#BLM, Systemic Racism, and the Role of Law Enforcement

[Mischief Maker]

Listen to this audio, it's only two minutes long.

Now let's put this in proper context. The cop being reprimanded here isn't meeting his arrest quota. We could say for the sake of argument that the supervisor doesn't have a racist bone in his body. The fact of the matter is, if you stop more black people, you're more likely to find people with outstanding warrants (they "pop") and reach your quota. Of course, because you're stopping more black people, you're more likely to, say, find them with a joint on their person, therefore giving them a drug arrest record, therefore ensuring there are more warrants for black people in the system, and the cycle continues. And if you're a law-abiding black person, you're stopped, frisked, pulled over, and otherwise have your life interfered with by police more often than identically-behaving white people by a scale of magnitude more.

No individual cop needs to be racist for the rules of the quota game to have a racist result. Hence systemic racism.

(quotas are not the only form of systemic racism, I'm just using them as one example).

Yet another argument founded on convenient half truths and flawed perspectives on the role of law enforcement. As much as I would like to crack this nut right here, this one is particularly tough and probably warrants a discussion of its own.

Here you go. Its own discussion.

Educate me.

[BryanM]

Capitalism is inherently racist, so until you support pulling out the guillotines and overthrowing the bourgeois, you're supporting systematic racism.

[Blinge]

Here's the latest insanity.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/mor ... ?tid=sm_fb

[Mischief Maker]

Well I just gotta add this one detail before my liberal indoctrination is exposed for the sham that it is:

At the time [1994], I was writing a book about the politics of drug prohibition. I started to ask [Nixon’s domestic-policy adviser John Ehrlichman] a series of earnest, wonky questions that he impatiently waved away. “You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

Full Article.

[Durandal]

Here's the latest insanity.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/mor ... ?tid=sm_fb

That's just beyond understanding. I can barely understand mistaking a white as teeth Wiimote for a gun, but a toy truck? Do American police officers live in constant fear or something? Is this something purely American, or do dumb-ass incidents like these also happen with police forces in other countries with high crime rates?
I'd wager that the police reflexively shot a bullet after the autistic patient did something unexpected but missed, however without the crucial missing seconds there's no way to tell. It's more incompetence than racism related if you ask me.

[evil_ash_xero]

Capitalism is inherently racist, so until you support pulling out the guillotines and overthrowing the bourgeois, you're supporting systematic racism.

Marxism is so much better than Capitalism. Am I right?!

[BryanM]

Marxism is so much better than Capitalism. Am I right?!

Yes, you are right. With technological advancement that renders the economic value of human life to $0 an hour, you can choose a desolate hellhole of death or establish some sort of system of minimum basic allocation to allow people to actually live.

You're a very smart person to have actually read the things Mr.Marx actually said about math and numbers, instead of going "hur hur USSR, North Korea, China!" (All of which, last time I checked, had governments. Ew. How much further from Marx can you possibly get than that?)

Those three bastards are perpetrating a hoax to fool everyone into thinking global warming is real, I hear.

[BryanM]

Yes, you are right. With technological advancement that renders the economic value of human life to $0 an hour, you can choose a desolate hellhole of death or establish some sort of system of minimum basic allocation to allow people to actually live.

You're a very smart person to have actually read the things Mr.Marx actually said about math and numbers, instead of going "hur hur USSR, North Korea, China!" (All of which, last time I checked, had governments. Ew. How much further from Marx can you possibly get than that?)

Those three bastards are perpetrating a hoax to fool everyone into thinking global warming is real, I hear.

Man, remember the old days? Back when we had pure 100% capitalism? That was the best.

No minimum wage, no days off, 90% of kids had a job, good times. Then those damn abortionists invented abortion so all the 10 year old prostitutes wouldn't die from pregnancy. Then the damn socialists and communists got concessions in the form of social security, a minimum wage, and an end of child labor. Those damn monsters.

