From Citilab.
As a taxpaying city resident, I don’t like having to foot the bill for bad behavior. (I also don’t think cities should be so quick to settle.)
My solution is give whatever money the city is now paying out to the police department budget. Raise the police budget by that much. And we’re talking millions. And then tell the police department: it’s on you. All future lawsuits will come from your budget. I guarantee you this would result in fewer lawsuits.
But it might be behind a paywall. If so, here is the good parts version:
Even undercounting, America easily outguns other rich countries: in the year to March 2013 police in England and Wales fired weapons three times and killed no one.
Such comparisons should be read in context. America’s police operate in a country with 300m guns and a murder rate six times Germany’s. In recent years the New York Police Department (NYPD) was called to an annual average of almost 200,000 incidents involving weapons, shot 28 people and saw six of its officers shot (mostly non-fatally). Despite the headlines, it is one of America’s more restrained forces.
…
In a small town policemen are investigated by people they work with all the time. “The prosecutor is the guy who went to your kid’s confirmation,” says Mr Moskos.
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A more obvious culprit is the way policework is measured. Police managers fret about lazy officers. To keep them away from the doughnuts, most forces judge officers by how many arrests they make. Preventing a rape does not count; busting someone for jaywalking does.
There is a paradox in all this. American cities have become much safer in the past two decades. Too many urban forces do not seem to have noticed. In Cleveland, the DoJ found a sign in a police parking lot that read “Forward Operating Base”, as if it were an outpost in Afghanistan.
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The federal government stokes the culture of the warrior cop by offloading surplus military kit to local police. The Los Angeles School District Police Department has acquired three grenade-launchers and a mine-resistant armoured vehicle, perhaps to keep its sophomores in check.
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The number of shots fired by police in New York has fallen by more than two-thirds since 1995.
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Even with these changes, “There is at least one crazy cop in every precinct,” says a retired NYPD officer.
That last part is so not true. The actual number of crazy cops in every precinct is three.
A lot of people really believe that cops are out there gunning for blacks. People who know more about police officers find this absurd. Of course black lives do indeed matter. But other things being equal (like committing a violent crime), are cops more likely to shoot and kill blacks because they are black? That’s an empirical question worth trying to answer. And recent event and protests not withstanding, based on the data we have, the answer seems to be no.
This is not to say there isn’t a problem with some police use of lethal (and less-lethal) force. But if you want to improve policing, you’re barking up the wrong tree if your only solution is to make cops less racist. I’ve said it before:
Sure, race matters, but if you want to improve policing, you need to move past the idea that police only do bad things to black people. This isn’t a black and white issue. It’s a police issue.
Here is what we know: taking population into account, if one looks at black and white men of all ages killed by police (based on very shoddy data, mind you) blacks are four times more likely than whites to be killed by police.That doesn’t sound good. But since we know police-involved homicides correlate with homicide and violence among individuals policed, what rate of racial disparity would one expect to find in police-involved homicides? Certainly not 1 to 1.
Somebody on facebook (and no, I won’t be your “friend”) just asked me a rather basic question: “What is the racial breakdown of those who kill police?” Fair question. And you would think I would have known the answer. But I didn’t. I would assume there would be a pretty tight correlation between the race of those feloniously killing cops and the race of those shot and killed by police. Violence begets violence.
At least one would expect that correlation if one thinks, as I do, that cops are not out there gunning for blacks. So I found that we actually do have some decent data about those who kill cops (but not so much the other way around). Based on FBI data of cop killers 289 cop killers have been white and 243 black. (If one really is looked for a group to scapegoat, 98 percent of cop killers are men.)
[This is UCR data from 2004 to 2013. And data is those who kill cops is pretty complete. During these past 10 years, according to Officer Down, a very reliable source, there have been 520 cops shot and killed, 14 stabbed to death, and 82 killed by a vehicle (not all of the latter feloniously).]
Adjusting for population, black men, overall, are 5 times more likely than white men to kill police officers. But to put a less ominous-sounding way, the odds that any given black man will kill a cop this year is 0.000012 percent. For white men it is 0.0000024 percent. And for women it is basically zero.
If one takes rates of violence into account, police are not more likely to shoot and kill blacks than they are whites. Given the racial disparity found in violent crime rates (for homicide it’s 6:1, black to white) and the racial disparity among those who kill police officers (5:1, black to white), the disproportionate rate of blacks killed by police (4:1, black to white) (Ed Note: 3:1, based on 2016 Washington Post data, is a more accurate figure) seems, well, less than I would actually expect.
