Another unarmed black man shot

[eeyore1954]

The obvious ques tion is why the cop had her gun out and her finger on the trigger when another cop clearly thinks a taser will do.

She probably was wrong to have the gun out but also I don't think he was there with her when this all started.

 

[William Parcher]

Can anyone identify the year, make and model of this SUV? I'd like to see the shoulder belt as it appears in various photos for this vehicle.

 

[Pterodactyl]

Can anyone identify the year, make and model of this SUV? I'd like to see the shoulder belt as it appears in various photos for this vehicle.

Early 2000's Lincoln Navigator

 

[William Parcher]

Thanks.

 

[Puppycow]

So what does this tell us about the theory that the way to reduce police violence is to hire more female cops?

If You Want Less Police Violence, Hire More Female Cops

KING: To combat police brutality, hire more female cops — studies show they’re better at keeping their cool

Little as you can not draw statistical significance from a single event.

Sure, but it's also not unique:

Female police officer faces murder charges for shooting and killing unarmed suspect

That's a disturbing video to watch too. She tazes the crap out him before shooting him.

Then there's this one.

I realize these are all just individual anecdotes but it seems like there are cases where the suspect is a large male and the officer is a small female, she can't physically overpower him like a male officer could so she resorts to weapons instead?

 

[Pterodactyl]

deleted; not constructive

 

[sunmaster14]

None of which refutes that at an encounter between a cop and a civilian, the cop is at less risk than the civilian. Capiche?

First of all, that's not what you said. Second of all, it is irrelevant how much risk there is in each individual encounter. The cop has to face those individual encounters on a regular basis, which makes all the difference.

I'll make an analogy to an x-ray technician. When you're getting an x-ray, he leaves the room so as not to be exposed to the x-ray, but you, of course, get the full exposure. Does that mean that he's being wimpy since he is afraid of a getting a little radiation and you're not?

 

[Hlafordlaes]

... Go ahead and put all of the blame on the cops.

Happy to oblige. Here are some brave beefcakes who don't know how to handle a 15 year old, unarmed, small, female accident victim. Guess she was guilty as sin of being of mixed race! Sniveling cowards claimed to bystanders she needed to be forced to seek medical care, but she was arrested and booked at the station instead. Not at all surprised these 'patriots' hale from the same area the Abu Ghraib goons nest in.

 

[ponderingturtle]

First of all, that's not what you said. Second of all, it is irrelevant how much risk there is in each individual encounter. The cop has to face those individual encounters on a regular basis, which makes all the difference.

I'll make an analogy to an x-ray technician. When you're getting an x-ray, he leaves the room so as not to be exposed to the x-ray, but you, of course, get the full exposure. Does that mean that he's being wimpy since he is afraid of a getting a little radiation and you're not?

So stasistics now don't matter? The cop is more likely to kill the person by a factor of 10 or more than the person is likely to kill the cop. The civilian has very legitimate reasons to be more afraid of the cop than the cop is in this situation.

 

[sunmaster14]

<snip>

I realize these are all just individual anecdotes but it seems like there are cases where the suspect is a large male and the officer is a small female, she can't physically overpower him like a male officer could so she resorts to weapons instead?

That's certainly a good reason why I think female police officers are more likely to destabilize a situation than stabilize it. There are other reasons too. For example, most criminals are men, particularly violent criminals, and they're probably less likely to take a woman's authority seriously. Or they might feel particularly humiliated by having to submit to the authority of a woman. A female police officer might also feel less constrained by protocol because the disciplinary and justice system usually treats women more leniently than men. Female rapists, for example, are treated with shocking leniency by our justice system in comparison to male rapists.

 

[eeyore1954]

Police conveniently don't keep stats on persons killed by police, hopefully that will change.

I believe there should be reporting requirements.

On the other side we do have the stop and frisk stats in NYC before it was ruled unconstitutional by the courts, 90% or more of the people stopped were doing nothing wrong and 90% were black or Hispanic.

A black person was more likely to be subjected to an unwarranted stop and frisk by the police. But that doesn't equate to being shot by the police for doing nothing.

We know the poor people of Ferguson were being given tickets because the fees were a big chunk of the city's budget.

Common practice in many jurisdictions. Where I live the Town of Islandia does the same thing. They have got me. But they give out the tickets for violating the law. I believe it skews towards poor people because you are more likely to have a taillight out or no insurance when you do not have the money to fix these things.

And I'm sure it's not hard to show that driving while black is something that gets one stopped by the police on that basis alone.

I believe the stats were not that convincing although being searched after being stopped were much higher for minorities. Still this has nothing to do with the fear of being killed by the police while doing nothing wrong.


Out of the millions of encounters with police each year how many have ended in an unarmed person being killed? Out of those how many were unjustified?
To me it is an irrational fear hyped up. Of course that comes from a white man.

 

[Pterodactyl]

I believe there should be reporting requirements.

I am fairly certain there are reporting requirements.

