It really illustrates the problem and the obvious solution.

On a related note, this exact situation happened in towns where the fire tax was optional, and some asshole decided he was against socialism and wouldn't pay the tax. So the fire dept watched patiently as his house burned down and kept his neighbors' houses from feeling the burn. He offered to pay the tax on the spot, but it was too late.

Thanks for sharing

During situations like police shootings, immigration/visa reform, and similar issues, many of my fellow liberal DUers unwittingly show their true colors.

The national media usually ignores all the unarmed whites killed by cops. Of which there are many. More than blacks. Hell, a couple years back one was totally naked and still shot. Also ignoring the fact that minority cops are far more likely to fire their weapons than white ones.
Its a damn BAD COP problem as much or more than a race problem. They're too many on a power trip they want to express.

Of course it is a bad cop problem. The problem is that bad cops are not punished for murdering people, especially in the cases where the people murdered are black.

... please stop listening to FAUX news without getting coverage for the other channels.

They're the only ones who are pushing this "well whites get shot too" and "black cops kill black people too" bullshit without talking about the proportionality of blacks being shot or that no one is talking about the color of the cops skin.

it's 82% in the former, 89% in the latter...too minor a difference to be meaningful.

... FAUX news likes to ignore.

They're not the rates the crimes are committed at. They're really useless numbers in this context, but serve to deflect attention from where you don't want it to where it's convenient to put it. Most people citing stats don't actually ever look at anything close to the original sources. They just parrot people parroting other parrots.

What's the difference between the two rates? Let's use orange and green. If 95% of orange murders are committed by oranges, and 95% of green murders are committed by greens, they're the same, right? But what if 20 oranges are murdered each year and 20,000 greens are murdered each year? Hey, 95% = 95%, they're the same, why focus on green-on-green crime? Green-on-green crime is just like orange-on-orange crime! Except that in the orange community there are 20 dead and in the green community 20,000 dead. But they're the same. 95%. (That's fair, I guess, if we value a green at 1/1000th of an orange.) Sample size matters. Now, these numbers were exaggerated for the sake of illustration.

Most black victims are killed by blacks. That's according to the uniform crime reports put out annually by the FBI. Left out is that nearly half of homicides in most years have black victims. You can't use the "12.1% black" demographic because this is a racial designation, not an ethnic one. If you're black, you could also be Latino. If you're not black you're white, but could also be Latino. They give the ethnic breakdown, but the unknown #s swamp those known, so I'll ignore them. Still, that's a really disproportionate number.

Google gave me the data for 2013 first. So I'll go with that. 2755 whites listed as committing murder, 2698 blacks. 57 more whites than blacks. As for victims, the actual dead bodies, 3005 white, 2491 black. 514 more dead whites than blacks. Now *those* are disproportionate numbers. It's true that most blacks were killed by blacks and most whites by whites. Sample size matters. (https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_6_murder_race_and_sex_of_vicitm_by_race_and_sex_of_offender_2013.xls )

We'll overlook that on the order of 45-50% of intergroup homicides have black perpetrators. That's not a one-year fluke. Most of those stranger murders, because they're between strangers, occurred during crimes--drug deals, robberies, assaults.


I chose murder mostly because unlike home robberies or rapes, I think almost all murders get reported. It's also the issue at hand. Now, notice: currently the Guardian puts dead-blacks-by-cop at around 130. By year's end, it'll be around 260. That includes those who point at gun at cops and threaten to kill them. (Those won't be included, by the way, since if it's justifiable it's not "murder" for the purposes of this chart.) My estimate is that by year's end the disproportionality of black deaths means about 140 more blacks are killed than whites (including the "justifiables&quot , and that black unarmed deaths will be about 15 higher than otherwise expected. That number is based on the Guardian's count, and might be off depending how those listed as "unknown" race break down.