If you find this difficult to believe, consider some possible reasons:
1) Big-city police departments (cities are disproportionately minority) might be better trained and less trigger-happy.
2) Cops in more violent neighborhoods (disproportionately minority, like where I policed in Baltimore) are less likely to over-react to real and perceived threats than are cops in less violent neighborhoods. (Even though these shootings tent to get all the press.)
3) Police might indeed improve and become less likely to be involved in shootings, both good and bad, in response to a public outcry — and the public simply does not cry out when whites are killed by police.
The idea that police don’t use lethal force in a racist way might be a tough pill for many to swallow. But keep in mind that the fact remains that blacks are indeed four times more likely than whites to be killed by police! Even if the cause isn’t racist cops, something is seriously wrong. So what is the solution? As I’ve said before:
If one wishes — as one should — to reduce the racial disparity of police-involved shootings, one needs to focus on racial disparities in crime and violence in general. If one wishes — as one should — to reduce the incidences of unjustified police shootings and improper police use-of-force, one needs to improve police training and reduce police militarization.
It’s also worth mentioning, unrelated to race, the average age of your average killer of cops is 30, which is higher than I would expect. And in case you were wondering why cops want to keep everybody in jail? Well among cop killers, 82 percent (n=565) have been previously arrested (and 63 percent convicted) of a previous crime. Twenty of those who killed police officers (3.5 percent of the total) had a previous conviction for murder. And then they got out and kept killing.
[see follow up]
Very recently I received two absurdly racist comments to a post. (A popular post from a google search, ie: not a regular copinthehood reader). My question is this: Why are RACIST COMMENTS TO THIS BLOG ALWAYS WRITTEN WITH THE CAPLOCKS KEY ON!?!?!?
I’ve been writing this blog for seven years now. And, as Blogger tells me, I have written 2,048 posts and published 6,508 comments. Out of all that, I think these were the first comments I wouldn’t publish because they were racist (THOUGH MAYBE I’M FORGETTING ONE OR TWO I’M NOT SURE).
So kudos to all of you who do comment! My sincere thanks for engaging with me and other while keeping things interesting and civilized. Honestly, it’s so rare to see that with police issues.
We don’t know how many people are killed by police. That’s an outrage. But seriously, think about it: police kill more people than America executes. We spend a lot of time and money when it comes to executions. And we don’t even count those killed by police. And this isn’t even a pro- or anti-police issue. Either way we just need to know.
Here’s somebody who is taking it on himself to keep track. It might even work. Similar methods have been used to give us idea of how many people have been killed as a result of fighting the drug war in Mexico. Another website keeps very good track of Taser-related deaths since nobody else does (about one per week, in case you were wondering. And here’s a parallel site).
I try and fight them lies on both sides. And finally one ace reporter, William Freivogel of St. Louis Public Radio, sets the record straight regarding ProPublica’s lie that that black teens are “21 times” more likely than white teens to be killed by police. This is the first light of day my lengthy bitching on the matter has received. Makes me almost think some of the time I waste trying to spread some truthiness is worth something.
But this isn’t before that damn 21-times figure was repeated as fact by both a New York Times editorial and the Economist. [sigh] And what also bothers me is that I spoke at length with one of the ProPublica authors. He seemed to understand a) the sever statistical limitations of UCR homicide data, b) the statistical need for a larger “n,” and c) the concept of a statistical outlier… but then he still refuses to publicly update or correct anything because the numbers — statistically somewhere between meaningless and misleading — are, well, computationally correct. I think he and his team are statistically savvy enough to know this is ideological bullshit.
One of the ProPublica authors recently doubled down: “We weren’t cherry picking years. We looked
at all of the years. But we were looking at what is happening in the
most recent years. The disparity is growing.” But… but… they looked at the last three years. And if you look at just the last year or two (worth repeating: this is based on basically meaningless data), the number is actually shrinking.
It’s one thing if they just happened to pick a year that was a statistical outlier. I could have pointed that out and they could say “Oops. my bad” (besides, it’s not like the more correct numbers couldn’t also help them make the same point). But to say they considered all the years and then chose the outlier that statistically means the least? Come on, now.
After reading this, take a break by watching David “1 of 3 Hanks” Klinger on the Daily Show. Klinger is the guy heavily quoted in that St. Louis Public Radio piece. Good stuff.
This is the tenth (or so) in my occasional series of “Right-Wing Lies.” Now I know there are some left-wing lies, too. (It’s not true that 1 in 5 college women are raped, for instance. Nor is it true that black teens are 21 times more likely to be shot and killed by police than white teens.) But among my friends, I find there are many more simply false statements coming from my dear conservative brethren.
