
Research database explores racial bias in police shootings (2019) - tomohawk
https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2019/new-research-database-explores-racial-bias-in-police-shootings/
======
macspoofing
This study mirrors others, namely, police shooting are rare and don't show
racial bias in the aggregate, and usually are 'justified' in some form (i.e.
aren't a very clear case of wrong doing like the George Floyd case). It isn't
great for police reform policy, because you don't have metrics to judge
success or aspire to.

Having said that, this is an emotional issue and does need some solution.
There was a recent article about a black Google VP who was hiding in her
office when there was some sort of active-shooter threat on the YouTube
campus. She was as much afraid of being shot by this threat, as she was of
mistakenly being shot by a police SWAT team... that's a real fear in a person
of privilege (highly educated and positioned high in a Fortune 500 corporate
hierarchy) and that's not good. There is a lot of trust that needs to be
regained that all the calls to 'defund the police' miss. Maybe we need more
funding (not less), for things like training in community interactions and
deescalation. Why not have police officer spend 1 day out of every month,
doing some sort of simulation training on deescalation and community outreach
and .. heck .. 'customer service' \- it's going to be expensive, but social
strife is expensive too.

~~~
xorfish
Police killings in the US are around 40 times higher per capita than in the
rest of the developed world. Murder Rate is also around 5 times higher than in
the rest of the developed world.

Clearly this are problems that needs to be addressed.

My opinion is, that the first step to solve this issue are good safety nets
for everyone.

Sentence lengths need to be reduced and victimless crimes should not be
punished.

The prison system must be rebuild from the ground up to reintegrate offenders
to reduce the risk of re-offending.

Police training needs to be improved as well. It can't be that two sober cops
end up shooting a drunk that is sobering up in his car in the back because
they are unable to handle such a ordinary situation.

~~~
twsttest
Is selling or buying drugs a "victimless crime" when people's lives, families
and communities are destroyed by said drugs? What exactly is a "victimless
crime" then?

Your characterization of the recent killing of Mr. Brooks is incomplete.
Brooks fought against the police and fired a taser (a deadly weapon according
to the Atlanta DA) at the officers giving him chase. They were absolutely
justified in shooting him.

The problem we have in America is that many people think it's ok to fight the
police. Almost all publicized police killings in recent years are a result of
suspects resisting arrest in a violent manner, escalating things to the point
where force is required to control them. Of course this doesn't fit the
narrative, so it's ignored.

~~~
xorfish
So the taser is deadly? Why was it pulled in the first place? How many times
can a taser be fired? Brooks is running away, are you seriously suggesting
that he posed a serious thread to the officers?

Nevertheless, the incident shows at best how grossly incompetent the police in
the US are,however manslaughter is certainly also a reasonable interpretation.

Alcohol is the most dangerous drug. Are merchants responsible if they sell
alcohol?

~~~
twsttest
He was out of his mind enough to fight with two police officers, steal a taser
and shoot it at them. Whether or not he was a threat to the officers in that
exact moment after shooting the taser he clearly could have posed a threat to
the community.

So yes, he did pose a serious threat and had to be stopped. He brought his
death upon himself through his own actions. My feelings on this are completely
independent of his race or other superficial characteristics.

~~~
xorfish
You know, the US is the only developed country where police officers that are
called on an unarmed drunk person, end up killing him. You can find excuses
for nearly every instance all day, but in the end you can't expect model
behaviour from a drunk person. You can however expect two well trained sober
offers to handle something like this without an escalation to deadly force.

I mean 40 times higher than the developed world. Do you agree, that this is an
unacceptable level of violence?

------
motohagiography
The critical response to this research, which they helpfully link, seems to
imply the authors (and arguably others) using racial shootings data to
conclude that PoC are not in fact shot at a higher rate - have fallen for a
base rate fallacy or selection/sample bias, where the base rate of upstream
neutral encounters between all people and police is not captured in the data.
Without that frame, there isn't enough information to infer causality in the
selected data.

The linked critical letter:
[https://www.pnas.org/content/117/3/1261](https://www.pnas.org/content/117/3/1261)

That's my layman reading of this, as the language is a bit opaque. If that is
their assertion, this kind of error seems like such a rookie mistake I would
sympathize with someone who thought that neglect was ideological or
misrepresented. Personally, I think in politics and policy, data is used for
support not illumination. The only way data ever causes anyone to change their
mind is if it comes from a poll. That's my skepticism, but a more capable
reading of the criticism would be useful.

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karpierz
1\. The study assumes that the statistics provided to them by police
departments is accurate. That is to say, they're assuming that when an officer
shoots an unarmed man without provocation, the officer will report it
accurately.

2\. This study focuses on police shootings, not use of force. So choking a
civilian to death wouldn't count.

3\. It also doesn't measure how often the officer involved escalated the
situation.

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x86_64Ubuntu
Why do people always look at "shootings". The black experience with police
extends to all interactions from fining, arresting, charging, overcharging,
railroading all the way up to killings. That's like having a quality metric
that ONLY considers times when production had to be shutdown, and never when
people couldn't login, when transactions were lost, and when people got
someone else's shopping cart's contents in theirs.

~~~
mc32
Unfortunately leadership want to grab into the most salient examples and
purposely use raw language like “police brutality”. Not denying there is
police brutality because there is, but pointing out the leadership themselves
are pushing this angle, so how do you expect people to look at the finer
points?

But I get it, it’s not sexy, it doesn’t draw headlines, it doesn’t draw middle
class protesters.

