Nature had a great analysis on the data collection/analysis perspective last year: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02601-9
Our police force has had it's immune system stripped away.
Qualified immunity, lack of independent prosecutors and police unions make this a multi angle problem.
Imagine every place you've worked (if you've done that) and the larger the company the more likely you are to have one or two scary psychos that you just try to keep off their radar, now imagine that coworker has qualified immunity, a state issued gun, police union backing and a blue line to back him up... you aren't going to antagonize that guy, at best you'll avoid him, and he'll go out effectively unsupervised or with someone who won't stop them, we need external processes to get rid of bad cops so police have a better work environment.
Police reform is the most pro human thing I can think, whether your a cop or not.
https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/area/workshop/leo/l...
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.
I care very little about alleged dog whistles these days. You can only cry wolf so many times and all that.
> 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.
Maybe you're right, but the conversation as far as I'm aware is still very much fixated on the former question. We are locked on this question and we can't meaningfully "baysian" our way to deeper questions without more authoritative data. If one actually cared about solving the problem, he ought to support this sort of data collection initiative.
Then you aren't the group I was referencing. :) Your feedback loop theory seems plausible. Hard to say conclusively without more data, which is my point.
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.