Using Stats To See If Black People Are Being Targeted By Police

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-databas

While the death of George Floyd wasn't a shooting it still gives into the idea that police are targeting black men.  Now of course, you aren't going to change the minds of idiots on this subject, anymore than you are going to convince religious people that there is no god.  Their belief in it goes beyond evidence.  There are cases to go either way.  Not all cops are good.  Some innocent black people are killed by police, and some innocent white people are killed by police.  It's important to go beyond a story here or there, and beyond what the mainstream highlights, and look at more complete data to get a better look at the big picture.  

The Washington Post has been keeping track of police shootings since 2015, and now they've got all their numbers from 2015 to now on one page.  I've looked at the numbers, and the pattern is consistent. About 1.9 times as many white people have been killed in police shootings as black people.  When I last checked today there had been 2358 white people killed in police shootings, and 1252 black people.  Another important detail how likely is how likely black people, and white people are to resist arrest.

One issue with the FBI's crime stats is that we don't have the 2019 stats, let alone those for 2020 so far.  The 2019 data will be released in September of this year.  Still we have the 2015-18 data to look at.  I added up the arrest numbers for those 4 years.   In terms of total arrests there were 2.56 times as many instances of white people being arrested than black people, but when it came to violent crime that ratio dropped to 1.56/1.  In terms of murder black people, who make up just 13% of the population commit over 50% of the murders.  From 2015-18 black people were arrested for murder 1.18 times as much as white people.  That data doesn't give a clear picture to show that police are targeting black men, or that the there is an epidemic of police killing black people.  There are other things to the don't fit that narrative.  Only 234 women were killed in police shootings according to the Post's numbers.  Only 47 of those women were black, compared to 132 that were white.  If police are just racist, and targeting black people then why are so few black women being killed by police.  A white man is more likely to be viewed as a threat than a black woman.  You know why?  It's because men are more likely to commit crime.  Yet when it comes to race it's so tough to people to use the same reasoning.  

In terms of resisting arrests studies tend to show that black people are more likely to resist arrest than whites, but there isn't a bunch of data on this, and one of my links is from 2014.

Correction: Factoring In Hispanics
One thing that I forgot is that the FBI, and Washington Post count Hispanic differently.  The Washington Post counts it as a race, while the FBI correctly counts it as an ethnicity.  The problem that while most Hispanic look Native American, most of them identify as white, and that increase the arrest numbers for whites.  Looking at the 2019 Census data 76.5% of the population is white, while 60.4% is non Hispanic white.  So, about 16.1% of the country are listed as white Hispanics, and Hispanics make up 18.3% of the population.  Based on those percentages about 88% of the country's Hispanics are listed as white.  According to the FBI crime data from 2015-18 there were 4,807,933 arrests of Hispanics, 22,557,336 for whites, and 8,797,330 for blacks.  The data doesn't break down Hispanic arrests by race, but if I were to assume it's 88%, then that would lower the arrest totals for whites over those same years, and the ratio arrest would go down to 2.1/1 for crime, and just 1.1/1 for violent crime.  This doesn't factor in the very small percentage of Hispanics that are black, and is based on the assumption that the percentage of Hispanics arrested who are identified as white, is equal to the what the percentage is in the census. So the estimates are flawed.  It still gives some very serious evidence against the narrative of police being racist against black people.  If anything police might be less likely to kill black people under similar circumstances.  

Links

Resisting Arrest

https://www.wnyc.org/story/resisting-arrest-black-white/

https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/african-americans-arrested-for-resisting-arrest-at-a-larger-rate-in-san-diego/2260289/

Crime

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-2015/tables/table-43

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/topic-pages/tables/table-21

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/topic-pages/tables/table-43 

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/topic-pages/tables/table-43

Demographics
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219












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Kobe Bryant Overrated

Even before Kobe Bryant died, his reputation as a basketball player exceeded his statistics.  Since he's died it's gone to another level.  ESPN ranked the 74 greatest basketball players of all time, and had him ranked 9th.  This caused a lot of controversy from people thinking he should be ranked higher.  Jamal Crawford even said he couldn't respect a list that didn't have Bryant in the top 5. 

So is Kobe a top 5 player.  No.  In my opinion he's borderline top 10.  There are several reasons that Kobe is thought so highly relative to what the numbers say.  

