Trayvon Martin

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
While shooting deaths are low, total number of deaths in the UK following contact with the police since 1990 is 1476 (of which 144 non-white people), which I find staggering. The kind of figure the govt would trot out to show how 'uncivilised' other countries are - the police are totally out of control and virtually beyond prosecution.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Yeah, I saw those figures in a k-punk blog 'you' put up on FB the other day. Terrifying. And yes, I totally agree that it gives the lie to the idea that there are countries where cops are 'bad' and then lovely civilized Britain where cops are 'good'. Sure, some places are a lot worse than the UK but being a bit better than somewhere that's absolutely terrible is not really a ringing endorsement.

Interesting that "only" a tenth of those killed have been non-white, when you consider the make-up of the city. Not that that makes it any less bad, obviously.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
Interesting that "only" a tenth of those killed have been non-white, when you consider the make-up of the city. Not that that makes it any less bad, obviously.

Those are UK figures, according to Baboon - not just London. Although 10% is roughly in line with the non-white population as a whole, I'd have thought.

What does 'contact with the police' mean, though? Someone hanging himself in his cell? Old friend of mine was taken to the cells one night cos the police saw him loitering on a footbridge over a bypass. They thought he was a suicide risk. He insisted he'd done nothing wrong and demanded to be released. He went straight back to that bridge and jumped to his death. Would that count as 'contact with the police'?
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Those are UK figures, according to Baboon - not just London. Although 10% is roughly in line with the non-white population as a whole, I'd have thought.

Oh I missed that bit, I thought it was just for the Met.

What does 'contact with the police' mean, though? Someone hanging himself in his cell? Old friend of mine was taken to the cells one night cos the police saw him loitering on a footbridge over a bypass. They thought he was a suicide risk. He insisted he'd done nothing wrong and demanded to be released. He went straight back to that bridge and jumped to his death. Would that count as 'contact with the police'?

Yeah, I guess it's kind of ambiguous. But it's well known that a lot of deaths happen in custody, where suicidal people are supposed to be protected from the risk of self-harm. So even a death that's 100% self-caused points to a failure of care if it happens on police property.

Very sorry to hear about your friend, that's awful.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Those are UK figures, according to Baboon - not just London. Although 10% is roughly in line with the non-white population as a whole, I'd have thought.

What does 'contact with the police' mean, though? Someone hanging himself in his cell? Old friend of mine was taken to the cells one night cos the police saw him loitering on a footbridge over a bypass. They thought he was a suicide risk. He insisted he'd done nothing wrong and demanded to be released. He went straight back to that bridge and jumped to his death. Would that count as 'contact with the police'?

Only just seen this - sorry about your friend, that's absolutely terrible.

In answer to the question, I don't know - I tried to find how Inquest compile their stats, but couldn't locate the relevant part. I think 900-odd deaths happen in custody, the rest outside in various circumstances.

I went to the Mark Duggan vigil in Tottenham on Saturday, and there were speeches by various family members of other men and women (mainly those men and women were black, but not exclusively) killed by the police - Sean Rigg, Leon Biggs, Azelle Rodney. Hearing the stories of how they died was just numbingly horrific. And how as a father/mother/sister/brother/friend do you ever get over that, with no justice ever materialising?
 

Leo

Well-known member
In related news...

10608368_10204158929267823_6691880067703029840_o.jpg
 

rubberdingyrapids

Well-known member
While shooting deaths are low, total number of deaths in the UK following contact with the police since 1990 is 1476 (of which 144 non-white people), which I find staggering. The kind of figure the govt would trot out to show how 'uncivilised' other countries are - the police are totally out of control and virtually beyond prosecution.

i dont want to play that figure down but id be interested to know where it compares to other countries.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
It's a fair question. While the figure is phenomenally high, I don't really know how it compares to others. No doubt some way below the US, which is not saying much of course. Looked for figures for France and Germany, not found anything yet, and probably won't if I persist in searching in English...
 

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
Found an article on the subject that is based on a Dutch study. It covers the period between 1995-2005

Holland: 1/5.000.000 (an average of 1 death on every five million inhabitants)
France: 1/6.000.000
Denmark: 1/7.000.000
Portugal: 1/8.000.000
Germany: 1/14.000.000
England: 1/27.000.000

British number was actually the lowest, highest were those of Canada and the U.S. (article didn't give a number).

http://www.volkskrant.nl/binnenland/relatief-veel-doden-door-politiekogels~a372336/
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Found an article on the subject that is based on a Dutch study. It covers the period between 1995-2005

Holland: 1/5.000.000 (an average of 1 death on every five million inhabitants)
France: 1/6.000.000
Denmark: 1/7.000.000
Portugal: 1/8.000.000
Germany: 1/14.000.000
England: 1/27.000.000

British number was actually the lowest, highest were those of Canada and the U.S. (article didn't give a number).

http://www.volkskrant.nl/binnenland/relatief-veel-doden-door-politiekogels~a372336/

I assume those numbers are for shootings only, right? I expect the British rates would be higher if they included people dying by suffocation or heart failure while being, um, over-enthusiastically apprehended...

Tangentially related, but I can only assume there's going to be the usual annual controversy-fest over Saint Nicholas' Eve tomorrow? I heard somewhere that a lot of places had decided to ban Zwarte Piet this year.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
George Zimmerman to auction gun he used to kill Trayvon Martin

Zimmerman wrote that he was “proud to announce” that a portion of the proceeds raised would be used to “fight BLM [Black Lives Matter] violence against Law Enforcement officers” as well as ending the career of Angela Corey, his prosecutor – “and Hillary Clinton’s anti-firearm rhetoric”.

He signed off “your friend, George M. Zimmerman” and “Si vis pacem, para bellum” – the Latin adage, “If you want peace, prepare for war”.

