Saturday, July 09, 2016

Do police of any race take black lives assuming an implicit degree of impunity?

Data for this post was taken from
Washington Post article
Fatal Encounters Org
Daily Wire
Race and Crime the USA
Census.gov and fbi.gov
Full disclosure .. this disgusts me and makes me feel like vomiting. But following will be facts since I WANT TO UNDERSTAND THE OBJECTIVE REALITY

Fact one..Right now whites are ~62% of the population as projected from the last census (census.gov). Blacks are ~13.2%.

Fact two..ARRESTS DATA..

69% of arrests by police were of whites, 28% were blacks.
58% of arrests for VIOLENT crime were of whites, 38.5% of blacks.
48% of arrests for MURDER were of whites, 49% were of blacks.
Conclusion .. complicated by ECONOMIC SITUATIONS, whites were slightly more than expected by proportion in the population to be arrested (NOT CONVICTED) and blacks were TWICE as likely as their proportion would indicate.
This data skews WORSE for violent crimes and murder where the black population is concerned, where it is almost MORE LIKELY THAN NOT that an arrest made for murder is going to be a black person even though they represent 13% of the population.
I draw no satisfaction from this, and find it alarming for the nation since economic conditions are undoubtedly a major factor (NOT AN EXCUSE).
Now, how do police act when the stop or arrest occurs and there is a police shooting?
Remember, slightly more than 1 out of 4 arrests are of blacks, and 2 of every 3 are whites. If a violent crime has occurred or is being investigated, the balance is heavily shifted towards a black American then being arrested.
WaPo says 965 people were shot by police last year. 564 were armed with a gun. 281 with another weapon. 90 were unarmed.
In a year-long study, The Washington Post found that the kind of incidents that have ignited protests in many U.S. communities — most often, white police officers killing unarmed black men — represent less than 4 percent of fatal police shootings.
I hate to call that data encouraging, but it is.
The Post found that the great majority of people who died at the hands of the police fit at least one of three categories: they were wielding weapons, they were suicidal or mentally troubled, or they ran when officers told them to halt.
BUT…
Although black men make up only 6 percent of the U.S. population, they account for 40 percent of the unarmed men shot to death by police this year, The Post’s database shows. In the majority of cases in which police shot and killed a person who had attacked someone with a weapon or brandished a gun, the person who was shot was white. But a hugely disproportionate number — 3 in 5 — of those killed after exhibiting less threatening behavior were black or Hispanic.
40% of the 90 men is 36 men.
END OF DATA

Conclusions, and observations:

Police officers have a pretty good idea of this data in rough form. To know this data is not profiling.
We are all asked to judge the BELIEF of cops at the moment they decide to fire. Police being convicted of murder or manslaughter is a rare event. So rare the data can hardly be extrapolated.

WaPo outlines a PERFECT case. David Kassick’s shooting by Officer Lisa Mearkle. Kassick was pulled over at a stop for expired inspection sticker (something that has happened to yours truly THIS YEAR). He took off in his vehicle. Then, he ran. He was tasered three times and fell to the ground and apparently kept trying to get the electrodes out of his body by reaching for them, or in her mind, MAYBE SOMETHING ELSE. He was shot twice in the back and killed. For an expired inspection sticker. He was white. She was white.
The jury in her trial was asked to judge her state her mind and thus found that EVEN THOUGH in observing the video they would not have shot Kassick, the foreman said they had to figure out if her fear Kassick might have a gun was justified.
Kassick’s sister claimed a summons for the expired sticker could have been sent in the mail, rather than engage in a chase. Mearkle claimed his taking off and trying to get away for a traffic stop as kids were coming home from school made this a potentially dangerous and inexplicable social action,…what else was going on?
There were no protests or riots.
She was acquitted.
_________________________________________________________

I do NOT see in 36 deaths last year of unarmed black men, especially considering the arrest data, a pattern by police which represents the fact that police don’t think their taking a black life matters.

Whether a lack of equal opportunity is REALLY the driver of the perception that black lives don’t matter is an entirely other issue.

I live in a rural state, in a town with ~2,000 people. I am white. I am a religious minority (to say the least, especially up here). Per capita gun ownership here is among the highest in the nation. Anyone might have one or several weapons in their vehicle of ANY SORT. The ‘AR-15′ is the NUMBER ONE hunting rifle. High capacity clips are widely available. The officer got out, told me to stay in the car, ran the plate, and my license and told me, ‘go get your your sticker’, then walked around the truck to make sure there were no obvious issues which meant I was really avoiding inspection. I pulled over. I didn’t get out of the vehicle. It took 3 minutes. We laughed.

Once the officer established who I was, the incident became NOTHING.

The last 2 incidents involving the deaths of men being questioned/stopped by cops should be vigorously investigated. COLOR BLIND.

That’s all there is.

The larger question of the perceptions of the black community, frankly, is best answered by black folks TAKING PART in their own self government where they live. Protests are the short lived orgasms of getting riled up. Be the governance you want.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"The larger question of the perceptions of the black community, frankly, is best answered by black folks TAKING PART in their own self government where they live."

In theory, yes. In practice: Detroit, East St Louis, Gary Indiana, Sierra Leone, Liberia...

It is sad.

Always On Watch said...

We're in for major trouble.

God, I hate what I see going on.

Epaminondas said...

Anon- there will always be corruption. So what ..keep at it.

Ferguson was 86% black, had 14% voting, and was there any black American in the town management?

Anonymous said...

Anon, this is not Sierra Leone or Liberia. As for cities like Baltimore, DC, etc., it's clear their Democratic leadership lack in governance abilities what they excel in corruption.

There are hundreds of thousands of professionals in the Black community who have the ability to set examples and provide leadership and governance in their communities. This has to be a grass roots movement, where everybody able to do so, takes responsibility, and who are ready and willing to face those in power when their actions are not in the best interests of the black community.