Ferguson

[Seether]

You don't need sniper rifles, armored vehicles and automatic weapons during a riot.

Why? Obviously a riot is not a simple protest; the first implies violence, the second does not. Why not be prepared for violence since it is, as you said, a riot and a riot implies violence.

Also police in "maidan" suffered as many casualties as protesters there.

The Yanukovych police violence begot violence from the protestors.

How many policemen died from gun-related injuries in Ferguson?

Not sure, but the equipping of "combat gear" and lack of actually using it en masse is definitely a major reason for the low number of casualties on both sides.

They recently shot a mentally ill black guy for stealing donuts from a convenience store like 3 miles away. Then lied and said he was within striking distance and brandishing a knife in an overhand grip. None of which was true.

He wasn't shot for stealing donuts. He was shot because he had a knife, refused to drop it, came directly toward the cops, and was shot in self defense. If anyone argues that they had to actually be stabbed first for it to be self defense, or should wait until he "swing" at them, which is too late to try and defend yourself, then you're an idiot.

Whether the overhand grip was true or not is of little importance (I can't tell in the video how the grip was, as it is difficult to see his hands or the knife). What is important is that the police repeatedly told him to drop the knife (which is a lethal weapon) and he was shot when he began approaching the officer when he was 7-9 feet away (which is definitely within striking distance). Tell me: if someone had a knife and was walking directly at you after you told them to stop, would you feel at all threatened or that they might use it on you if they were 7-9 feet away? Be honest, please.

[chilon]

Well first I'm not not arguing blacks are genetically more violent than Whites/Asians/Hispanics. But I am arguing that cultural decisions and a lack of accountability (both internal and the desire of white leftists to excuse away dysfunctional behavior by blaming "society") have produced the crisis in crime and general political/economic dysfunction in black America.

Culture unfortunately is not really a measurable quality.

If you are going to argue that the primary cause of of higher black homicide is "cultural decisions and a lack of accountability" you would have to provide at least some evidence and data that somehow supports that claim.

Secondly, as I've repeated earlier saying that all the studies support socio-economics and then handwaving away real world examples that prove those studies wrong is disingenuous.

You would need to provide a real world examples that you believe prove "those studies wrong". You made a vague reference to "Chinese/Viet" communities without providing any sort of actual data, time period or geographic location of these communities.

I also already mentioned the difference between reported crimes and actual crimes and how some non-English speaking immigrant communities simply do not report crimes as frequently as they occur. In the case of the Chinese in San Francisco from 1880-1900 era, the reason was the number of hate crimes against the Chinese and the community not necessarily feeling like reporting a crime would do any good. So crime rate from this era would not really be reflective of the reality.

If you want to conduct responsible social science you can't just look at one statistic or a single example insolation without considering context and contributing factors.

Also its important to understand that correlation is not causation. That makes a huge difference. Low socio-economic status correlates with higher crime rate. A single example especially without any context or considering other variables does not disprove a correlation.

Why is crime cratering even though our economy crashed in 2008? You can't just wave that away.

First, the correlation between socio-economic level and crime is not dependent on the specific state of the economy. Whether the overall national economy is booming or busting, the ghettos of Richmond,CA would still be low socio-economic level and still be ghettos.

I do acknowledge that some in the past have made the un-nuanced argument that essentially "crime decreases in booms and increases in busts" but thats really drastically oversimplifying and not taking local conditions into account which IMO is essential.

Richmond did see its lowest murder rate in 33 years in 2013 though. But that results from a combination of factors. Many of which include what the city itself did. In 2006 after a particularly shocking murder at a funeral the City of Richmond spent time and money hiring consultants and trying to come up with innovative programs to reduce crime. One thing they did was provide an economic incentive, both in the form of paying specific individuals to stay out of trouble and by buying back guns. This provided a direct concrete incentive for specific targeted individuals to stay out of trouble.

Also Richmond intended to unveil a rather creative imminent domain program which really pissed off the banks and the financial elite who went to war in the media against the city. The point of that though is that city of Richmond was also trying a lot harder and more publicly to help its constituents who were "underwater" in their mortgages.

Another thing to put Richmond in context is that over past 6-7 years Richmond has made a concentrated effort to improve the socio-economic status of the city. They have made serious bids to attract big biotech companies, Lawrence Berkeley National Labs is opening a large new campus in Richmond, they provided some of the largest rebates in California for energy efficiency home remodeling and solar power (sparking the stagnant construction business in the city) and started technology focused job training programs for the poorest kids growing up there.

