[flagged]
Here, have a morsel from my old hometown.
https://www.wbrz.com/news/brpd-narcotics-officer-exposes-wro...
> "At least three to four nights a week they would have us riding through the neighborhoods," Ardoin said. "If you saw a random black person walking around the street and hasn't done anything, they would tell us just to jump out the vehicle, grab them and pat them down without probable cause. I voiced my opinions several times, and I didn't agree with that."
Many of my black friends used to call the local police the "jump out boys". My friends had to grow up worried that they would be randomly planted with drugs. Unfortunately of all the people I know, I'm the one who actually ended up getting planted with drugs by a deranged cop, despite being white.
The full story is much longer and so insane that I don't even want to open the full can of worms here at the moment, but I should do a write-up and talk to a lawyer now that I have the time/money, despite the statute of limitations which probably protects them.
I mean I've literally watched this officer with my own eyes procure meth ingredients, I have footage of her distributing, some people I know murdered her brother and there was a giant meth lab found at his house, it's just a total unbelievable shit show from start to finish. But I was the one who got railed. The FBI refuses to get involved despite numerous tips.
mistrial, in law, a trial that has been terminated and declared void before the tribunal can hand down a decision or render a verdict. The termination of a trial prematurely nullifies the preceding proceedings as if they had not taken place.
Other than that it’s a totally credible story about a meth-cooking police officer…
As for the mistrial, it's only in spirit because my public defender flat out refused to take my case seriously and refused to appeal on grounds that it would make her life difficult.
It's hard to make people believe or understand what small town corruption is like unless they've seen it for themselves. The mayor himself showed up at the place I was crashing at after I got arrested just to further make things more difficult for me... what kind of psychotic town allows for such behavior?
I thought about calling the police and getting them to review the footage, but it was a crapshoot who showed up and if I would only get into more trouble.
My arresting officer has been kicked off of the local force before and reinstated. Until a few years ago, the father of the local district attorney was the the town's mayor. The same mayor was the town bail bondsman. When I was processed, the town's mayor himself visited the parents of the friend I was staying with at the time in a play to get me kicked out and back on the street.
It's an insane town and it's ruled by a few wealthy families. The corruption in that town was unimaginable and I myself was subject to an abusive power figure as my guardian while growing up, that same man is great friends with the same prosecutor who conspired to press charges and conduct a mistrial. I can't get away from it.
My second lawyer didn't know my name after two years, prepared no defense and refused to file a motion to quash (the town dragged on proceedings for years and it turned out they'd never sent the "evidence" to the lab).
I had half a dozen cops approach the stand, sequestered, and each of them told a totally different story. My only witness then got slapped with a charge for "lying to the police", whatever that was in legalese, and the judge ignored all of the inconsistencies. I should also mention that my right to a trial by jury was taken away from me in an act of deceit, where I, a minor without a lawyer or guardian present, was made to sign a document upon bail which gave up that right. I was told at the time that they would not release me on bail unless I signed the document.
My lawyer then refused to file an appeal because it would, and I quote, "make [her] job miserable", because her de facto boss was the judge, who happened to be the only presiding judge across two parishes.
My original public defender, who had been removed from my case, was so upset by the outcome that he came to visit me in jail, promised me he'd fight for me... he had a private screaming match with the judge in his office, but the best he could do was get me a reduced sentence on good behavior. I still had to pay thousands in fees and endure all of the other issues that come with the state having a vice grip around you.
That's an extremely bold statement to make.
The study the WSJ article was based on was retracted: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014148117
Directly from the authors themselves:
> Despite this correction, our work has continued to be cited as providing support for the idea that there are no racial biases in fatal shootings, or policing in general. To be clear, our work does not speak to these issues and should not be used to support such statements. We take full responsibility for not being careful enough with the inferences made in our original report, as this directly led to the misunderstanding of our research.
And there are articles that go into how exactly they got it wrong: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/07/15/police-sho....
On top of this, police shootings are just one aspect of policing. You can find various research that supports, for example, that you're way more likely to be pulled over while driving if you are black than if you are white. And that relative proportion drops at night because it's harder for them to see. They're then more likely to be searched after the stop, and more likely to be handcuffed.