[Mischief Maker]

Are you guys talking about Black Lives Matter? I skimmed the last page or so. I think it started from a good place. As in, there are problems with cops being a bit too abusive, with black people at times.
However, the media has pushed this to a fever pitch, and you'd think there was some kind of massacre going on.
And BLM...even though it had some good points, has turned into a very hateful movement (like almost all SJW movements...claim peace and love, but are some of the most close minded and judgemental people you'll ever meet).
Hateful is one thing, but this has now gotten violent. Which I blame on the media, and BLM.

Whatever the solution was, it's not this. But just typical results, from SJW-like movements. Just with some added death.

That's one thing I have learned, from the last couple of years...the far left are more likely to be violent, than the far right, at this point.

Bad times.

These posts are really difficult to write because I have to resist the temptation to drown you in video links to the point you aren't going to follow ANY of the links and my message is lost.

Full disclosure: once upon a time I was on a career path to become a prosecutor as my career. But just from my experiences in my second summer internship I could see that the punishment-centric system we have is fundamentally broken and I no longer wanted any part of it.

Let me start by clarifying a term. "Ignorance" is not the same thing as stupidity. It means you're reaching worldview conclusions based on a lack of information. If you think the media is at the center of all this anger, you need to talk to more black people about their experiences with law enforcement and realize the magnitude of difference between their experience with police and yours. Philandro Castile had been charged with more than 50 minor traffic violations in ten years (most of which were dismissed outright in court), out of God-knows-how-many traffic stops, before one turned deadly. His experience was not unusual for black men. Like I said in the OP, the system demands cops stop lots of black men to reach their quotas.

Even safe and cuddly Neil DeGrasse Tyson acknowledges how messed up the situation with excessive police force has always been, even as it improves. (~3 min) This is not a media-generated hysteria. It's an ongoing problem that had been successfully swept under the rug for decades until the recent proliferation of video cameras made it impossible to ignore.

Remember the LA riots in 1992? They weren't set off by the videotape of Rodney King being brutally beaten by four police officers getting shown on the news over and over. It was set off by the jury verdict to acquit those four police officers. It's ignorant to think "black lives matter" means that white lives don't matter. It's a response to when unacceptable behavior by cops (who could very well be isolated bad apples) is exposed to the world, and the establishment responds with a shrug.

Now as in the OP, I take the view that the root of the problem is systemic racism. Individual cops don't necessarily need to be racist themselves for the machinations of a game that scores success by the number of butts in jail cells to produce a racist result.

I really, really urge you to set aside a half hour and watch this super-edit video of Joe Rogan talking with Michael Wood, a retired marine and retired Baltimore police officer, as he breaks down systemic racism within police practice in far better detail than me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPzCodDwvKc (Part 1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rJ4KVVfIaE (Part 2)

Now that said, I'm not just here to shit on the status quo and walk away without offering any solutions. There ARE solutions being pursued to improve the methodology of law enforcement with rigorous and scientific examination. The Center for Problem-Oriented Policing is one such effort. To sum things up, every crime requires three essential components: The perpetrator, the victim, and the environment. Take just one of those components out of the equation, the crime can't happen. Focusing on the perpetrator is the most expensive and least likely to succeed portion of that triad, but it's also the only effort that is rewarded by our current system.

I'll explain in greater detail if you want, but I don't want this post to turn into any more of a wall of text than it already is.

[Immryr]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaEeEbP16Wg

[GaijinPunch]

the media has pushed this to a fever pitch

The media: people shooting videos on their phones and uploading it to facebook.

[Durandal]

Concerning the quota thing you linked earlier in that secretly recorded police meeting video, Mischief Maker, the description mentions such quotas are illegal. Is this a widespread thing amongst many police forces in the USA, or have the people responsible actually been prosecuted for doing so?

And another thing, if by some theoretical magical force all police officers would act completely accordingly within the laws and regulations, treat people with the utmost respect and care, never apply more force than necessary, never profile people based on race, never resort to lethal force until necessary (insert your own criteria here), and in addition the government will start passing bills which should improve police academy standards and prosecution against officers mishandling a case (which is fairly redundant because of our theoretical magical force, but people need to feel like something is being done), how much will this improve the living standards and crime rates amongst ethnic minorities in the USA? After the introduction of theoretical magic super police, will those living in poor crime-ridden ethnic neighborhoods finally be able to sigh a breath of relief that they won't have to be pulled over or shot by cops anymore?