So its hard to really say any one specific thing reduced Richmond's crime and murder rate in particular. One thing is that the city definitely took concrete steps to both provide a unique (but arguably unscalable) incentive to individuals (based btw on economic research like Steven Levitt's) and also provided indirect incentives in the forms of job training, rebates for homeowners and attracting prestigious cutting edge high tech corporations and LBNL research to the city which could provide hope for better life prospects than what the kids in ghetto might have felt in 2003.

I say all this because on this street level, crime is a local phenomenon - not getting into cases of organized crime and interstate/international trafficking. Thus, I don't think you can analyze any city without looking at a variety of different specific factors as I did with Richmond. Those factors were specific to Richmond and for crime in any area, all the factors have to be examined.

So do you believe that over the next 30ish years as white flight completes and all the police, city council members, judges, and business owners are now black that crime will recede? Do you believe the economy will thrive? At what level of political and governmental control do black areas become responsible for the socio-economic conditions that occur in places they control?

I am unsure how these questions about race of the city council are relevant to the discussion.

I don't believe the race of the city council is relevant in any way to whether an area improves or decays or stagnates at same level if that answers your overall point of asking.

What matters is the incentives as I highlight above with the Richmond example.

Also of interest is Levitt's classic study on the decline of crime where he quite controversially correlated the legalization of abortion with a decrease in crime (among providing data against a few popular mainstream conservative and liberal theories on crime).

Always a fun point to bring up on crime reduction:

The five states that allowed abortion in 1970 (three years before Roe v. Wade) experienced declines in crime rates earlier than the rest of the nation. States with high and low abortion rates in the 1970s experienced similar crime trends for decades until the first cohorts
exposed to legalized abortion reached the high-crime ages around 1990. At that
point, the high-abortion states saw dramatic declines in crime relative to the
low-abortion states over the next decade. The magnitude of the differences in the
crime decline between high- and low-abortion states was over 25 percent for
homicide, violent crime and property crime. For instance, homicide fell
25.9 percent in high-abortion states between 1985 and 1997 compared to an increase
of 4.1 percent in low-abortion states. Panel data estimates confirm the strong
negative relationship between lagged abortion and crime. An analysis of arrest rates
by age reveal that only arrests of those born after abortion legalization are affected
by the law change.

[Heathen Hammer]

Why? Obviously a riot is not a simple protest; the first implies violence, the second does not. Why not be prepared for violence since it is, as you said, a riot and a riot implies violence.

Why would you need guns against unarmed people?

The Yanukovych police violence begot violence from the protestors.

So basically you are saying that shooting American policemen in Ferguson is justified? Interesting.

Not sure, but the equipping of "combat gear" and lack of actually using it en masse is definitely a major reason for the low number of casualties on both sides.

Actually this whole thing wouldn't even happen if American police didn't like to shoot unarmed people that much.

[Seether]

Why would you need guns against unarmed people?

Unarmed except for firearms, Molotov cocktails and other weapons, not to mention the looting and destructive violence.

So basically you are saying that shooting American policemen in Ferguson is justified? Interesting.

Is your posting really so inept where you have to lie about what I said? Please show where I said anything even close to resembling that or I will report you.

Actually this whole thing wouldn't even happen if American police didn't like to shoot unarmed people that much.

No, it wouldn't have happened if thugs didn't attack the police in the first place.

And please provide a source that American police like to shoot unarmed people. Make sure the source confirms that police like to do it.

[Heathen Hammer]

Unarmed except for firearms, Molotov cocktails and other weapons, not to mention the looting and destructive violence.

So how many policemen got shot? Surely, such excessive firepower could only be warranted due to high casualties among policemen...

Is your posting really so inept where you have to lie about what I said? Please show where I said anything even close to resembling that or I will report you.

Didn't you just say that shooting police in Ukraine was justified?

No, it wouldn't have happened if thugs didn't attack the police in the first place.

Except that police brutality was the reason behind the protests.

And please provide a source that American police like to shoot unarmed people. Make sure the source confirms that police like to do it.

If they don't like it, then why are they doing it? They have gear and training to deal with them without using lethal force.

[Derpy Hooves]

The real reason for the protests is that a black man was shot by a white policeman thus muh racism

[opock]

Culture unfortunately is not really a measurable quality.

