I'm not sure what you should call this phenomenon, but it basically goes like this:
- There are plenty of laws that you may or may not be aware of whose enforcement is disparate across the population, or perhaps not enforced at all.
For example, in Texas it's actually illegal to turn without using your turn signal at least 100 feet before the turn [^1]. There are similar laws that exist in California.
If you've ever driven in Texas for even an hour within the city or suburbs you'll know this law is rarely enforced, even when police are present.
Given the lack of enforcement, the (illegal) behavior is normalized. However, despite the normalization the behavior itself is still illegal.
Now here comes the tricky part - since everyone is engaging in illegal behavior, the police, if desired, could focus on any group and trivially reprimand them for their (technically) illegal behavior. This enforcement will be reflected in the demographic likelihood of breaking this particular rule which will reinforce the very focusing on certain demographics. Recursive, if you will.
Unfortunately despite being aware of this I'm not sure what the solution would be, other than mass-surveillance. Ultimately you would need to know (1) the rate at which groups are breaking the rule absolutely, (2) the rate of which enforcement is overlooked and (3) finally the rate at which enforcement occurs. We only have but a small piece of the puzzle here.
As long as this paradox exists police will have plausible deniability backed by their very own (misleading) stats. In my opinion this is the main driver of seemingly racist law enforcement. That is, selective enforcement.
This is exactly what I think of when I hear "police being racist".
As a white person, I've never had a bad interaction with the police. At worst they are very authoritative, but never obnoxious.
Hearing about black people getting stopped for jaywalking, "loitering", and just generally yelled at, it's not right. Before the famous Starbucks case, I've never imagined someone could get arrested and handcuffed for using a restaurant's public bathroom (I guess technically for "customers only" but that's a dumb rule anyways).
I get the cops' side too, they deal with a lot of actual dangerous criminals (that maybe "look similar" because they're also black men) who have no morals and try to catch them off guard. That can drain empathy and make every situation tense. But that's no excuse for the blatant disregard of black people's humanity. If you can't approach someone both in control of the situation and respecting their humanity, then you're not qualified to be a cop.
I sometimes think this is intentional, in the sense that trivial laws like these are kept on the books long term simply because they provide such a convenient mechanism to justify stops and other police activities that would otherwise not meet the burden needed to make them legal. I wonder if a solution might be to have certain categories of laws require re-evaluation every so often, in order to stay relevant. Almost like an expiry date, if they aren't explicitly renewed, they are no longer enforceable, thereby necessitating at least some kind of discussion on their continued relevance at regular intervals.
Wouldn't the solution be to automatically repeal any laws that are not regularly enforced? A "use it lose it" rule. We could regularly commission studies to see which traffic laws are not being enforced.
The mass surveillance is already underway. Police have body cameras and dash cams in many jurisdictions. But good luck getting enough of that footage through an FOIA request -- so it's up to the police to decide whether or not this is an issue worthy of investigation.
"An unbiased sample would be clustered around the dotted line: a beat whose population is about 40% Black would have about 40% of its police stops be of Blacks".
Is this the case? In terms of murders I think it was something like 30 - 1 in terms of per capita likelihood of a suspect being black vs asian for example. Adding in gender / age it got even worse - ie, very few asian women gunning down folks on the street.
I couldn't find good stats on this based on a quick look, but it might be worth it to evaluate if there are different rates of murder by race / age / gender when doing these types of articles -> I wouldn't be surprised if their WAS racial bias, but it would be helpful to have a bit more context perhaps.
As a person living in Oakland: lots of homeless have sketchy (stolen?) bikes. I don't see that many sketchy white people on them. No one ever said that different populations in Oakland are comparable in the first place.
Articles like this are usually written by wealthy liberals living in nice suburbs.
I have no doubt there’s racial bias, because the police are trying to catch gang members or other serial troublemakers with a weapon, drugs, or some other pretext to put them away. So they don’t just police a space more, they police it with the intent of creating stops. I am pretty sure that bias targets men. What would be interesting is to see how big the racial disparity is looking only at women.
I couldn't find the data on what the stops were "for."
Tbh, I don't even know what kind of things you can get stopped on a bike for except swerving around traffic, so it seems like a good thing to know about.
Is there any data on what the "reasons" were for stopping these different bike riders?
I found this article difficult to understand. Though I was able to eventually follow along with the theme, perhaps a quick explainer of what a "beat" is? Hint: in police terminology, a beat is the territory that a police officer patrols.