Let's go back to 1998.  Michael Jordan is playing a season that many believe will be his last.  In this season Kobe really emerges.  He holds his own to showdowns with Jordan, and Jordan gives Kobe his seal of approval.  They were on camera having a conversation in which was giving Bryant advice.  Michael said Kobe was the future of the league.  When Michael retired in January of 1999, a lot of people were looking for a Michael Jordan replacement.  Kobe Bryant fit the mold.  He went out of his way to copy Jordan, from his use of the fadeaway jumper, the same footwork, and even the mannerisms.  He was the right person at the right time.  Kobe rode the Michael Jordan wave, and his fandom is closely related to Jordan's.  Because Kobe was copied Jordan, and was athletic, and skilled, his game was aesthetically pleasing.  Not in the way Jordan's game way (who's is), but good enough to give the popularity edge of Shaq, who dominated by brute force.  Even though Shaq was the better player during the Lakers' threepeat, Kobe was the one fans wanted to be better.  Now years later, many of them act as if he was better.

The numbers don't back up Kobe's reputation.  His PER ranks 27th all time.  He ranks 29th all time in Box Plus Minus, and that stat is only used for season starting in 1973-74.  Even metric categories that reward longevity aren't that favorable to him.  He's 19th all time in Win Shares, and 12th in Value Over Replacement Player.  When you consider that he player over 48,000 minutes those rankings really don't back up his reputation as a player.  I like advanced metrics.  Sure they aren't perfect.  What stat is perfect for letting you know how good a player is?  

 

Looking at scoring numbers shows that Kobe was one of the greatest scorers of all time.  He averaged 35.8 points per 100 possessions in his career, good enough for 5th all time according to basketball reference.  His points per 100 was 36.1 before the dip in his last 3 seasons.  Still the 4 players ahead of him all have higher true shooting percentages.  Some of the players close to him also are/were more efficient scorers.  Still Kobe was one of the greatest scorers ever.  The problem is that he doesn't stand out in any other category.  His rebound number aren't that special.  There were several shooting guards who were better rebounders than him.  His assists numbers are okay for a guy with so much scoring responsibility, but they aren't great.  He wasn't great at getting steals either.  So statistically he wasn't one of the 10 greatest players of all time.  Was he better than his stats?  Relative to his era, I don't think he was.  He was a good defender, but not a great one.  He was named first team all defense in several seasons in which he didn't deserve it.  If you want to bring up eras, then it's tough comparing Bill Russell, or Wilt Chamberlain to Kobe, because the players were so inferior in their era.  Obviously we give those old legends the benefit of the doubt.  

Kobe was one of the greatest basketball players of all time.  In my opinion he wasn't a top five player ever, and might not have been a top 1o players.  He certainly isn't a top 10 player based on statistics.  Besides borderline top 10 isn't bad.

About Wilt Chamberlain Michael Jordan And Rule Changes

Wilt Chamberlain once mentioned that rules were changed to stop him, while rules were changed to help Michael Jordan.  It's one of those things that Chamberlain, and some other just accept as fact.  I decided to look at NBA rules changes through history to see just how accurate Chamberlain's take was.

http://archive.nba.com/analysis/rules_history.html

The only major rule change that was done to slow Chamberlain down was the widening of the lane before the 1964-65.  There were a number of other rules changes, but they probably didn't have much affect on Wilt.  So Wilt should've said that one rule was changed to slow him down, but Wilt wasn't known for his honesty.  One rule brought up by Jordan detractors is the flagrant foul rule.  Before the 1990-91 the penalty was increased for flagrant fouls, but what was the prior punishment, and how did it make things easier for Jordan.  The flagrant foul was established in the NBA for the 1980-81 season, but all the rules history states is that the coach of the offended team could choose the free throw shooter.  Punishment was increased in 1990, allowing the offended team to get two free throws, and possession of the ball, which equates to another offensive possession.  Overall that rule change didn't have much affect on the league, as flagrant fouls weren't called that often, and played remained physical in the 90's.  In fact it probably got more physical as players got bigger and stronger than they were in the 1980's.  One rule that I've read being attributed to protecting Jordan from the Bad Boy Pistons was the rule against hand checking, but that rule wasn't added until the 1994 offseason, when Jordan was playing baseball, and after he won NBA 3 championships.  The 3 point line was shortened at the top of the key starting with the 1994-95 season, and that helped Jordan's 3 point percentage, but Jordan wasn't playing when the change was made. That change lasted 3 seasons before it was changed back to it's original distance for the 1997-98 season. While there were some rules added in the mid to late 90s, they weren't estabhlised to help Michael Jordan.  Those changes were made to help make the games higher scoring.  The league scoring average was going down every season at that point, and league really wanted to increase the pace, and scoring of the game.  One major proof of his is how rules were changed even when Jordan was retired.  I mentioned a couple of them from the 1994 offseason.  Jordan had the best seasons of his career before any of these rule changes were established.  

Most rules were changed to help offense, and a few went against the offense, but the rules history doesn't back up this idea that the NBA changed the rules to help their golden boy win championships.  It also doesn't show a pattern of rules being changed against Wilt Chamberlain.