If you are going to argue that the primary cause of of higher black homicide is "cultural decisions and a lack of accountability" you would have to provide at least some evidence and data that somehow supports that claim.

What data exists on accountability? It's my own opinion based on my own lifetime of observation of the subject. I mean there are certainly polls that show that blacks and non blacks have very different views on what the causes of the disproportionate dysfunction found in their communities are. There are so many independent cultural issues that we could spend forever discussing just that, so we'll try to take one at a time as examples. Do you think a "stop snitching" culture exists in equal measures in black and white communities? And if not, do you think a culture that promotes non cooperation with police would lead to less crimes being solved, more criminals on the street, and hence more crime?

You would need to provide a real world examples that you believe prove "those studies wrong". You made a vague reference to "Chinese/Viet" communities without providing any sort of actual data, time period or geographic location of these communities

I already did. And something that fundamentally debunks the entire narrative. We have been told crime in America is tied to economics. Our economy crashed in 2008 and yet crime went down. The methods are flawed if they produce results that are at odds with real world examples. As is now the case.

I also already mentioned the difference between reported crimes and actual crimes and how some non-English speaking immigrant communities simply do not report crimes as frequently as they occur. In the case of the Chinese in San Francisco from 1880-1900 era, the reason was the number of hate crimes against the Chinese and the community not necessarily feeling like reporting a crime would do any good. So crime rate from this era would not really be reflective of the reality.

That sounds like an excuse to be honest. You can't just assume that those areas "must have" had high crime rates just because. And it's an excuse you can make for anything that contradicts the narrative. "boat people coming from SE Asia with absolutely nothing not committing massively disproportionate violent crime?" "they must have been but not reported it because they didn't speak english"

If you want to conduct responsible social science you can't just look at one statistic or a single example insolation without considering context and contributing factors.

Also its important to understand that correlation is not causation. That makes a huge difference. Low socio-economic status correlates with higher crime rate. A single example especially without any context or considering other variables does not disprove a correlation.

The USA is not in isolation. Country wide crime went down while country wide poverty and economic disintegration skyrocketed. If you claim something is linked and real world examples show they are not you can't just keep trudging along. And again a study that shows violent areas are poor also doesn't mean poverty causes violence because as you stated correlation does not equal causation. How do you show that it's not the violence itself that causes the poverty? Which actually makes a lot more sense. If stores can't open without being shoplifted or robbed. If shoppers and tourists can't freely travel to areas without fear or robbery/rape/murder economic viability will suffer. That doesn't mean the original problem (places being too violent/dysfunctional for business to survive) was caused by the fact that business can't survive there.

First, the correlation between socio-economic level and crime is not dependent on the specific state of the economy. Whether the overall national economy is booming or busting, the ghettos of Richmond,CA would still be low socio-economic level and still be ghettos.

But we are talking about the US as a whole. If the economy in Richmond collapsed and crime tanked you could no longer declare that crime in Richmond was because of the economic status of the residents. Yet when it comes to the US as a whole people continue to make that claim despite the 2008 recession debunking it.

I do acknowledge that some in the past have made the un-nuanced argument that essentially "crime decreases in booms and increases in busts" but thats really drastically oversimplifying and not taking local conditions into account which IMO is essential.

But it seems like circular reasoning to me. "Look at the local conditions, but if the methods you used to can also be used on a large scale and come to conclusions that contradict social science orthodoxy, ignore them"

Richmond did see its lowest murder rate in 33 years in 2013 though. But that results from a combination of factors. Many of which include what the city itself did. In 2006 after a particularly shocking murder at a funeral the City of Richmond spent time and money hiring consultants and trying to come up with innovative programs to reduce crime. One thing they did was provide an economic incentive, both in the form of paying specific individuals to stay out of trouble and by buying back guns. This provided a direct concrete incentive for specific targeted individuals to stay out of trouble.

Also Richmond intended to unveil a rather creative imminent domain program which really pissed off the banks and the financial elite who went to war in the media against the city. The point of that though is that city of Richmond was also trying a lot harder and more publicly to help its constituents who were "underwater" in their mortgages.

Another thing to put Richmond in context is that over past 6-7 years Richmond has made a concentrated effort to improve the socio-economic status of the city. They have made serious bids to attract big biotech companies, Lawrence Berkeley National Labs is opening a large new campus in Richmond, they provided some of the largest rebates in California for energy efficiency home remodeling and solar power (sparking the stagnant construction business in the city) and started technology focused job training programs for the poorest kids growing up there.

