Thursday, October 13, 2016

Are police less likely to kill black people: Some Numbers Crunching

So I'm on twitter earlier today, and I see a link to this http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/5/police-officers-more-hesitant-to-shoot-black-suspe/.

 The study doesn't look into actual data on police killings.  It's more of a look into the mentality of police officers.  Still I wanted to do some numbers crunching.  I wanted to look at some data.  The FBI's statistics on arrest in 2015, and the Washington Post data on police killings from 2015, were two key pieces to the puzzle.  I've read stories that mention that black men being more likely to be killed by police.  While that is true when you adjust for population, it is deceiving.  Police are more likely to shoot people they interact with, and more specifically criminals. You would have to adjust for crime, and more importantly violent crime.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings/

Let me mention one important thing.  The Washington Post counts Hispanic as a race, while the FBI data doesn't.  Hispanics get added on to the population of other races, and most of them are white.

http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/00

Let's go to the census data on the U.S. population in 2015.  Going by that data 61.6% of the countries' population are non hispanic whites.  Counting hispanics brings the white population up to 77.1%, so doing some math about 15.5% of the countries' population is white hispanics.  Hispanics make up 17.6% of the population.  So I can estimate that 88.1% of hispanics in this country are white.  The census doesn't give data for how many black people in the country aren't hispanic. Total blacks in the country are 13.3% of the population.  I'll instead use data from 2010 http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762156.html.  This counts  Hispanic separately from races.  12.2% of the country was non hispanic blacks in 2010.  Counting black hispanics like the 2015 census link does, gives the black population for 2010 at 12.6%.  The hispanic population in 2010 was 16.3%, meaning blacks made up just 2.45% of the hispanics in the United States in 2010.  I'll use that estimate for 2015.  Going by that data black hispanics would still make up about 0.4% of the population, and non hispanic blacks 12.9%.  I'll estimate that there were 198 million non hispanic whites, 41.5 million non hispanic blacks here in 2015, and 25.4 million who weren't black, white, or hispanic.  Those would be in the other category according to the Washington Post.

According to the Washington Post's data 495 whites were killed by police shooters in 2015, compared to 258 blacks, and 172 Hispanics.  I wanted to guess what number of those Hispanics killed by police who would count as white according to the FBI.  Time to go into some complex math.  Based on census bureau statistics I estimated that there were 198 million non hispanics whites in the country.  The 495 deaths equals ~0.23 per 100,000.  258 blacks being killed means 0.62 per 100,000.  Just based on population non hispanics blacks were 2.7 times more likely to be killed than non hispanic whites. When it comes to others 38 deaths mean 0.15 per 100,000.  That means blacks were around 4 times more likely than them to be killed by police  Let's say the ratio is similar for white and hispanics, which they might not be.  If I were to act as if white and black hispanics were killed by police at equal rates, it would actually project to more whites being killed relative to blacks, than if I do things the way I am. Without going over all of the math, I estimated the black hispanic population at 1.3 million, and the white hispanic population at 49.8 million. The closest I could get to the ratios was with 150 white hispanics, and 10 black hispanics, and 11 others.  Those estimates would mean 608 whites, and 248 blacks, a ratio of 2.45/1.  Does that fit arrest statistics?
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-2015/tables/table-43

Whites were arrested 2.6 times as much as blacks, so that isn't great evidence of police bias against blacks, but lets look at violent crime.  The ratio goes down to 1.65/1.  That is very important.  I am just going to guess that someone arrested for a violent crime is more likely to get into a confrontation with police, than some arrested for embezzlement.  In terms of murders blacks committed more, and were arrested more.  4347 for blacks, and 3908 for whites were arrest for murder.  The overall data doesn't give a clear picture of police bias against black people, but the argument that police are more careful with black people isn't some stupid idea.  The numbers offer it some support.  There is also the fact that black people are more likely to resist arrest.


http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/07/08/stefan_molyneux_lies_about_the_dangers_of_white_racism_do_a_massive_amount_of_damage_to_the_black_community.html
This article says blacks are 9.6 times more likely to resist arrest than whites.  They may be adjusting for population, and not for police encounters, but blacks aren't close to 9.6 times more likely to be arrested than whites, and I don't think that number is just made up.  Black people are more anti police than white people, so it makes sense that black people would be more likely to resist.  If you factor that in, the argument that police are actually more likely to kill whites (adjusting for encounters with police), isn't that far fetched.  Even without it, we have a picture that doesn't back up the narrative that police are racist against black people.