If you're not up to speed on the jargon, parsing graph titles like "Police beat resident population" become confusing (are we talking assault?).
Also, a summary of the findings and assertions at the beginning would have been helpful.
The problem with highly-charged reporting like this is that anything other than carefully justified claims and technical jargon will immediately bring a torrent of complaints. Each group that has a conclusion without looking at the data will try to poke any hole in any aspect of the argument and staying dry and technical helps stave off this sort of criticism.
The charts seem to show that the police are biased in favor of Hispanics and Asians, and against blacks and whites. I wouldn't have expected that result. But of course the only thing the article focuses on is black people.
> Another possible explanation is that Blacks are more likely to be criminals, and these stops represent police getting bad guys off the street. [..] City-wide, 68% of no-arrest stops city-wide were of Blacks, the same proportion as arrest stops, which means that Blacks were no more likely to be criminals than others who were stopped.
If, despite being stopped more often, the stop is equally likely to result in an arrest (I'm assuming that's what "no more likely to be criminals than others who were stopped" means, since if they were less likely, the author would surely mention it), doesn't that support this explanation? Of course there are problems with this, since an arrest itself is up to the cop's possibly biased judgement. Which brings me back to
> There is more policing in those beats, they argue, because that’s where the crime’s happening. There’s a logical problem with this argument, because more crime will always be found where more policing is done. But leaving that aside
How quickly he moves on! But there is a solution: look at crimes not affected by over-policing, such as homicide, or look at victimization surveys [1], that don't involve the police. Finding the results is left as an exercise for the reader.
> the stop is equally likely to result in an arrest
A study of California police data found that "when the police search black, Latino and Native American people, they are less likely to find drugs, weapons or other contraband compared to when they search white people."
Why is there so much hate on this thread? Is it hard to accept that blacks are discriminated against in US?
Part of being intellectually curious is that data should be able to change your mind or have the opinion be reasonably falsifiable.
If you want to find fault on the methodology in the OP, then comment/criticize the analysis. @athenot posted the stats for convicted crimes that shows blacks are not more likely than whites to do commit crimes.
They could try out the CHAZ/CHOP idea then? No police officers stopping you. No problem.
A summer of love utopia without getting stopped over. Think about it.
EDIT: Care to further elaborate what is exactly wrong with this idea? Surely the goal is to 'self-organize' yourself as a community without the involvement of the 'police', given that they complain of 'biased policing'.
Might as well just set one up since it won't be the last time that this will happen again.
[+] [-] endisneigh|4 years ago|reply
- There are plenty of laws that you may or may not be aware of whose enforcement is disparate across the population, or perhaps not enforced at all.
For example, in Texas it's actually illegal to turn without using your turn signal at least 100 feet before the turn [^1]. There are similar laws that exist in California.
If you've ever driven in Texas for even an hour within the city or suburbs you'll know this law is rarely enforced, even when police are present.
Given the lack of enforcement, the (illegal) behavior is normalized. However, despite the normalization the behavior itself is still illegal.
Now here comes the tricky part - since everyone is engaging in illegal behavior, the police, if desired, could focus on any group and trivially reprimand them for their (technically) illegal behavior. This enforcement will be reflected in the demographic likelihood of breaking this particular rule which will reinforce the very focusing on certain demographics. Recursive, if you will.
Unfortunately despite being aware of this I'm not sure what the solution would be, other than mass-surveillance. Ultimately you would need to know (1) the rate at which groups are breaking the rule absolutely, (2) the rate of which enforcement is overlooked and (3) finally the rate at which enforcement occurs. We only have but a small piece of the puzzle here.
As long as this paradox exists police will have plausible deniability backed by their very own (misleading) stats. In my opinion this is the main driver of seemingly racist law enforcement. That is, selective enforcement.
^1 - https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/TN/htm/TN.545.htm
[+] [-] armchairhacker|4 years ago|reply
As a white person, I've never had a bad interaction with the police. At worst they are very authoritative, but never obnoxious.
Hearing about black people getting stopped for jaywalking, "loitering", and just generally yelled at, it's not right. Before the famous Starbucks case, I've never imagined someone could get arrested and handcuffed for using a restaurant's public bathroom (I guess technically for "customers only" but that's a dumb rule anyways).
