Police brutality against black people happens way less than public thinks

Social movements tap into our most primitive emotions, obscuring the complexities of sociopolitical problems. Reason is traded for ideological fervor and skepticism is swapped with religious dogma. Such was the case in 2020 in the wake of several high-profile cases of alleged police brutality involving black victims. Across the US and Western countries worldwide, activists and average citizens alike vigorously protested against a perceived (but empirically refuted) “epidemic of racist police killings.”

A new survey commissioned by Skeptic Research Center reveals the extent to which the public is misinformed on the issue of police violence. Participants across the political spectrum in the nationally representative survey were asked how many unarmed black men were killed by police in 2019. The results were revealing. Overall, nearly half of surveyed liberals (44 percent) estimated roughly between 1,000 and 10,000 unarmed black men were killed whereas 20 percent of conservatives estimated the same.

Most notably, the majority of respondents in each political category believed that police killed unarmed black men at an exponentially higher rate than in reality. Over 80 percent of liberals guessed at least 100 unarmed black men were killed compared to 66 percent of moderates and 54 percent of conservatives. But, according to a close database compiled by Mapping Police Violence, the actual number of black men killed by the police in 2019 is 27.



https://nypost.com/2021/02/27/cases-of-police-brutality-against-black-people-are-overestimated/?utm_source=url_sitebuttons&utm_medium=site%20buttons&utm_campaign=site%20buttons

How is the proportion compared to white killed by police?

Original Quill wrote:How is the proportion compared to white killed by police?

This is about misperceptions.

Something you should be very familiar with.

Maddog wrote:

Original Quill wrote:How is the proportion compared to white killed by police?

This is about misperceptions.

Something you should be very familiar with.

I"m not interested in misperceptions. I'm interested in reality.

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:

This is about misperceptions.

Something you should be very familiar with.

I"m not interested in misperceptions.  I'm interested in reality.

And this thread addresses that.

So you do want to go there.  Ok, so the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health says...

Harvard University wrote:Black people more than three times as likely as white people to be killed during a police encounter

Black Americans are 3.23 times more likely than white Americans to be killed by police, according to a new study by researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The researchers examined 5,494 police-related deaths in the U.S. between 2013 and 2017. Rates of deadly police encounters were higher in the West and South than in the Midwest and Northeast, according to the study. Racial disparities in killings by police varied widely across the country, with some metropolitan areas showing very high differences between treatment by race. Black Chicagoans, for example, were found to be over 650% more likely to be killed by police than white Chicagoans.

Original Quill wrote:So you do want to go there.  Ok, so the T.H. Chan Harvard School of Public Health says...

Harvard University wrote:Black people more than three times as likely as white people to be killed during a police encounter

Black Americans are 3.23 times more likely than white Americans to be killed by police, according to a new study by researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The researchers examined 5,494 police-related deaths in the U.S. between 2013 and 2017. Rates of deadly police encounters were higher in the West and South than in the Midwest and Northeast, according to the study. Racial disparities in killings by police varied widely across the country, with some metropolitan areas showing very high differences between treatment by race. Black Chicagoans, for example, were found to be over 650% more likely to be killed by police than white Chicagoans.

Thanks.

But this thread is about reality vs perception. Both have already been addressed and there's quite a wide chasm between the two. Why do you think that is?

Perception is a non sequitur. The only reality is...reality.

Original Quill wrote:How is the proportion compared to white killed by police?

I agree can you point me to the media articles of the number of white people unarmed shot by the police?

Even though there is more unarmed white people shot by the police

You speak of proportion

How is it proportionate in the media that we never hear of white people unarmed killed by the police?

Original Quill wrote:Perception is a non sequitur.  The only reality is...reality.

Sorry, we all suffer the effects of peoples perceptions.

If you ever had any question abt how quickly seemingly innocuous situations escalate, watch this. I believe a national conversation on policing is a good thing, but it’s hard to have an honest conversation when much of the public has NO IDEA what goes on every day on the streets.

https://twitter.com/Mr_Squires/status/1368264661293006848

Innocent white people killed by police are reported in the media -- just search and you'll find the stories -- but let me let everyone in on a little secret.

Because of the public interest in innocent black people killed by police, every time it happens, people jump on their phones or laptops to read about it, and when that happens, Google pushes the story up in its news rankings, as does Apple. Facebook posts about it become more prominent as well, as more people search Facebook. It starts to trend on Twitter.

All of these platforms and more have algorithms that, in a nutshell, find items that a lot of people are searching for, looking at and reacting to, and they tell the platforms to push those stories in front of more people. It makes sense -- if there seems to be a lot of interest in something on the platform, show it to more people who might also be interested in it.