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

FBI Murder Data For 2015

The FBI released their crime statistics for 2015, and murders have gone up 10.8%.  This is not a surprise to me, as I read an article about murder rates going up in major cities.  I haven't read much on possible explanations for this, as it goes against what has been the general pattern for around 2 decades.


https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-2015/tables/expanded_homicide_data_table_6_murder_race_and_sex_of_vicitm_by_race_and_sex_of_offender_2015.xls

The link above shows a  table that looks at incidence of single victim/single offender homicide.  Based on the data on this chart here are some stats.

White Offenders-2897
Black Offenders-2934

500 whites killed by black offenders
229 blacks killed by white offenders

3167 white victims   2574 killed by whites   81.3
2664 black victims  2380 killed by blacks   89.3

It's interesting that according to the table blacks killed whites at over 2 times as much as vice versa.  As someone who looked at data from previous years this is no surprise.   It's been that way for a while.  Each year I've checked it's been that way.  Mainstream media coverage could lead you to believe that it's the other way around.  Incidence of blacks killing whites doesn't get the same attention.

According to the 2015 census white people made up 77.1% of the U.S. population, while blacks made up 13.3%.  Based on that data there are about 5.8 times as many white people in the country as black.  Both the census data, and FBI data doesn't count hispanic as a race, and white hispanics are counted as white, black hsipanics as black, etc.  Based on that data blacks are 5.9 times as likely to commit murders as whites, but that's not the complete data.  I'll get to the more complete data later.  There is also the question of black on black crime, or in this case black on black murder.  About 89% of blacks who were murdered were murdered by other blacks according to this data, while 81% of whites murdered were murdered by other whites.  Those percentage are deceiving, because they don't look at the rate in which each happened.  Black were 5.4 times more likely to kill another, at least in single victim/single offender homicides.

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-2015/tables/expanded_homicide_data_table_3_murder_offenders_by_age_sex_and_race_2015.xls

That gets me to the above table, which looks at Murder offenders.  There were 5620 black offenders, and 4636 white offenders in cases where the race of the offender was known.  Blacks made up 53.3% of those offenders.  That's 13.3% of the country committing  around 53% of the murders.  That is a huge over representation.  A black person was 7 times more likely to murder than a white person.


https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-2015/tables/expanded_homicide_data_table_2_murder_victims_by_age_sex_and_race_2015.xls

The third link is to a table that gives data on murder victims.  There were 7039 black victims, and 5854 white victims.  Unlike single victim/single offender data, this doesn't break down the race of those whom killed them.


What if I applied the percentages from my first link, when it came to how the percentage of black murder victims who were killed by blacks, and the percentage of white murder victims killed by whites.  That would translate to 6289 blacks killed by blacks 4758 whites killed by whites.  Those are just estimates, though it gives you an idea of how more complete data victim/offender data would look.


Thursday, September 15, 2016

More About This Colin Kaepernick Guy

What's going on with Colin Kaepernick?  It's about more than his protest of the National Anthem, which if you go by his reasoning, is pretty much a protest of the country.  It's how he has become a radical.  The transformation happened before he protested the anthem.  He was showing what he was about on his social media sites, but people weren't paying attention.  If you don't believe me check out his twitter, and instagram accounts.  They are full of controversial, and often racist shit.  He has jumped on the BLM bandwagon, and his beliefs, often times, goes right along with theirs, even when it's proven wrong.  According to his instagram he doesn't believe Sandra Bland committed suicide.  He likes the original Black Panthers, and apparently Assata Shakur as well.  He believes that Martin Luther King's murder was part of a government conspiracy  according to this post https://www.instagram.com/p/BAs7z23NBMs/?hl=en.  He has posted an anti police message from Malcolm X, and he likes Nat Turner.  He might not like integration that much, but I'm not sure about that.  Pretty strange for a guy who looks more white than black, and was adopted by a white couple.   Some people think the media is going tough on him, but I think the media is going easy on him.  Maybe it's the soft bigotry of low expectations, or maybe something else.  If you want to go after him, you can go further than some socks with pigs in police hats.  His twitter and instagram accounts give you plenty more to criticize him for.  Some people believe that it was his girlfriend Nessa Diab who was changed his ways.  She is a black muslim woman, who is BLM. Colin converted to Islam, and is now protesting, and speaking on police brutality.  I don't know how true it is, but it's realistic to think that she was influential in changing his mindset.

