same scapegoating of athletic and explosive youth?
 
Hey a Zim Zam/Tray Tray thread! Haven't had a good one of these in years.

I'm surprised nobodies talking about the black kid that kidnapped the elderly white couple, robbed them and raped the wife. Then broke into another house and executed a white father in front of his kids. Guess that's white privilege.
 
superpunch said:
African Americans are 13% of the population.

55% of murderers. 40% of cop killers. 42% of rapists. 60% of robbers.

But are only 28% of people shot by police.

Why is it a popular narrative that racist police shoot black people because they're black?
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These numbers do not exist in a vacuum and need 400 years of racist context to accurately depict police/Black relationships.

FWIW I'm convinced White arrestees are shot more often than Black arrestees due to the smaller town nature of White criminals (meaning more police on their own and less backup) and the lack of a White Al Sharpton (which would be nice actually) for them to worry about and second guess their shoots. Just my opinion...
 
Kafir-kun said:
I mentioned the FPD because I've read some of the report on it but I imagine there are similarities between it and the other PDs that target blacks; institutional incentives to target the citizenry(ticket and arrest quotas) combined with discretion leading to the disproportionate targeting of blacks which leads to their disproportionate incarceration which then reinforces the disproportionate targeting of blacks.

I remember that one lady who drowned her kids by leaving them in her car and rolling it into a lake initially blamed a young black male. That's a high profile case but how many lower profile ones see the same scapegoating of athletic and explosive youth?
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Pretty much. The part of this conversation that many people don't realize is just how often this stuff occurs before an example makes it into their local newspaper. If the police treat 1000 people negatively before 1 story makes the paper, the community still feels targeted for the prior 1000.

But for the people who only hear about the 1 story, they think that's the only instance and so disregard the true scale of events.

In this regard, the media have done those communities a tremendous disservice. They fill up their 6pm news with stories of minority criminals committing easily sensationalized crimes and completely skew the general populations perspective. So that when a story runs about police overstep, the populace already thinks of the community in terms of the preceding months/years of criminal stories.
 
Rod1 said:
There are 38 million blacks, there are around 15k murders a year in America, if blacks represent half of them thats 7.5k murders a year.

So only 0.01% of African Americans murder someone each year, lets multiply that by the working age of an African American (47 years).

Thats roughly 0.45% of African Americans who are murderers in a given lifetime.

Why do the 99.55% rest has to deal with police treating them like shit for that?
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I haven't looked into your stats or crunched your numbers but if what you're saying is correct - that 1 in 200 black people are murderers, that is an astonishingly high rate. I'm actually stunned.
 
method115 said:
It's that + the history of blacks in this country as well. Let's not pretend blacks have never been treated unfairly by the police in this country. So it's not out of left field for them to believe it's still happening today.

I don't agree with it and I've had nothing but nice encounters with cops. In fact my white friends have had the worst experiences. Hell I had a white cop let me go when he flat out knew I was high as a fucking kite. I also had an ounce in my glove compartment.

Made up some excuse about how I just woke up (it was 3am) and was headed to the BM's house to give her diapers. He saw the car seat and diapers and said I was lucky he was headed to a house party to break it up and told me to go home.
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Yeah I agree that there is a larger historical backdrop that makes the narrative more enticing, or plausible. And in addition to that it is also true that a higher number of black youth get involved with police, and that can be spun into any direction a narrative creator desires, using an incomplete picture.

It is easy to believe when it is being marketed in a certain way. It appeals to people at a certain level.

I think most people end up with a mix of good and bad interactions with police. I know from experience that one bad interaction sticks with you far more than 10 good interactions. If there are improvements to be made around the relationship between police and everyone else, I think pushing the 'cops are racist out hunting people' narrative just divides everyone and confuses things.
 
Hard To Tell said:
It's not just profiling though. When the police get a crime reported to them with a description and more often than not the perp is described as a black male, then they aren't going to be stopping little old white ladies just to even things out so as not to appear 'racist'.
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Well obviously that's not profiling, and that type of situation accounts for a small percentage of overall people who are stopped by the police. I don't think anyone would argue police should pull over white people if they are actively looking for a black suspect.
 
Rod1 said:
Fair enough.

