"Privilege"

[yovargas]

Thanks for that, Lali. I really appreciate the different perspective. I think we need as many perspectives as we can get on this topic. (Also: )

(And just as an FYI, you said you've seen estimates of ~420 citizens killed by police per year but that's definitely very low. The http://www.killedbypolice.net/ site I keep linking to reported 1100 last year and is at 380 so far this year. Though a few of those are totally accidental deaths such as car accidents.)

[Lalaith]

I didn't get those numbers from police sites, but I still figured they were too low. I'm not good enough at statistics to make any kind of meaningful or convincing argument on this. (The fact that good, solid numbers don't seem to exist doesn't help either.) The stats for LEO fatalities (which are quite solid) also include heart attacks during work, motorcycle crashes and vehicle crashes (some caused by others, some not), being hit and killed by vehicles (some deliberately, some accidentally or through negligence), and violent deaths through gunfire. So you can see how challenging it would be to get meaningful stats. I think it could be done, mind you, just not by me.

It seems to me, however, like the stats we can find show that it's more likely to be killed as a LEO by a citizen (or in the line of duty) than it is to be killed by the police. I think the stats seem to show that a disproportionate number of black people are killed by police, but I think it's good to compare that to the type of crimes being committed as well. With that factored in, I'm not sure how it washes out.

Again, it's such a complicated topic.

(Thanks for the hug. )

[yovargas]

(What's LEO stand for?)

[Primula Baggins]

Law enforcement officer, I'd guess.

[River]

Regarding riots, I know I've posted this before, but it's something I like to remind myself and others of whenever another burning city makes the news cycle. In 1999, Seattle hosted the WTO meeting. Protesters turned out in droves. Most were peaceful, but not all. The media portrayed it as total destruction of downtown with cops hurling tear gas everywhere. There was a semi-iconic photograph of a Seattle police officer kicking a protester in the nuts (years later, the SPD would end up under a consent order due to their brutality issues, but I digress). I was on the other side of the country and found it very distressing. Then my sister, who was at the protests, said that the chaotic and scary bits were limited to one or two blocks. Nowhere near where she was marching. My parents went downtown after everything got cleared out and said the destruction of the city was limited to a couple smashed windows. So I take reports of riots with lots and lots of salt. Which isn't to say there aren't any idiots in Baltimore. Just that the idiocy on display might be exaggerated.

[JewelSong]

I am not sure it is that exaggerated this time. The Baltimore Orioles are playing their afternoon game to an empty stadium (it will be televised, but not spectators will be allowed inside the ballpark) and have moved the rest of the series to Tampa Bay. I have never heard of something like this happening before in pro baseball.

ETA:http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/r ... dline_7_hp

[Primula Baggins]

Apparently it hasn't, ever. Or so said the announcers on the game that was going this afternoon downstairs.

Baltimore is quiet tonight.

[Lalaith]

Yes, LEO means law enforcement officer(s).

The destruction of that senior center looked like a major thing in and of itself, and that was just one example. I'm not sure these riots are as minor as the Seattle one you referenced, River. (I do agree that the media can make a mountain out of a molehill, though. They do it all of the time.)

[Frelga]

Lali, thank you for that post. I know this is a difficult time for those in law enforcement and their families, and the more so for the officers who put their lines on the line in the protection of their communities.

yov, you are counting trees when the problem is the forest. Looking at the nationwide numbers as a whole is not very helpful here, because the problem, while widespread, is not averaged out uniformly. It's like comparing the number of redwoods and nettles - you may have more redwoods overall, but it doesn't help when you land in the nettle patch.

The riots in Ferguson, which now look like the first spark in the current firestorm, were not just about the killing of Mike Brown. It was about the police department treating the community as an occupied territory from which they were collecting tribute (fines). This caused the community to treat the police as an occupying army, the perception that was confirmed as a certainty when the police showed up in military uniforms and with military equipment. (I still don't know WTF they thought they were doing. Was opening fire on the crowd an actual possibility?)

But why did Ferguson police treat the community that way? Was this city in fact populated by dangerous criminals that had to be held in check like a plague of zombies?

Here's an article about the DOJ report published on redstate.com, a conservative blog. Its author, Leon Wolf, approached the report with the deliberate assumption that the DOJ is biased and every single witness is lying, so he would only consider the facts provided by the FPD.

His conclusions were pretty staggering. I'm just going to list section headings, and I highly recommend that you read the entire thing.

1. The Ferguson Police Department acts almost exclusively as a revenue generation machine for the city

2. The FPD habitually uses excessive force. (Based only on the officers "use of force" reports!)

3. The FPD has utterly failed to supervise its officers' use of force. (Again, based only on the internal FPD documents. For instance, "anyone of rank sergeant or above reviews their own "Use of Force" reports." - highlight author's)

4. The FPD systematically punishes residents of Ferguson for 'Contempt of Cop. (This includes citations and arrests for "Manner of Walking", dafuq is that? Also, arrests for "Failure to Comply" where the original order was actually illegal. Still all internal FPD documents.)

5. The evidence of racial bias in the administration of justice is overwhelming. (Far beyond arrests and searches, this covers the percentage of arrests for outstanding warrants, including those for missed courts payments and appearances (see #1), and the likelihood of having similar charges dismissed.

[axordil]

http://www.npr.org/2015/05/14/406699264 ... he-ghettos

Heard this the other day, and it filled in a few missing pieces for me. Basically, public policy and private interests colluded to put money into the pockets of white families and not blacks for about forty years, such that by the time segregation in housing actually became illegal in the 70s, the opportunity for wealth creation that the white middle class takes as a given was gone and the ghettos--created, again, with malice aforethought by the public-private partnership--firmly established.