That's actually interesting. Were there demographic changes in that time also? I ask this again to stress I'm not saying that blacks are inherently violent. But one trend that I've seen in Chicago personally, and have read about in Detroit and elsewhere is that white hipsters (unmarried 20 somethings) gentrify a previously black ghetto, and then you start getting stories about how thriving and safe these areas are now all of a sudden as if nothing had changed. So if there really is a tech boom there I want to know if it's going to the people that actually need it, IE the native residents. Or if you basically have transplants taking over and gentrifying certain areas while the rest of the city goes on like normal.

Also I'm not quite sure how you can blame society at large for crime committed by black Americans if the solution is basically bribing criminals not to commit crime. Things like innovative policing/bribing criminals/ tax breaks to lure in high skilled jobs may very well help mitigate the problem, but that's a far cry from blaming the problem in the first place on things outside of the control or responsibility of the residents.

So its hard to really say any one specific thing reduced Richmond's crime and murder rate in particular. One thing is that the city definitely took concrete steps to both provide a unique (but arguably unscalable) incentive to individuals (based btw on economic research like Steven Levitt's) and also provided indirect incentives in the forms of job training, rebates for homeowners and attracting prestigious cutting edge high tech corporations and LBNL research to the city which could provide hope for better life prospects than what the kids in ghetto might have felt in 2003.

I say all this because on this street level, crime is a local phenomenon - not getting into cases of organized crime and interstate/international trafficking. Thus, I don't think you can analyze any city without looking at a variety of different specific factors as I did with Richmond. Those factors were specific to Richmond and for crime in any area, all the factors have to be examined.

Crime is a local phenomenon. But when the same patterns play themselves out almost universally across the country you can make certain conclusions.

I am unsure how these questions about race of the city council are relevant to the discussion.

I don't believe the race of the city council is relevant in any way to whether an area improves or decays or stagnates at same level if that answers your overall point of asking.

What matters is the incentives as I highlight above with the Richmond example.

I disagree. The race of those in power matters more than almost anything else. What started this initial discussion was our differing opinions on the large scale disproportionate violent crime rate between black Americans and other Americans. You seemed to offer the common explanation that basically the reasons for this was outside of their control, and basically they were not fundamentally responsible for the crime and dysfunction that disproportionately follow them. That it was some magical "socio-economic" status that again, they had no control over nor responsibility for. But at some point when you have complete black hegemony over the politics, economy, schooling, judiciary, and in local cases even media, when does that community become responsible for the socio-economic conditions they create? If someone can handwave away the current riots and rage in Ferguson because it's all the fault of the local white people who just don't get it, at what point do black Americans in Ferguson become responsible for the area?

Also of interest is Levitt's classic study on the decline of crime where he quite controversially correlated the legalization of abortion with a decrease in crime (among providing data against a few popular mainstream conservative and liberal theories on crime).

Always a fun point to bring up on crime reduction:

Isn't abortion also disproportionately black in America? So that seems like treading on somewhat dangerous eugenics territory. That basically if you abort enough non whites/asians crime goes down a generation later.

Anyway I appreciate your opinion and I don't think its entirely in error, and we may be talking past each other a bit. I'm not saying there are not things that society can and should do to try and mitigate or lesson what is in my opinion a largely self inflicted situation that modern black Americans find their communities in. But I also think that such mitigation is limited, and as long as people keep insisting that black Americans have no responsibility and that it's all about some mythical "socio-economic" status that's being denied to them by whites(and apparently asians and hispanics) real progress will never be made.

No other group in America has to be hand held to such an extreme extent as paying criminals danegeld just to prevent their communities from degenerating into complete Chicago style levels of violence and dysfunction. You are right that every country or region is different and should be viewed as such. Russia has a sky-high murder rate also. I'm sure they have their own cultural issues that are behind it. Certainly their economy has boomed over the past decade. Yet in 2009 the murder rate was just as high as it was during the economic disaster of the 90s. And indeed it has actually fallen recently, in spite of an economic slowdown and stagnation. I don't think paying Russians not to kill each other is a better solution than examining what went wrong in their society and culture to lead them to this point. And I think they have the advantage of not having armies of well meaning white academics rushing to tell them how it's not their fault and they are violent because of factors outside of their control.

[Condottiere 40K]

Openly deploying a sniper in a shooting position on top of an armoured vehicle, is meant to provoke the crowd, not cow them.