At my agency, I am required to send in reports to the state bureau of investigation for every single reported crime, citation and arrest I make. This compiled data is then made available to the public at the end of the year.
Also, in my state every officer involved shooting is investigate by the state bureau (outside agency), so would be on their record from that end too. I would bet this is more or less standard across the country.

Shootings are also pretty rare events for most agencies.
There were 900 something people killed by police last year, right?

According to google, there are around 18,000 different police agencies in this country. One in every 200 agencies has an officer kill someone (epidemic, right?). Obviously in major metro areas this will be higher, but the point is this is big news when it happens. I dont see how these would ever go "un-reported" but I could be wrong.

 

[sunmaster14]

So stasistics now don't matter? The cop is more likely to kill the person by a factor of 10 or more than the person is likely to kill the cop. The civilian has very legitimate reasons to be more afraid of the cop than the cop is in this situation.

First of all, the risk in an individual encounter is so small for a civilian that fear of being shot is irrational. Furthermore, if the civilian wants to reduce his risk even more, probably by at least a factor of 10 (to bring it down below the risk that the police officer faces), he can do so by being compliant.

Second of all, and more importantly, the police officer is not acting out of fear. He is acting according to an established protocol, which has been designed to minimize his risk in any individual encounter because he is expected to face many, many such encounters over his career, and it would be untenable to allow the risk in one such encounter to be higher than a certain very low limit.

It is the same reason that an airline pilot goes through a ridiculously long checklist before taking off or landing. He doesn't do it because he's afraid that the plane will misbehave at a critical moment on any particular takeoff or landing, but because if he doesn't go through the checklist every single time, then the risk is unacceptable over the long term.

 

[qayak]

A black person was more likely to be subjected to an unwarranted stop and frisk by the police. But that doesn't equate to being shot by the police for doing nothing.

Actually it would. The only way you can get shot by police while doing nothing wrong is to interact with police while doing nothing wrong. With 90% more interactions one would expect a lot more shooting of blacks who are doing nothing wrong.

Common practice in many jurisdictions. Where I live the Town of Islandia does the same thing. They have got me. But they give out the tickets for violating the law. I believe it skews towards poor people because you are more likely to have a taillight out or no insurance when you do not have the money to fix these things.

Check what the justice department said. It wasn't being poor that got you in trouble, it was being black. Poor white people were fined less often and at lower rates for the same violations.

I believe the stats were not that convincing although being searched after being stopped were much higher for minorities. Still this has nothing to do with the fear of being killed by the police while doing nothing wrong.

Out of the millions of encounters with police each year how many have ended in an unarmed person being killed? Out of those how many were unjustified?
To me it is an irrational fear hyped up. Of course that comes from a white man.

I guess you have to decide what is acceptable. Is it the white rate, the black rate, or is it just unacceptable for an unarmed, non threatening person to be shot by police.

 

[Jules Galen]

First of all, the risk in an individual encounter is so small for a civilian that fear of being shot is irrational. Furthermore, if the civilian wants to reduce his risk even more, probably by at least a factor of 10 (to bring it down below the risk that the police officer faces), he can do so by being compliant.

Second of all, and more importantly, the police officer is not acting out of fear. He is acting according to an established protocol, which has been designed to minimize his risk in any individual encounter because he is expected to face many, many such encounters over his career, and it would be untenable to allow the risk in one such encounter to be higher than a certain very low limit.

It is the same reason that an airline pilot goes through a ridiculously long checklist before taking off or landing. He doesn't do it because he's afraid that the plane will misbehave at a critical moment on any particular takeoff or landing, but because if he doesn't go through the checklist every single time, then the risk is unacceptable over the long term.

Most people aren't afraid of being shot...they just use those examples to highlight a horrifying trend: the rise of Police State USA and the criminilization of civil life.

It's no accident that the US has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, and has almost as many people in prisons as both Russia and China combined. People don't like that.

 

[Dr. Keith]

The arrest rate per year is about 4 per 100 people. So, in a country of 320 million, you're talking about 12.8 million arrests, and 1,000 people killed, per year. So, about a 0.008% chance of being killed by a policeman during an arrest. It's got to be a lower probability for a single encounter rather than an actual arrest, and I imagine even lower than that if you're actually innocent of committing a crime. And don't forget to scale down the numbers by a factor of 4 if you're not carrying a weapon.

So, no, it's not terribly risky to have an encounter with police in general.

And its even less risky for the police, and yet they are constantly in fear of their lives.
Maybe this is a training issue.

Less risky? Ummm, no. It's not. There are almost 13 million arrests per year, but only about 750,000 policemen. That means each policeman on average is involved in 17 arrests per year, but the typical citizen is involved in one every 25 years.

Another way of looking at it is that there are about 1/25th as many homicides of police as there are homicides by police, but there are over 400 times as many citizens as police. Therefore, the average policeman has a 400/25 = 16 times higher probability of being killed by a citizen as the average citizen does of being killed by the police.

I could break down these numbers by race as well, but I won't for now. I predict, however, that it will show you something that the Black Lives Matter people won't like.

None of which refutes that at an encounter between a cop and a civilian, the cop is at less risk than the civilian. Capiche?