The socks with the pigs in police hats was one thing.  Even the media couldn't agree with him on that one.  They have mainly tried take the focus away from that.  It happened before he protested the anthem.  Then there was that shirt with the image of Malcolm X, and Fidel Castro.  Just after protesting the anthem because of the perceived oppression of non whites in this country, he wore a shirt with an image of a man who really oppressed people.  It seems like the decision of a person lacking in knowledge, or just lacking in self awareness.

 Kaepernick hasn't been commenting much since his protest.  He is being careful, and trying to look out for his image.  The problem is, before he even protested, he already showed his hand on his social media accounts.  He has gotten away with it, but I would really like for someone to ask him the tough questions.  Right now they are so afraid of offending black people, and I can understand that.  People who have criticized him have been called all types of shit.  Blacks who have gone against his stance have been called coons, and whites have been considered racist for it.  If anything he is being protected by a mostly white media, which is very different from how many activists/complainers thought it would be.  In fact it's different from how many of them portray it.  Some of one act as if he's getting it worse than Ryan Locte.  Kap's jersey is the highest selling in the league, and he's a backup quarterback that hasn't been good in a few years. It would be nice to give him the benefit of the doubt, but if I am being honest, I can't.  Despite how white he looks, and the fact that his adoptive parents are white, i will say this.  (Kanye West voice) Colin Kaepernick don't like white people.

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Colin Kaepernick's Protest: Are Blacks (And Other Non Whites) In America Oppressed

This Colin Kaepernick shit has been all over the news.  Watching ESPN, it constantly comes up.  Some people think that he was being disrespectful, to there are many who agree with him, and have SJW like veiwpoints.  I wanted get beyond that, and to the point he was trying to make. I agree with his right to protest, but don't agree with his point. Are non-whites, and specifically blacks oppressed in the United States.  Let me get this out of the way now.  I don't believe it.  If the Powers that be, are using institutional racism to oppress blacks, they are doing a bad job of it.  The average salary for a black American is about 27,000, which is much more than the average USD of 2,000 in Africa.  White Europeans are closer to white Americans in terms of income, life expectancy, and lifestyle, than black Americans are to black Africans.  Just based on that, I would have to say that blacks in the U.S., are prospering.  How are whites oppressing blacks in this country, yet allowing blacks to live a much better lifestyle than blacks in Africa.  Black people here are benefiting from Economic powerhouse that is the United States, you can argue more so than whites.  Even though whites make more money on average, my point is to compare whites Americans to White Europeans, and black Americans to black  Africans.  Whites do make more on average than blacks, but they achieve more academically.  They get better grades, and have higher college graduation rates http://hechingerreport.org/college-graduation-rates-rise-racial-gaps-persist-men-still-earn-women/.  The high achievement of Asians also seems to go against the idea of systematic oppression.  They routinely achieve higher academically than whites.  Their average salary is higher, and they have lower crime rates.  Does Colin want to complain about Asian privilege.  See how that one works out.  Better academic achievement in a races usually results in higher salary.  You can talk about the reason for low achieve among blacks, but the where is the proof of oppression.

Jim Crow segregation is over. Slavery was abolished 151 years ago.  We have the right to vote, and there are anti discrimination laws, as well as shit like affirmative action.  The best argument for the oppression of blacks is talking about institutional racism, and the affects of slavery.  Neither one actually points the finger at individuals, and neither one helps offer solutions.  It's excuse making.  Blacks Lives Matter is largely about blaming whites, and taking accountability away from blacks.  Colin hasn't stated that he is part of BLM, but he is talking similar shit.   He wants to talk about police getting away with murder (almost all police killings are justified), but doesn't talk about the high crime rates in the black community that makes blacks more likely to be killed by police per capita.  What about the fact that about 2 times as many whites are killed by police as blacks.  Adjusting for violent crime, and for those who resist arrest, you can argue that whites are unrepresented in terms of police shootings.

