Comment by pdabbadabba | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pdabbadabba | Hacker News Reader

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> However, I hate the fact that this change was brought about by the deaths of people.

Amen. I also hate that this was brought about by, it would seem, police officers pouting about the public and the mayor finally speaking out against biased policing.

Edit: I know policing is hard. And frankly, I sympathize with a police officer who finds himself more intimidated by a black man on the street than a white man. It is racist and wrong to respond that way, but none of us are perfect, and these biases can be hard to suppress. But in the face of ample evidence that these biases are needlessly getting people killed (or, even more prevalently, to be disproportionately imprisoned), a police department has a duty to do something about it. I suspect this "something" will be a combination of training, change of internal culture (easier said then done), and altered tactics.

I wish we could have a dialogue where we admit that biased policing is a problem, but simultaneously refrain from painting all cops as racist brutes. I see our present predicament, though, as a result of cops' failing to see past the names they've been called by the angriest voices out there (not by the mayor, I might add) to the fact that there really is a problem in their departments that is causing unconscionable harm to black communities.

> I know policing is hard. And frankly, I sympathize with a police officer who finds himself more intimidated by a black man on the street than a white man. It is racist and wrong to respond that way...

"Wrong" maybe, but it's also statistically sound. Police 3 to 4 times more likely to shoot a black man but black men are 5.6 times more likely to shoot a police officer. (source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/kent-osband-what-statistics-say-... )

I think the relevant point from my source's editorial is this: "While these inferences aren’t fair to the vast majority on either side [(police or civilian)], they are rational responses to fear and uncertainty. As such, neither legislation nor indoctrination can banish them."

So I'm not sure it's fair to call police officers racist. It's certainly not old-school Racist in the form of a deliberate and systematic oppression of a minority or an opinion that they're genetically inferior.

(Disclaimer. This post is meant to provide insight into behavior of people, only. No specific public policy recommendation is hereby condemned or endorsed.)

There is a salient statistic that you (and the WSJ editorial) have overlooked: what are the actual odds that an officer will be shot by any given black man? They are greater, you say, than an officer's chances of being shot by a white man, but is the risk objectively large? I think the answer to this is clearly no.

So while it might be rational for an officer to behave as though he is more likely to be shot, this is different from responding as though he is likely to be shot. Unfortunately, they are doing the latter entirely too often. Perhaps this is the result of natural cognitive biases (some combination of confirmation bias and negativity bias, maybe), amplified by the images we all see in the media. These are powerful forces that, I think, most of us struggle with. But that does not mean that cops, who are supposed to be highly trained professionals, entrusted with powerful weapons, and the preservation of public safety, do not have a duty to overcome these biases.

(I agree it's not what you've called "old-school racist." But it makes no difference. Old-school racism is not the only bad kind of racism. [Is there a good kind?])

Whoa! I overlooked this from the WSJ editorial:

> police are six times as likely to be killed by black civilians than black civilians are to be killed by police. . . . . [P]police are 22 times as likely to be killed by nonblack civilians than nonblack civilians are to be killed by police.

I think this tells you everything you need to know. Police are always more likely to be killed by civilians than the other way around. This is probably as it should be, unfortunately. The police are highly trained and will typically strive for non-violent resolutions. The civilians they are interacting with, however, are sometimes criminals who are high, desperate, evil, or what have you.

Officers respond to this threat with far greater force when the threat is black, than when it is white. As the author explains, "the juxtaposition suggests that the police respond far more defensively to blacks (a 1-to-6 homicide ratio) than to whites (a 1-to-22 homicide ratio). African-Americans would correctly perceive the police as three to four times quicker to pull a lethal trigger against them than against whites."

The article goes on:

> Police officers naturally take a different perspective. While blacks are 14% of the U.S. population, they account for 47% of killings of police

But this perspective is faulty. While the 6:1, 22:1 statistics naturally take into account the frequency of police-civilian contact, the latter 14:47 comparison does not. In other words, this latter statistic is likely due to the fact that police have a disproportionate amount of contact with African americans. But the 6:1, 22:1 statistics do not have this problem.

This was a good comment that I can agree with. I'm also genuinely curious what the reaction/outcome would be if de Blasio would be less apologetic and slightly more confrontational with the Unions. Or even if the governor spoke out more.. Maybe confrontational is the wrong word, but rather something more "truthful" as your post is suggesting. I wonder what it actually takes to make a major cultural shift in the police force.

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