The military advises against that.

[Rich86]

The situation in Ferguson is frankly, messed up.

So far as I am aware the only things we know at present are:

1) Brown was possibly involved in a robbery or theft from a local store - I don't believe the store owners are making a complaint, but of course that doesn't mean that they weren't robbed.

2) Brown was stopped by Officer Wilson

3) Something happened at this point - exactly what that is, is currently disputed with one side basically saying Brown was gunned down despite surrendering/doing nothing wrong etc etc - and the other side saying that Officer Wilson was assaulted/charged and Brown went for his gun.

4) Brown was shot 6 times

Everything else (unless someone can point out further facts I am not aware of) is speculation. Unfortunately though, the "We don't really know what has happened" story doesn't sell many papers, and doesn't get many clicks online. In contrast, "Poor sweet innocent boy gunned down by brutal, nasty, racist cop" is a far more profitable story - especially considering there's huge numbers of people out there who will blindly agree with it without thinking too much about the facts of the case as it fits in with their current world view.

For me personally I think there should obviously be a full, and thorough investigation and we should all be waiting for that investigation to conclude - for the facts to emerge rather than jumping to poorly formed, poorly evidenced conclusions. I also think that the police shouldn't have revealed Officer Wilson's identity - it may transpire he's acted lawfully in the weeks to come - but for Officer Wilson that won't matter now as he's going to be a public figure of hate from segments of the black community for the rest of his life.

I normally don't like Fox News at all, and I think Hannity is frankly a bit of an ass - but someone sent me this link



To be fair, I think it sums things up quite well - Hannity is an idiot but he makes some valid points and the lady he's arguing with repeatedly asserts this is an example of police brutality whilst refusing to acknowledge that she doesn't actually know the facts of the case yet - seeming to believe that the mere fact he was unarmed automatically means it must be brutality - quite a stupid view in my opinion.

[tarvu]

The situation in Ferguson is frankly, messed up.

So far as I am aware the only things we know at present are:

1) Brown was possibly involved in a robbery or theft from a local store - I don't believe the store owners are making a complaint, but of course that doesn't mean that they weren't robbed.

2) Brown was stopped by Officer Wilson

3) Something happened at this point - exactly what that is, is currently disputed with one side basically saying Brown was gunned down despite surrendering/doing nothing wrong etc etc - and the other side saying that Officer Wilson was assaulted/charged and Brown went for his gun.

4) Brown was shot 6 times

Everything else (unless someone can point out further facts I am not aware of) is speculation. Unfortunately though, the "We don't really know what has happened" story doesn't sell many papers, and doesn't get many clicks online. In contrast, "Poor sweet innocent boy gunned down by brutal, nasty, racist cop" is a far more profitable story - especially considering there's huge numbers of people out there who will blindly agree with it without thinking too much about the facts of the case as it fits in with their current world view.

For me personally I think there should obviously be a full, and thorough investigation and we should all be waiting for that investigation to conclude - for the facts to emerge rather than jumping to poorly formed, poorly evidenced conclusions. I also think that the police shouldn't have revealed Officer Wilson's identity - it may transpire he's acted lawfully in the weeks to come - but for Officer Wilson that won't matter now as he's going to be a public figure of hate from segments of the black community for the rest of his life.

I normally don't like Fox News at all, and I think Hannity is frankly a bit of an ass - but someone sent me this link



To be fair, I think it sums things up quite well - Hannity is an idiot but he makes some valid points and the lady he's arguing with repeatedly asserts this is an example of police brutality whilst refusing to acknowledge that she doesn't actually know the facts of the case yet - seeming to believe that the mere fact he was unarmed automatically means it must be brutality - quite a stupid view in my opinion.

Why is it that we don't know more? The Ferguson police have only released an incomplete death report (which is illegal), and only selectively release both information and claims of information/pictures which would exonerate the officer... but they are withholding the bulk of this as well.

So they don't have to commit to a story one way or another, and can later adjust the "facts" to discredit any witnesses who might come forward or new evidence that might be presented.


The allegations of racism here did not form out of nowhere, but out of a history with this police department and many of its officers. People are also protesting the lack of transparancy, you know the not knowing why that you are criticizing them for. Are there still questions? Sure, but there should not be if the police were doing their job.

The main difference between this case and the hundreds of other officer shootings a year is the staggering incompetence of the Ferguson P.D. So Wilson has no one to blame for his current infamy other than himself and his fellow officers.