It will be interesting to see what happens to Colin.  I heard about Jesse Williams' speech at the BET Awards, and was very disappointed when I heard it.  It had extremists talk, and he put his own spin on things.  When that speech gets huge positive responses among black people, it is disappointing to me.  Where is the reasonable inquiry into the truth of these cases, and how come when someone does make a reasonable point against the BLM narrative, they are discredited them for simply having that opinion?  I looked at Jesse Williams twitter page, and found that he was knee deep in the extremist BLM ideology.  One issue for Black Lives Matter, is all those white people who know they are wrong, but who are afraid to say anything.  More extremist behavior will make it easier for them to stand up, and give their opinions. It's possible Kaepernick could expose himself as anti-white.  There is another interesting dynamic.  Colin is biracial, and looks more white than black.  In fact I thought he was white at first.  He was raised by two whites who adopted him.  Look at the pics in this article http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2243429/Colin-Kaepernick-Biological-mother-Heidi-Russo-wants-relationship-quarterback-son-gave-up.html.  Does he look black?  It seems like the "black thing" is in right now, and many biracial people would rather identify as black.  How many biracial people do you know who identify as white?  I mean Shaun King is as white as Rachel Dolezal, identifies as black.  

Friday, August 5, 2016

Black Lives Matter And Their Demands

https://policy.m4bl.org/

This shit is broken into six sections

End the War on Black People
This consist of a bunch of bullshit as you would suspect by the title.  The first demand in this section is for the end to criminalization and dehumanization of black youth.  I guess it doesn't really matter that blacks commit crimes at a much higher rate than other races, and that black male youth have an especially high crime rate.  Are Asians being criminalized?  #2 ask for an end to capital punishment.  Reasonable enough, but a peace loving hippy could've given you that shit.  #3 ask for an end to moneybail, mandatory fees, and other expenses that go with getting in trouble with the law.  Total bullshit.  #4 is one of dumbest ones out of this section.  It ask for an end to the use of prior criminal history in consideration for housing, licenses, loans, employment, and a bunch of other shit.  Complete stupidity.  You look at someone's past history when it comes to shit like that, and you are supposed to.  Prior history helps give you an indication of future behavior.  Past criminal history should be considered, and it is unrealistic, and stupid to ask for an end to that type of consideration.  #5 ask to for an end to the war on black immigrants.  I didn't know there was a war on black immigrants.  Obviously they use some very inflammatory language.  What about that war on Asian immigrants?  Not quite the same for some reason.  #6 ask for the end to the war on black gay, queer, trans, whatever other fucking titles they want to add.  I'm for LGBT rights, but to say there is a war on them is bullshit.  The seventh one seems to be a strange one.  It ask for an end to surveillance of black communities.  Included in this this for some reason is police body cameras.  If you really want to expose all of these bad cops, shouldn't you want them to wear body cameras.  From the standpoint of pushing the BLM narrative this one actually makes sense.  If anything the use of body cameras has helped clear officers, and makes it less likely for BLM to fill in the gaps with their anti police narrative.  More often than not, body cameras, and or a thorough investigation doesn't expose the police.  It exposes the person killed by police.  8 ask for demilitarization of police, which is complete bullshit.  It also doesn't explain how they want the demilitarized.  Do you they want police to not work in groups, or not carry weapons?  It's not specific.  #9 ask for the end to privatization of police, prisons, etc.  Bullshit, bullshit, and more bullshit.  They just like to take shit away from law enforcement.  #10 in another stupid one.  This one asking for things such as the end of the shackling of pregnant people (that would mean women obviously), end to solitary confinement, and some other garbage.   The biggest detail in this demand is when they ask for the end of public jails.  Just making things easier for criminals.

This sections is largely about limiting law enforcement, while taking away blame, and many punishments for black criminals.  It mentions the end to numerous things without addressing why those punishments are needed, and why black people face those harsh punishments more often.  It's not about fixing up issues in the black community, but then again BLM hasn't been very good at addressing those issues.

Reparations
To make this shit shorter I'll give a quick review of this part instead of going one by one through the different demands.  It ask for reparations for numerous things.  Slavery, wealth extracted from the black community, criminalization, among other things.  Slavery was abolished in 1865.  That was over 150 years ago.  Sure whites owned black slaves, but blacks owned black slaves in Africa, and sold them to whites.  Arabs owned African slaves, blacks owned white slaves in Africa, and whites were enslaved by whites. When it comes to slavery, and the different races, everybody enslaved everybody.  If anything white people were ahead of blacks in realizing that slavery was wrong.  They are still are ahead of most people as you can see here https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/11/18/map-the-worlds-36-million-slaves/.   Look at the U.S. doing very good compared to Africa, and the Middle East in terms of slavery.  Then there is the fact that black Americans benefit from living in a nation that is such an economic powerhouse.  The average income for a black person in the United States is about 27,000, which is much higher than the $2,000USD that is about the average income for someone in Africa. 