And police brutality is much more than just shooting - I don't think we keep track of how often police officers use _any_ kind of force, but that's another thing that would also need to be evaluated.
There are just... so, so many things you'd need to consider and refute in order to make that statement.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-cited-their-study-so-they-dis...
My June 3 Journal op-ed quoted the PNAS article’s conclusion verbatim. It set off a firestorm at Michigan State. The university’s Graduate Employees Union pressured the MSU press office to apologize for the “harm it caused” by mentioning my article in a newsletter. The union targeted physicist Steve Hsu, who had approved funding for Mr. Cesario’s research. MSU sacked Mr. Hsu from his administrative position. PNAS editorialized that Messrs. Cesario and Johnson had “poorly framed” their article—the one that got through the journal’s three levels of editorial and peer review.
Read the correction they issued:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2004734117
"As we estimated Pr(race|shot, X), this sentence should read: ‘As the proportion of White officers in a fatal officer-involved shooting increased, a person fatally shot was not more likely to be of a racial minority.’ This is consistent with our framing of the results in the abstract and main text."
In other words, the thing being fought over was the wording of a single sentence that didn't change their actual conclusions, which are consistent with the other evidence. But then later:
"Despite this correction, our work has continued to be cited as providing support for the idea that there are no racial biases in fatal shootings, or policing in general."
Yes, because their correction in their own words "is consistent with our framing of the results".
This whole incident is just proof of what I'm saying - the American left systematically attacks anyone who tries to point out the actual data here, which is why people don't hear about it. This particular paper led to a Twitter mob and someone got fired, but it wasn't due to bad methods, it was because student activists were upset about the "harm" it caused:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-twitter-mob-takes-down-an-adm...
>> you're way more likely to be pulled over while driving if you are black than if you are white.
Aren't you now doing the things you're claiming these Michigan researchers did? Where's your control for actual crime rates?
And you're systematically ignoring literally everything else I've said, including an article pointing out the multitude of errors included in the study, references to other unexplained disparities, and I might also just add:
> Cesario and Johnson write that their "decision had nothing to do with political considerations, ‘mob’ pressure, threats to the authors, or distaste for the political views of people citing the work approvingly."
Even if police shootings aren't evidence of racial disparities in policing, there are a _lot_ of other disparities.. which are certainly worth considering if you actually care about the data.
But if your evidence consists entirely of vacuously parroting Oped pieces by a right wing political commentator who "claimed that 95% of outstanding homicide warrants in Los Angeles were for undocumented immigrants and that 75% of L.A.'s most wanted list comprised undocumented immigrants", then.. I don't know what to tell you.
>https://www.wsj.com/articles/i-cited-their-study-so-they-dis...
Indeed. The chronology is important:
1. Cesario et al [1] received some criticism [2], but they stood by their findings [3]
2. A student union / twitter mob was not happy with the findings of the study [4]
3. The resulting political pressure led to the ousting of Stephen Hsu from MSU, who had approved the funding for the study [5]
4. Only then retracted Cesario et al their study, while still standing by their findings [6]
______
There is a similar study done by economist Roland Fryer [7], while at Harvard.
Summarized, the two studies find the following:
Cesario et al:
Per interaction with the police, civilians have roughly the same risk of being killed by police gunfire, regardless of their ethnicity.
Fryer:
- Per interaction with the police, civilians have roughly the same risk of being the target of police gunfire, regardless of their ethnicity.
- Per interaction with the police, a black civilian is 1.5x more at risk to receive slight use of force by the police than a white civilian. This disparity gets smaller at higher levels of force. (See [7], Figure 1)
- Per interaction with the police, a perfectly compliant black civilian is 1.2x more at risk to receive slight use of force by the police than a perfectly compliant white civilian. This disparity gets smaller at higher levels of force. (See [7], Figure 5)
[1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1903856116
[2] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1919418117
[3] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1920184117
[4] https://twitter.com/gradempunion/status/1270829004157849600
[5] https://lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/2020/06/19/msu-vp...
[6] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2004734117
[7] https://scholar.harvard.edu/sites/scholar.harvard.edu/files/...
So in any situation where a black male and a police officer encounger each other, the police officer is more likely to kill.
Racism *and* base rate fallacy. Fancy that.