And why isn't prevalence of guns factored in as well?
> County-level race-specific crime rates (1. aggravated assault, and 2. weapons possession)?
So they are categorizing weapons possession into race-specific crime rates.
> There is no relationship between county-level racial bias in police shootings and crime rates (even race-specific crime rates)
Which is to say crimes related to weapons possession does not correlate with racial bias.
I'm not seeing why ratio is important compared to magnitude. There is certainly a relationship between number of armed suspect shootings and number of unarmed suspect shootings but it is not clear what that relationship is. It can't be a constant, that just doesn't fit human threat response. Rather, I would expect that the higher the armed suspect shootings (numerator) in an area, the smaller the ratio, meaning that nonproportionately more unarmed suspects are shot as a direct result of a large number of armed suspect shootings. But if that's the case, that will increase the likelihood of unarmed suspect shootings without there being any necessary racial bias. A smaller ratio just reflects a larger denominator increase due to numerator.
If we have equal numerators for each race, but the denominator differs, than that seems like a clear indication of racial bias. But if the numerators are different at all, that potentially reflects an entirely different police interaction dynamic. The expectation that one race is more likely to be armed than another race is, strictly speaking, a racial bias but could also be a rational bias based on encounters rather than prejudice.
What are the numerators? This whole issue may be of course be misguided but I'm simply unable to find the actual numbers from the paper.
Why not? This works great in other countries...
I'm Norwegian and I live in the UK, and while I think the US would have been in a much better place if the US had followed a similar policy a long time ago ("US conditions" is a standing term in Norwegian politics used to scare voters - almost nobody wants "US conditions" in almost any context), I still think the US would find it extremely hard to introduce such a policy now.
It works in Norway and the UK for a number of reasons:
* Low sentences for crimes without weapons combined with huge additional sentences if using a weapon. E.g. you could easily get 4-5 years for participation in a relatively serious robbery, but risk tacking on up to 10 extra for an armed robbery.
* Criminals rarely risk meeting armed resistance. Lots of people have weapons, but the weapons law requires weapons to be stored locked down in an inoperable state (so detach a part and lock it down in a different location).
* Criminals know very well that if they are reported to be likely to be armed, they will face a large manhunt with armed police, while if they don't carry a weapon anyone coming after them will be hunting them without firarms.
The problem with introducing this elsewhere is that you have an existing situation where criminals have a strong incentive to arms themselves, which in turn maintains a strong incentive for other people and police to be armed. Changing that around without the risk of a lot of harm in the process would be incredibly challenging.
And I advocate for police not carying guns. They don't need them. No one else in society needs them during normal interactions. They should be reserved for the swat team and only used for that level of situation. A regular police officer's only job should be to give tickets and directions - and those interactions don't seem very dangerous.