------
gedy
This appears to be convincing argument and research. However, someone here(?)
pointed out recently that most people are unconvinced by facts that leave them
emotionally unsatisfied. Information like this likely won't help when people
are upset already.

~~~
mc32
The press could provide more context and balance to reporting rather than the
Robo-cop like apocalyptic narrative that gets people riled up.

~~~
Agenttin
The police haven't been doing themselves any favors by actively attacking
members of the press though. If you don't want a narrative about police
brutality to spread, perhaps you shouldn't beat the people responsible for
generating the narrative while they scream that they're 'Press'.

~~~
mc32
But that’s exactly the point. The majority of reporters don’t get beat up, but
it’s presented as a routine thing to happen when more often reporters get beat
up by protesters —but even that is a minority of interactions.

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lucaspm98
I have been somewhat disappointed by the number of people not being willing to
even look at the data when it comes to these racial and police issues. It's
certainly an emotional issue where the data can be inaccurate or misleading,
but that doesn't mean it can be completely ignored. There are big changes that
need to be made and the efforts will be much more productive if they're backed
by research and not pure reactionary emotion.

~~~
disantlor
it seems more likely that people who are invested in not changing anything
would look at data uncritically (what is the source of the data? police? do
they get to say what is justified use of force?) and conclude nothing needs to
change.

i suspect people who feel their life is on the line are considering seriously
all methods for making change, including reviewing all available research

note that the article mentions criticism of their work, includes a response,
and a note about reassessing certain aspects.

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daenz
People in this thread who are engaged in rapidly shifting the goal posts to
fill the vacuum left by the race-based narrative, please stop and consider why
you and many in the US were so incensed by widespread beliefs that were easily
disproved by clear and available data. Consider what else you believe on this
topic that may also be wrong. This is a teachable moment.

~~~
yoz
Similarly, people in this thread who so readily provide their own
interpretations of this data as supporting their existing beliefs: please stop
and consider that data in itself doesn't prove anything. Interpretation is
what matters. You'll see plenty of excellent questions both elsewhere in this
thread and even posted as a response to the research. The point is not that
the data itself is wrong - though it may well be, given the sources - but that
the interpretation and conclusions may be far less straightforward than they
first appear.

Consider what else you may be ignoring as you seize an answer that feels
concrete and rational, and just happens to agree with your existing political
stance. This is, indeed, a teachable moment.

------
opwieurposiu
Police in the USA literally toss hand grenades into the cribs of sleeping
babies. It is not a question of race, white or black they will come for you
and they will injure or kill your children.

[https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/05/baby-in-
coma-...](https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/05/baby-in-coma-after-
police-grenade-dropped-in-crib-during-drug-raid)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Aiyana_Jones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Aiyana_Jones)

------
eyelidlessness
It's astounding how many problems are immediately apparent in this article.

> Reports of racially motivated, fatal shootings by police officers have
> garnered extensive public attention and sparked activism across the nation.
> New research from Michigan State University and University of Maryland
> reveals findings that flip many of these reports on their heads – white
> police officers are not more likely to have shot minority citizens than non-
> white officers.

> “Until now, there’s never been a systematic, nationwide study to determine
> the characteristics of police involved in fatal officer-involved shootings,”
> said Joseph Cesario, co-author and professor of psychology at MSU. “There
> are so many examples of people saying that when black citizens are shot by
> police, it’s white officers shooting them. In fact, our findings show no
> support that black citizens are more likely to be shot by white officers."

First of all, none of this research purports to "flip [any] of these reports
on their heads". The preceding disclaimer makes that explicit.

Second of all, the charge of racial bias in policing (and racial bias in
police violence as a consequence) is not and has never been about the race of
the police officer. So far as I'm aware, the race of the police officers is a
focus mostly of white people, sometimes from a misguided assumption that black
police won't produce similar results, but usually from a perspective intended
to discredit the charge of racial bias. This article beginning from that
assumption is a really bad sign.

The charge of racial bias in policing is institutional, structural, and
historical. Policing in the US was _created_ to reinforce racist social
structures. People who are nominally targets of racism are capable of
participating in and reinforcing the racist institutions and social structures
which would target them, and there's a long history of that. The fact that
people of color as cops reproduce the same outcome in no way discredits the
claim that policing is racially biased.

> “Many people ask whether black or white citizens are more likely to be shot
> and why. We found that violent crime rates are the driving force behind
> fatal shootings,” Cesario said. “Our data show that the rate of crime by
> each racial group correlates with the likelihood of citizens from that
> racial group being shot. If you live in a county that has a lot of white
> people committing crimes, white people are more likely to be shot. If you
> live in a county that has a lot of black people committing crimes, black
> people are more likely to be shot. It is the best predictor we have of fatal
> police shootings.”

This cannot be supported by the data sources they attribute. The police are
the subject of scrutiny and can't be relied on to accurately represent the
"rate of crime" of their victims. Nearly 90% of entries in the Washington
Post's database has no body camera data. The Guardian's database doesn't
provide filtering by accused criminal activity, but a quick glance at a few
entries shows descriptions straight out of police reports. The "rate of crime"
claim is directly attributable to police, and to levels of policing.

This is obviously unreliable when scrutinizing the police. It bears
mentioning, since the murder of George Floyd was a catalyst for recent
protests and scrutiny, that the original police report was drastically
different from what was actually filmed, and that an independent autopsy
reached a drastically different conclusion from the official autopsy.