[Gaidin]

Why is it that we don't know more? The Ferguson police have only released an incomplete death report (which is illegal), and only selectively release both information and claims of information/pictures which would exonerate the officer... but they are withholding the bulk of this as well.

So they don't have to commit to a story one way or another, and can later adjust the "facts" to discredit any witnesses who might come forward or new evidence that might be presented.


The allegations of racism here did not form out of nowhere, but out of a history with this police department and many of its officers. People are also protesting the lack of transparancy, you know the not knowing why that you are criticizing them for. Are there still questions? Sure, but there should not be if the police were doing their job.

The main difference between this case and the hundreds of other officer shootings a year is the staggering incompetence of the Ferguson P.D. So Wilson has no one to blame for his current infamy other than himself and his fellow officers.

He's pointing out the undisputed facts. Which there aren't a lot of. By the way, Rich86, add to number 2 that Brown was stopped for walking in the middle of the street. Wilson didn't know about 1.

[Count of Montesano]

I think the biggest thing to realize with Ferguson is this is the final straw to tensions that have been boiling for years. And the African American community have plenty of legit grievances. First, the area was hit hard by subprime mortgages and foreclosures. Unemployment for young black men is nearly 47 percent. This isn't surprising since the African American community in St Louis was barred by law for decades from living in white communities.

But it gets worse. Due to falling revenues the local cops are relying on arrests, drug seizures and tickets to make up revenue. Stops and searches are aimed mostly at blacks, even though the community is 30 percent white and whites are more likely to have drug contraband during a stop.

So gunning down a teen who was trying to surrender after committing a minor theft charge was the fuse that lit a powder keg created by America's institutional racism.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/18/op...ower.html?_r=0

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/...ps_harass.html

[Napoleonic Bonapartism]

I realise I am a new poster here but I think I should make my point.
The problem here is not the specifics of the case - I do not deny they are important, who did what and why does matter - but the problem undeniably is one of race and ironic - or not - it should happen in the South. The problem stems from the failure of Reconstruction post-Civil War. There was a breif period in Reconstruction where the South showed real progress, there were black congressmen etc. But a counter-revolution occoured, Democrats and other conservatives rallied and the North wained. The problem as I see it is a failure to make gains then. If there had been a period of effective rule in the south by Radical Republicans, whereby democracy was temporarily bypassed in the interests of harmony, where schools were forced to be non-segregated and there had been widespread mixing of race these problems would be lesser - although I admit probably not entirely gone. And not just in the south but all over the USA. A failure in education then means that the paretns and grandparents of generations today inherited racist attitudes in many places accross the US. The problem today I fear, and call me what you may is the hold the political right - or what may be called right wing attitudes - has on many. A compreshensive schooling effort should be made to root out racist attitudes. Arguments such "You can't its human nature" would be swept under the rug by such measures I feel. As for "Re-education thats facism" I argue all forms of education have a ideological bias and Im afraid the Christian rights hold on many doesnt help. Races unfortunatley tend to stay in groups, educatation should remove this idea. If interracial mixing occoured on a wide scale then race would simply not be a problem. Staying in groups is an understandable defensive tactic but staying on the defensive will only exasperte problems such as this. Those who moan that mixing would lead to a loss of 'cultural identity' or other such trite which I fear is but a few steps away from 'racial purity' can get stuffed. It needs to be done. Its a trite saying but I'm afraid the answer is 'Education, Education, Education'.

[Phier]

I think the biggest thing to realize with Ferguson is this is the final straw to tensions that have been boiling for years. And the African American community have plenty of legit grievances. First, the area was hit hard by subprime mortgages and foreclosures. Unemployment for young black men is nearly 47 percent. This isn't surprising since the African American community in St Louis was barred by law for decades from living in white communities.

But it gets worse. Due to falling revenues the local cops are relying on arrests, drug seizures and tickets to make up revenue. Stops and searches are aimed mostly at blacks, even though the community is 30 percent white and whites are more likely to have drug contraband during a stop.

So gunning down a teen who was trying to surrender after committing a minor theft charge was the fuse that lit a powder keg created by America's institutional racism.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/18/op...ower.html?_r=0

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/...ps_harass.html

Is it ever their fault?

[Gaidin]

Is it ever their fault?