Even if you include the "justifiable" deaths, where the guy points the gun at the cops and threatens to shoot, we're outraged over 260 deaths and defensive over 2500. The attention shown to the two is dispoportional. But the ratio of of black death-by-cop and black death-by-civilian is pretty consistent year in and year out, which is distressing in all kinds of ways and might allow inferring something deeply disturbing or meaningful.

It's an even worse in terms of disproportionality if we just look at unarmed black deaths. Then we get upset over probably 15 excess deaths for the year, but given the size of the number that could easily swing to 10 or 25. They're wrong, but it's focusing on a mote intead of a beam. Point out the beam, and it's all "mind your own business, don't tell me there's a problem." Even as the problem's denied or deflected. We share responsibility except when it's offensive and we suspect bad motives in pointing out what's offensive.

The stats you quote are true, but irrelevant to the death toll. The rest of the stats here are true, but offensive. I call it "PC" when we prefer nice irrelevant numbers to offensive relevant numbers. If you can't name a problem, you can't work on solving the problem. What we've done so far has lowered the death toll--but it's lowered the death-by-cop toll a lot more than the death-by-civilian rate, to be honest.

I'd also point out, in the interest of fairness, that there are other crimes and some of them are disproportionately white or Latino. (No point mentioning Asians or Native Americans because the numbers are so small the likely between-year variation is larger than any between-group difference.) It's also worth nothing that in all those stats lies the necessary information for breaking up the perp and death toll for the murder numbers by age cohort--you're more likely to be a victim or victimizer if you're of a certain age. That distribution is similar between races and ethnicities, but still different. So crime peaks for the 15-29 group and is lowest for the over-65 group, but it may be worse for one race or ethnicity than for another within an age cohort.

Fox news has nothing to do with the stats being what they are.
Nobody ever wants to talk about the disproportionality of who does what when it comes to crime.
NONE of it excuses the actions by some of these cops either. But I do have a problem with lumping them all together. You cant compare a Michael Brown with a Walter Scott or Eric Garner.
The cops involved in many of these cases should be in JAIL, like they would be if they'd done the same thing without having a badge.

... a plurality or the majority of the arrest either.

I know the blame the black people angles and can see them from two miles away...

Here's one the blame the blacks crowd can't refute without the usual strawmen or red herrings - http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/10/10/3578877/black-teens-were-21-times-more-likely-to-be-shot-dead-by-the-cops-reported-deaths-suggest/

Its not a strawman. But its only part of the issue.
My whole point is that ALL these stories should get equal media exposure. They dont. THATS the only way to get through to a lot of people who just dont pay attention. When they see the kid looks just like THEIR kid, they start paying attention. But 1/2 the time the news jumps the story before the facts are even known, as in the Mike Brown case. The Justice Dept said that much of what we'd heard never even happened, yet thats too late when the news has run with it. So people see that and think "oh well, thats not my problem"
When the REST of the population starts to notice what we here already know, then we might see some progress. People will tire of paying out millions in wrongful death suits. They'll start demanding more accountability and jail time.
As I said in another post, a cop should go to jail if he does something that would put ME in jail if I did it. Shooting a guy running away, unarmed, in the back would damn sure get ME & YOU put in jail!!

... to death maybe then people wouldn't brush it off as a black thing.

There's a disproportionate amount of blacks men being shot and Hispanic men... but the "its not me" is something that's human nature so people get polarized when its the other.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me

The cases are out there, but it seems it usually only makes local news unless you go LOOK for them. PArt of the problem is the 24 hr news cycle. They NEED to fill those hours so they replay over & over and interview 50 different people. But as soon as something else happens, poof! the story fades and its on to the NEXT one

but during a fire the ones threatened by the fire do matter the most.

I'll be posting this elsewhere. Thanks!

"If all lives matter then why aren't you as outraged when an unarmed black man gets murdered by a cop as you are when a cop is shot?"

if you made that an op.

It's not like one-line OP's just aren't done at DU. And at least your point is worth it.

although sometimes I wonder if they don't want us dead