And when people in the news media see that happening, they react by saying, "People are interested in this story, so let's get our own stories going and grab some of that eager audience."

It's a business function, not a bias. I've said it time and time again; the news media is biased toward stories that people are rabidly interested in. Rather than doing what so many people complain it does, which is ramming stories down its audience's throats, it actually tries very hard to give its customers exactly what they want, like every other business.

Re the OP

Tommy has been saying this for quite a while. Did you ever disagree with him, didge?

eddie wrote:Re the OP

Tommy has been saying this for quite a while. Did you ever disagree with him, didge?

I have been saying this for sometime myself eddie

Ben Reilly wrote:Innocent white people killed by police are reported in the media -- just search and you'll find the stories -- but let me let everyone in on a little secret.

Because of the public interest in innocent black people killed by police, every time it happens, people jump on their phones or laptops to read about it, and when that happens, Google pushes the story up in its news rankings, as does Apple. Facebook posts about it become more prominent as well, as more people search Facebook. It starts to trend on Twitter.

All of these platforms and more have algorithms that, in a nutshell, find items that a lot of people are searching for, looking at and reacting to, and they tell the platforms to push those stories in front of more people. It makes sense -- if there seems to be a lot of interest in something on the platform, show it to more people who might also be interested in it.

And when people in the news media see that happening, they react by saying, "People are interested in this story, so let's get our own stories going and grab some of that eager audience."

It's a business function, not a bias. I've said it time and time again; the news media is biased toward stories that people are rabidly interested in. Rather than doing what so many people complain it does, which is ramming stories down its audience's throats, it actually tries very hard to give its customers exactly what they want, like every other business.

But its more than that Ben, its how the media portrays every said story and incident wen it happens to someone African American

Take the story of the one where the man got shot reaching into his car for a knife resisting arrest which paralysed him

It took later for the victim to say that he was reaching for his knife, yet the media claimed he was some how a victim of Police Brutality

So really disagree with your view here. I have seen people post up on social media when white people are shot by the Police and still the main media do not take up the story

Outrage news sells better in the world today based racially

Didgee wrote:

eddie wrote:Re the OP

Tommy has been saying this for quite a while. Did you ever disagree with him, didge?

I have been saying this for sometime myself eddie

Fair enough. I genuinely asked because I couldn’t remember if you were one of the people who disagreed on this particular topic.

I’m not sure where I stand on this as I don’t always trust figures.

eddie wrote:

Didgee wrote:


I have been saying this for sometime myself eddie

Fair enough. I genuinely asked because I couldn’t remember if you were one of the people who disagreed on this particular topic.

I’m not sure where I stand on this as I don’t always trust figures.  

I have disagreed on stats with Tommy in the Uk and the US around crime

I do not think I have disagreed with him on police shootings

Well the figures are quite accurate now these days around police shootings. They are well documented in most cases

That’s interesting. I don’t tend to get involved in topics about black people if I can help it. I tend to think that whenever one says anything to sound like they’re not “backing the blacks” one gets called a racist, and I’m too tired to keep repeating my same old lines of defence.

Ben Reilly wrote:Innocent white people killed by police are reported in the media -- just search and you'll find the stories -- but let me let everyone in on a little secret.

Because of the public interest in innocent black people killed by police, every time it happens, people jump on their phones or laptops to read about it, and when that happens, Google pushes the story up in its news rankings, as does Apple. Facebook posts about it become more prominent as well, as more people search Facebook. It starts to trend on Twitter.

All of these platforms and more have algorithms that, in a nutshell, find items that a lot of people are searching for, looking at and reacting to, and they tell the platforms to push those stories in front of more people. It makes sense -- if there seems to be a lot of interest in something on the platform, show it to more people who might also be interested in it.

And when people in the news media see that happening, they react by saying, "People are interested in this story, so let's get our own stories going and grab some of that eager audience."

It's a business function, not a bias. I've said it time and time again; the news media is biased toward stories that people are rabidly interested in. Rather than doing what so many people complain it does, which is ramming stories down its audience's throats, it actually tries very hard to give its customers exactly what they want, like every other business.

It's also media and society.

While the media reported Daniel Shavers horrific killing, he was never called an unarmed white man. He's just an unarmed man.

If race only matters when it's one race, perceptions will get skewed.

Maddog wrote: While the media reported Daniel Shavers horrific killing, he was never called an unarmed white man. He's just an unarmed man.

