I believe it's the primary reason for the complete apathy law enforcement shows towards de-escalation and self-restraint in general.
Why bother behaving when the standard for prosecuting you is so high as to be laughable?
The fact is, the relationship between unprivileged communities is such that:
- Crime rates to not reflect actual community grievances
- Community members do not want to rely on police even if they would like to bring in some sort of neutral authority / arbitrator to a dispute.
- The portion of would-be crime where the would-be victim is happy for the police presence is incredibly low.
- The portion of actual crime where the actual victim is sad for the police absence is incredibly low.
So it doesn't even matter if the statistics show the police kill extra in proportion to the neighborhoods the patrol and that in turn is proportional to the crime rate, because you haven't Baysianed deep enough to find the cycle. As exemplified by the latter two points, there is no way to find any value for the police as they currently with a democratic basis, and as such they must be defunded and replaced with something else.
This article collects a number of statistics: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/12/black-community-...
> Finally, Atlantic Media’s “State of the City” poll—published this past summer—shows an “urban minority” class that’s worried about crime, and skeptical toward law enforcement, but eager for a greater police presence if it means less crime. Just 22 percent of respondents say they feel “very safe” walking in their neighborhoods after dark, and only 35 percent say they have “a lot” of confidence in their local police. That said, 60 percent say hiring more police would have a “major impact” on improving safety in their neighborhoods.
In fact, even today, a slight majority of African Americans say that the criminal justice system in their area is “not harsh enough” on criminals: https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/documents/899/download (Table 2). At the height of the crime wave of the 1980s and 1990s, over 70% of black Americans felt we needed harsher punishment of criminals. Half of African Americans today say we are spending “too little” on law enforcement.
Hispanics are even more strongly in favor of policing. 53% of Hispanic people supported NYC’s controversial (and unconstitutional) stop-and-frisk policy: https://www.blackenterprise.com/nypd-stop-and-frisk-poll-rac....
Notions of “defunding the police” are an idea dreamed up by people who don’t actually live in these disadvantaged communities. Poll after poll shows that is not what disadvantaged communities actually want. They want the law to be enforced; they can’t criminals brought to justice; and they want all that done with due process protections, just like police manage to do for white neighborhoods.
- Despite worry about crime (something I never diminished), the police are not trusted. The distrust of the police while fearing crime is all the more damning.
- Attitudes towards punishment have changed since the 80s/90s as the incarceration rate has not fallen nearly as much as the crime rate.
- The slim 60% majority in favor of more policing among "urban minorities" is undercut by the huge difference between Hispanic and Black sentiment in NYC according to your source. Atlanta is significantly less Hispanic than NY, but the ratio looks like 5:1, which could well mean the Black Atlanta is closer to 50-50. Finally recall that the government of Atlanta is significantly more black than NY (including police chiefs), and that ~ slim majority is hardly a ringing endorsement.
I'll be first to admit White liberals underestimate Black conservativism, but the picture you paint is at best wary ambivalence towards the police. Thanks for doing my work for me.