zlacker

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+(OP)
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.