Surprising New Evidence Shows Bias in Police Use of Force but Not in Shootings

[Islam Imamate]

Cliffs

• Study finds higher likelihood of blacks being subject to non-lethal force by police officers but not lethal force

A new study confirms that black men and women are treated differently in the hands of law enforcement. They are more likely to be touched, handcuffed, pushed to the ground or pepper-sprayed by a police officer, even after accounting for how, where and when they encounter the police.

But when it comes to the most lethal form of force — police shootings — the study finds no racial bias.

“It is the most surprising result of my career,” said Roland G. Fryer Jr., the author of the study and a professor of economics at Harvard. The study examined more than 1,000 shootings in 10 major police departments, in Texas, Florida and California.

The result contradicts the image of police shootings that many Americans hold after the killings (some captured on video) of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.; Tamir Rice in Cleveland; Walter Scott in South Carolina; Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, La.; and Philando Castile in Minnesota.

Mr. Fryer wonders if the divide between lethal force — where he did not find racial disparities — and nonlethal force — where he did — might be related to costs. Officers face costs, legal and psychological, when they unnecessarily fire their guns. But excessive use of lesser force is rarely tracked or punished. “No officer has ever told me that putting their hands on inner-city youth is a life-changing event,” he said.

I didn't see a thread on this and I thought it would be a more interesting angle to discuss this issue from since its centered around some hard data and larger trends in addition to the seemingly counter-intuitive finding concerning police shootings.

EDIT: Forgot to include link
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/12/u...e-use-of-force-but-not-in-shootings.html?_r=1

 

[in the]

Live CNN stream about race relations.

 

[Greoric]

So the implicit bias line is legitimate, but the line about AAs being slaughtered because they're black is nonsense.

 

[thebluerider]

Makes sense to me

 

[Islam Imamate]

So the implicit bias line is legitimate, but the line about AAs being slaughtered because they're black is nonsense.

According to this study, yes. Its important to remember this study examines the situation after the police has decided to stop a civilian and to keep in mind the possibility that blacks are more likely to be stopped by police. The author addresses this in a different article where he takes questions

Mr. Fryer: I agree that blacks are more likely to be stopped, more likely to be harassed and more likely to be arrested.

Ideally we would be able to set up an experiment to understand potential differences before an encounter. Unfortunately, that would require us to randomly assign civilian race in encounters of police, which isn’t possible!

Given this limitation, we need to make the best out of available data. There are two important things I want to note:

1. The types of encounters that lead to police shootings in the videos that we have all seen are not the most common that actually occur in the data. In Houston, for instance, most of the officer-involved shootings come from calls for service resulting from burglaries or violent crimes, not from chasing down people with broken taillights.

2. I totally agree that deciding who to stop in a police stop is highly problematic and there certainly may be racial bias in that decision. So let’s think about the officer-involved shootings in which there’s a robbery in progress or a violent crime. Those are less likely to be plagued by selection bias in the decision of who to harass or stop. Analyzing only those cases yields similar results. Moreover, when we analyze only cases in which the officer-involved shooting began with a routine stop or a traffic stop, we do not find bias. But these results are susceptible to your point that there’s more traffic stops of blacks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/13/u...r-questions-about-his-police-force-study.html

 

[in the]

According to this study, yes. Its important to remember this study examines the situation after the police has decided to stop a civilian and to keep in mind the possibility that blacks are more likely to be stopped by police. The author addresses this in a different article where he takes questions

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/13/u...r-questions-about-his-police-force-study.html

I think black people get pulled over too much for shady reasons. I've had too many black friends tell me how they were busted for DWB. I don't think they're all lying. Stopping that practice would go a long way.

I hate being pulled over, I would hate it with even greater fury if it was just because of my skin color.

 

[Devout Pessimist]

 

[SomebodyElse]

For anyone involved in Economics or academia, please read the paper rather the article. He clearly has a bias that rivals the sort one encounters with the "intelligent design" offerings. Before even reaching the Introduction, we are greeted with:
“We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.” Martin Luther King, Jr., August 28, 1963.

The paper has NOT been peer-reviewed.

The categories the author identified as having "bias" have different sources than the categories that do not show "bias". Specifically, he cites Stop-and-Frisk (NY city only), which did not require officers to report anything unless force was used, and the Police-Contact Survey ... a self-selected, self-reported survey. (see page 9, Section B)

Ex. "Panel B describes self-reported civilian behavior. According to the all PPCS survey respondents, almost no civilians disobey police orders, try to get away, resist, argue or threaten officers."