While I do understand the impact of systemic racism in ethnic societies and the history that helped shape it, like the name implies, the police is just a part of a larger system that enables such systemic racism. Just the introduction of theoretical magic super cops will not also magically improve living standards in poor ethnic communities to the point where everyone becomes an ideal law-abiding citizen. It certainly would help, and we certainly should be striving towards theoretical magic super cops no matter how unrealistic it sounds, but it is only one of many ills plaguing ethnic communities. The effort and emotional energy could be more efficiently used by aiming it at laws, practices, corporations, and everything (in)directly responsible for the existence of systemic racism plaguing minorities which the Congress could fix, even though such protests rarely bear any fruit aside from influencing which candidate more sympathetic to your cause gets more votes. And even if Congress gets off its ass and implements some half-assed solution towards preventing police brutality, then what? Will BLM have served its purpose and then lose all of its steam once they are sufficiently satisfied as minorities keep living in shitty situations?

[Mischief Maker]

When will I learn?

Why did I bother wasting a perfectly good Saturday morning writing a carefully thought out, detailed post on a complex issue?

Why bother when I damn well know you will just ignore, or at best skim my post, then snidely dismiss some argument you concocted in your own imagination?

How many times do I have to say the problem is systemic, the problem is systemic, the system forces good cops to do bad things or face professional consequences, to get it through your thick skull that I'm not talking about hiring better people to be cops, but rather changes to the system?

Did I say there was a quota based on race? Did I say quotas were the one and only form of systemic racism?

I get it. You hate SJWs. You don't have to read anything with even a hint of social justice because all they have to say is crazy talk hypnotized into them by their hippie professors and if you do read it you risk going crazy, too! This is why Bernie lost. This is why Trump will be president.

[Durandal]

How many times do I have to say the problem is systemic, the problem is systemic, the system forces good cops to do bad things or face professional consequences, to get it through your thick skull that I'm not talking about hiring better people to be cops, but rather changes to the system?

I suppose I should have changed theoretical magic super cops to a theoretical magic super system which treats all races magically equally (even though theoretical magical super cops would have prevented people dying at the hands of police brutality, regardless of the systemic racism in place). Though that does not change that fixing systemic racism in only the law enforcement is not enough to counter systemic racism as a whole, yet that's what mainstream attention is focused on the most. The drug war and the ensuing stereotyping was a cause, but more than a police reform is required at this point to give minorities a fair chance.

Did I say there was a quota based on race?

Like I said in the OP, the system demands cops stop lots of black men to reach their quotas.

You didn't say there was a quote on race, but neither did I.

I get it. You hate SJWs. You don't have to read anything with even a hint of social justice because all they have to say is crazy talk hypnotized into them by their hippie professors and if you do read it you risk going crazy, too! This is why Bernie lost. This is why Trump will be president.

The reason I posted in this thread as an ignorant European about an American issue is because I was interested in expanding my worldview, otherwise I would have kept circlejerking with my imaginary friends over at r/KotakuInAction about those silly Orwellian BLM protesters. But it seems I must have ignored everything you posted and conquer this thread in the name of the Trump Internet Army.

[Ed Oscuro]

I think I posted this elsewhere, but here's something simple that "the media" (meaning, the traditional talking heads) played up for quite a while and turned out to be totally embarrassing:

http://scholar.harvard.edu/jfeldman/blo ... ngs-police

Short version - guy at Harvard calls out other guy at Harvard for looking at the wrong numbers.