Invest-divest
#1 ask for a relocation of funds allocated from various programs to community based shit.  The government already uses tax money for schools, and various other programs, so this is basically pleading for special treatment. #2 ask for the decriminalization, release, and record expungement of drug offenses, and prostitution.  Mostly bullshit.  I understand that the war on drugs hasn't worked, and marijuana is being  decriminalized, but let's not take this shit too far.  I can understanding not wanting hoes to get arrested, but that's another issue.  #3 ask for real meaningful universal health care.  We do have Obamacare, that should be good enough.  #4 is asking for far too much.  Why do queer and trans people need special rights in school.  Don't they have the same rights under the law.  Then there is rest of the shit.  Free daycare, and school curriculum that acknowledges students cultural needs.  More well worded garbage.  5, and 6 are short and I'll show them fully worded.

5. A divestment from industrial multinational use of fossil fuels and investment in community- based sustainable energy solutions. 

What community based energy solutions?  This one is beyond stupid, and unrealistic.

6.  A cut in military expenditures and a reallocation of those funds to invest in domestic infrastructure and community well-being. 

Yeah just take away power from our military.  More stupid and unreasonable shit.  Maybe those who are interested in helping the "community" can give some money.  Then again many already do.

Economic Justice
1. A progressive restructuring of tax codes at the local, state, and federal levels to ensure a radical and sustainable redistribution of wealth.

Can  someone say communism.  That shit doesn't work.  Capitalism inspires hard work, creativity, and production.  It's not perfect, but provides the best economic systems in the world.

#2 ask for funding for programs for marginalized black youth, or something to that effect.  The thing is we already have those programs.  There are plenty programs we have to help out poor people.  There is welfare.  Poor people are taxed at a lower rate.  No child left behind.  Affirmative Action.  White folk have gone out of their way to provide these types of programs. The third one is beyond silly.  Democratic control over how resources are distributed?  I'm not saying they are communist or anything, but a communist system would be a nice way to get the type of distribution they would like.  When it comes to #4 workers already have the right to organize.  If BLM wants more, they could be more specific.  #5 ask for the breakup of big banks, and also demands for the creation of black banks.  This is shit is real simple.  If a black person has enough money to open a bank, they can do so, and what do they mean by black banks?  Would that mean black owned, or black owned with black customers. 

6. An end to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and a renegotiation of all trade agreements to prioritize the interests of workers and communities.  Yeah this would certainly help out the black community (sarcasm).  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership

#7 is asking for more special treatment.  They want U.S. to facilitate trade among black communities globally.  Talk about asking for too much.  You want to trade with blacks outside the U.S. go right ahead, just don't demand the government to help make it happen.  It also ask for all funds used to facilitate this to go to black owned businesses, as determined by the community, which would obviously mean the black community.  Sounds like they want some more special treatment.  #8 ask for support for black alternative institutions, which is another case of asking for special treatment.  #9 is about more rights for workers, which includes those imprisoned.  I thought those people were imprisoned because they committed crimes, but nevermind that.  BLM seems to believe in the theology of the Prison Industrial Complex.  This rhetoric sounds similar to the "Prison is the new slavery" bullshit.

Community Control
This part is rather small, consisting of just 3 demands.  The first ask for direct democratic control of local, state, and federal law enforcement.  They want people in a community to have the power to hire and fire law enforcement, among other things like controlling budget.  This is one of the dumbest demands they have, if not the dumbest.  Under these rules, some officers would have probably gotten fired after Sandra Bland's suicide.  A majority of the black community has been wrong about cases like Mike Brown, Alton Sterling, Tamir Rice, etc.  One can only imagine the problems that would arise if a community had the power to hire and fire police officers, that are supposed to have authority over them.  #2 ask for the end to privitization of education, which isn't a good demand considering how good private schools tend to be.  It also ask for community control by parents and students over curriculum, hiring, firing, and discipline policies.  This is like the police shit.  These aren't the type of things that the "community" should have control over.  You can a  get group of qualified people to have control over this.  People like government, the school district, etc.  Not the fucking community.  #3 ask for participatory budgeting, which I had to look at their explanation further down the page.  I guess they want more community control over budgeting to ensure racial and economic justice.  Sounds real nice in theory, but it's another garbage demand.  Why should the community have that type of control of budgeting.  You aren't qualified to control budgeting just because you are an adult in the community.