I get the cops' side too, they deal with a lot of actual dangerous criminals (that maybe "look similar" because they're also black men) who have no morals and try to catch them off guard. That can drain empathy and make every situation tense. But that's no excuse for the blatant disregard of black people's humanity. If you can't approach someone both in control of the situation and respecting their humanity, then you're not qualified to be a cop.
[+] [-] FreeKill|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmckib|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] klyrs|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akerl_|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Overton-Window|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] slownews45|4 years ago|reply
Is this the case? In terms of murders I think it was something like 30 - 1 in terms of per capita likelihood of a suspect being black vs asian for example. Adding in gender / age it got even worse - ie, very few asian women gunning down folks on the street.
I couldn't find good stats on this based on a quick look, but it might be worth it to evaluate if there are different rates of murder by race / age / gender when doing these types of articles -> I wouldn't be surprised if their WAS racial bias, but it would be helpful to have a bit more context perhaps.
[+] [-] athenot|4 years ago|reply
Suspect perhaps, but not convicted offender. And therein lies the bias & prejudice.
This table shows Race, Sex, and Ethnicity of Victim by Race, Sex, and Ethnicity of Offender, 2019
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
One thing that stands out is that more often than not, the offender and the victim are the same race.
And overall numbers are similar between white and African American.
[+] [-] vaidhy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cratermoon|4 years ago|reply
Well, that's exactly illustrating the problem.
[+] [-] thereare5lights|4 years ago|reply
No it's not. It assumes that groups have a uniform likelihood to break the law.
This is not an obviously true statement.
The reason people assert this is because of the focus on equal group outcomes rather than equal individual treatment.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] fencepost|4 years ago|reply
While comments are possible, updated data from 2019 shows changes (fewer overall stops) and limited improvement as noted in this October 2020 article https://bike-lab.org/2020/10/15/racially-biased-policing-in-...
Between the pandemic, George Floyd, etc any numbers for 2020 may bear no resemblance to anything from years before or after.
[+] [-] Aa9C4xPz43Gg7k6|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Karrot_Kream|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] CheezeIt|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seph-reed|4 years ago|reply
Tbh, I don't even know what kind of things you can get stopped on a bike for except swerving around traffic, so it seems like a good thing to know about.
Is there any data on what the "reasons" were for stopping these different bike riders?
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ultimoo|4 years ago|reply
If you're not up to speed on the jargon, parsing graph titles like "Police beat resident population" become confusing (are we talking assault?).
Also, a summary of the findings and assertions at the beginning would have been helpful.
/rant
[+] [-] Karrot_Kream|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fallingknife|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abneg|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] trident5000|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] iaw|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MikeUt|4 years ago|reply
If, despite being stopped more often, the stop is equally likely to result in an arrest (I'm assuming that's what "no more likely to be criminals than others who were stopped" means, since if they were less likely, the author would surely mention it), doesn't that support this explanation? Of course there are problems with this, since an arrest itself is up to the cop's possibly biased judgement. Which brings me back to
> There is more policing in those beats, they argue, because that’s where the crime’s happening. There’s a logical problem with this argument, because more crime will always be found where more policing is done. But leaving that aside
How quickly he moves on! But there is a solution: look at crimes not affected by over-policing, such as homicide, or look at victimization surveys [1], that don't involve the police. Finding the results is left as an exercise for the reader.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Crime_Victimization_S...
[+] [-] tomnipotent|4 years ago|reply
A study of California police data found that "when the police search black, Latino and Native American people, they are less likely to find drugs, weapons or other contraband compared to when they search white people."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/02/california-p...
[+] [-] nraynaud|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spoonjim|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] j_walter|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WarOnPrivacy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] vaidhy|4 years ago|reply
Part of being intellectually curious is that data should be able to change your mind or have the opinion be reasonably falsifiable.
If you want to find fault on the methodology in the OP, then comment/criticize the analysis. @athenot posted the stats for convicted crimes that shows blacks are not more likely than whites to do commit crimes.
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|4 years ago|reply
You might want to read the stats before describing them.
[+] [-] rvz|4 years ago|reply
A summer of love utopia without getting stopped over. Think about it.
EDIT: Care to further elaborate what is exactly wrong with this idea? Surely the goal is to 'self-organize' yourself as a community without the involvement of the 'police', given that they complain of 'biased policing'.
Might as well just set one up since it won't be the last time that this will happen again.