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Tag: police-involved shooting

  • Meanwhile, in the Land of the Free…

    A bad police-involved shooting is a bad shooting. Now admittedly police, being armed representatives of the state, have a higher degree of responsibility than an average Joe. But my problem with the dozen or so media requests I get after something like this is perspective and selective outrage. Perhaps 500 or 600 people are killed by police America each year (it’s a shame we don’t know for sure). The vast majority are justified.

    Just today in my newsfeed there are stories about these other issues. And I’m happy they’re in the news. But these are mostly one-off issues. Bad shootings by police are such a small part of greater nationwide problems. And nobody is calling me about any of these other issues. They don’t galvanize the public. Why not?

    1) People out of jail can’t get jobs. This is a problem that affects 66 million Americans. 66 million! Oh, well.

    2) A prisoner who was going to be released this month dies because of bad health care. A dialysis technician didn’t show up for work. You know, sometimes people can’t get to work. But is our system so screwed up that there’s no backup plan? Somebody died. Others were hospitalized. Hope it doesn’t happen again. But it will.

    3) Something like 90 rounds were fired at a Sweet 16 party in Cincinnati. Just another day in the city. People be crazy. Oh, well. (Also in Cincinnati papers today parents were charged in killing their 2-year-old child. And officials identified a man, a white man with a knife, who was killed by Cincinnati police on Monday.)

    4) A professional basketball player was cut in some stupid club argument.

    5) In Ferguson, you know, that Ferguson, all of 30 percent of registered voters voted in a local election. And that was considered high voter turnout. I mean, if you’re not voting in Ferguson in this election this year… Jeeze, what can I say?

    Meanwhile, and not just today:

    5) More than two-million Americans woke up today behind bars. No other country in the history of the world has locked up so many people, by rate or numbers. I mean Rwanda is the only country that comes close, by rate. And they, it should be pointed out, had a friggin’ genocide.

    6) Best I know, villages in St. Louis County and elsewhere are still funding 30 percent of their budget through taxes, fines, and civil penalties, in effect criminalizing having no money. Similar to the guy in South Carolina who was wanted for failure to pay child support, and then killed. Oh, well.

    And this is just the news from today. And the only way we seem to be able to broach any of these issues is in relation to a questionable police-involved shooting. Here’s the problem: Even if there were no bad police-involved shootings, a few dozen people each year wouldn’t be be dead. But shouldn’t we also care that 38 Americans who are going to be murdered today. 120 Americans will die today from drug overdoses (about half prescription and half illegal drugs). 110 Americans will kill themselves today. Oh, well.

  • Well this look bad.

    Very bad. For a lot of reasons. A man is wanted for arrest for unpaid child support. A cop shoots the man while the man is running away and clearly, at that moment, is not a threat. The officer then apparently picks up and moves and drops his Taser closer to the dead body? Oh, it’s all bad.

    The North Charleston, South Carolina, police officer is being charged with murder.

    The NYT has the video.

    As if the first seven shots weren’t bad enough… the pause and the eighth shot? That last shot, as so often happens, will doom the cop. Though in this case it’s not like the first seven were justified. But even if they were, cops have to justify all their shots. And a pause indicates a reassessment of threat. And then he shot again?

  • DOJ on Michael Brown Shooting: Justified

    So many reports. So little time. [My other two posts on the DOJ reports: 2 & 3.]

    First the easy one: the DOJ report on Darren Wilson shooting Michael Brown. The press seems more interested in the other DOJ report, the one that reams the whole criminal justice system in Ferguson a new one (more on that, later). But what about Darren Wilson and Michael Brown: the shooting that started it all.

    This DOJ report really is a complete vindicate of Police Officer Wilson. 100 percent. And you can’t really say that this is some racist white-wash from Eric Holder’s rah-rah pro-police Department of Justice.

    Now you may say the protests were about so much more. OK. You may say that Ferguson Police overreacted with too much force against protests. Sure. I agree. None of that means Ferguson isn’t a fucked-up place, racially and institutionally. And maybe it’s good that now we know about the business of racial injustice in Ferguson (that’s the other report).

