One of the issues with following a crime rate is that it perpetuates discrimination.
Even if two groups have the exact same probability of, for example, carrying illegal substances, racist targeting will mean your crime rate will continue to reflect that one group “seems worse”.
You don’t spot crime where you dont look for it.
That’s why it’s important to tackle these issues and make sure there is no racial targeting.
Imagine, for the sake of argument, both white people and black people have a 50% chance of possessing weed (not that weed should even be criminalized, but you get the idea).
Now also let’s take a group of 100 people, assuming 80 are white and 20 are black. Given the above weed possession rate, we can say there are 40 weed-carrying white people and 10 weed-carrying black people.
Now imagine cops last year searched 20% of the total population, 90% of those searched being black and 10% being white. Thus, last year, 18 black people were searched and only 2 white people. Of these searched people, 9 black people were caught in possession of weed vs 1 white person.
Thus, the newspapers can now publish “9 black criminals for every 1 white criminal!”, and so the police decide to continue mostly searching black people this year.
Same underlying crime rates, but searching one demographic more skews the resulting arrest record and seemingly justifies further discriminatory enforcement.
I know from my days as a young white guy that enjoyed extracurricular activities that I could do damn near anything in front of cops while smelling like extracurricular activities and cops never hassled me…
Meanwhile my Black friends constantly got hassled even if they never broke laws.
Cops see nervousness as indication of guilt. So if you’re afraid of cops (because they may kill you over nothing) the cops are going to see that as reason to hassle you.
Even if it’s not explicit racism on the cops behalf, the racist environment of policing means it’s going to affect how they do their job and who they hassle. That’s why people keep saying it’s a systemic issue.
Cops are a lot like dogs or wild animals. They don’t often use higher logic like normal people. Because they’re trained to “trust their gut” even tho absolutely no science backs it up. It’s easy and makes them feel smart, so that’s what they do.
Weird how you keep asking “questions” like this after you were already shown that the stops were extremely disproportionate. It’s almost like you didn’t care about the answers to the questions at all, and were just using “questions” as a vehicle to insert your already formed opinions.
One of the issues with following a crime rate is that it perpetuates discrimination.
Even if two groups have the exact same probability of, for example, carrying illegal substances, racist targeting will mean your crime rate will continue to reflect that one group “seems worse”.
You don’t spot crime where you dont look for it.
That’s why it’s important to tackle these issues and make sure there is no racial targeting.
As an example:
Imagine, for the sake of argument, both white people and black people have a 50% chance of possessing weed (not that weed should even be criminalized, but you get the idea).
Now also let’s take a group of 100 people, assuming 80 are white and 20 are black. Given the above weed possession rate, we can say there are 40 weed-carrying white people and 10 weed-carrying black people.
Now imagine cops last year searched 20% of the total population, 90% of those searched being black and 10% being white. Thus, last year, 18 black people were searched and only 2 white people. Of these searched people, 9 black people were caught in possession of weed vs 1 white person.
Thus, the newspapers can now publish “9 black criminals for every 1 white criminal!”, and so the police decide to continue mostly searching black people this year.
Same underlying crime rates, but searching one demographic more skews the resulting arrest record and seemingly justifies further discriminatory enforcement.
Don’t even need to imagine it when every study shows that is an accurate description.
Sure, but a lot of people need it very clearly spelled out for them.
Thank you and the poster above you for explaining that so well.
What a wonderful, easy to understand example. Thank you for this
Yep.
If you’re only stopping people in cargo shorts to search them for drugs, you’re only going to find drugs on people wearing cargo shorts.
Doesn’t mean they’re the only ones carrying drugs around. They’re just waaaaay more likely to get caught because they’re the ones getting searched
That makes sense. Do you think that there’s a large amount of drug crime among white folks that is presently being ignored?
No cop ever searched me for drugs, even when I obviously smelled like weed. Total white privilege.
I know from my days as a young white guy that enjoyed extracurricular activities that I could do damn near anything in front of cops while smelling like extracurricular activities and cops never hassled me…
Meanwhile my Black friends constantly got hassled even if they never broke laws.
Cops see nervousness as indication of guilt. So if you’re afraid of cops (because they may kill you over nothing) the cops are going to see that as reason to hassle you.
Even if it’s not explicit racism on the cops behalf, the racist environment of policing means it’s going to affect how they do their job and who they hassle. That’s why people keep saying it’s a systemic issue.
Cops are a lot like dogs or wild animals. They don’t often use higher logic like normal people. Because they’re trained to “trust their gut” even tho absolutely no science backs it up. It’s easy and makes them feel smart, so that’s what they do.
Weird how you keep asking “questions” like this after you were already shown that the stops were extremely disproportionate. It’s almost like you didn’t care about the answers to the questions at all, and were just using “questions” as a vehicle to insert your already formed opinions.
Lol, true. Let me show you how a real man deals with this troll the Rex Kwan Do way.
Come at me with a “question”.
“Why don’t they just follow the rules like everyone AHH!”
See, I just block and walk away. Block and walk away.