While I was aware of local and state government collusion, I was unaware of the depths of federal involvement. The low-interest loans provided by the FHA and the GI Bill came with segregating strings attached: deeds and such had to have clauses in them forbidding the sale of the property in question to non-whites. Public housing, starting in the mid-30s, was built in such a way as to destroy existing integrated neighborhoods and replace them with segregated areas.

The average asset growth in question that black families got locked out of is about $450,000. Obviously the damage done was more than the dollar figure, since having a house as an asset changes the nature of life in a lot of other ways, both for the individual family and for the community at large: available credit, school funding, persistence of civic institutions, et al.

[yovargas]

I heard that story when it was on. It was pretty damn depressing though very enlightening. I was also vaguely and generally aware of that stuff but amazed at the depths and breadths of the conspiracies. I was a bit frustrated in that interview, though, because I really wanted to hear the guy offer some suggestions for how to try and correct the awful messes that were created for blacks in the US. There must be some solutions.......

[axordil]

Well, at least now there's a solid dollar figure to look at. I find that a number can provide focus in discussions of righting large-scale wrongs, which otherwise have a tendency to become nebulous.

Straight-up reparations to those households affected (or descendants) would be economically (not to mention politically) difficult to muster: there were about 6.5 million black households at the end of the period in question, c. 1975, and 3 trillion dollars isn't just lying around under sofa cushions. Even if one throttled it in to include only those otherwise eligible for GI Bill benefits or FHA loans in the relevant period, we're still probably talking over a trillion dollars--and that's if we limit the damages solely to those of African-American descent.

Amortized, though, it might be more feasible...so having the feds pick up the tab for the affected class's mortgages up to that aforementioned dollar amount? And perhaps dinging the private parties who helped the situation along back in the day, or their current corporate incarnations, to help pay for it? Obviously a lot of people would scream at the notion no matter how it's framed, and there are going to be those who would want to subtract out the value of any benefits paid out to the affected class in the interim--as if a patient who's hemorrhaging can't use more than ten pints of blood over the course of treatment.

Honestly, I'm not sure anything can be done in the currant political climate, which will just kick the can down the road...until it falls off the demographic cliff when non-whites are an absolute majority. Gerrymandering and voter suppression can only put off the inevitable payback time so long, and the longer it goes, the nastier I fear it will be.

[yovargas]

Straight-up reparations to those households affected (or descendants) would be economically (not to mention politically) difficult to muster: there were about 6.5 million black households at the end of the period in question, c. 1975, and 3 trillion dollars isn't just lying around under sofa cushions. Even if one throttled it in to include only those otherwise eligible for GI Bill benefits or FHA loans in the relevant period, we're still probably talking over a trillion dollars--and that's if we limit the damages solely to those of African-American descent.

Amortized, though, it might be more feasible...so having the feds pick up the tab for the affected class's mortgages up to that aforementioned dollar amount? And perhaps dinging the private parties who helped the situation along back in the day, or their current corporate incarnations, to help pay for it?

I think I already said as much in the "libertarian ideals" thread but yeah, I'd be very on board with an honest, focused attempt at doing this or something like it. It'd be impossible to get it perfect but you're right that this makes getting a handle on the real damages done here, and therefore the real debt blacks are owed, much more feasible.

Obviously a lot of people would scream at the notion no matter how it's framed...Honestly, I'm not sure anything can be done in the currant political climate

I think I said that in the "libertarian ideals" thread too. Hell, it'd likely be impossible for a politician to even suggest such a thing, much less try and do it.

[yovargas]

For those that didn't listen to the interview, I think the most relevant and revealing piece of data was his quoted statistic that while black income is on average about 60% of white income, black wealth is only 5% of white wealth. It would be difficult to explain that massive discrepancy outside of the explicitly racist housing policies of most of the 1900s.

[Teremia]

Ax, thanks for posting the link to that interview. I heard it on NPR and thought it was just amazingly illuminating. I had never thought about the effects of housing policies in that way! The difference in wealth that results is so egregious . . . . Wow.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

This picture doesn't reflect the attitudes of all police officers, of course. It doesn't reflect the attitude of most police officers. It doesn't even reflect the attitude of many police officers. But it does reflect the attitude of some police officers. And that is a very disturbing thought.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

yov, you've been asking for some statistics about the rate that African-Americans are killed by police, particularly when unarmed. Here is a new Washington Post report that has some.

Fatal police shootings in 2015 approaching 400 nationwide

Of particular significance is this finding:

About half the victims were white, half minority. But the demographics shifted sharply among the unarmed victims, two-thirds of whom were black or Hispanic. Overall, blacks were killed at three times the rate of whites or other minorities when adjusting by the population of the census tracts where the shootings occurred.

As I have said before, I am distrustful of such data, because I think it almost always can be spun to support whichever side of an issue one wishes to support, but the numbers do seem telling.

[yovargas]

Finally! I can't believe it took so long for a journalist somewhere to do this. I'd considered doing it myself based off killedbypolice.net (which they site as one of their major sources) but quickly realized it would be extremely time consuming. It says that the "data, which will be collected through the end of the year, will be made public at a future date" which is really excellent (I hate having to wade through all the editorializing and stories to get to the real info). Thank you for posting this.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[JewelSong]

The cops did not "crash" the pool party. They were called by several neighbors because someone in this (gated) community was holding a private pool party (without asking anyone else in the neighborhood) that got way out of control with loud music and several hundred teenagers, many whom had heard about it from a friend of a friend of a friend.

The family holding the party apparently wanted to start their own entertainment business and had the DJ announce over the air that people should just "come on down."

Of the 12 cops that arrived at the scene, 11 behaved as they should have. One didn't and he has resigned.

This doesn't excuse his behavior, but the incident was not so black-and-white (no pun intended.)

HERE is an account from someone who lives in the neighborhood.