In other words, he establishes how police treated people by simply taking the word of those who bothered to respond. He also admits much of the data lacked necessary context for his conclusions and claims, but decided to distribute the results he had across the potential variables as he saw fit. The details of his method of statistical estimation are complex and frankly beyond discussion for the general public.

He openly admits the sources he is working with are insufficient, but that does not stop him from drawing firm conclusions and making confident claims.

Horrible, and would be mocked in academia in most any pursuit outside of race issues.


Link to the actual paper:
http://www.nber.org/papers/w22399.pdf

 

[SomebodyElse]

I think black people get pulled over too much for shady reasons. I've had too many black friends tell me how they were busted for DWB. I don't think they're all lying.

They don't have to be lying, but unless they have the ability to read minds, they are just guessing at motivation.

That's the fundamental problem with Racism and associated accusations, right? They are impossible to prove, and they are impossible to disprove.

 

[MMA IAN]

No surprise to the people who look at the stats instead of the news

 

[lookslikeseen]

I think black people get pulled over too much for shady reasons. I've had too many black friends tell me how they were busted for DWB. I don't think they're all lying. Stopping that practice would go a long way.

I hate being pulled over, I would hate it with even greater fury if it was just because of my skin color.

I think it's more likely that they either broke a minor traffic law without realizing it, or left out the part where they broke a minor traffic law. The "if I were white, he wouldn't have even pulled me over for something little like rolling through a stop sign" defense.

Maybe I'm just naive, but that just seems much more plausible.

 

[DoomPatrol]

They only examined 10 police departments, which are probably the ones most likely to be more fair. It's these smaller departments in the middle of nowhere that seem to be fucking up the most. I would like to see a study on those, because 10 departments is hardy representative of the whole.

That said, there was another police shooting that's coming to light out of Frenso. Police pulled over a truck, and a man walked towards them with a hand behind his back. Eventually they shot him without him ever presenting a weapon. Of course he was found to be unarmed after they murdered him.

This shit needs to fucking stop. I'm so sick and tired of hearing news like this. I don't understand how police can have looser regulations for deadly force than I did in Iraq. It's absolutely insane. Just because someone is non-compliant doesn't mean you can kill them. Just because you can't see someone's hand doesn't mean you can kill them. You need positive identification of a deadly threat or deadly intent before you discharge your weapon. Otherwise it's fucking murder.

Police keep doing shit like this and they wonder why the citizens don't support the departments. If police stopped killing our friends and family then blaming it on them, maybe they would have the support out society. This shit is crazy.

 

[Gref]

They only examined 10 police departments, which are probably the ones most likely to be more fair. It's these smaller departments in the middle of nowhere that seem to be fucking up the most. I would like to see a study on those, because 10 departments is hardy representative of the whole.

That said, there was another police shooting that's coming to light out of Frenso. Police pulled over a truck, and a man walked towards them with a hand behind his back. Eventually they shot him without him ever presenting a weapon. Of course he was found to be unarmed after they murdered him.

This shit needs to fucking stop. I'm so sick and tired of hearing news like this. I don't understand how police can have looser regulations for deadly force than I did in Iraq. It's absolutely insane. Just because someone is non-compliant doesn't mean you can kill them. Just because you can't see someone's hand doesn't mean you can kill them. You need positive identification of a deadly threat or deadly intent before you discharge your weapon. Otherwise it's fucking murder.

Police keep doing shit like this and they wonder why the citizens don't support the departments. If police stopped killing our friends and family then blaming it on them, maybe they would have the support out society. This shit is crazy.

That guy is definitely taking home the Darwin Award this year. "I know, I'll defy orders and continue to approach officers who's guns are drawn despite the fact that it's in my best interest not to."

 

[thebluerider]

that guy wanted to get shot

 

[Islam Imamate]

I think black people get pulled over too much for shady reasons. I've had too many black friends tell me how they were busted for DWB. I don't think they're all lying. Stopping that practice would go a long way.

I hate being pulled over, I would hate it with even greater fury if it was just because of my skin color.

The problem is that you're trying to undo a what is many times an unconscious bias. Many of the officers who pull people for DWB probably don't consciously do it because of race. Its likely consciously rationalized as targeting a suspicious person, not a black person.

