U.S. Police Shootings: Breaking Down the Data by Race | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Police Shootings: Breaking Down the Data by Race

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Now is the time for us to start doing the hard work to make police accountability happen. Getting public records data accessible is a way to make good progress toward this.

450+ of us are working on a new project called the Police Data Accessibility project, aimed at making local court record data (which contains cop/department level data) accessible outside of clunky county court records websites. More info here: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/gr11aw/i_think_i_a...

Step one: Demilitarize the police.

Then who will the military sell its barely used equipment to in order to justify buying new and keeping the military-industrial complex going?

Or just train them like the military because the military has some actual discipline and internal accountability.

They already do train them like the military. In fact, since Obama, they've also been arming them as the military as well, not only with M4's and Barrett 50's, also with up armor MRAPS and hummers. That's not including other tactical wartime gear such as stingrays etc.

Train The cops as soldiers, don't be surprised when cops act as soldiers.

I realize that as we've been millennialing our military into occupying and policing, but make no mistake that's not what they're for. And it's the same issue with cops.

That's the whole problem! Police are to serve and protect the community. Instead they've become a paramilitary force in major cities where their job is now to serve, and protect the government and its institutions.

Are you going to cut their knees too? Because thats what started latest Minneapolis riots.

Is there any source for this data normalized per police interaction? Basically I want to know where in the process the issue starts. Are non-whites stopped/harassed more by the police so they get into more altercations that lead to shooting/death or are police just more likely to shoot non-whites? The difference makes a huge change at what level the issue should be addressed at.

Also comparing the rate of shooting to deaths would also be nice to see if there is an issue of care after a shootout.

"An Empirical Analysis of Racial Discreperences in Police Use of Force, Roland G. Fryer, Jr.m July 2017" [1]

This is by African American Harvard prof, and highly controversial because his research indicates there isn't actually that much racial disparity in policing.

I for one, believe it. Cops are mostly not aggressive, and cops are mostly not racist. But there's a wide bell curve on that - and some are racist, some are aggressive. Coupled with the fact there are 330M people, 1 Billion guns, areas of 'extreme violence' ... we're going to see bad situations on CNN every few months for a long while yet.

Fixing the 'bad cops' problem is important, but so is fixing the 'out of control crime' problem, which is probably much harder due to complex social root causes.

[1] https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/empirical_anal...

There is the problem. You can frame most cops as good but dealing with out of control crime, and you can frame most people as good, but dealing with out of control police, and both can be right. (Even through I actually believe both are probably wrong)

Worse, both can be right and events like recent ones can still be demonstrably unequivocally wrong inexcusable. It's almost like the statements of general trends are uncorrelated with the highest profile cases. Which is the problem.

True. And other 'problem' is 'facts' vs 'populism'.

I think what happened in Minnesota is outrageous, but probably not as indicative of systematic problems as some people might believe.

I don't think the 'cops are bad' narrative is healthy - BUT - it may be necessary to help fix the problem. Humans are lazy, we fear for our jobs, DA's may not react until there is political pressure and everyone is throwing everyone under the bus.

It's also worth remembering that almost every single measure of 'inequality' has been steadily improving over the last 30 years and our current 'race war conditions' may be really just a function of Twitter, Social Media, and ever more biased press on all sides, jockeying for clicks and attention.

I'll say to you what I end up saying to everyone who has this view, read the The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

I can guarantee that if you read that book and look at the data, you'll change your mind.

Believe me, it'll cover every single talking point you probably have.

You should probably read the actual paper. It doesn't disprove the current narrative. And in his paper he also states that blacks are 21.3% more likely to have force applied against them by the police than whites.

The data is kind of sloppy (the author admits) since it is nonuniform across many police departments. Also, it's the police reporting data on themselves about police racial discimination. Not exactly an unbiased source.

And finally he ends with this:

> movements such as Black Lives Matter should seek solutions within their own communities rather than changing the behaviors of police and other external forces

Which is kind of an insult that have identified a real problem for their community.

Your own data disputes your own argument.

First - you've unfairly cherry-picked a statement. Here is the full context: "Even when officers report civilians have been compliant and no arrest was made, blacks are 21.2 percent more likely to endure some form of force in an interaction. Yet, on the most extreme use of force – officer-involved shootings – we are unable to detect any racial differences in either the raw data or when accounting for controls."

So right there in the very same para as your 21% argument, you have the author indicating that for more extreme violence there is no difference in police treatment among races.