    But let’s not change the subject. Darren Wilson was legally and morally justified in shooting Michael Brown. The whole “shot while surrendering” part? It simply did not happen. To say otherwise approaches the wacky level of Creationists, climate-change deniers, and the anti-vaccine camp.

    After I read the grand jury testimony, I was convinced: Darren Wilson’s version rings true. The DOJ agrees. If you don’t believe me, read the whole report. But the bottom line is this:

    The evidence, when viewed as a whole, does not support the conclusion that Wilson’s uses of deadly force were ‘objectively unreasonable’ under the Supreme Court’s definition. Accordingly… it is not appropriate to present this matter to a federal grand jury for indictment, and it should therefore be closed without prosecution.

    The end. Now that might not sound like huge statement in support of Officer Wilson. But the devil is in the details. The purpose of this report was not to exonerate Darren Wilson but to see if there was any reason to charge him federally. There isn’t. But the details of the DOJ’s report, based on all the evidence, presents a pretty unambiguous picture. These are now the facts:

    Brown stole several packages of cigarillos. … An FPD dispatch call went out over the police radio for a “stealing in progress.” Wilson was aware of the theft and had a description of the suspects as he encountered Brown.

    …

    Wilson … told the two men to walk on the sidewalk…. Wilson then called for backup, stating, “Put me on Canfield with two and send me another car.” Wilson backed up his SUV…. stopping Brown and [Dorian Johnson] from walking any further. Wilson attempted to open the driver’s door of the SUV to exit his vehicle, but as he swung it open, the door came into contact with Brown’s body and either rebounded closed or Brown pushed it closed.

    Wilson and other witnesses stated that Brown then reached into the SUV through the open driver’s window and punched and grabbed Wilson. This is corroborated by bruising on Wilson’s jaw and scratches on his neck, the presence of Brown’s DNA on Wilson’s collar, shirt, and pants, and Wilson’s DNA on Brown’s palm.

    …

    Brown then grabbed the weapon and struggled with Wilson to gain control of it. Wilson fired, striking Brown in the hand…. Brown used his right hand to grab and attempt to control Wilson’s gun…. Brown’s hand was within inches of the muzzle of Wilson’s gun when it was fired. The location of the recovered bullet in the side panel of the driver’s door… also corroborates Wilson’s account.

    …

    There is no credible evidence to disprove Wilson’s account of what occurred inside the SUV.

    …

    The autopsy results confirm that Wilson did not shoot Brown in the back as he was running away.

    …

    Brown ran at least 180 feet away from the SUV…. Brown then turned around and came back toward Wilson, falling to his death approximately 21.6 feet west of the blood in the roadway.

    …

    Several witnesses stated that Brown appeared to pose a physical threat to Wilson as he moved toward Wilson…. Wilson fired at Brown in what appeared to be self-defense and stopped firing once Brown fell to the ground.

    …

    While credible witnesses gave varying accounts of exactly what Brown was doing with his hands as he moved toward Wilson … they all establish that Brown was moving toward Wilson when Wilson shot him.

    As to witnesses who said things that contract these facts:

    As detailed throughout this report, some of those accounts are inaccurate because they are inconsistent with the physical and forensic evidence; some of those accounts are materially inconsistent with that witness’s own prior statements with no explanation, credible for otherwise, as to why those accounts changed over time. Certain other witnesses who originally stated Brown had his hands up in surrender recanted their original accounts, admitting that they did not witness the shooting or parts of it, despite what they initially reported either to federal or local law enforcement or to the media.

    That’s it. So you can keep whatever world view you want. [I am the only person on the Venn Diagram who was convinced that George Zimmerman was guilty and Darren Wilson was innocent?] If you thought Michael Brown was executed in cold blood by a racist cop, you were misinformed about the facts. Now you should change your opinion.

    [In an otherwise informative piece, Ta-Nahasi Coates admits Wilson’s innocence as charged but says, “Darren Wilson is not the first gang member to be publicly accused of a crime he did not commit.” Oh, snap. But Wilson may be the first innocent person in the 21st century to inspire mass public protests assured of his guilt.]

    What about Police Officer Darren Wilson? The mob of public opinion declares him guilty. As far as I know he’s still in hiding. He’s innocent. Is he really an agent of a criminal operation? Or does he get his life and job back?

