Death by police is a (1) YOUNG (2) MEN issue with a bias towards blacks

[swissaustrian]

Death by police is a (1) YOUNG (2) MEN issue with a slight bias towards blacks.
Young black men die more often of ALL causes. Police is just 1.5% of all deaths at worst.

source

[Invisible Man]

Something to consider about the way you're using these stats.

When you identify being young as a crucial factor, that's not necessarily the case (at least not proven by the graphs you show). Keep in mind that older people are much more susceptible than younger people are to die of many other causes. It's possible that they could be killed by police just as often, but that the percent of all deaths of their age group from that cause would still be much lower, whereas with younger people it's higher because so few of them die from those things that are killing older folks.

You're probably right that people in the 20-35 age range get killed by police more often than those over 50. But the top graphs don't actually establish that.

A graph that would be more useful in proving or disproving your claim about age would be one that shows number of police killings per every 1,000,000 people per age group per year or something like that.

[Matt4Liberty]

Those stats are what the MSM use to further their agenda. It fails to take into account the average amount of crimes committed by the groups cited. When adjusted for that, whites are way more likely to be shot by police.

[Brian4Liberty]

Let’s see a graph that is not “percentage of deaths”. How about total number of deaths? Then we can look at per capita.

[Brian4Liberty]

Those stats are what the MSM use to further their agenda. It fails to take into account the average amount of crimes committed by the groups cited. When adjusted for that, whites are way more likely to be shot by police.

What would be interesting is objectively dividing the deaths into blatantly justified vs. other. Unfortunately such stats don't exist, as there are vested interests at play.

And we can’t forget that intentional suicide by cop is a common occurrence.

[swissaustrian]

Something to consider about the way you're using these stats.

When you identify being young as a crucial factor, that's not necessarily the case (at least not proven by the graphs you show). Keep in mind that older people are much more susceptible than younger people are to die of many other causes. It's possible that they could be killed by police just as often, but that the percent of all deaths of their age group from that cause would still be much lower, whereas with younger people it's higher because so few of them die from those things that are killing older folks.

You're probably right that people in the 20-35 age range get killed by police more often than those over 50. But the top graphs don't actually establish that.

A graph that would be more useful in proving or disproving your claim about age would be one that shows number of police killings per every 1,000,000 people per age group per year or something like that.

good point.

should have also posted this figure.

[swissaustrian]

Let’s see a graph that is not “percentage of deaths”. How about total number of deaths? Then we can look at per capita.

total seems to be roughly 1130 per year:
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/su...04116.sapp.pdf

[Occam's Banana]

Those stats are what the MSM use to further their agenda. It fails to take into account the average amount of crimes committed by the groups cited. When adjusted for that, whites are way more likely to be shot by police.

What would be interesting is objectively dividing the deaths into blatantly justified vs. other. Unfortunately such stats don't exist, as there are vested interests at play.

And we can’t forget that intentional suicide by cop is a common occurrence.

This was my first thought. It's a critical point to make if we're going to account for "average crime rates by race" (or by any other grouping, for that matter)

How many police-involved deaths occur due to confrontations initiated by the police over non-violent crimes - or victimless "crimes" - or even no crimes at all (e.g., SWATtings, so-called "welfare checks" gone wrong, etc.)?

And how many occur as a result of pseudo-crimes arising from the confrontation itself, such as "resisting arrest"?

I wouldn't be surprised if some groups are more prone to being killed under such circumstances than others.

[jmdrake]

What would be interesting is objectively dividing the deaths into blatantly justified vs. other. Unfortunately such stats don't exist, as there are vested interests at play.

Yes. But can we come up with an objective measure of what is and is not "blatantly justified?" In my mind the shooting of the kid who didn't have a gun in his hand was not "blatantly justified" but in yours it is. On the flip side I feel the shooting of the girl who had the knife was "blatantly justified" but you seemed to feel the opposite. This is not a criticism of you or your positions. Rather pointing out that reasonable people can look at the same set of facts and come to opposite conclusions that don't seem to have a pattern. (Neither of us are calling every shooting justified or unjustified and we're on opposite sides on at least two shootings).

