I don't recall seeing this latest study make the rounds here. It paints a starkly different picture of the findings released over the summer. I haven't read or analyzed the actual study yet. I'll include the abstract below.

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The devil made me do it the first time, second time I done it on my own - W

It paints a different picture because instead of controlling for the fact that blacks commit more violent crimes per capita, especially murder, this study looks at every single police stop that lead to a death as the same. It would stand to reason, I would think, that police are stopping more black males for violent crimes who may be more likely to resist arrest, but it's impossible to say just by looking at the abstract and newspaper articles on this study (all of which just talk about the findings and not about the method or level of rigor). Which study is more representative of what's going on? I don't know. I'd like to read the whole study, but you have to pay $35 to get the .pdf version.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

Yeah, it's interesting, but the Houston study mentioned in the abstract delineated between armed encounters and unarmed. Did the murdered suspect commit a violent crime, armed or unarmed, or were they jaywalking? How many of these victims were killed when police responded to a gang-related incident?

No answers without digging into the data but if it's not controlling for variables like these then it's all but worthless - actually, worse than that, it's misleading and another faulty 'statistic' people will point to in defense of BLM, of protests against racist cops.

So rather than put forth a reasoned explanation you choose to post a white teletubbie circle jerk. Well thanks for the incite.

What makes it even more comical is it is the most reasoned response in this entire thread. Besides my original one of course. Carry on though!

Good point but you've over rated your original post - it was almost as childish as crazy swimmer guy's.

Merry Christmas Dave! Hope you have a good one.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

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Civilize the mind, but make savage the body.

- Chinese proverb

That's a low blow in a thread designed to rehash the same talking points with the sole purpose of stroking each other egos by pretending to know why these people are not right in the head.

Spot, with all due respect, you linked a bunch of right wing tabloids. Nevertheless I read through some of them and then read the DOJ report myself. Those articles show a very distorted view of what the report actually showed.

Read the report yourself. Read the first 6 pages, and then skip to the middle that covers the detailed analysis of the racism found in the department. They didn't just do a few statistical calculations and ignore any controls to draw their conclusions. This was a very in depth investigation that found the department to be very corrupt above and beyond simple racism. This was corroborated by *controlled* statistics, investigations into their emails, interviews of people in both the police department as well as the communities, ride along investigations, meetings with field experts from other departments, etc. etc. ALL of these methods point to the same answer: the department showed significant racial bias.

Here,s a singke quote from the report. Please read the rest. It'll take less time than those articles you linked:

"African Americans are more than twice as likely as White drivers to be searched during vehicle stops even after controlling for non-race based variables such as the reason the vehicle stop was initiated, but are found in possession of contraband 26% less often than white drivers....."


In order to discount the findings of the DOJ you either have to not be familiar with the details of the study, or you have to have some world view that prevents you from accepting that a police department that has been proven to be corrupt in other manners showed racial bias that is entirely consistent with the findings of several controlled statistical analyses, extensive interviews with members of the community who have interacted with the police, and the findings of racist comments in the email system.

In other words, one would have to make up their mind before reading the report, possibly because one believes that racism doesn't exist anymore. All you have to do is read the comments section of any race related Internet article to see that it is still alive and well.

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

So, I read the report, and, there are some troubling things in there, no doubt. But, you are still misrepresenting some of it. You keep saying they did "several controlled statistical analyses," but they seemed to pick and choose when they did those analyses, because they did it some cases and not in others, which is odd.

Let's take the rate at which blacks are stopped as compared to their population, which is used to claim that there is racial bias in the police force. There was no controlling for any factors in that statistic; all the report says is this (footnote 39, page 64): "While there are limitations to using basic population data as a benchmark when evaluating whether there are racial disparities in vehicle stops, it is sufficiently reliable here." The report never explains why it is reliable here, at all. It never mentions that blacks do, in fact, commit more traffic infractions than whites, which it would, were they controlling for that. The only thing the footnote says is that the black driving population is slightly lower than the population, 63% vs 67%. Interestingly enough, further down in the report, we do find that blacks are caught speeding by laser/radar than others, accounting for 72% of those tickets.

Other statistics may indicate some sort of bias, such as the rate at which traffic stops generate multiple tickets, failure to comply tickets, etc. The one spot I found where they say they did a regression analysis is in the outcome of traffic stops; however, I find it interesting that they didn't include any of the actual data, just the outcome. The report would have been stronger had they shown the math.

In other cases, such as pedestrian stops, they throw out a bullet point that implies bias, but then later in the text acknowledge that they don't have enough data to actually determine if there is bias or not. Other statistics they don't try to explain at all, again, using the statistic as proof of bias, such as arrests based on warrants.

As for the emails, the last of those appear to have occurred in 2011; one would think that if they had evidence of recent bias in the emails, they would have quoted those. Nevertheless, the emails they did quote are very offensive and troubling.

The bulk of the report seems to be focused on using traffic stops and other misdemeanor charges as revenue producing. I find that practice reprehensible, as it does have a disparate impact on lower income people. That being said, I don't understand why that is in the report at all, as many, many towns and cities do the same thing, to include cities largely run by African Americans, such as Washington DC. That practice has zippo to do with racial bias.

So, to conclude, I'll give you that the articles I linked overlooked some aspects of the report that seem to indicate some bias, mainly in what occurs after a traffic stop. I'll note, however, that those articles are still largely correct when discussing the statistics regarding the rate of traffic stops. The emails are troubling, but I find it odd that the report doesn't quote any beyond Dec 2011, which begs the question of whether or not they found any after that date. If they didn't, why wasn't that in the report? My guess is because they didn't find any, and including that fact would have undercut the case they were trying to build. But that is just a supposition. And, as mentioned above, the practice of using fines and court fees as a method to generate revenue is not inherently racist, although I do not like it personally for the reason stated.

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Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

I think a lot of people feel the ends justify the means. They'll do and say whatever they want if they think it helps their cause--whatever that many be.