zlacker

I'm curious if you really think that it is ok to set fire to a police car? If so, what's the logic? Because my understanding of the first amendment (i.e. the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances) does not protect you if you commit crimes.

>>rsween+(OP)
If the police are indiscriminately killing members of my race simply because they're afraid of people from my race, I don't think a little property damage to draw attention to that fact is really an equivalent response. So yeah, I'm OK with setting fire to a police car in this circumstance.

But the bigger question is, did they really find the person doing the work they claimed or did they use parallel construction to hide illegal use of surveillance tools?

>>theweb+l2
Based on the metrics I have seen, police are not indiscriminately killing any particular race - deaths from police are not too far off of the crime rates by race. Police killings is a problem, but does not seem to be a problem targeted at any particular race.

>>GhostV+e7
Do you think that when police wrongly kill people, they don't also assume the victim is guilty and file it as justified? When they kill a black person during a minor, not violent crime, do you think it's ok because of the correlation with a crime?

Also, since police are notorious for hiding and protecting such metrics, care to provide any sources?

>>BlueDi+Q8
I don't think it is OK to kill anyone during a minor non-violent crime, I just think that if there were a significant number of police killing black people due to their race you would see it in the numbers.

People shot to death by police in the US by race (technically not the same number as are killed, but should be close enough): https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...

Percentage of population by race: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/IPE120218

Homicides by race: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

Violent crimes by race (2016): https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

If you are looking at black people in particular, they make up ~23% of the people shot by police while making up ~13% of the population of the US. They commit ~50% of the homicides, and more than 23% of violent crimes such as robbery, assault, and burglary so to me this shows that the police do not have a significant bias towards killing black people, as if there was no discrimination at all you would expect the number of police killings to match the violent crime rates (since violent crimes generally lead to justified police shootings).

The root cause of black people being so over-represented in violent crimes may be discrimination. However, the reality is that right now black people commit a significant portion of the violent crimes in the US, and as a result you would expect them to be over-represented in the number of people being killed by police, even without any discrimination by the police. This does not show that police never discriminate against black people, or that police brutality is not a problem, it just shows that when it comes to police killings, it does not seem to be an issue caused by police targeting black people.

Personally, I think that the biggest issue is that in the US there seems to be a number of dense areas of significant poverty and violence, which are predominantly black. If you grow up in one of these areas, there is a good chance you will be pulled into this violence and continue the cycle. Discrimination and over-policing of minor crimes just makes this problem worse, as black people in these areas are kept in poverty and with limited options to get out, and people who have the means to move get out of the area just leaving behind the people with no other options.

>>GhostV+e7
I looked into it a few years ago. Because it's also about structural racism, you need to compare rastes and numbers with comparable international figures, as there are biases stacked upon biases if you only look at domestic relative rates. Those crime statistics you cited, try to compare them to some other first world countries. Look at incarceration rates, convication rates, ratio of jury trials, and percentages of subpopulations in prison at any one time, and as long as you are willing to accept it, you'll soon start to see a very clear pattern. You'll see that US crimes statistics over ethnicity and income doesn't look like anything, or anywhere else at all. It's bizarrely skewed, not subtle at all.

>>rsween+(OP)
Yes, under certain conditions, setting a police car on fire seems like an ethical action. Welcome to the US. If the police are unaccountable, they're thugs and not police. It's fine to burn the cars of thugs and those that prey upon us.

>>lostmy+Fd
Crime statistics are definitely skewed, and discrimination is a huge part of that. But the question is not whether black people are being killed at a higher rate due to discrimination, the question is whether black people are being killed at a higher rate because the police are targeting them due to their race. The answer to the former is definitely yes - due to a variety of factors including discrimination black people commit more violent crimes and as a result are killed by the police more frequently. I think the answer to the latter is no, there is not strong evidence that police officers are more likely to kill black people over white people in the same situation.

>>Wealth+ce
Those cars that are burning don't belong to the thugs. They belong to American citizens. They were purchased with your tax dollars. They will have to be purchased again with your tax dollars. It's also a crime.

I'm all for major changes to policing in the US. Our police departments are far to aggressive. But...seems like we are hurting each other.

>>GhostV+e7
You might want to cross-reference those deaths with the rate of wrongful arrest (don't have it in front of me, but high ~48% black), and a clearer picture will form: it is clear that black people are simply policed more and often for exceptionally petty charges. It turns out the rate of criminals in a place is directly related to the amount of police in a location that are motivated to arrest people. The number is highly misleading, purposefully so. And of those alleged "criminals" how many really deserved to die? So, yes, there is definitely a racial element to this.