I think it's safe to say that neither of us would charge either cop in either shooting I mentioned. (Correct me if I'm wrong). So really this is a question of "In hindsite, could a different response have yielded a better result?" (And please. Let's stay away from the "Don't Monday morning quarterback" argument. All of these cases involve hindsight to some extent or another).

This is how I look at it. If time could be rewound to right before the shooting and a different choice had been made, what would be the outcome? Note I'm only going back to right before the shooting for a reason. Yes if Mikia Bryant had been removed from the foster home the incident never would have happened, and if the Adam Toledo had been at home the incident never would have happened. But that's got nothing to do with the cop's decision.

If the cop had not shot Mikia, I can't imagine a scenario where the girl in pink didn't get stabbed. Maybe if the cop had shot Mikia's father, who was about to stomp on the head of another girl, the sound of the gunshot might have shocked Mikia into not stabbing and turning to see who got shot. Some (not you) have suggested a "warning shot in the air." But that can be dangerous. (What goes up must come down). Some have suggested a taser. I've seen more than one video of an assailant stabbing a police officer after being tazed. The officers in question had on body armor, but I'm assuming the girl in pink did not. Some have suggested he should have "de-escalated" the situation. But he was distracted by curb stomping dad and when he realized Mikia was also a danger she was in mid swing of the knife. So I'm not seeing a better outcome here.

With Adam Toledo there are at least two things on a few second rewind that could have gone differently. The cop could have said "Drop the gun. Don't turn around. Put your hands up." The other thing that could have gone differently is..the cop simply could not have shot. I get it. There was little reaction time and since he didn't see the gun on the ground he assumed it was still in Adam's hand. But it actually wasn't.

So....is there any way to quantify this? Perhaps. This is what I came up with.

1) Initial danger - real or perceived
2) Danger at time of shooting - real or perceived
3) Who was in danger - cop or third party

Mikia Bryant
* Initial danger - high and real. (There was a report of a girl being threatened with a knife...and when the cop got there Mikiah ran out and confronted another girl with a knife.

* Danger at time of shooting - High and real to the girl in pink. Non-existent to the cop.

Adam Toledo
* Initial danger - high and real. The 21 year old Adam was with actually fired a real gun.
* Danger at the time of the shooting - high but only perceived. Directed at the cop. (Nobody else was around).

In the case of Tamir Rice there was no real danger before or at the time of the shooting. He had a BB gun. The person who called 911 said it might be a BB gun. The 911 operator is the one who said "Active shooter." (Maybe police should be played the 911 call itself rather than having to rely on the 911 operator's interpretation of the call?) The perceived initial danger was high. When the police rolled up on Tamir, he tucked away the bb gun, and within two seconds of their arriving they shot him.



Note that the officer thought Tamir, who was 12, was "maybe 20." That factors into research of police misjudging the age of African Ameircan children.

Regardless of the racial age bias issue, we have a police shooting where from the police point of view the danger before they showed up was real even though the 911 operator (a black woman) should have known better. That should have been treated as only a moderate inital perceived danger.

What about when the police arrived? The park was empty. There weren't any bodies laying around. There didn't seem to be any attempt to assess the danger. They just assumed the worst and rolled up on the kid and gunned him down. There was no real danger. Was the perceived danger reasonable? Hard to say. I don't know what kind of training police go through when they hear the term "active shooter." But if police assume the worst based on nothing but a second hand statement by a 9/11 operator....that's a problem.

So an analysis of Tamir Rice.
* Initial danger - High but not real. Had police been told the truth, that it might have been a BB gun, they (hopefully) would have approached the situation differently.
* Danger right before shooting. Perceived apparently. But questionable justification. There was nobody in the park so, unlike the case of Mikia Bryant, there was no danger to any third party. What about danger to the police? The police could have set up a peremiter at a distance and tried to talk to Tamir over their loudspeaker and from behind the protection of their car. The perceived danger they were in was of their own making, even if Tamir had had a real gun.

Philando Castille
* Initial danger. High perceived. The cop that shot Philando initially misidentified him as a robbery suspect.
* Danger right before the shooting. Unjustified perceived. Philando said he had a firearm (legal as he had a permit). The officer told him to give him his license. As Philando reached for his license the officer assumed he was reaching for a gun. If Philando really wanted to gun the officer down why would he have told him he had a gun permit? And the officer should have realized that he would have to reach for his license after being instructed to do so.

