zlacker

>>colinp+(OP)
Honestly, I was blind to police racism against blacks. Until I watched this video.

----------------

This is a shocking video:

https://www.wral.com/ace-perry-pulled-over-by-sampson-county...

+ white cop pulls over black driver (North Carolina)

+ refuses to tell him why he was stopped until he shows ID

+ asks driver questions about company name on his tee-shirt

+ expresses incredulity when driver says he works at the company

+ asks driver other irrelevant personal questions.

+ tells driver he was stopped for driving UNDER THE SPEED LIMIT (doing 65 in a 70)

+ asks driver: "wouldn't you find it suspicious if someone were doing 65 in a 70?"

+ gives driver a WRITTEN WARNING for driving 65 in a 70.

+ brushes off driver's questions saying "I've got stuff to do"

+ Feb 2020

Googling about the case `"Ace Perry" Sampson` it seems no action was taken against the officer. If anyone has an "in" with the ACLU (or similar), the police dept. could use some publicity.

(Strange how some cases don't get the attention they deserve.)

(Note: in response to a now apparently deleted comment: I'm aware that some roads have minimum speed limits. I remember once seeing on a highway: max75 min40. However, 65 in a 70 is just prudence.)

>>reacts+4b
I don't doubt there is racism but not everything is necessarily racially motivated.

I once was pulled over when I did a cross-country road trip. I was given some bs reason that I cut off a semi truck when changing lanes and that my GPS unit in the car was too high and blocking my view. I'm not a POC and the cop asked tons of questions, wanted to inspect my trunk, called the k9 unit, etc. I ended up also getting a warning. Subsequently the cops followed me for miles which felt like they're trying to harass me and find another reason to pull me over. So these things exist regardless of skin color.

>>throwa+Zy
Cops harassing people because they're bored isn't evidence that cops don't harass people of color because they're racist. The two things can, and very evidently do, co-exist.

Your attempt to dismiss racism as a factor in police actions is a big part of the reason why the police are able to get away with it so much.

>>onion2+Pz
Do you have any data that we could use to find out which hypothesis has the most explanatory power? High black crime rates make it difficult to distinguish racial motivations for police suspicion from other motivations. I would love to see arrest rates by race controlled for crime rates.

>>etrabr+dC
You would also need to control for unreported crime in non-black races. If the police ignore minor crimes by some races (eg not arresting white people found with small quantities of drugs) while they do arrest black people for the same crimes, or if the police ignore crime committed in white neighbourhoods and focus their efforts on arresting black people, then "black rates of crime are higher" is a fiction that stems from systemic police racism and isn't provably real.

The problem is that you're assuming the system is fair and therefore the statistics that come from it are a reflection of reality. If the system is racist then the statistics will be a reflection of that racism. Until you can demonstrate that isn't the case then using crime statistics as an excuse for police actions will be questionable at best, and actively enabling racism at worst.

>>onion2+XM
> Until you can demonstrate that isn't the case then using crime statistics as an excuse for police actions will be questionable at best

What else can be used other than statistics? Is there some other common frame of reference out there?

>>jeegsy+ni1
Well, among other things, if you simply poll people and ask about drug use, white people admit to using drugs at higher rates than black people but are punished much much less frequently for it.

So there are plenty of ways to acquire statistics and data other than through the biased system you are trying to examine. Think of it like going after a computer system that you suspect has been rooted. Do you want to use the system tools from that system to examine itself? Probably not.

>>jellic+uN1
> Well, among other things, if you simply poll people and ask about drug use, white people admit to using drugs at higher rates than black people but are punished much much less frequently for it.

If I recall correctly, there's a few confounding factors there - one is that survey results for "have you used drugs in the past week" show much higher relative use by African Americans than "have you used drugs in the past year". Another is that in other surveys African Americans were significantly more likely to answer "no" to "are you a convinced felon" given that they were actually convinced felons, so the survey results aren't necessarily accurate anyways.