Interesting. Very interesting.

eddie wrote:

Maddog wrote: While the media reported Daniel Shavers horrific killing, he was never called an unarmed white man. He's just an unarmed man.

Interesting. Very interesting.

House lawmakers on Wednesday passed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a reform bill that would ban chokeholds and alter so-called qualified immunity for law enforcement, which would make it easier to pursue claims of police misconduct.

The 220-212 vote, mostly along party lines, came nine months after Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was killed by Minneapolis police officers last spring.

https://www.npr.org/2021/03/03/973111306/house-approves-police-reform-bill-named-after-george-floyd

CNN) —
While in Mesa, Arizona on a business trip for his Texas-based pest control company in 2016, Daniel Shaver was slaughtered in a hotel hallway. And though the Arizona jury that acquitted the officer, 27-year-old Philip “Mitch” Brailsford, of second-degree murder and reckless manslaughter charges may have gotten it right according to a legal standard, a confluence of interrelated errors by the tactical team transpired to cause this tragedy, and it was entirely preventable.

https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/11/opinions/daniel-shaver-shooting-opinion-gagliano

CNN also ran a photo of Shaver. Everyone who saw that knew his race.

When a cop of one race kills an unarmed person of a different race, people naturally wonder whether racism was a factor. That drives the story's popularity, which drives the media agenda.

eddie wrote:

Maddog wrote: While the media reported Daniel Shavers horrific killing, he was never called an unarmed white man. He's just an unarmed man.

Interesting. Very interesting.

Except it isn't true. Plenty of media outlets not only mentioned his race, they also ran articles on why his story wasn't as hot of an item as when black people are killed.

Ben Reilly wrote:

eddie wrote:

Maddog wrote: While the media reported Daniel Shavers horrific killing, he was never called an unarmed white man. He's just an unarmed man.

Interesting. Very interesting.

Except it isn't true. Plenty of media outlets not only mentioned his race, they also ran articles on why his story wasn't as hot of an item as when black people are killed.

Why did they think it wasn’t as “hot”?

“Hot” items in the media usually translates as “fashionable”.

Why is Black Death a “hotter” topic than a white death?

eddie wrote:

Ben Reilly wrote:

eddie wrote:

Maddog wrote: While the media reported Daniel Shavers horrific killing, he was never called an unarmed white man. He's just an unarmed man.

Interesting. Very interesting.

Except it isn't true. Plenty of media outlets not only mentioned his race, they also ran articles on why his story wasn't as hot of an item as when black people are killed.

Why did they think it wasn’t as “hot”?

“Hot” items in the media usually translates as “fashionable”.

Why is Black Death a “hotter” topic than a white death?

Because it suggests that the police might be racist. If the cop and the suspect are the same race, then the audience rules out the possibility of racism being a factor.

The media writes about racist crimes because people only want to read about racist crimes?

eddie wrote:The media writes about racist crimes because people only want to read about racist crimes?  

There's only political power with racial issues in terms of crime.

Nobody gives a fuck about dead white people because they can translate it into some type of power.

Ben Reilly wrote:

eddie wrote:

Interesting. Very interesting.

Except it isn't true. Plenty of media outlets not only mentioned his race, they also ran articles on why his story wasn't as hot of an item as when black people are killed.

Find his race in print.

Ben Reilly wrote:

eddie wrote:

Why did they think it wasn’t as “hot”?

“Hot” items in the media usually translates as “fashionable”.

Why is Black Death a “hotter” topic than a white death?

Because it suggests that the police might be racist. If the cop and the suspect are the same race, then the audience rules out the possibility of racism being a factor.

That is why the assumption is the key to seling news stories

If you throw in a perception and view that something is racist, its going to generate a reaction

Hence why again the media is fuelling racist tensions by its takes on stories

To say you can rule out racism being the same race is also a fallacy

As racism can take many different forms

Where many groups classed as white can be seen not as white by white supremacists

I mean the Nazis murdered millions of people classed in the category of white, Russians, Polish etc, as they treated them as subhuman

The Japanese murdered millions of other Asian ethnic groups, as they treated them as subhuman

Both down to racism and a view of racial superiority over others. 

The issue is this, the liberal media in the US lead wit a view that their is racial intent in just about every single case of African America s being shot by the Police. They lead with a view of guilty of racism and Police brutality and not innocent until found guilty

This whips up racial tension and is done deliberately so, because they know it sells far better to instil a view that all shootings of African Americans by the Police are racist

Hence more than anything the Liberal media are guilty of whipping up racial tensions in the US

Maddog wrote:

eddie wrote:The media writes about racist crimes because people only want to read about racist crimes?