Political Power
We get to the last section, which another short one.  Just five demands.   The first ask the end of criminalization of black political activity, and the release of all political prisoners.  Who would count as a political prisoner?  Would Mumia Abu-Jamal, who murdered a cop, count as one.  What about Assata Shakur? Even though she isn't a prisoner, she is hiding in Cuba.  There is quite a lot of appreciation for her among black activists.  I clicked to get the What's the Problem portion of the page, and they want Assata Shakur off of the international terrorist list.  Shakur got into a shootout with troopers in 1973, in which she killed State Trooper Werner Foerster.    #2 ask for the end of money controlling politics. In other words they don't like major businesses funding politicians.  If a person is rich, and wants to donate money to a political campaign, why shouldn't they be able to.  It's their money, and they should be able to use it to fund campaigns.  It's still up to the people to vote, and they can always vote for the politician who they like the most.  Money certainly helps a person get to that spot, but you are still voting for values.  If the vast majority of the country were democrat, then that would favor democratic candidates.  Funding might help determine what candidate got to that spot, but it would still be likely to be a  democrat elected, whose values were similar to most of the country.  #3 is about more voting rights, which sounds nice in theory.  They want greater voting rights for formerly incarcerated people, and it seems like they want incarcerated people to vote.  They want same day registration, which would cause a mess.  #4 ask for full access to technology, including universal internet access.  The problem with is that internet service is sold by companies, who make money off of that.  You just don't give that shit out for free.  #5 ask for increased funding for black colleges and universities.  This is another instance of them asking for special treatment

So there you have it.  A list ridiculous demands that ask for unrealistic things, and often times ask for special treatment for black people.  There are a lot of people who don't believe that Black Lives Matter is an extremist, and racist group.  It's best for BLM not to focus too much on their demands, before they turn more of their politically correct apologists against them.




Saturday, July 30, 2016

Looking At The Washington Post's Data On Police Shootings

According to Data from the Washington Post there were 990 fatal police shootings in 2015.  I looked through this data to find patterns.  In terms of race, as I mentioned before whites outnumbered blacks in terms of fatal shootings.  There were 494 whites shot dead, compared to 258 blacks.  This doesn't count Hispanics who are incorrectly counted as a race.  According to the 2015 census data close to 90% of Hispanics in the country are white.  That is an important point because the FBI's crime data doesn't count Hispanic as a race.  I already did an article about how the data doesn't make it clear that police are racist against blacks, in terms of using lethal force.  Blacks are more likely to be killed per capita, but are also more likely to commit crime, and especially violent crime.

For this article I wanted to look at details of the police shootings.  I looked at the unarmed category, in which 38 of those killed were black, and 32 white.  There were a total of 93, out of which 34 involved an attack in progress.  There were some 9 undetermined, and 50 listed as Other.  If there was one category to look at to criticize police officers it would be the unarmed category, and in that category, it would seem` it would be best to look at other, as opposed to undetermined, and attack in progress.  The problem for the BLM supporters is that looking at that category doesn't do much to back up their case, at least not in my view.  There were some accidents.  One involved police in a shootout with a suspect in a vehicle, in which they shot a passenger.  Another involved Felix Kumi , a bystander who was shot by an officer who was trying to shoot someone else that pointed a gun at their head. There were a few instances of police thinking someone had a weapon when they didn't, but those were by far the minority of the 50. There were instances of people reaching in their waistband, and or pretending they had a gun.  In some cases the Post didn't provide much data.  Like the case of David Kassick (who was white btw).  I looked up his name on google, and found an article about charges being dropped against the officer who killed him.  Kassick was on the ground when he was shot, but a video showed that Kassick's hands repeatedly disappeared under his body, even as officer Lisa Mearkle told him to put his hands where she could see them.  In some other instances there was a struggle, or some confrontation, but further information is not given.  In some of these cases the "unarmed" person had a weapon.  One rushed at officers with a large tree branch.  Another refused to drop a broomstick. One man was throwing rocks at a police car.  Another rammed his vehicle into cars of police, and the U.S. Marshal's Service. In another incident Joshua Omar Garcia, who was a 24 year old Hispanic man, was handcuffed in the front seat of a patrol car, and still tried to drive away, before he was shot.  These are those "unarmed" people who aren't listed as an attack in progress, and even those 50 cases don't make much of a case that police are the bad guys, or racist, and certainly none of them look like premeditated murder.  What would happen if I looked at the instances of those who had a deadly weapon and were shot dead by police?  If the 50 instances of "unarmed" in the Others category doesn't paint a clear picture of evil police, why would the other 940 do so?  I am getting ready to look some of those instances of armed people being killed by police.