In this case, the wrong numbers make it look like if you are black you aren't more likely to be shot by police. It might seem reasonable to end the discussion there, if "getting shot by police happens about as much if you are white as black," but this leaves out the critical information - when you are stopped. That, in turn, allows us to ask the question: Why is somebody stopped? White people don't get randomly stopped as much as black folks; and that isn't all just reflecting higher crime in black communities. Being stopped and shot while black seems to happen a lot more than we can chalk down to appropriate police action - of course this is true of everybody, and the big goal is to not stop and shoot law-abiding and peaceful people. But at the same time it might be instructive to ask: What are the chances somebody who is white that was stopped and shot was getting an appropriate police response, versus somebody who was black? This kind of question and answer can very easily be misused. A lot of crime happens where the cops aren't, so even if the amount of police shootings directly corresponded to police criminality we should still be concerned - when the shooting isn't a response to an individual situation, but a response to some belief in a pattern that probably doesn't have any relevance in the encounter. I think much of the difficulty would evaporate if innocent people weren't constantly being shot, but not all of it: Even if there were no police shootings at all, we could ask a more interesting and difficult question - how much policing is needed, and where does it go? It's no disrespect to the police to say that there is a tradeoff here between freedom and having visible professional police (this might not be a super liberal thing to write, but note the assumption that you need professional police, because communities aren't competent enough). Also, Roland Fryer also agrees that police misreport what happened sometimes and if somebody is shot and killed for the wrong reasons, it doesn't much matter to the officer, the legal system, the family, or the person if that person was white or black - so police need to be very careful so they they don't end up involved in a shooting (where there ends up being a great incentive to not tell the full and true story).

Eric Adams, borough President for Brooklyn and a 22 year NYPD vet, put it this way: Even most black officers buy into "police culture" and a police approach to things, which is that you go and descend on places where there have been shootings and crimes. So far everything we've heard is that crime is often very localized. What's challenging for everybody, especially police, is knowing how not to look at every random person as "the bad apple" and let them keep their dignity and respect as the default.

In other words: Say you have populations A and B, and A has three times the crime of B. A police officer, random tourist, or member of the population is almost certainly not three times more likely to suffer the effects of crime if they meet somebody form population A than if they had met somebody from population B - 3% versus 1%, for example, is still quite small, and in real life it's going to be even smaller. Even if you say there is a huge uptick in the possibility of a crime happening on meeting somebody from population A, when we consider the actual person we're meeting that kind of statistics-based reasoning is misleading if not worse than useless: The person is either going to try to victimize you or they aren't, and if there is a chance they are innocent we would be doing them wrong to act towards them as if they are guilty. After all, would you accept being locked up on the theory that there was a 50% chance of your being a criminal? That would be essentially random chance. And in the cases we're talking about, the punishment is far worse than being locked up, and the chances are even more in their favor that they are in fact innocent.

[evil_ash_xero]

Are you guys talking about Black Lives Matter? I skimmed the last page or so. I think it started from a good place. As in, there are problems with cops being a bit too abusive, with black people at times.
However, the media has pushed this to a fever pitch, and you'd think there was some kind of massacre going on.
And BLM...even though it had some good points, has turned into a very hateful movement (like almost all SJW movements...claim peace and love, but are some of the most close minded and judgemental people you'll ever meet).
Hateful is one thing, but this has now gotten violent. Which I blame on the media, and BLM.

Whatever the solution was, it's not this. But just typical results, from SJW-like movements. Just with some added death.

That's one thing I have learned, from the last couple of years...the far left are more likely to be violent, than the far right, at this point.

Bad times.

If you think the media is at the center of all this anger, you need to talk to more black people about their experiences with law enforcement and realize the magnitude of difference between their experience with police and yours.

My closest friend is black. We don't see eye to eye on it.

I think that BLM has points. However, the movement has turned hateful. I think it's going to be too far gone to save, in the near future.
I don't really have any ideas or solutions on this subject. It's complicated. It doesn't help that we live in a country where everyone may or may not have a gun. And the police are jumpy and paranoid to begin with. And when a lot of the vids that you see contain people resisting arrest, you can kind of see how this happens.

But I've seen some of that racism in action. I've also seen some of that paranoia in action. Bad combo.