First of all, that's not what you said.

See above. In context of our conversation how could you read my statement as anything other than: [an encounter] is even less risky for the police

And you have not refuted this. Even as a white man, when a cop pulls up to me I know that it is very unlikely anything bad will come out of it, but it is more likely I get hurt than he does. It is an imbalanced relationship from the start. To ignore that is even sillier than pretending that I ignored the fact that cops have more encounters than civilians.

Second of all, it is irrelevant how much risk there is in each individual encounter. The cop has to face those individual encounters on a regular basis, which makes all the difference.

You are the one who said: it's not terribly risky to have an encounter with police in general.

You picked "an encounter" as the measure of risk, not me. And really does it matter? The cop has far more control over the encounter than the civilian. One is a trained professional doing their job and the other isn't.

I'll make an analogy to an x-ray technician. When you're getting an x-ray, he leaves the room so as not to be exposed to the x-ray, but you, of course, get the full exposure. Does that mean that he's being wimpy since he is afraid of a getting a little radiation and you're not?

He also covers the patient in a lead vest to reduce the exposure to the patient. Maybe we can expand on that and have the cops actively work harder at reducing the risks to the people they encounter instead of focusing solely on protecting themselves.

PS: I just had my teeth X-rayed and they no longer leave the room. I guess they got that stuff more under control now. Lessons to be learned there?

 

[eeyore1954]

I guess you have to decide what is acceptable. Is it the white rate, the black rate, or is it just unacceptable for an unarmed, non threatening person to be shot by police.

I wasn't discussing what is acceptable. I was discussing if being afraid of being shot by the police while doing nothing wrong is a rational fear for a black person.

Actually it would. The only way you can get shot by police while doing nothing wrong is to interact with police while doing nothing wrong. With 90% more interactions one would expect a lot more shooting of blacks who are doing nothing wrong.

Out of the millions of stop and frisks how many resulted in an innocent black person being shot.
BTW I am against stop and frisk if the stops are unwarranted.

Check what the justice department said. It wasn't being poor that got you in trouble, it was being black. Poor white people were fined less often and at lower rates for the same violations.

Can you point me to that data?

 

[William Parcher]

Early 2000's Lincoln Navigator

I have narrowed it to being either a 2003 or 2004, but I haven't figured out which one.

 

[Jules Galen]

I have narrowed it to being either a 2003 or 2004, but I haven't figured out which one.

And...here's how a seat belt hangs in a 2003 Navigator.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2003/2346338596_15bc852ea5.jpg

This proves...THE WINDOW WAS CLOSED.

DEAL!

 

[sunmaster14]

See above. In context of our conversation how could you read my statement as anything other than: [an encounter] is even less risky for the police

Because you claimed "yet the police are constantly in fear for their lives" as if it was irrational for them to be in fear even though their risk per encounter was lower. Furthermore, a policeman's risk in any individual encounter can be orders of magnitude higher, depending on the circumstances, and he would know it. If a suspect is acting erratically (as if on drugs), or has a serious arrest warrant outstanding, or if the encounter is in a high crime neighborhood, the policeman could have legitimate fear in just one encounter.

And you have not refuted this. Even as a white man, when a cop pulls up to me I know that it is very unlikely anything bad will come out of it, but it is more likely I get hurt than he does. It is an imbalanced relationship from the start. To ignore that is even sillier than pretending that I ignored the fact that cops have more encounters than civilians.

It is an unbalanced relationship from the start because of who you are, which, presumably, is a law-abiding citizen. If you were a psychopath, or a violent criminal on the lam, the risk would be far greater for the policeman than for you. Perhaps 99 times out of 100, the policeman has nothing to fear from the person he stopped. But 1 time out of 100, he is at serious risk. The problem is that he doesn't have a good way of differentiating the two situations. There are several acceptable metrics he could try to use: gender (women are far less dangerous than men), age (older people are far less dangerous than people aged 15 to 30), evidence of wealth (wealthy people are less dangerous than poor, in part because they have something to lose), sketchiness of neighborhood (stops in high crime areas are far more dangerous than stops in low crime areas), facial expressions and body language (humans have evolved a rather accurate ability to perceive threat from such visual information), and verbal expression (humans have likewise evolved the ability to perceive thread from auditory information). What police are not supposed to use as a metric (although they probably do subconsciously) is race or ethnicity. I suspect that the other acceptable metrics would easily dominate the unacceptable one if there was a conflict. Unfortunately, some of those acceptable metrics are correlated with race or ethnicity, so the importance of the unacceptable factor is probably overestimated in the statistics.

You are the one who said: it's not terribly risky to have an encounter with police in general.

You picked "an encounter" as the measure of risk, not me. And really does it matter? The cop has far more control over the encounter than the civilian. One is a trained professional doing their job and the other isn't.

He only has more control over the encounter actually if the civilian chooses to be compliant. If the civilian has decided not to be compliant for whatever reasons, then in fact the cop has less control because he is constrained by protocol. Which is another way of saying that the cop has less control over the encounter precisely when it matters.