I intented to say disproportionally being treated worse by the law.
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That's possible, I can't rule it out, I also don't see a lot of evidence for it. For obvious reasons, it's hard to put a number on it.
I think there are a couple of very 'simple' steps which should be taken in order to make an evaluation more straightforward.
The FBI should keep track of all sorts of police killings and every documented case of severe use of force by law enforcement officers, and collect+publish as many details as possible. To the best of my knowledge, they're not really doing that, which is a shame.
Every police officer should wear a body cam all the time.
We need to get rid of the idea that a police officer's subjective feeling of being in danger is somehow enough to justify the use of a deadly weapon. Misjudgements are unlawful killings.

I think this could largely be done without long debates and talk about 'difficult reforms' etc.
 
panamaican said:
I agree. The kid had stuff to get high - so what? Zimmerman had no idea that Martin liked to get high so it couldn't have influenced his engagement with Martin.

That comes from people who minimize Zimmerman's behavior after the fact, imo. Turn around and say "harsher penalties for marijuana possession" and many the same people will respond about how it's a non-violent drug and that we need to legalize it. The MJ thing just always struck me as hypocritical in this country, re: Martin. I'm sure some people really don't like people who smoke but even on this board most people seem to think it's benign.
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Except that even as a pot smoker, I would have at least thought it important to watch where he went afterwards. Drug activity is often detrimental to a neighborhood, brings crime, etc.

I lean heavily towards decriminalization.
 
Hard To Tell said:
Source?
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There are plenty of stories, Kafir-kun just referenced one where the woman, Susan Smith, drowned her kids and tried to pin it on some black assailant carjacking her. I included a link to the father who accused 5 teens of raping his daughter when he and she were actually engaged in consensual intercourse. There are no shortage of stories and, in any community, such stories will travel and inform how people respond to potential police engagements.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-park-prosecutors-say/?utm_term=.147461240c2c

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/06/us/a-woman-s-false-accusation-pains-many-blacks.html

Then there's this study that shows that black men are more likely to be falsely convicted of murder.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-...gly-convicted-of-murder-more-often-data-shows
 
Overpressure said:
Except that even as a pot smoker, I would have at least thought it important to watch where he went afterwards. Drug activity is often detrimental to a neighborhood, brings crime, etc.

I lean heavily towards decriminalization.
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See, I would read what you just wrote and say it's an argument not to decriminalize but that would be derailing this thread.
 
IDL said:
If there are improvements to be made around the relationship between police and everyone else, I think pushing the 'cops are racist out hunting people' narrative just divides everyone and confuses things.
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Couldn't agree more and one of the complaints I have with BLM. I've seen the stories of white kids\people being killed by cops unjustly I know it happens. One of my favorite stories was about a white teen who was killed and the dad used all the money he got + some of his own to change the laws so an outside agency investigates the police department.
 
panamaican said:
See, I would read what you just wrote and say it's an argument not to decriminalize but that would be derailing this thread.
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?
I fell off there.

There are good arguments for both continued and discontinued criminalization.
 
Gunny said:
I haven't looked into your stats or crunched your numbers but if what you're saying is correct - that 1 in 200 black people are murderers, that is an astonishingly high rate. I'm actually stunned.
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It works out to a yearly murder rate among black americans of 19 per 100k.

Its high, but not really that high compared to Central America or Detroit.
 
superpunch said:
African Americans are 13% of the population.

55% of murderers. 40% of cop killers. 42% of rapists. 60% of robbers.

But are only 28% of people shot by police.

Why is it a popular narrative that racist police shoot black people because they're black?
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If these numbers can be legitimately sourced then that's not only ridiculous but also pretty infuriating. Like seriously, what the hell
 
Overpressure said:
?
I fell off there.

There are good arguments for both continued and discontinued criminalization.
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It doesn't matter, if there's ever another mj thread and it's relevant, I bring it back up.
 
lecter said:
That's possible, I can't rule it out, I also don't see a lot of evidence for it. For obvious reasons, it's hard to put a number on it.
I think there are a couple of very 'simple' steps which should be taken in order to make an evaluation more straightforward.
The FBI should keep track of all sorts of police killings and every documented case of severe use of force by law enforcement officers, and collect+publish as many details as possible. To the best of my knowledge, they're not really doing that, which is a shame.
Every police officer should wear a body cam all the time.
We need to get rid of the idea that a police officer's subjective feeling of being in danger is somehow enough to justify the use of a deadly weapon. Misjudgements are unlawful killings.

I think this could largely be done without long debates and talk about 'difficult reforms' etc.
Click to expand...

I think bodycams would do more than enough to solve most of these issues.
 
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