  • From the [not so] sharp minds at ProPublica

    I’ve written before about their foolish and inaccurate claim that the black-to-white racial disparity among those shot by police is 21 to 1. I said, given the group they look at, the number is 9 to 1. But without any slight-of-hand or misleading highlighting of statistical outliers, the actually black-to-white racial disparity, the take-home stat, is 4 to 1.

    More than two months passed. The inaccurate 21-to-1 figure was bandied about by the NPR, the New York Times, and The Economist.

    Then, on a quiet Christmas Eve, ProPublica’s Ryan Gabrielson and Ryann Grochowski Jones posted an article to address criticism (mainly brought by me and David Klinger) of their initial study.

    I don’t want to waste much more time on this; I’ve wasted too much already (see 1, 2, 3, 4). But I do find it funny, in their piece, after many paragraphs focusing on the red herring non-issue of hispanic undercount, there it is — buried in the 11th paragraph — they kind of admit I’m right: the ratio might be 9 to 1!

    Maybe I should just stop there and say, “you’re welcome.”

    But, but, I can’t! Because then there it is — a revisionist gem — they say the actual number doesn’t really matter: “And whether 9 times as great, 17 times or 21 times, the racial disparity remains vast, and demands deeper investigation.”

    What the fuck?!

    The 21-times ratio is the only real point of your original article (which is still up and unapologetic)! And the only real point of my bitching was that 21-times is wrong. Now even 4:1 or 9:1 may be too large. And it does demand deeper investigation. So why not investigate deeper (Or at least crib from those who have)? According to ProPublica: “the data is far too limited to point to a cause for the disparity.” Actually, no. The disparity can be explained pretty well, without too much “deep” digging. What I’m about to tell isn’t the “deepest” investigation, mind you, but it’s a start. And it’s on me, guys. Gratis.

    The black to white racial disparity (all ages) of those killed by cops since 2000 (and reported to the UCR, which is big caveat) is 4 to 1. The racial disparity among those who kill cops is 5 to 1 (the rate is per capita, mind you, not the absolute number). I’d bet $20 it holds for teens, too.

    Now one could say, as does Prof. Klinger, that the data on police-involved homicides are simply too limited to make any point at all. But if one is willing to play with bad data (and I’m game, if they’re the best we got), then you can’t say your conclusion is fine but… other conclusions? …well, “the data is far too limited.”

    Finally — and it goes back to my point about outliers and cherry-picked bullshit data — ProPublica has the chutzpah to say they can’t go back further in time — thus including more data, increasing statistical validity, and decreasing the magnitude of their conclusion — because, get this: they can’t get accurate population numbers.

    So let me get this right: they’re fine using fucked-up UCR data on justified police-involved homicide, they’re fine cherry picking an outlier three-year sample with an “n” (total cases) of 62, but they wouldn’t dare look at more years because we can’t estimate the US population between 2001 and 2007? Are they on crack? Are they stupid? Or are they simply blinded by ideologically bias. I honestly do not know. But it’s a nonsensical line of statistical integrity for them to draw.

    Here is it in their words:

    Using Census 2000 and Census 2010 data for baselines assumes that the ratio of populations remain static, and that a snapshot of population rates for a subset of time can be assumed to be accurate for an entire period. We know that’s not true…. To test the critics’ argument, we calculated risk ratios for as far back as the American Community Survey data goes (2008) [ed note: the ACS actually goes back to 2005, but whatever]. From 2006 to 2008, the risk ratio was 9.1 to 1 (with a 95 percent confidence interval 6.19, 13.39).

    First of all, stop the fancy talk about “risk ratio” and “confidence interval.” You either don’t know what you’re talking about or you’re knowingly trying to mislead.

    Speaking above your reader’s head is a dirty rhetorical trick to hoodwink gentle reades into trusting your statistical acumen (which is pretty crappy). As my grand pappy used to say, “Ain’t no need to use a 25-cent word when a 5-cent one will do.” (See, now I’m usin’ the reverse rhetorical trick by affectin’ an aww-sucks-I’m-just-a-common-guy style of speech here.) For what it’s worth, my papou was an immigrant who spoke with a Greek accent.