References

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3305916/Cop-fatally-shot-motorist-cleared-charges.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings/

Monday, July 11, 2016

Police And Black People: Going to the Stats

Police shootings of black men have been in the news lately, in case you haven't noticed.  The shooting deaths of Alton Sterling, and Philando Castile have given Black Lives Matter protestors more reason to rally.  There was also the shooting deaths of five police officers at the hands of Micah Xavier Johnson, who said that he wanted to kill white people, especially white cops.  I have seen numerous people picking out instances of a black man being killed by cops, and a white man not being killed for somewhat similar behavior.  Even though most of these that I saw were bad equivalents, that is not the point.  The point I wanted to make was to focus on the totality of police shootings to see if there is a pattern which shows police racism against blacks.  The total numbers give us a better picture than some facebook post, or some video compilation. 

On the FBI's page when looking for statistics on race and crime the latest stats I could find were from 2013.  I did find Washington Post's data on police shooting deaths by race in the time they have been counting it, but that data is about what happened in 2015.  I wanted to get an idea of what went on recently, so I can assume that the race and crime ratios from 2013 are similar to what they were in 2015.  According to the Washington Post's 2015 statistics there was 990 fatal police shootings in 2015.  In most of them the person killed had a weapon.  494 whites were shot dead by police, while 258 blacks were.  That's a ratio of 1.91/1.  There are far fewer black people than white people in the country, and many adjust for population to try and prove that pattern of racial bias by police.  The problem with that is that those that commit crime are most likely to encounter police.  I wanted to look at crime, and especially violent crime.  Going back to the 2013 there were 2.44 times more whites arrested in than blacks. Using data estimates for population based on the 2015 census, that
would mean that blacks are 2.38 times more likely to be arrested than whites.  Now I am using 2013 crime statistics, and 2015 population statistics, but the ratio should be similar if I had 2015 crime statistics. It is important to look at violent crime.  I'll just guess that a person arrested for murder or robbery, is more likely to get into a confrontation with police than one arrested by embezzlement.
In terms of violent crime that white/black ratio drops to 1.51/1.  That is a ratio lower than the police shooting death ratio.  If we just adjust for violent crime whites are more likely to be shot dead in a confrontation with police.  Factoring in other crime doesn't give a clear picture.  Adjusting for the 2015 population again, blacks are 3.84 times more likely to be arrested for violent crime than whites, and 6.68 times more likely to be arrested for murder and non negligent manslaughter. 

My data isn't quite good enough to either show a correlation, or disprove one, since I am using 2013 crime data, and 2015 population data.  I also cannot adjust for the types of crime, at least not in the way I want to.  There is also the fact that the Washington Post article falsely list Hispanic as a race. There was a study done at Harvard that I just found out about today.  According to the study data police are bias to blacks in terms of use of force, but not in terms of shooting.  The fact that police are more likely to use force against blacks they encounter can be explained by that fact that blacks are more anti police, but what about the other finding.  The study doesn't show bias against blacks by police in terms of shootings.  The study adjust for how, when and where they encounter police, it least it does for use or force, and most likely for shootings as well.  This goes along with other data I've found on fatal police shootings, and police killings.  When you get past pointing out an example here or there, we don't have strong evidence of racial bias against blacks by police when comes to police killing.   

The Blacks Lives Matter movement arose behind a false story.  The false 'Hands up don't shoot' Michael Brown narrative that has been proven wrong by the evidence. It also is motivated by an inaccurate narrative of police targeting black men.  BLM is like a religion though, so I don't expect something as awful as the facts to get in the way of their movement. 


https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings/
http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/00
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/tables/table-43

Harvard  Study
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/bias-found-in-police-use-of-force-but-not-in-shootings/ar-BBubfce?li=BBnb7Kz