One of the recently forwarded picture/meme involving Obama’s supposed disrespect for police officers.
“794 law enforcement officers have fallen in the line of duty since
B.H. Obama took office, with no special recognition from the White
House. A man robs a convenience store and assaults a cop; the White House sends three representatives to his memorial service.”
(Never seen this before? Then you, my liberal friend, really need to have a more diverse group of friends.)
Of course the above is not true. At least not the part of Obama never offering recognition to fallen police officers. From politifact you can get six quick links to special proclamations. Obama has said things like this:
Every American who wears the badge knows the burdens that come with it
— the long hours and the stress; the knowledge that just about any
moment could be a matter of life or death. You carry these burdens so
the rest of us don’t have to….
The rest of us can never fully understand what you go through. But
please know that we hold you in our hearts — not just today, but
always. We are forever in your debt. And it is on behalf of all of us,
the entire American people, that I offer my thoughts, my prayers, and my
thanks. May God shine a light upon the fallen and comfort the mourning. May he protect the peacemakers who protect us every day.
It’s kind of touching, to be honest. Politifact goes on to conclude, in part: “Archived information about these events was easily available to the
public on the White House website, meaning that the meme’s creator was
reckless in not taking them into account. We rate the claim Pants on
Fire.”
But… if you believed the lies when you first read them, my bet you will continue to believe them, facts be damned. Because well, if you hate Obama, then something like this just should be true. Even if it’s not.
(Also, the number 794 isn’t right either, but whatever.)
Did I mention I met Sgt. Plantinga last time I was in San Francisco? Good guy. He bought me lunch.
Here’s the last (for now) from Plantinga’s 400 Things Cops Know: Street-Smart Lessons from a Veteran Patrolman:
You won’t feel sorry for many defendants. You figure they probably committed a dozen crimes before they finally got caught for this one. But it can give you a moment of pause when you’re subpoenaed for court and you look around to see how few people have shown up to support the defendant in his criminal trial. Sometimes it’s just one. An elderly woman, the defendant’s grandmother perhaps, who appears interested in the proceedings but a little disoriented. Then when that woman gets up and leaves, you realize that she wasn’t the grandmother, just some old lady who realized she was in the wrong court room. Back down to zero. The defendant may have gone through life largely alone and is now being sent to prison alone. If I ever got arrested, my friends, extended family, junior high art teacher and every member of the Polecats–my elementary school T-ball team–would show up with supportive banners and character references and exculpatory evidence. It is yet another difference between the haves and the have-nots.
Yet another from Plantinga’s 400 Things Cops Know: Street-Smart Lessons from a Veteran Patrolman. My friend Dan gave me aline about people showing up for court “in their best sweatpants.” That always stuck with me.
Many defendants dress casually, even for felony trials. The collared shirt is a rarity. Most wear what they might don to watch Saturday morning cartoons, like a shirt that says Lucky Charms or flip-flops and shorts. Or an oversized football jersey and their good jeans, the ones with the embroidered dragon on the rear pockets. Defendants will show up for trial on a marijuana sales case wearing a shirt with a marijuana leaf design, not on a dare, or as some kind of political statement, but because they’re so oblivious that they put the shirt on and don’t think anything of it. My partner Steve recently told me of watching a defendant stand before the judge during sentencing wearing the latest urban T-shirt that said No Remorse in bold script, a choice of apparel that probably made the man’s defense attorney, at the very least, loosen his tie.
More from Plantinga’s 400 Things Cops Know: Street-Smart Lessons from a Veteran Patrolman.
Cynicism in law enforcement is wide-spread and to some degree, self-perpetuating. But sometimes you strive for optimism. You try to picture many of the juvenile criminals you deal with years later, as adults, having turned it around. One day you’d run into them and they’d be healthy and gainfully employed. They’d remember you and you’d remember them and you both would look back at that day in question and shake your heads knowingly at the folly of youth.
You snap back to reality as you book the 13-year-old auto thief. There is food stuck in his hair and he smells bad. He lives with his grandma because he doesn’t know his father and his mother is in prison for the next decade. When you’re filling out your arrest paperwork and ask him how to spell his middle name, he takes a stab at it before admitting he’s not sure. You stare at him, trying to penetrate his thoughts, to mentally peel open his brain to see what’s going on in there. To see if he’s going to make it. And you don’t know. What you do know is that, for better or worse, he’s the future.
And the future has to start somewhere.