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Comment by eyko | Hacker News Reader

The number of white armed men shot by police in 2019 was, according to the Washington Post database[1], between 388 and 398. The number of white unarmed men shot by police in 2019 was 26.

According to this source, the number of black unarmed men shot by police in 2019 was not 13, but 12. The number of armed black men shot by police was 240, possibly 241.

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic...

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This is why spouting stats to make a point is dangerous, murky water. Tread carefully.

Stats can give us quantitative views but give no opinion on the qualitative view.

I agree - interpretation is super important. The above is a good example; someone who isn’t paying attention might not take into account that there are 5-6x the number of white vs black people in the US, which puts a very different spin on the raw figures.

Then normalise for crime rates. Ah, the wonders of slicing and dicing a dataset.

Yes. And crime and poverty is related. Also, when more crime occur, police tend to congregate. So if police are pulling people over for minor traffic violations, and then discovering drugs, the 'crime' rate goes up. This then exacerbates the stats.

My point is, pure stats should never be the only source of information. One may not think the police are racist, and instead think that crime and poverty are related. But over policing of the poor doesn't magically make them wealthy.

The policing issue in the US is complicated.

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