    “Risk ratio” here means nothing more than “more likely.” “Confidence interval,” well, if you’re going to use it, explain it. Better yet, explain it accurately* or at least point out that it supports 9:1 more than 21:1.

    More to the point, it’s pointless to discuss statistical nuances of irrelevancy! Of all the problems in your analysis, you’re going to draw the line at estimating population in Census off-years? Really?! It’s like we’re sitting in your rusted jalopy and you tell me you can’t drive me home because the windshield wipers aren’t working. But you failed to mention the fact that the whole thing is up on cinder blocks!

    Of course we can estimate population figures, you fools! The US population grew 9.7% between 2000 and 2010. Talk about easy math! Go on, be bold, you dirty devil: assume a linear population growth for all categories. Divide 10% by 10. It comes out to 1% a year. I know it’s not perfect, but it’ll be close enough; trust me. (Actually population growth of 9.7% over 10-years comes out 0.925% compounded continuously.)

    Will this population estimate be perfect? No. Is it good enough? Yes. Will it tell you far more about what you claim to show? Of course. Is that why you won’t do it? Probably. Would this population estimate be the single most accurate number in your entire analysis? Abso-fucking-lutely.

  • Police Shooting Kids

    Here I am on NPR’s “Morning Edition” flapping my mouth about the shooting of Tamir Rice (Cleveland kid killed by police while holding a realistic-looking BB gun):

    [Moskos] says mayors everywhere walk a tightrope between police and citizen outrage. He says the public needs to get more realistic about how the police work. And police need to be less tone deaf to how their actions can inflame the public. The fundamental challenge for mayors, Moskos says, is a willingness to make big changes when police shootings aren’t warranted.

    This also applies to NYC, by the way. But I really don’t like hearing myself speak (seriously, I think my voice is kind of high and nasal). The voice I liked hearing came from the Cleveland mayor:

    I do not want children to die at the hand of police officers. But at the same time, I don’t want a policeman killed on the street because he was hesitating because he didn’t know if he was going to be sued or fired. So I don’t want that either.

    Who’s got a problem with that? [And yet I bet you — and I really have no idea about him or Cleveland — but I bet you that most Cleveland cops hate their mayor. Why? Because he’s a liberal black mayor of Cleveland. But I really have no idea if he’s hated, liberal, or even black. I can’t even guarantee he’s he mayor.] Now I was pretty clear about what I thought about the shooting of Tamir Rice (good shooting in the legal sense; horrible and shameful shooting in the I-live-in-America sense).

    So if I had one word for police officers, who, for good reason, feel they need to defend officers in these situations (hell, I do), at least be enough of a human being to admit the obvious: “You know what, it’s really horrible that a 12-year-old kid holding a non-lethal gun got shot and killed in America.”

    Just say what you’re feeling. It would go a long way. And it’s not anti-police to feel a bit for a 12-year-old shot dead by police.

    And to those who can’t fathom how police could shoot and kill a 12-year-kid, consider that this kid was holding a fucking gun! (Or at least something that no reasonable person could distinguish from a real bullet-firing gun.) And then consider of the words of the honorable mayor of Cleveland: “I don’t want a policeman killed on the street because he was hesitating because he didn’t know if he was going to be sued or fired.”

  • “If you point a gun at a police officer…”

    I mention this article by Peter Katel in CQ Researcher (alas, behind a pay wall) because, along with lots of good stuff, there’s a quote I wasn’t expecting coming from my man Norm “a liberal critic of much police strategy” Stamper:

    A video of the [Tamir Rice] shooting — showing a police car driving up next to the boy, who was shot two seconds later — demonstrates that the shooting never had to happen, Stamper concludes, saying the officer could have taken cover behind his car and evaluated the situation more calmly.

    “A more mature, experienced, confident police officer would have better understood what he was facing,” Stamper says.

    At the same time, he says Rice’s parents never should have let him outside with a replica pistol, and schools and police should ensure that children know an essential fact of life: No one seen to pose a mortal threat in the presence of police should expect to walk away, or even to survive.

    “If you point a gun at a police officer, you have punched your ticket,” Stamper says. “I don’t care if it’s a toy gun.

    Norm is right about a lot of things (like ending the drug war). Add this to the list.

