Topic: USA Politics (redux)

[coffee]

     I think it has to do with encounters with the police in inherently stressful situations, not crime in general. I would have to look deeper at the kind of situations where police are likely to shoot, justified or not. Based only on media reports alone, I surmise that "shot while holding a sandwich" is rarer for whites. I don't think racism explains all of it, but the history of policing suggest that officers have an ingrained fear of black suspects that is prevalent among officers of all races. This has to do with the neighborhoods where the possibility of violent confrontations is rationally deemed to be higher than average.

     The question might be better resolved by asking why so few white suspects invoke a fear response in police officers. If you only normalize for neighborhood crime rates I still think there's a disparity in, say, "shot while running away". But I do think we need a finer grained breakdown of the circumstances of cases.

I have heard that in training-style simulations the general population of [white?] Americans shoot black suspects even more disproportionately than the police do. I don't mean that the police don't have a problem -- they do, if only because a police force needs to be perceived as legitimate by the population they're policing -- but I do suspect that the problem is much deeper and broader than policing, it's just that policing is where the rub hurts the most.

[fbjim]

Well fear seems to be the watchword for police generally. You saw that in Uvalde, but more generally the liberal use of deadly force speaks to a mindset that one's life is in danger at all times.


I understand that policing is an inherently dangerous job (though not excessively so) but the culture seems to be a fear-based "shoot first" one, to the extent that Stephen Mader, a police officer in West Virginia talked a suicide-by-cop down, and was rewarded by being branded a "coward" by his fellow officers (despite not using lethal force seemingly being the more courageous option) and being fired.


Contrast that with Uvalde where a police department who were facing a situation where they had no control and no option to pre-emptively shoot first suddenly froze up.

[Todd]

I understand that policing is an inherently dangerous job (though not excessively so)

What does "not excessively so" mean, and is your definition objective?  I believe BLS data shows a fatality rate about four times higher than the average worker, though more dangerous professions like logger and commercial fisherman are much higher. 

[DizzyD]

     ...Based only on media reports alone, I surmise that "shot while holding a sandwich" is rarer for whites. ...

Except as usefulness for politically divisive rhetoric, I would say that's fairly rare for all groups. If that does happen to a white it's probably not going to get quite the same media coverage either.

 

    The question might be better resolved by asking why so few white suspects invoke a fear response in police officers. ...

Unless you're a police officer and work closely with them I don't know how you can say that they don't. Suspects are probably somewhat scary regardless.

...
Contrast that with Uvalde where a police department who were facing a situation where they had no control and no option to pre-emptively shoot first suddenly froze up.

That's b.s. This is similar to those deputies hiding in the bushes during the Parkland shooting.

Police responding to so-called active shooters have been trained for at least two decades to confront the assailants as soon as practical rather than wait for reinforcements, a practice that was developed amid countless mass killings across the US over the past two decades.

But instead of ordering officers to go in, Arredondo – who was on site at the school – reportedly had them wait while he called the city police force for reinforcements.

“We don’t have enough firepower right now,” Arredondo said, in part, according to a committee transcript of that call.

Arredondo also purportedly worried that the door to the classroom where the intruder was cornered had potentially been locked, and he couldn’t immediately track down its key. But the door was in fact not locked – and even if it was, officers had a “hooligan” tool that could pry locked doors open, according to the committee’s evidence.

Officers stormed the classroom 77 minutes into the attack and killed the gunman. But by then he had already murdered 21 and wounded 17 others.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/02/pete-arredondo-uvalde-school-district-police-chief-resign

By the way Mader was awarded a $175k settlement. And one of the Parkland dudes was reinstated with back pay.

[k a rl h e nn i ng]

Jennifer Rubin: And the insane lies coming from Republicans are not only about Trump. The active purveyors of the “big lie,” the vaccine deniers, the replacement theory provocateurs and the crowd that spun conspiracy theories about Ukraine when Trump was caught extorting its president are all either delusional or willing to pretend so. They are either hopelessly gullible or infinitely cynical.

[greg]

Nor probably did the media care enough to cover it thoroughly. Not enough potential for group vs group conflict.

Bingo.
Back a year or so ago, I shared a video of a cop outright murdering a white man when responding to a domestic disturbance call (IIRC he was yelling at a game, it might have been Crash Bandicoot) (full body cam). He thought the guy had a gun, but he didn't, so shot and killed him.
The story got local coverage (in Phoenix) but never got the extensive national coverage of George Floyd.
Because the USA is mostly anti-racist, people get more triggered when it's white cop vs. innocent black person. Which is reasonable to feel that way.
But the media purely capitalizes on this, airing the ragebait to get as much attention as possible. They could still show the George Floyd story but also show stories like that, evenly, but what exactly gives the media more attention?

Just look at the real numbers. Police brutality affects minorities much more.

Never said it didn't.

I, as a very white man with a top education could sweet talk myself out of bank robbery. A black Harvard professor famously got arrested for entering his own home.

Lol! I'd like to see you try.

All Lives Matter was invented to void BLM, it is a typical right wing snark, and you're lapping it up because it suits you. The whole 'concepts' thing is BS.

