
U.S. Police Shootings: Breaking Down the Data by Race - OrganizedChaos
https://www.cybercoastal.com/u-s-police-shootings-breaking-down-the-data-by-race/
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kristintynski
Now is the time for us to start doing the hard work to make police
accountability happen. Getting public records data accessible is a way to make
good progress toward this.

450+ of us are working on a new project called the Police Data Accessibility
project, aimed at making local court record data (which contains
cop/department level data) accessible outside of clunky county court records
websites. More info here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/gr11aw/i_think_i_a...](https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/gr11aw/i_think_i_accidentally_started_a_movement/)

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Simulacra
Step one: Demilitarize the police.

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throwaway0a5e
Or just train them like the military because the military has some actual
discipline and internal accountability.

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duckMuppet
They already do train them like the military. In fact, since Obama, they've
also been arming them as the military as well, not only with M4's and Barrett
50's, also with up armor MRAPS and hummers. That's not including other
tactical wartime gear such as stingrays etc.

Train The cops as soldiers, don't be surprised when cops act as soldiers.

I realize that as we've been millennialing our military into occupying and
policing, but make no mistake that's not what they're for. And it's the same
issue with cops.

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tick_tock_tick
Is there any source for this data normalized per police interaction? Basically
I want to know where in the process the issue starts. Are non-whites
stopped/harassed more by the police so they get into more altercations that
lead to shooting/death or are police just more likely to shoot non-whites? The
difference makes a huge change at what level the issue should be addressed at.

Also comparing the rate of shooting to deaths would also be nice to see if
there is an issue of care after a shootout.

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jariel
"An Empirical Analysis of Racial Discreperences in Police Use of Force, Roland
G. Fryer, Jr.m July 2017" [1]

This is by African American Harvard prof, and highly controversial because his
research indicates there isn't actually that much racial disparity in
policing.

I for one, believe it. Cops are mostly not aggressive, and cops are mostly not
racist. But there's a wide bell curve on that - and some are racist, some are
aggressive. Coupled with the fact there are 330M people, 1 Billion guns, areas
of 'extreme violence' ... we're going to see bad situations on CNN every few
months for a long while yet.

Fixing the 'bad cops' problem is important, but so is fixing the 'out of
control crime' problem, which is probably much harder due to complex social
root causes.

[1]
[https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/empirical_anal...](https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/empirical_analysis_tables_figures.pdf)

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jvanderbot
There is the problem. You can frame most cops as good but dealing with out of
control crime, and you can frame most people as good, but dealing with out of
control police, and both can be right. (Even through I actually believe both
are probably wrong)

Worse, both can be right and events like recent ones can still be demonstrably
unequivocally wrong inexcusable. It's almost like the statements of general
trends are uncorrelated with the highest profile cases. Which is the problem.

~~~
jariel
True. And other 'problem' is 'facts' vs 'populism'.

I think what happened in Minnesota is outrageous, but probably not as
indicative of systematic problems as some people might believe.

I don't think the 'cops are bad' narrative is healthy - BUT - it may be
necessary to help fix the problem. Humans are lazy, we fear for our jobs, DA's
may not react until there is political pressure and everyone is throwing
everyone under the bus.

It's also worth remembering that almost every single measure of 'inequality'
has been steadily improving over the last 30 years and our current 'race war
conditions' may be really just a function of Twitter, Social Media, and ever
more biased press on all sides, jockeying for clicks and attention.

~~~
diob
I'll say to you what I end up saying to everyone who has this view, read the
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

I can guarantee that if you read that book and look at the data, you'll change
your mind.

Believe me, it'll cover every single talking point you probably have.

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randyrand
the data looks pretty reasonable IMO. It’s not as big of a difference as I
would expect.

Also, noticeably missing asians, native american, middle eastern data.

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TulliusCicero
Two and a half times as likely to be killed by police doesn't seem that bad to
you?

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guevara
The real question is "why is that?". Do blacks tend to get into more
altercations with police, is it systemic racism, both?

Without further investigation, this graph can bait people into jumping to
misinformed conclusions.

Furthermore, the site states: > black Americans account for less than 13
percent of the population but they are shot and killed by the police at a rate
that’s over twice as high as for white Americans.

Yet they also account for over 50% of crimes in the U.S [0]. Like I said, ask
questions, don't just look at a graph and raise pitchforks.

[0]: [https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-
the-u.s.-...](https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-
the-u.s.-2016/topic-pages/tables/table-21)

~~~
testbot123
> Without further investigation, this graph can bait people into jumping to
> misinformed conclusions.

Likewise with the data you've linked. Submission of data to the UCR database
is completely voluntary and does not represent an accurate picture of crime in
the United States:

> "The totals provided in this table reflect only those persons arrested by
> law enforcement agencies that provided race information to the UCR Program;
> therefore, the totals may not match those shown in other arrest tables for
> the nation." [0]

> "It is incumbent upon all data users to become as well educated as possible
> about how to understand and quantify the nature and extent of crime in the
> United States and in any of the more than 17,000 jurisdictions represented
> by law enforcement contributors to the UCR Program. Valid assessments are
> possible only with careful study and analysis of the various unique
> conditions affecting each local law enforcement jurisdiction." [1]

I.e., you can't expect to get any kind of meaningful analysis by dumping a
table of raw, incomplete data into a thread.

[0] [https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-
the-u.s.-...](https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-
the-u.s.-2016/tables/table-21/table-21-data-declaration)

[1]
[https://www.ucrdatatool.gov/ranking.cfm](https://www.ucrdatatool.gov/ranking.cfm)