Literally he's saying that "Shootings of Black men due to racism is 'not a thing'"

Second - that in some instances police are actually more likely to 'lay hands on' African Americans, by 21% actually disproves the narrative that 'African Americans' are in prisons etc. mostly due to disproportionate violence by cops.

The data presented in the article in question shows that Blacks are 2.5x more likely to be 'shot' - which is 'extreme violence'.

From the research, this would suggest that African Americans are probably involved in crime or situations which 'getting shot' is the unfortunate outcome.

Even if you apply the '21% disparity' - which would be unfair because the research indicates that's only for 'low violence situations' - that still does not explain the 250% disparity among races. Not even close.

So yes - unfair policing exists, and it's a problem, but the much bigger problem seems to be the inherent amount of crime.

That's what the data is indicating:

+ No racial disparity in more violent situations + Racial disparity in less violent situations + Quite substantial differences in the amount of crime

That American cops are somewhat too aggressive is without doubt, that racist cops exist is without doubt, but the extent to which they are, and to the extent to which it's systematic or 'bad actors' and the extent to which affects actual criminal behaviour is in doubt. There is also no doubt there is deep social malaise in the African American community.

The 'popular narrative' seeks to lay the blame mostly on cops, which the data does not support, also, it seems to ignore the 'Elephant in the Room' subject of the vast amount of crime in the community, which is also unfair.

Most Americans want to improve the situation, I think that narratives that support the nuance reality are more helpful towards that end.

<pet-peeve-soapbox>"which the data does not support" should be "which the data do not support"; data is plural, does is singular.</>

Well said.

the data looks pretty reasonable IMO. It’s not as big of a difference as I would expect.

Also, noticeably missing asians, native american, middle eastern data.

Two and a half times as likely to be killed by police doesn't seem that bad to you?

If they're twice more likely to be committing crimes then it would explain it.

The ratio may align with the ratio of underling rates of crime and violence by ethnicity.

This means the 'root cause' of that 2.5x multiple may necessarily be 'cops are shooting blacks at an arbitrarily greater rate', rather, cops may very well be shooting criminals in a rate somewhat commensurate with necessity given rates of altercations.

Which would imply the 'cause' is one step away, i.e. whatever is 'causing' people of different groups to commit more or less crime.

This is the very obvious and problematic issue with reporting such a statistic without context, that even smart people will be utterly misled.

There are 330M Americans, a Billion guns, an inherently aggressive population, there's a 100% chance that people are going to die in awkward situations, it doesn't mean that there's a deeply racist police force.

Case and point: in this very Minnesota incident, one of the officers was White, one Black and one Asian (!!) this is a seriously 'Multicultural' gang of dudes that will be up on charges.

The argument was made back in the 1980s that 'mostly white cops' was the 'problem' in dealing with communities that didn't look like them, but in 2020 we actually have police forces that largely represent the people they police and yet we still have a lot of problems (though fewer).

Almost every story and every bit of data is 'taken out of context' it's almost as though the whole can of worms needs to be opened each time there is serious reporting.

The real question is "why is that?". Do blacks tend to get into more altercations with police, is it systemic racism, both?

Without further investigation, this graph can bait people into jumping to misinformed conclusions.

Furthermore, the site states: > black Americans account for less than 13 percent of the population but they are shot and killed by the police at a rate that’s over twice as high as for white Americans.

Yet they also account for over 50% of crimes in the U.S [0]. Like I said, ask questions, don't just look at a graph and raise pitchforks.

[0]: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

I didn't see the data that supports the "50% of crimes" statement.

Can you make it more obvious?

I saw whites are ~70% of arrests, and for violent crime arrests of a juvenile, blacks are 50%, but nothing like blacks commit 50% of crimes.

> Without further investigation, this graph can bait people into jumping to misinformed conclusions.

Likewise with the data you've linked. Submission of data to the UCR database is completely voluntary and does not represent an accurate picture of crime in the United States:

> "The totals provided in this table reflect only those persons arrested by law enforcement agencies that provided race information to the UCR Program; therefore, the totals may not match those shown in other arrest tables for the nation." [0]

> "It is incumbent upon all data users to become as well educated as possible about how to understand and quantify the nature and extent of crime in the United States and in any of the more than 17,000 jurisdictions represented by law enforcement contributors to the UCR Program. Valid assessments are possible only with careful study and analysis of the various unique conditions affecting each local law enforcement jurisdiction." [1]

I.e., you can't expect to get any kind of meaningful analysis by dumping a table of raw, incomplete data into a thread.

[0] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

[1] https://www.ucrdatatool.gov/ranking.cfm

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