Justine Diamond

[Loki]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40718997

Looks like the woman slapped the back of the police car, which is what got her shot. Lewk should be happy. Inappropriate behavior punishable by death.

[LittleFuzzy]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40718997

Looks like the woman slapped the back of the police car, which is what got her shot. Lewk should be happy. Inappropriate behavior punishable by death.

That's only counted as resisting arrest when someone of color does it.

[Aimless]

Who gives a flying fig what proportion of people there are? That would only matter if the Police were shooting entirely at random.

Why would general population % matter at all? Statistically speaking certain races commit far more crime than what their population % would represent.

Lewk observed that police killed a greater number of white people, in absolute terms. In a discussion about bias in police shootings, this observation is meaningless without adjusting for relevant demographic variables such as relative population size.

Let's say police kill 1 in 1000 people per year with no regard to race. If you have a country with 1000 000 white people and 1000 000 black people, you'll find that police kill 2 000 people per year: 1 000 white people and 1 000 black people. If you instead look at a country with 1 900 000 white people and 100 000 black people, you'll find that the police still kill 2 000 people per year, but that 1 900 of those people are white and 100 are black. Lewk then asks you if you find that surprising or if you think that police are biased against white people. Do you? Of course not, because you know that, even if the police are completely non-racist in the second scenario, they would still end up killing many more white people than black people. These absolute numbers would be meaningless to a discussion about unjustified bias in police shootings. They would perhaps be more relevant to the question of just how homicidal cops are. So, the question you both should have asked is: who gives a flying fig what the absolute numbers are, in a discussion about bias in police shootings? The answer is: no-one.

Now let's say police kill 1 in 1 000 white people and 1 in 100 black people per year. If you have a country with 1000 000 white people and 1000 000 black people, you'll find that police kill 11 000 people per year: roughly 1000 white people and 10 000 black people. It would be clear that black people were being killed at a higher rate and you'd have to investigate different explanations, such as bias against black people, differences in crime rates, the homicidal tendencies of police, etc. If you instead had a country with 1 900 000 white people and 100 000 black people, you'd find that police kill 2 900 people: roughly 1 900 white people and only 1 000 black people. If you were to look at this second country through Lewk's eyes, focusing on absolute numbers, you'd be forced to conclude that police are racially biased against white people, or that white people are more likely to be violent criminals, and that cops aren't all that homicidal after all. This would lead us to focus on the wrong explanations and underestimate either the problem of racial bias against black people or criminality among black people--or both.

Since the Police should only be killing killers, it would make sense if the Police are being objective that 52.5% of those they shoot are black but that's not true.

Over 50% of the US population are female yet very few females get shot. Which makes sense since only 10% of murders are committed by females. The Police should be shooting killers in self-defence they should not be shooting at random surely, so it is proportion of killers that matters. If blacks make a majority of killers then they should make a majority of those shot by cops.

[...]

Or do you deny that blacks make a majority of killers?

Statistically speaking certain races commit far more crime than what their population % would represent.

We know for a fact that police don't only kill murderers or even criminals. We also know--for a fact--that police are implicitly and explicitly biased against black people. We know this from experiments. We know this from interview studies. We have corroborated this with circumstantial evidence that shows bias in the occurrence of unjustified stops, unjustified searches, unjustified arrests, unjustified use of excessive--even lethal--force and unjustified charges. In every respect, black people in America are unfavorably treated by police, even when you account for relevant variables of specific encounters (nullifying the greater part of your arguments about differential crime rates which were already shaky due to other studies that have attempted to adjust for criminality).

You guys are acting like no-one studied this issue before you came along and decided to pull opinions out of your behinds.

"In other words, black men were roughly “nine times more likely” to be murdered than white men, and the overwhelming majority of those murders were committed by other black men."

Even without racial bias, most black murder victims would be killed by other black people, just as most white murder victims (over 80%) are killed by other white people.

In other words you are going to put your fingers in your ear and go 'lalalalalaal' and continue the drum beat of 'white cops murdering black innocents!' despite evidence that the problem is likely larger than simply screaming 'RACISM.'

I'd take this more seriously if you hadn't made it abundantly clear that you do not believe that racial bias against black people is a significant problem, a view that is thoroughly repudiated by all available evidence.

Reasonable doubt basically means you give the benefit of the doubt to the person who is on trial.

Some so-called liberals on this site seem keen to forget this very fundamental fact.

In reality, as has been shown many times by scholars, "reasonable doubt" means a wide range of standards, standards that appear to be differentially applied based on defendants' race, socioeconomic status, occupation etc.

[RandBlade]

Lewk observed that police killed a greater number of white people, in absolute terms. In a discussion about bias in police shootings, this observation is meaningless without adjusting for relevant demographic variables such as relative population size.

Yes he did while specifically contrasting that with crime stats and looking at the relevant population: criminal killers ... blacks make up a majority.

The rest of your post is redundant as you looked at general population rather than the murderous population. If we are to look at general population then racism is absolutely nothing compared to sexism. If we merely look at general population injustices we should be saying Male Lives Matter.