Gordon wrote:
You can't say that all BLM people are that way.
Moonshadow wrote:
Yes I can, because BLM logic is flawed.
The fact is statistics show that more whites are killed at the hands of police than blacks. Where's the outrage? Why is it only black lives matter? What about innocent white lives? What about Jennifer Rooney's?
Moon, I read the data citations, and it is a bit skewed. As it is often said, there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. This data isn't even technically a
statistic.
To say there are more white people killed by police than black people is logical; whites make up 63% of the population; blacks around 13%. But to claim from any of these figures either way - that black complaints are exaggerated or that police shootings of black people are rarely justified - cannot be accurately gleaned, because, believe it or not, there is no mandatory national database for this information, and Congress (we know who that means) has refused to authorize one. the best database that exists is the FBI Supplementary Homicide Report. This database depends on
voluntary submission of data on police homicides, but even the voluntary reporting is less than thorough. Some entire states, like Florida, do not participate; even supposedly progressive New York City doesn't participate.
Remember that when you cite the first set of results from Google, you are often viewing ranked resources; conservative "think tanks" routinely use rapid auto-search programs that can skew those search results. They home in on specific sites that provide their preferred information (or misinformation/disinformation) and deliver tens of thousands of hits in a very short time. If you don't have the ability (or desire) to seek out refereed academic research, the first results you find in a search may been manipulated. So, please look at the first ten sites in the Google search you cited; NONE are academic studies; most cite the same non-analytic data from the same initial report, and most are obvious conservative blogs and so-called "media resources"; not a single one was a legitimate nationally recognized journal. Be careful not to be duped; Google is just an algorithm, after all, not a Solomonic adjudicator.. I'd call to your attention that one of the sites you referenced was operated by Ku Klux Klan - Nazi leader David Duke. It cited the same data as the others.
But, if you want the "liberal" side of the issue, and, judging by your hostility, you may not be interested in it, please look at this site:
http://mappingpoliceviolence.org/
I am not claiming it paints an unbiased picture, but at least it doesn't mask itself as a news source, as your list of sites did.
Too, numbers alone don't prove much unless the right questions are asked and answered from the data. One must ask several questions that are not adequately answerable from the data that is actually available. The most reasonable and basic question, which could be answered from some of the available data is this: In any given interaction with police, what is the probability that a person of a particular race/ethnicity will end up killed by an officer? What we cant answer is: How many total shootings by police are there, fatal and nonfatal (breakdown by race)? And of all police shootings, how many are fatal (also by race)? And if it was possible to ascertain this info, how many shootings were "justified"? Trouble is, the last question is a very subjective one, and would require substantial research into every individual incident.
The FBI database is a
minimum count of homicides by police, and does not precisely measure what puts people at risk of homicide by police. That can't be gleaned without more and better records. Still, what the data shows about the race of victims and officers, and the circumstances of killings, is significant. A study by the University of Albany (NY) of this database looked, in as much detail as uniformly possible, accounts of more than 12,000 police homicides stretching from 1980 to 2012. The data from this was for deadly shootings only, not all police shootings; changes in the detail of reporting made data for the three years 2010 to 2012 the most analyzable. If you look at
all black people, the probabilty of being killed during an police interaction is 2.5 times higher than for
all white people. But if you look only at the sex/age range where most deadly police shootings occur, young men ages 15 to 19, then young black men are 21 times more likely to be killed in an interaction with police than young white men. The 1,217 deadly police shootings from 2010 to 2012 captured in the federal data show that blacks, age 15 to 19, were killed at a rate of 31.17 per million, while just 1.47 per million white males in that age range died at the hands of police. The BLM, Moon, generally speaks of the lower 2.5X figure, just as an FYI. So far in 2016 it is reported that the raw numbers of black vs white killed by police are approximately equal, despite the obvious difference in population demographics.
I'm not trying to paint black people as innocent angels and whites as trigger-happy devils; clearly there is a real crime problem in poor and mostly black communities in many cities and black people are most often also the victims of this crime. But I also think our police are not well-guided or well-trained to make good judgement calls in many instances. They need to decide whether the culprit is an actual danger if he gets away, and maybe let him do so rather than kill him. They are, however, trained to protect themselves, and while that is good, it is incomplete, especially when the danger is so great to both the law officer and the person he is trying to arrest. Police today face a country awash in guns, so they are naturally cautious; anyone they stop or speak to may be armed and dangerous. But, I also think they are conditioned to see the danger incrementally by race...my personal opinion. White skin = benefit of the doubt, black skin = if in doubt, shoot.
Of all the people I have sorrow and prayers for after this terrible week, I think the officer who shot the black man in Minnesota is the most tragic. The video clearly showed that he was both terrified of the situation and horrified at what he had done. His hands were shaking. He has to live with that decision for the rest of his life; he needs our prayers as much as the families of the slain officers in Dallas, and the families of the black men who were killed.
As a matter of fact, the sun DOES shine out of my ...
I guess should I have taken Volunteer Pkwy home that night... might life wouldn't either.