That being said, I do think that the cams are one of the best things we have now to keep police on the up and up.

[evil_ash_xero]

Marxism is so much better than Capitalism. Am I right?!

Yes, you are right. With technological advancement that renders the economic value of human life to $0 an hour, you can choose a desolate hellhole of death or establish some sort of system of minimum basic allocation to allow people to actually live.

You're a very smart person to have actually read the things Mr.Marx actually said about math and numbers, instead of going "hur hur USSR, North Korea, China!" (All of which, last time I checked, had governments. Ew. How much further from Marx can you possibly get than that?)

Those three bastards are perpetrating a hoax to fool everyone into thinking global warming is real, I hear.

So, name me some purely Marxist/Socialist utopias.

[BulletMagnet]

I think that BLM has points. However, the movement has turned hateful. I think it's going to be too far gone to save, in the near future.

To the best of my knowledge BLM has unreservedly condemned every cop killing or the like that's happened since it came into existence, so I'm curious how you've come to that conclusion.

So, name me some purely Marxist/Socialist utopias.

Placing too great an emphasis on the larger community at the expense of the individual isn't ever likely to turn out well...but neither is the opposite, and I'd very strongly argue that the latter is a much more ingrained and poisonous notion, at least in this country and at this point in time.

I also wonder where you get the notion that the far right has been handily outdone in terms of violent behavior by the far left...the former have always taken it as a point of pride that they're infinitely more willing to kick ass to get things done than their infinitely more sissified ideological counterparts.

[evil_ash_xero]

They condemn it, but they are breeding hatred. This hatred is building up and you are having more violence. Such as the attacks on the police.

This is just my opinion. However, I have seen enough stuff from BLM to consider them to be headed towards a very racist direction. The tweets of their members, vids on YT of them saying racist stuff...the fact they want segregated classrooms in some colleges.. It just adds up to a movement that has gone off the rails.

They don't preach equality and understanding. They preach that the white man is oppressing them and is the blame for all their problems. And it's more than OK to hate your oppressor. You know..."Racism is privilege plus power". So if you're black, you can't be racist. It's making it OK to hate. It's an Us Vs. Them mentality. They are dehumanizing their opposition, which makes it easier to not feel so bad about acting out upon them.

Just my opinion.

As for the left wing and right wing violence thing... Well, I just tend to see these SJW college kids getting way more physical than their right wing counterparts. They beat up Trump supporters, spit on people they don't agree with, try to TACKLE Trump. What right wing nonsense have we seen like this, in recent times?
You have your nutty militia guy, time to time. But this generation of kids seems to be really passionately motivated in ways that lead to violence of some sort.
And of course now we have the police shootings. Which I consider to be fueled by the far left.

Of course, I'm speaking from an American's perspective. I wouldn't know if you have some kind of right wing hate groups running amok over there. But I doubt they can compete with the Islamists, anyway.

I'm always open to different opinions though. This is just from what I've seen.

Also, I would just like to point out again that I consider myself a left wing liberal. But the tone this ideology has taken, in the last batch of years, has gotten way out of hand.
Still, I would never consider myself a conservative or leaning towards the right. There just isn't much I agree with.

I thought I would point that out, as I get the impression people think I am coming from a Republican point of view. I voted for Obama. Twice!

[antron]

Even most black officers buy into "police culture" and a police approach to things

A black friend got in my car once and noticed an empty beer bottle in the floor. He asked me if I was crazy, but then said, "oh yeah, you're white". I pointed out that half of the cops in our town were black. He looked at me very seriously and said, "those are the worst ones"

[trap15]

I pointed out that half of the cops in our town were black. He looked at me very seriously and said, "those are the worst ones"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zrl2Dm8Rwtk&t=50s

[Durandal]

http://www.kwch.com/content/news/Nation ... 89542.html
Would a barbecue to improve relations helped things?

[antron]

I pointed out that half of the cops in our town were black. He looked at me very seriously and said, "those are the worst ones"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zrl2Dm8Rwtk&t=50s

Self loathing. Funny delivery, but wrong diagnosis (not that you meant it t be)

It's probably pride that drives black cops to profiling/discrimination.