  • Recipe for Outrage

    If you want to be outraged, I find the lack of more public protest over the police-involved killing of Akai Gurley odd. I mean, if you’re looking for an honest victim killed by police for no reason at all, why not focus on an honest victim killed for no reason at all (instead of say, a guy who robbed a store and then, almost assuredly, attacked a cop)?

    Gurley was a guy walking down some dark stairs where he lived (the Pink Homes, NYC public housing). Next thing you he’s struck in center mass by a police officer’s bullet and dead. Just like that. Boom. Game over.

    Seems like a rookie cop couldn’t open a door without accidentally firing his gun (either that or he was so scared of being in the project stairwell that he fired blindly). This is an obvious, blatant, unambiguous, fuckup. And yet compared to Brown and Garner, you hear very little about Akai Gurley. Not to say there’s been no coverage of his death, but is it even national news?

     Just imagine: the aftermath of Gurley’s killing has been so non-controversial that we haven’t even yet seen any attempt to personally besmirch the victim! I mean, come on now, I’m sure Fox News can dig up some previous incident or facebook picture that portrays Gurley in an unflattering light.

    So why the lack of more outrage? I can think of three reasons — lessons, you might even say — as to how to handle a bad police-involved shooting.

    1) We’ll never know all the details. But apparently Commissioner Bratton felt like he knew enough to say right away that police messed up:

    Bill Bratton characterized the incident as an “unfortunate tragedy” and an accident. Officials said Liang was holding a flashlight in his right hand and a Glock 9-mm. in the other when he opened the door to the eighth-floor landing.

    Here’s what Commissioner Bratton did not say, “I’m not commenting until we know all the details. An investigation is underway. Until we know all the details, we need to let the justice system work. But let me add that Gurley was no alter boy.”

    2) Sharpton has been pretty quiet about this. From last week’s NY Post:

    [Sharpton] muscled his way into the arrangements — and even put out press releases promising to deliver the eulogy — without ever consulting the family or offering to foot the bill.

    But Gurley’s relatives told Sharpton to stay away rather than turn the somber ceremonies into a spectacle.

    …

    “Who made you the spokesperson of our family? We just want to bury our nephew with dignity and respect.”

    …

    “How can you do a eulogy for someone you don’t even know? It’s heartbreaking,” she said. By late Friday, Sharpton accepted a rare defeat and backed off, though he blamed it on “confusion and division” within the Gurley family.

    Well that lessens the Sharpton Effect. Say what you want about Sharpton, but he does get media attention. Sharpton gives voice to the tree that otherwise just falls in the woods. And without anger, a perceived cover up, or a tone-deaf police department, there’s little news story. Tragic mistakes are just a one-day story in the news.

    3) The officer wasn’t white. This matters, though I’m not certain how much. Last I checked, Asians can be racist, too. And other police-involved shootings involving non-white officers have become issues because of the race of the victim (Sean Bell, for instance). But certainly an “officer of color” (as they say) removes some of the typical boilerplate narrative.

    So you’ve got an unquestionably innocent guy, and instant apology, a non-white cop, no Al Sharpton, and a justice system that hasn’t (yet) let the shooter completely off the hook. All you’re left with is some disembodied, vague fear of a rookie cop. That fear is probably more racist than anything that happened in the Ferguson shooting or Eric Garner’s choking, but because it’s all in an officer’s mind until the gun gets fired, there’s not much story.For public outrage — and I wish there were some way of addressing issues of racial justice and politics without focusing on individual ambiguous police incidents — but maybe you need ambiguity to create conflict and allow people to disagree and project their moral ideology.

    So here’s my recipe for outrage (feel free to substitute some of the ingredients):

    Take one beefy white cop and combine with an ambiguous hands-on police situation, a stonewalled inquiry, and a glug of bureaucratic tom-foolery. Do not apologize. Set aside. Place Al Sharpton in front of media cameras while at the side of the victim’s family. Stir in some militarized police over-response (to taste) and add a twist of judicial inaction. Let simmer till everything bubbles over. Do not remove from heat.

    Prep time takes years. But this handy recipe can be prepared in one day. Serves thousands.

    [thanks to ZLO]

  • Police killing whites and blacks

    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]

  • How many people do police kill?

    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).

  • Fighting Liberal Lies

    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.