Any proof of that, outside of lefty sources?
If it's common to understand it as something more inclusive, then it isn't just something that right-wingers use.
Does this looks right wing to you? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Lives_Matter#/media/File:Defending_Portland_(34939466302)_(cropped).jpg
BLM could have avoided this problem by making their slogan "Black Lives Also Matter." BLAM.
But people don't know how to make good slogans.

Then you're wasting our time with a fear that is merely in your uninformed head.

Um, have you never heard of affirmative action? This has been discussed for many years now. Many people out there who want this.

I think you simply see a woman or black person doing a job and make assumptions about quotas without evidence.

Very typical unfounded leftist accusation that I've heard several times before. Yawn.

[drogulus]

Except as usefulness for politically divisive rhetoric, I would say that's fairly rare for all groups. If that does happen to a white it's probably not going to get quite the same media coverage either.

 Unless you're a police officer and work closely with them I don't know how you can say that they don't. Suspects are probably somewhat scary regardless.

     I think holding a sandwich or cellphone while shot gets coverage.

     I don't start a discussion of disparity by assuming there isn't one. It could be that whites don't get confronted by police in danger zones, or because they are less feared on average, or some of both.

[DizzyD]

     I think holding a sandwich or cellphone while shot gets coverage.

I haven't heard of very many incidents like that either way. It would be wrong regardless of the victim's color.
 

    I don't start a discussion of disparity by assuming there isn't one. It could be that whites don't get confronted by police in danger zones, or because they are less feared on average, or some of both.

The point is there's also a disparity concerning who might be in "danger zones". A commenter above mentioned the police shooting of a white guy in Phoenix. I looked it up, and it did happen. The guy's name was Ryan Whitaker. He did have a gun in his hand when he went to the door late at night after the cops knocked, but he put the gun down as soon as he realized they were cops. He was shot in the back and killed anyway. Incidentally that body cam footage is nightmare fuel.

I never heard about it until now. I'm sorry, but the media love to exacerbate racial ill-will. They just do. And those interracial instances are the ones that they will emphasize.

[geralmar]

Reading these posts recalls to mind when I was a kid in the 1950s learning to read by studying the Sunday Detroit newspaper.  One story I read so many times one Sunday after another that  I asked my father about it was the fleeing "negro" man killed when the policeman's "warning shot" hit the suspect in the back or back of the head.  (I asked why the police marksmanship was so bad it invariably resulted in the death of the fugitive. Also, why would a warning shot be fired AT someone?)  Of course newspapers no longer automatically identify suspects by race and police have abandoned  the "warning shot" so I  guess society is so much better now. 

[drogulus]

I haven't heard of very many incidents like that either way. It would be wrong regardless of the victim's color.

 The point is there's also a disparity concerning who might be in "danger zones". A commenter above mentioned the police shooting of a white guy in Phoenix. I looked it up, and it did happen. The guy's name was Ryan Whitaker. He did have a gun in his hand when he went to the door late at night after the cops knocked, but he put the gun down as soon as he realized they were cops. He was shot in the back and killed anyway.

I never heard about it until now. I'm sorry, but the media love to exacerbate racial ill-will. They just do. And those interracial instances are the ones that they will emphasize.

     If I wanted to exacerbate racial ill-will I could tell lies about how many black citizens are shot in questionable circumstances (holding something, running away etc.), or if I was really devious and ill-willed I could tell the truth about these incidents. I think the latter is safer and more effective. It might also be the case that media reports are usually cases of covering the crime and police beat, which everyone expects the media to do. I want to know if something disturbing like a shooting happens in my neighborhood, and I'm almost like a completely normal person.

[DizzyD]

     If I wanted to exacerbate racial ill-will I could tell lies about how many black citizens are shot in questionable circumstances (holding something, running away etc.), or if I was really devious and ill-willed I could tell the truth about these incidents. I think the latter is safer and more effective. It might also be the case that media reports are usually cases of covering the crime and police beat, which everyone expects the media to do. I want to know if something disturbing like a shooting happens in my neighborhood, and I'm almost like a completely normal person.

You wouldn't have to tell lies. You can concentrate almost exclusively on white-on-black instances which obscures the fact the cops kill alot of white people, too. It's everybody's problem.

[drogulus]

You wouldn't have to tell lies. You can concentrate almost exclusively on white-on-black instances which obscures the fact the cops kill alot of white people, too. It's everybody's problem.

     No, you would have to suppress the truth and that's lying. It does happen to whites, and it is more of a problem for others, and that is both what statistics show and what the media reports. Do they also sensationalize? That depends on how you view their tendency to cover the worst cases and the ones where police violence is most questionable.

     If I'm an editor I wouldn't think it was my job to run compensatory stories about police brutality against whites. I wouldn't fiddle with the proportions to make or refute a point. If that's sensational so be it.

[DizzyD]

     No, you would have to suppress the truth and that's lying. It does happen to whites, and it is more of a problem for others, and that is both what statistics show and what the media reports. Do they also sensationalize? That depends on how you view their tendency to cover the worst cases and the ones where police violence is most questionable.

     If I'm an editor I wouldn't think it was my job to run compensatory stories about police brutality against whites. I wouldn't fiddle with the proportions to make or refute a point. If that's sensational so be it.

It wouldn't be compensatory; it would be perspective. If your concern is the truth rather than shaping opinion or serving an agenda, you'll provide it.