You must be living under a rock to not have read one of the bazillion of stories about policing and racism that have come up since last fall, but for a great overview of the subject I highly recommend The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness [1]
We're talking about SWAT team raids. I am interested if the rate of raids is higher for a specific race compared to other types of arrests.
Also to be intellectually honest in the subject, one can't use media coverage as a proxy for actual data. Lots of anecdotes doesn't necessarily provide evidence. There are thousands of arrests daily. I haven't seen thousands of news stories -- generally only when there was an angle that would elicit ratings. A white man getting shot by the cops doesn't generally make national headlines just like the over 2000 shootings of (mostly) black victims in Chicago barely warrants mention.
My point isn't to argue if cops are racist. My point is that knee-jerk claims of racism ought to be quantifiable.
Police need to try harder to ignore the statistics of who commits crime. Just because one group is statistically committing more crime that should not affect their dealing with an individual who is innocent until proven guilty.
It's only a problem if unreasonable, excessive and unwarranted violence is used by the law enforcers. They should use every available indicator of crime in order to focus on problem areas. The alternative means that we're willingly sacrificing safety, peace and security in order to not offend, and that I find absolutely distasteful and negligent.
Of course, 100% innocent until proven guilty; I'm not saying we should convict/target people without merit based purely off of race/age/obesity/hair color.
briandear|11 years ago
Also to be intellectually honest in the subject, one can't use media coverage as a proxy for actual data. Lots of anecdotes doesn't necessarily provide evidence. There are thousands of arrests daily. I haven't seen thousands of news stories -- generally only when there was an angle that would elicit ratings. A white man getting shot by the cops doesn't generally make national headlines just like the over 2000 shootings of (mostly) black victims in Chicago barely warrants mention.
My point isn't to argue if cops are racist. My point is that knee-jerk claims of racism ought to be quantifiable.
happyscrappy|11 years ago
zo1|11 years ago
Of course, 100% innocent until proven guilty; I'm not saying we should convict/target people without merit based purely off of race/age/obesity/hair color.