[Mischief Maker]

I suppose I should have changed theoretical magic super cops to a theoretical magic super system

Yeah you should have. Because there is a vast gulf in feasibility between a total purge and restaffing of law enforcement verses making a change in the rules. If you're going to throw dismissive "rainbows and unicorns" language to say changes are not feasible, get your facts straight first.

Now perhaps being European you don't understand how the police work in the US, so I'll give some details. Congress does not do everything in the United States, we have layers and layers of government going from Federal to State to County to City, and every one of those layers has their own law enforcement apparatus. The FBI is the federal law enforcement agency, state troopers obviously are run by the states, and so on down the line. Getting radical legislation through at the federal level is indeed very difficult (unless it's a tax cut) because that's where the establishment is most firmly entrenched. But as you work your way lower and more local, populist protests and third party candidates can be more and more influential. What's more, there are many, many changes that law enforcement agencies can implement by themselves without legislative permission.

Now the final line I said in the OP was that quotas were not the only form of institutionalized racism. I just focused on those because that recording had just gone public and it was an excellent example. Changing the method by which police performance is measured to something other than butts in jail cells will not end racism for ever and ever, of course not. But if you're going to hold that against the change then you're just making "perfect" the enemy of "better."

What's more, an improvement in trust between the black community and law enforcement could improve economies in these neighborhoods. One detail people like to conveniently ignore is that one of the best sources of information to the FBI in battling terrorism is the law-abiding majority of the Muslim community, which is why Trump-style blanket condemnations that drive a wedge between Muslim and non-Muslim Americans make us less safe. Same benefits from police departments that make conscious efforts to connect with black communities. They get more info on criminal activity, which allows them to better target the real bad guys, which decreases crime in that community, which makes it less risky to start a business in the area, which improves the economy.

Once again, this is a massively complex issue and I'm just using isolated chunks as examples.



evil_ash_xero, I made a couple small changes to your post:

This is just my opinion. However, I have seen enough stuff from Gamergate to consider them to be headed towards a very sexist direction. The tweets of their members, vids on YT of them saying sexist stuff...the fact they made death threats against Anita Sarkeesian.. It just adds up to a movement that has gone off the rails.

Irony's a bitch, ain't it?

[evil_ash_xero]

This is just my opinion. However, I have seen enough stuff from Gamergate to consider them to be headed towards a very sexist direction. The tweets of their members, vids on YT of them saying sexist stuff...the fact they made death threats against Anita Sarkeesian.. It just adds up to a movement that has gone off the rails.

Irony's a bitch, ain't it?

Well, not really. People from GG have been pointing this out, and how people from the progressive media are being hypocrites now.







And GG never caused any real life violence or disruption. Just a bunch of hurt fee fees.

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

While it's not fair to compare murdering cops and racist snipers to mean tweets and animu tiddies, it is hypocritical for gamergate to ignore the legit issues and focus on the bad actors and "narrative". We're supposed to have learned that lesson.

[evil_ash_xero]

While it's not fair to compare murdering cops and racist snipers to mean tweets and animu tiddies, it is hypocritical for gamergate to ignore the legit issues and focus on the bad actors and "narrative". We're supposed to have learned that lesson.

I know what you're saying, but I just don't see how the comparisons are really that valid. Yeah, there are bad actors in GG. But they didn't kill anyone. It's just on a whole different level, so it's just not so...it's not as important.

What's going on with BLM is really important.

Of course I see that though.

And black people have a legitimate gripe. I'm not denying any of this stuff.

[Astraea FGA Mk. I]

It isn't a race or law enforcement problem it is an American problem I have been to countries where the police don't shoot people (often) they do exist and there is also racial harmony (Japan, Iceland).

[trap15]

Japan? Racial harmony? Surely you jest...

[Skykid]

Japan? Racial harmony? Surely you jest...

He probably means unfounded racial elitism. It's a common asian trend.