I think it's more likely that they either broke a minor traffic law without realizing it, or left out the part where they broke a minor traffic law. The "if I were white, he wouldn't have even pulled me over for something little like rolling through a stop sign" defense.

Maybe I'm just naive, but that just seems much more plausible.

Well you do make a good point but with how many complaints there are you have to figure they're not all false positives. My brother had some friends pulled over by a cop who basically admitted race was part of the reason he pulled them over. One of them was a redneck guy with a Confederate flag on his car and the other a black guy with baggy pants and a gold chain. The officer pulled them over, searched hem, and when he found nothing he told them he pulled them over because he only ever sees two guys like them together for drug deals.

A friend of mine told me a similar story. I can believe it because he told me he knew the hiding spot the cop used to catch people speeding and intentionally slowed down to avoid getting pulled but still got pulled over for speeding and he was searched. To be fair he did tell me nothing like that happened again after he shaved his afro, got a new car, and put a bunch of anime paraphernalia in his car to make him seem less threatening. That combined with the fact he's already light skinned probably makes him a lot less likely to be profiled.

 

[DoomPatrol]

That guy is definitely taking home the Darwin Award this year. "I know, I'll defy orders and continue to approach officers who's guns are drawn despite the fact that it's in my best interest not to."

Anyone who fights with police officers is clearly a fucking moron. That said, the fact that police are shooting people with lower requirements than the military in war has is a real problem. If you're too pussy to handle a little risk at the expense of protecting citizens, then you have no business being a police officer. It's that simple. We got a bunch of scared ass ducks running around in uniform shooting everything that makes them pucker their little anus.

 

[panamaican]

Yeah, I saw this earlier this week. It kind of underscores both sides points at the same time. Blacks might not get shot at an unreasonable pace but the scale of negative police interactions are much greater for them. Now, there's a reasonable argument that getting unjustly shot is the much more negative experience but that's juxtaposed by the fact that non-shooting interactions are much more common.

Will be interesting to see if gets data from additional police departments since his study only involved departments that voluntarily complied. Which always raises the possibility that they complied because they had more positive statistics to report and the departments with bad stats chose not to open themselves up to study.

Still, it's decent research.

 

[Greoric]

Yeah, I saw this earlier this week. It kind of underscores both sides points at the same time. Blacks might not get shot at an unreasonable pace but the scale of negative police interactions are much greater for them. Now, there's a reasonable argument that getting unjustly shot is the much more negative experience but that's juxtaposed by the fact that non-shooting interactions are much more common.

Will be interesting to see if gets data from additional police departments since his study only involved departments that voluntarily complied. Which always raises the possibility that they complied because they had more positive statistics to report and the departments with bad stats chose not to open themselves up to study.

Still, it's decent research.

That's hardly a bad trade off. Would you rather be harassed or dead?

 

[method115]

They don't have to be lying, but unless they have the ability to read minds, they are just guessing at motivation.

That's the fundamental problem with Racism and associated accusations, right? They are impossible to prove, and they are impossible to disprove.

This is true but honestly I don't really have to much of a problem with cops and racism and targeting blacks cause I think honestly they are just targeting poor neighborhoods and well blacks/Hispanics tend to make up the bulk to the population in places like that. The way cops are treating citizens in general is flat out wrong and needs to be changed a cop got off killing a 12 year old white boy who answered the door with a wii remote when the cops knocked on the door. The cop got off with no charges. How in the fuck does that happen?

Then you have the stop and frisk shit. I saw an interview where the cop said the sergeant was literally telling them to go out and harass the community. Also how they purposely try and rile people up so they can get more charges on them. If you try and not participate in that stuff? You'll be sent to the really bad places all alone at night. It needs to stop and if it doesn't they will keep pushing this further and further and things like what happened in Dallas will only be more common. Honestly though when I heard that the seargent was telling them to go harass the citizens it made me wonder if that's the whole point. Maybe it's what they want to get everybody angry for some sort of bigger agenda. Either that or they are just so damn greedy for the money they get from tickets that they are willing to go this far to get it and don't care about the consequences.

 

[Gref]

Anyone who fights with police officers is clearly a fucking moron. That said, the fact that police are shooting people with lower requirements than the military in war has is a real problem. If you're too pussy to handle a little risk at the expense of protecting citizens, then you have no business being a police officer. It's that simple. We got a bunch of scared ass ducks running around in uniform shooting everything that makes them pucker their little anus.

Believe me, I wish every officer had the capacity to conduct themselves like this guy:

Spoiler