And yes, the same "threat matrix" should be applied when the person killed by police is white.

Kelly Thomas.
* Pre-beating danger. None.
* Danger at the time of beating. None..except to Kelly Thomas.
(That was seriously pre-medidated murder).

Daniel Shaver.
* Pre-shooting danger. High perceived. (Daniel pointed a scoped pellet gun out of a hotel window). No actual danger.
* Danger right before shooting. Seems to have been contrived. (Apology to @Phil4paul on this one. After looking at it again, he was done worse than George Floyd). The officer gave Daniel conflicting commands, kept threatening to shoot him, and when Daniel finally made a mistake (tried to pull up his pants), the officer gunned Daniel down.

Ryan Whittiker
* Pre-shooting danger. Moderate perceived. Neighbor lied and said he heard a domestic dispute when he was really mad about loud video game playing.
* Danger right before shooting. High perceived to one cop. Ryan had a gun pointed to the ground when he opened the door. As soon as he realized it was the police he attempted to put the gun down on the ground and he raised his other hand.

Not saying my classification system is perfect. I just came up with it today. But without some objective way to quantify shooting that don't involve character assasination of the person shot, there really is now way to get to the bottom of this. All that should matter, in my opinion, is based on the information the officer had at the moment of the shooting (or beating, or tasering to death, or whatever), did he make the best decision in that moment. I care not if the person shot was a gang banger or an honor student unless that information was somehow available to the cop at the time of the shooting and relevant to the danger assessment.

[ClaytonB]

Death by police is a (1) YOUNG (2) MEN issue with a slight bias towards blacks.
Young black men die more often of ALL causes. Police is just 1.5% of all deaths at worst.

Yes. This is a very important issue because the MSMBS want to shift the discussion (that's why they exist) from the facts, onto "facts". The fact is that America is in the grips of an unprecedented cultural revolution that is waging a gender war on males. It is a male-genocide in slow-motion. Conservatives have their hair on fire about transgenderism but none of them ever talk about one of the primary contributing causes -- that many males realize that their life will be much better if they are legally female, in fact, it will be so much better that it is worth undergoing some kind of identity-transformation process. So the dramatic increase in transgenderism over the last few decades is a symptom or canary of the overwhelming success of the feminist revolution. And, by the way, "feminism" is badly misnamed -- it is not "feminist" at all, that is, it has nothing to do with furthering the rights of women. Rather, it is a wedge issue used by the (always and forever!) male-dominated establishment to grind their potential competition (other, less successful males) to powder. The street-thugs we call "police" are just the action-wing of the establishment. So society will go on offering up its boys as human sacrifices to appease the power-gods that they will not stop worshiping.

Stop worshiping the State. Stop worshiping power. Stop giving in to the carnal lust for war glory and political glory. Worship God!

[oyarde]

Dang , looks like those white cops are shooting too many Eskimos .

[jmdrake]

Yes. This is a very important issue because the MSMBS want to shift the discussion (that's why they exist) from the facts, onto "facts". The fact is that America is in the grips of an unprecedented cultural revolution that is waging a gender war on males. It is a male-genocide in slow-motion. Conservatives have their hair on fire about transgenderism but none of them ever talk about one of the primary contributing causes -- that many males realize that their life will be much better if they are legally female, in fact, it will be so much better that it is worth undergoing some kind of identity-transformation process. So the dramatic increase in transgenderism over the last few decades is a symptom or canary of the overwhelming success of the feminist revolution. And, by the way, "feminism" is badly misnamed -- it is not "feminist" at all, that is, it has nothing to do with furthering the rights of women. Rather, it is a wedge issue used by the (always and forever!) male-dominated establishment to grind their potential competition (other, less successful males) to powder. The street-thugs we call "police" are just the action-wing of the establishment. So society will go on offering up its boys as human sacrifices to appease the power-gods that they will not stop worshiping.

Stop worshiping the State. Stop worshiping power. Stop giving in to the carnal lust for war glory and political glory. Worship God!

Good point. I have to wonder if some of the angst over the shooting of Mikiah Bryant wouldn't have been there if she had been a he.