As a racial tension cultural thing in the town? Debatable, as the racial tension is obviously demonstrably real, at least to them. You want to start making FOIA requests for specific cases, be my guest. Thing is, they are two separate issues, and the shooting of Brown(of which no incident report was filed, good job police department) is just the flashpoint for the former, whether it's ruled legitimate by the police department and/or indicted by the grand jury or not.

Not like Ferguson is the only place having problems. NYC is going through their own issues after a cop breaks chokehold rules, tries to hide it, but got caught on video. Go figure.

[Lord Thesaurian]

Are your stats in proportion to population demographic breakdown though?

If "nearly" 50% of unarmed civilians shot are white but 73% of the population is white then whites are being shot much less in relation to their percentage of the population than blacks.

....Which is why looking at police homicides through the lens of race is nonsensical and counterproductive in this situation, not to mention against the trend of most academic studies of the subject. In the context of race, the almost comical rants all over the news about how Blacks are being disproportionately shot by police relative "to their percentage of the general population" isn't even a correlation-causation fallacy. It's just pundits and talk show hosts noticing a trend and assuming the police must be "out to hunt Black people;" completely ignoring the all-important contexts of urban demographics, relative crime rates, civil engineering, land values, relative differences in police presence, and of course SES. It never ceases to amaze me that, in spite of all the information out there, people can still get on TV and be paid to rant about how the police and by extension "white" America are inherently racist.

The rants are especially insulting to the intelligence of anything akin to an objective observer when you consider the fact that most studies point to SES and family dysfunction as root causes in the factors that result in the statistical racial gaps in crime and homicide statistics, which are manifested in an almost entirely intraracial, not interacial fashion. So no, there is no "open season" on black people - except, perhaps, by other black people.

http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand...s/adp_ajph.pdf

And just to be clear, the US is 57% white, not 73%. (less than 50% if you only count the traditional "White" demographic of Northern European ancestry, closer to 40% if you discount white Catholics. WASPs are almost gone). The remaining 16% in the "73%" stat are people of "white" Hispanic, Middle Eastern and North African descent, which fall under the Caucasian umbrella, not white. According to my initial source, 55% of those shot by police during arrest are white, 48% of those shot though they presented no physical threat to the officer(s) are white, compared to 35% and 30% Black, respectively.

[Phier]

As a racial tension cultural thing in the town? Debatable, as the racial tension is obviously demonstrably real, at least to them. You want to start making FOIA requests for specific cases, be my guest. Thing is, they are two separate issues, and the shooting of Brown(of which no incident report was filed, good job police department) is just the flashpoint for the former, whether it's ruled legitimate by the police department and/or indicted by the grand jury or not.

Not like Ferguson is the only place having problems. NYC is going through their own issues after a cop breaks chokehold rules, tries to hide it, but got caught on video. Go figure.

At what point do problems in the black community fall on the community? Police are human, they make mistakes, they get violent and aggressive when attacked at times, especially when under stress. Am I not being beaten by police become I'm white or because I'm unlikely to be a problem in the first place? Why do they protest over a criminal being shot under vague circumstances yet do nothing with the 100's killed weekly by their own kind?

The police are not the problem, the culture of these communities are the problem. "Better" policing is not the solution to their problems.

[Seether]

For once, I agree with Rush Limbaugh... I mean Phier.

[Gaidin]

Why do they protest over a criminal being shot under vague circumstances yet do nothing with the 100's killed weekly by their own kind?

So we assume someone's a criminal before he's found guilty now? K. As far as doing nothing about the 100's killed weekly by their own kind, every time someone does something, black white or yellow, that gets called vigilantism. I suppose we're supposed to trust the authorities, huh. Which just reached a flashpoint in that town for that group, whatever their justification is. Whatever the hell you want to rant about with it, you can't argue about the fact that it reached a flashpoint. Too damn bad about that. Sure, the circumstances of the shooting can be called vague, but that might be what the damn trial is for. Unless you just avoid that because you want to in spite of the fact that there's not yet any witness accounts that differ wildly with each other or the only known physical evidence(the private autopsy).

[Condottiere 40K]

The actual root of the problem is when the police force is no longer connected with the community it's supposed to police. There's not just one factor that you can look at isolation and point to that as the cause of the problem.

There's no magic formula that you can pull out that would solve it in the short run, or even in the long one.

What the community has to believe is that their police force is trying to do it's best, constrained by budget and personnel shortfalls, to protect them, not that they need protection from their own police force.