> It's not philosophical, it's the law.

All of these are considered crimes in all jurisdictions I know of in the USA: theft/burglary/robbery, violence or threat thereof, and reckless endangerment. If you commit one of those acts, you have definitionally committed a crime, even if you are not convicted in a court of law.

> dismisses the overwhelmingly higher rates of arrests for non whites as not being a systemic racism issue

I encourage you to re-read what I wrote, because that isn't what I said.

My post raises a question of causality. There are several common proposals for why arrest rates for blacks are disproportionately high:

1. Police are racist, so they arrest black people at higher rates than other people, regardless of criminality.

2. Criminal law is written specifically to target black people.

3. Black people, due to systemic racism elsewhere in society, end up committing more acts-that-are-legally-defined-as-crimes, and this eventually leads to a greater number of arrests.

4. Actual racist ideology, which is generally vile and I will not repeat it here.

The reality is probably a combination of explanations 1-3, and there is surely mutual causality among them.

Any serious attempt to understand the problem must attempt to disentangle these explanations from each other.

> assumes that white people commit fewer crimes with no data to back it up

I said that we specifically don't have good data, but it's not safe to assume that all demographics commit crimes at the same rate. See above.

> Sorry but that is gaslighting and victim blaming. Tell the parent of a black teenager to not be overly fixated on police reform.

This is a bad faith misrepresentation of what I wrote.

If anything, the media getting stuff kinda-wrong but still raising awareness is a net positive.

Also it should be obvious that police reform is necessary, and obviously people will care the most about the issues that affect them personally.

Moreover, nothing ever seems to get done without single-minded people focusing intently on a single problem. We need people working on all aspects of the racism issue, including racism in policing and law.

But you simply cannot look at the arrest numbers and assume that the discrepancy is definitely and entirely because of police racism. It would be fallacious to do so, and if you intend to put forth policy based on data then you should try to avoid logical fallacies in the process.

Indeed, "arrest records is a red herring" basically yes - but it depends on the community and the time frame. Look at new york city in the various time periods - sometimes lots of arrests equal more votes for politicians / DAs.. different time period, same place.. lower arrests equal higher property values. I've seen similar in other places around the US.. my point is that there is always lots of crime, the amount of arrests have to do more with local politics than anything else, however in many cases those local politics are pushed by the local community - if a predominantly black area has lots of black arrests - normally it's (at least a portion) of the community is asking for cracking down on crime.

So I think it's not fair to paint 'cops' as letting "X peeps" go across the whole country and stats.. just as it's not fair to say "Y peeps" are committing more crime.. I agree stats do not reflect actual crimes committed - it more shows the local areas tolerance for types of crimes. Which why the opposing view about 420 parties and such you mention is not a good opposing view - it's a local thing. Comparing the arrests in Chicago to tolerance for non-violent smoking in Colorado does not show apples to apples.

Those different communities are pressuring politicians differently. Often times a crackdown on arrests for minor things in a 'broken windows' community is done to prevent other crime not the petty stepping stones that are reflected in arrest stats.

When you say "redirect attention to your initial suggestion that higher arrest rates of minorities is indicative of higher crime rates among those folks" - I think you are thinking of a comment made by someone else, don't think I was inferring that.

Hey, I am with you on the unequal law is bullshit - and I've been advocating for changes in policing for some years now. Unfortunately the climate for discussions on this have the country so divided by arguments with race that it's hard to really get all citizens together for true change.

Why is breck mostly white telling? it's the only example I am aware of that did that decades ago - I think if we take the race out of the equation we can have some better discussions about cities VS state on issues like this - we are having large battles in states vs cities with all sorts of important issues these days. The atlantic had an article about this not too long ago. I've watched many city vs state things biol the past several years - it's interesting, and I hope it leads to more people paying attention to state elections and legislatures!

If you want to focus on the 'communities of color' not getting similar policing - there could be interesting answers to questions around that - but they may not fit the narrative that is popular right now.

In the cities I have experienced lots of blue lights, there are lots of requests from residents to police. It appears to me that things like gun shots bring more cops, assaults on citizens and such bring them out, fighting for territory beings them. If no one called the cops they would rather be eating donuts somewhere I am sure.

I know this can vary locale to locale, but I think in general in most places around the US, harder policing is brought by request, and more is brought by increased violence.

Now - the time period that bloomberg had his "stop and frisk" - that huge unconstitutional violation of rights for years - I will march with you that the disproportionate results of that crap appear to be focused on mostly minorities - and even if they try to say the results justified the means - I disagree and could not believe we had that going on in this country.

Even then - look at the country, it's a very big place, and bloomberg's persecution is a small blip on the map by square miles - so most of the country is not doing that kind of thing the past 50 years.

I am glad writing "because most of the residents are white and they have decided they don't like those laws." sounds absurd, because it is - the local community there wrote laws to stop the local police from coming down on weed smokers / sellers.. they did not get a pass from the state and feds, but they also did not have multiple shootings every week over it - which would of brought pressure to crack down on things.

Truth is - many 'communities of color' have been asking for strong policing, because they have been hotbeds of violence and don't like it. I do not say this to be divisive by color - I've noticed a big shift since we occupied Afganastan in more 'communities of whites' having had increases in lifestyle changes that have had a large increase in request for more hard core policing in their neighborhoods.

I wish we would take white black and all that out of these discussions and get more to citizens expect X types of service from the men and women (and whatever other pronouns) in blue..

we should all at least get the protections listed in the bill or rights.

Sadly I have seen recently many asking cops for more intrusions into people's lives and property to stop 'assumed crime' - and this is about white people.. It's like the citizens around here don't even know what the bill of rights says.

I assure you this is an American citizen VS the state thing - much more than it's a white vs black thing - in most of the country, most of the time.