Rumraket wrote:Oldskeptic wrote:I wonder what you won't do, what lengths you won't got to, what twisting of the words of others you won't employ, what pretzel logic you won't use in order to keep your own personal brand of bias intact? Credulity and incredulity is a bad mix when that's all you have.
Yes yes bla bla... I will say one thing with regards to the case you've made so far, I don't really think you're racist, however little you thinks that's worth coming from me.
Good, and thank you, at least we've got that out of the way.
Rumraket wrote:And I do think the matter is complicated. It does bring up a difficult issue, this whole thing with how statistics influence interactions between police and the black community.
The statistics are only reflections of the reality that police
and communities face on a daily basis.
Rumraket wrote:Is it even possible, or is it
realistic to expect of police officers, which are just as human as the rest of us, that they totally ignore their knowledge of statistics and their own experiences and approach any and all situations with a "blank slate"? It's basic human nature to learn from and act on your experiences. I some times wonder if this problem is solvable once it has begun due to the nature of the viscious cycle it invariably leads to.
It
is a vicious cycle, and that is all the more reason for people to stop trying to figure out who to blame. What the most recent studies have shown is that there is no explicit
or implicit bias on the part of police in the shooting of black people. That doesn't mean that there is no bias on the part of police, just that it is not a factor when it comes to pulling the trigger.
Those same studies do shown that in the case of lesser forms of use of force by police there is a definite, measurable, and statistically significant bias in the treatment of black people and Hispanics.
Some think that it defies logic to think that a 24% bias in having a gun pulled and pointed doesn't translate into a 24% or higher bias in actually shooting. I'm not one of those people. It is such a big step to go from pointing the gun to actually shooting someone that it's understandable that there be such a discrepancy between the biases.
As for the obvious bias in less than lethal use of force, trying to place blame will do no one any good. Especially since so many police forces realize their part in the problem and are actively trying to mitigate the problem.
I see the problem as one of respect: In many areas there is little to no respect for police and in those same areas their is little to no respect on the part of police for the people. That's the heart of the problem because in certain communities that lack of respect by police gets translated into distrust of police. And that lack of respect
of the police gets translated into bias and suspicion of the community as a whole, and communities come to almost resemble police occupied zones with police on one side and the community on the other; the police are in effect the enemy.
One way that I've proposed before to help solve that problem is for the community to in effect have it's own police force recruited from within the community, but that's not going to happen as long as young people in the community view the police as the enemy.
There is a self reinforcing vicious cycle for you: People of the community see police as the enemy because most of the police are not of the community and most of the police are not of the community because people of the community see the police as the enemy.
People in black and or Hispanic communities need to find a way to encourage not discourage young people of their communities to join their police forces. There are many police forces in the US that have been sued and or ordered by the courts to make their forces more representative of their communities and they try through recruitment efforts but the recruitment efforts don't work. Nothing changes much and those police forces only have to show the courts that they tried.
Some effort on the part of the community seems in order to me. Even if it's just an attitude change from their young people aren't joining the enemy they're infiltrating. Places like Ferguson could voluntarily or be ordered to only recruit and or hire black officers until 70% of their police force is black. But that only works if there are enough black people willing to be recruited.
This replacement by attrition could take a while, but what if a police department like Ferguson just fired every one of their police officers and hired back only those with a minimum of excessive use of force complaints and with a probation period for those hired back. Treat excessive use of force complaints seriously and investigate them thoroughly; so many and the officer is gone, whether white or black, and replaced by a black cop until the police force resembles the make up of the community.
A lot of people would object to affirmative actions such as this, but the supreme court hasn't ruled it unconstitutional for public educational institutions, and I think a problem like under representation in police forces is as important if not more important than how many black doctors, lawyers, or engineers we have.
Also juvenile criminal records restrictions need to be examined and reformed if too restrictive.
There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher will not say it - Cicero.
Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead - Stephen Hawking