Zimmerman was reportedly banned from Twitter in December but used the platform to voice similar views, including an apparent reference to Martin as a “moron”, a description of the BLM movement as “black slime matters” and a retweet of a post showing Martin’s lifeless body with the caption, “Z-man is a one-man army”.

Wow. This guy is really determined to prove that personal morality has no absolute zero, isn't he?
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Nothing here yet about the shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and anti-police retaliation (five cops shot dead by SNIPER FIRE in Dallas)?

It seems hardly hyperbolic to talk of an unofficial race war currently happening in the USA.
 
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Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Felt inevitable that cops would be shot with all these incidents of police brutality, but certainly didn't expect a coordinated sniper attack.

Militarise your police force, arm your citizens and subject an entire race and class to persistent discrimination and often lethal force and you've got the recipe for a domestic war. Also the fact that the justice system is manifestly unjust, especially if you happen to be black, and it's not surprising that people feel violence is the best recourse.

The argument from pro-gun people that guns are needed for self-defence against the government has always seemed alien to me but from the POV of african-americans, I can kind of see the point of it. If your police force was racist, armed and willing to kill you just for the colour of your skin (without fear of legal reprisals), wouldn't YOU want a gun?
 

vimothy

yurp
Scott Alexander had an interesting post a while back where he actually looks at some data surrounding racial disparities and police shootings:

A topical issue these days. Once again, the same dynamic at play. We know black people are affected disproportionately to their representation in the population, but is a result of police racism or disproportionate criminality?

Mother Jones magazine has an unexpectedly beautiful presentation of the data for us:

shootinggraph.jpg


The fourth bar seems like what we’re looking for. You could go with the fifth bar, but then you’re just adding noise of who did or didn’t duck out of the way fast enough.

As you can see, a person shot at by a police officer is more than twice as likely to be black as the average member of the general population. But, crucially, they are less likely to be black than the average violent shooter or the average person who shoots at the police.

We assume that the reason an officer shoots a suspect is because that officer believes the suspect is about to shoot or attack the officer. So if the officer were perfectly unbiased, then the racial distribution of people shot by officers would look exactly like the distribution of dangerous attackers. If it’s blacker than the distribution of dangerous attackers, the police are misidentifying blacks as dangerous attackers.

But In fact, the people shot by police are less black than the people shooting police or the violent shooters police are presumably worried about. This provides very strong evidence that, at least in New York, the police are not disproportionately shooting black people and appear to be making a special effort to avoid it.

For some reason most of the studies I could get here were pretty old, but with that caveat, this is also the conclusion of Milton (1977) looking at police departments in general, and Fyfe (1978), who analyzes older New York City data and comes to the same conclusion. However, the same researcher analyzes police shootings in Memphis and finds that these do show clear evidence of anti-minority bias, sometimes up to a 6x greater risk for blacks even after adjusting for likely confounders. The big difference seems to be that NYC officers are trained to fire only to protect their own lives from armed and dangerous suspects, but Memphis officers are (were? the study looks at data from 1970) allowed to shoot property crime suspects attempting to flee. The latter seems a lot more problematic and probably allows more room for officer bias to get through.

[EDIT: A commenter pointed out to me that Tennessee vs. Garner banned this practice in the late 1980s, meaning Memphis’ shooting rate should be lower and possibly less biased now]

The same guy looks at the race of officers involved and finds that “the data do not clearly support the contention that white [officers] had little regard for the lives of minorities”. In fact, most studies find white officers are disproportionately more likely to shoot white suspects, and black officers disproportionately more likely to shoot black suspects. This makes sense since officers are often assigned to race-congruent neighborhoods, but sure screws up the relevant narrative.

Summary: New York City data suggests no bias of officers towards shooting black suspects compared with their representation among dangerous police encounters, and if anything the reverse effect. Data from Memphis in 1970 suggests a strong bias towards shooting black suspects, probably because they shoot fleeing suspects in addition to potentially dangerous suspects, but this practice has since stopped. Older national data skews more toward the New York City side with little evidence of racial bias, but I don’t know of any recent studies which have compared the race of shooting victims to the race of dangerous attackers on a national level. There is no support for the contention that white officers are more likely than officers of other races to shoot black suspects.

From: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/25/race-and-justice-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/
 

droid

Well-known member
Nothing here yet about the shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile and anti-police retaliation (five cops shot dead by SNIPER FIRE in Dallas)?

It seems hardly hyperbolic to talk of an unofficial race war currently happening in the USA.

Yeah, thats why I posted the image above.

Dallas seems unclear at the moment, but I was just thinking yesterday that an armed black militant response is inevitable.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
...but is a result of police racism or disproportionate criminality?

I think this is a rather disingenuous question. Yes, black men commit a disproportionate amount of street-level crime including gun crime but just to say "oh well of course cops therefore going be more likely to shoot them" doesn't come close to justifying how willing cops are to shoot unarmed black men when they're either involved in extremely trivial offences (e.g. Michael Brown) or doing nothing wrong at all (e.g. Philando Castile, by the sound of it - reaching for his licence after being pulled over for a broken taillight, FFS!).
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Yeah, thats why I posted the image above.

Dallas seems unclear at the moment, but I was just thinking yesterday that an armed black militant response is inevitable.

Well a war is a two-way thing - I can't recall a situation with this kind of conscious, organized retaliation, which is why I used the word 'war'.
 

vimothy

yurp
But the question is how willing are the US police to shoot black men? That's a question about general trends, so it's not enough to simply look at a few specific cases: "In fact, most studies find white officers are disproportionately more likely to shoot white suspects, and black officers disproportionately more likely to shoot black suspects. This makes sense since officers are often assigned to race-congruent neighborhoods, but sure screws up the relevant narrative."
 
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