There's only political power with racial issues in terms of crime.

Nobody gives a fuck about dead white people because they can translate it into some type of power.

I don't think that's true. What makes racist crimes by police so notable in the news is it happens so often, and so disproportionately, relative to the population. Hence, it is this anomaly that distinguishes racial crime by police, and makes it newsworthy to most right-thinking people.

Particularly blacks, who were once slaves, are singled out by police for special treatment, and that fact suggests unequal treatment, which is an anathema in our society.

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:

There's only political power with racial issues in terms of crime.  

Nobody gives a fuck about dead white people because they can translate it into some type of power.  

I don't think that's true.  What makes racist crimes by police so notable in the news is it happens so often, and so disproportionately, relative to the population.  Hence, it is this anomaly that distinguishes racial crime by police, and makes it newsworthy to most right-thinking people.

Particularly blacks, who were once slaves, are singled out by police for special treatment, and that fact suggests unequal treatment, which is an anathema in our society.

While blacks are killed disproportionately, whites are still killed in greater numbers.

No one marches, no one cares. There's no political power in it. Shaun King can't make money off of a dead white dude.

Maddog wrote:While blacks are killed disproportionately, whites are still killed in greater numbers.

Well, whites exist in the population with greater numbers, so that is accounted for.

Everyone killed is regrettable, but it is the 'rise' in proportional numbers when it comes to the sub-population of blacks, that is questionable.  Obviously, some cops have it out for blacks, and that needs to be eliminated.

That's why I say, stick to the real world and not opinions when it comes to racism.  That is where it needs to be fixed.

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:While blacks are killed disproportionately, whites are still killed in greater numbers.

Well, whites exist in the population with greater numbers, so that is accounted for.

Everyone killed is regrettable, but it is the 'rise' in proportional numbers when it comes to the sub-population of blacks, that is questionable.  Obviously, some cops have it out for blacks, and that needs to be eliminated.

That's why I say, stick to the real world and not opinions when it comes to racism.  That is where it needs to be fixed.

Some are more regrettable than others, which is regrettable.

Maddog wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

Well, whites exist in the population with greater numbers, so that is accounted for.

Everyone killed is regrettable, but it is the 'rise' in proportional numbers when it comes to the sub-population of blacks, that is questionable. Obviously, some cops have it out for blacks, and that needs to be eliminated.

That's why I say, stick to the real world and not opinions when it comes to racism. That is where it needs to be fixed.

Some are more regrettable than others, which is regrettable.

They are statistics. Statistics tend to eliminate individual differences, except when related to the point.

It appears that the majority, whites, tend to regret the killings of whites more than the killings of blacks. Otherwise, they wouldn't so easily encourage the practice of killing blacks by police, by acquitting police accused of killing black men.

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:

Some are more regrettable than others, which is regrettable.

They are statistics.  Statistics tend to eliminate individual differences, except when related to the point.

It appears that the majority, whites, tend to regret the killings of whites more than the killings of blacks.  Otherwise, they wouldn't so easily encourage the practice of killing blacks by police, by acquitting police accused of killing black men.

Then where are the marches for the white victims?

Maddog wrote:

Original Quill wrote:

They are statistics.  Statistics tend to eliminate individual differences, except when related to the point.

It appears that the majority, whites, tend to regret the killings of whites more than the killings of blacks.  Otherwise, they wouldn't so easily encourage the practice of killing blacks by police, by acquitting police accused of killing black men.

Then where are the marches for the white victims?

Donno. That's up to the ones who care, innit?

Even as a white, I'm of the opinion that black police killings are a bigger problem...so I'm marching in their parade.

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:

Then where are the marches for the white victims?

Donno.  That's up to the ones who care, innit?

Even as a white, I'm of the opinion that black police killings are a bigger problem...so I'm marching in their parade.

Quill wrote:It appears that the majority, whites, tend to regret the killings of whites more than the killings of blacks

Guess this is false then.

I've always said that America is a racist country. Some are a little bit racist, some more so. In the south, racism is off the chart.

But none of us can claim innocence.

Original Quill wrote:I've always said that America is a racist country.  Some are a little bit racist, some more so.  In the south, racism is off the chart.

But none of us can claim innocence.

I don't care what you have always said.

Maddog wrote:I don't care what you have always said.

But...you're irrelevant. People will be the ultimate arbiters, dependent upon ultimate facts.

Original Quill wrote:

Maddog wrote:I don't care what you have always said.

But...you're irrelevant.  People will be the ultimate arbiters, dependent upon ultimate facts.

Hur dur.