US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7889

On June 18 2017 05:59 micronesia wrote:

I think you are making an argument for balance the way I discussed in the earlier post. The amount of innocent people who die in interactions with police due to some combination of racial tension or racism and tactical misunderstanding needs to be compared to the amount of cops who are killed by people they interact with. If cops very rarely get blindsided and killed, but often shoot unarmed people, then yes, that is a big problem. That doesn't directly affect whether or not a specific cop committed a particular crime in a particular situation, however.

Why do you find it funny that cops die by suicide more than by getting shot by criminals? Neither that nor the elevated suicide rate of cops is funny.

edit: I can understand a label of ironic (using Kwark's explanation) more than funny.

edit2: Oh I actually used the word suicidal lol forgive me

On June 18 2017 06:10 Plansix wrote:
That isn't in bad taste, that is just straight up irresponsible. Tell me that is not airing on TV?

Principled PAC is running an ad called ‘Stop the Violent Left.’ Backed by a small five-figure ad buy, the commercial will run on Fox News Sunday and Monday

As for the PAC itself, conservative commentator Laura Ingraham has warned in the past that they are nothing more than trolls, taking issue with them trying to raise money for their group based the possibility she might run for the Senate.

On June 18 2017 06:12 zlefin wrote:

sadly accurate statistics aren't kept, so it's rather hard to tell; depending on what you measure from what info I have ben able to find, you probably get ratios of 5:1, 10:1, or 20:1 with the cops being the ones.

On June 18 2017 05:59 micronesia wrote:

I think you are making an argument for balance the way I discussed in the earlier post. The amount of innocent people who die in interactions with police due to some combination of racial tension or racism and tactical misunderstanding needs to be compared to the amount of cops who are killed by people they interact with. If cops very rarely get blindsided and killed, but often shoot unarmed people, then yes, that is a big problem. That doesn't directly affect whether or not a specific cop committed a particular crime in a particular situation, however.

Why do you find it funny that cops die by suicide more than by getting shot by criminals? Neither that nor the elevated suicide rate of cops is funny.

On June 18 2017 06:10 Plansix wrote:
That isn't in bad taste, that is just straight up irresponsible. Tell me that is not airing on TV?

On June 18 2017 03:09 micronesia wrote:

When you say "it's about" what do you mean?

The purpose of the hypothetical is to show that just because a driver does not do something obviously wrong like pull a gun on the cop or yell out "I'm going to shoot you right now" and then pull out a banana in a dramatic way does not automatically mean the cop was completely in the wrong for discharging his weapon. It may be appropriate to acquit him of charges for shooting the unarmed person (the extreme example being a wallet that looks exactly like a gun at that moment). How much the wallet 'looks like a gun' helps to determine how reasonable a perceived thread of harm is, which generally is what determines whether self defense was appropriate (things working a bit differently for cops rather than regular citizens I can understand though). Some say it doesn't matter... once you are a cop authorized to use a lethal weapon, you cannot use self defense unless the perceived harm is objectively reasonable. I see it as more of a continuous spectrum, and strongly encourage those being pulled over by cops to keep their hands on the window/sill when not being specifically requested to retrieve something, regardless of what race you are.

Probably linked to my first question, what is your position regarding race and prior expectations, in terms of how police should be punished for shooting unarmed drivers? Cops being afraid of minority drivers and becoming trigger happy is indeed a big problem. The issue is whether or not the driver being a minority is a valid reason for considering the perceived harm to be objectively reasonable. I think most of the people here would say no, but that's also an easy thing to say from the comfort of your own home (just like those who are happy to 'take the shot cop every single time').

edit: I should clarify so I don't give the wrong idea that I'm incredibly racist; the driver being a minority is not justification for shooting him. Is the cop justified in being more worried in general?

On June 18 2017 06:15 Nevuk wrote:




That's what mediate has to say about it. www.mediaite.com

So yeah, it is going to run Sunday and Monday from the sounds of it

On June 18 2017 06:17 crms wrote:

grotesque and a shining example of everything wrong with modern politicking.

On June 18 2017 06:16 GreenHorizons wrote:


No I find it funny people pretend to care about the safety of the cops but they don't even know what is actually killing them far more frequently.

Or don't seem to appreciate that cops are tax/oppressive, regressive, fines(disproportionately lobbied against black people usually) and civilians aren't, so the expectations are very different.

It's so easy to demand consideration for the risks of the officers, but the ALREADY existing abuse is to be considered acceptable enough not to do anything about.

On June 18 2017 06:17 ChristianS wrote:

If someone had some kind of novelty gun-shaped wallet, this conversation starts to make sense. The thing is, wallets and guns don't really look alike. The only way you could confuse them is if through some combination of darkness, fear, and clouded judgment, you really couldn't tell very well what the object was at all. At that point the most you could reasonably conclude is "I can't tell what that object is." But the cop isn't reasonable at this moment, he's scared shitless because he's pulling over a black person and he's heard they like to shoot cops sometimes. Within that state of mind, the only thing going through his head is "is that a gun," and if his perceived probability gets high enough he's going to engage the "defend himself" sequence of actions. As I mentioned, his perceived probability doesn't have to get very high because people are risk-averse when it comes to their own deaths, so as soon as he thinks there's a real possibility it's a gun, it's too late.

There's a lot of rational biases that go into this. It's a bit like the "pink elephants" effect – as soon as someone tells you not to think about pink elephants you can't help but think about them. In this case saying the word "gun" as he reaches for his wallet massively increases the cop's likelihood to expect the object to be a gun. You'd think the fact that someone is telling you they have a gun would make you think it's less likely they're trying to get the jump on you, but something like confirmation bias applies here – the cop notices any evidence that supports his fear that this black guy is going to hurt him, but doesn't notice against it. So he's likely to notice that the wallet is grayish black, but unlikely to notice that it's leathery and has folds in it.

Cases like this have been studied by psychologists for a while. Typically it's something like a black guy walking into a bank, reaching into his back pocket, pulling out a wallet in a well-lit room full of customers, and then getting shot by a bank security guard. And that guard will absolutely swear to you the guy was pulling out a gun until you physically show him that there is no gun on the individual's person, and there's a wallet on the floor a couple feet from the hand the guard thought was pulling a gun. Is the guard lying? Maybe, but probably not. It's just an implicit bias problem – the guard has a narrative in his head about black people that involves them being crime-prone and likely to own and use guns. That sets his prior probability that the object is a gun high enough that his senses don't need much confirmation to go forward with that theory.

This is a conversation I've had a few times with a few people. My brother is an economist and is of the opinion that basically all anti-discrimination law should be abolished, because racial discrimination is irrational, so if someone is engaging in discriminatory behavior the free market should weed that out. If they're firing perfectly qualified black employees and hiring less-qualified white employees, or paying more for similarly qualified white employees, their competitors could hire the qualified black employees and put them out of business; therefore anti-discrimination laws are superfluous and wind up wasting a lot of public resources on investigations into questions that are basically impossible to answer – what someone's motivation for firing/not hiring someone was.

Where this connects to our current conversation is that there are some cases in which racial discrimination isn't irrational, and in those cases he thinks it's wrong to force people to go against their self-interest just to appease your diversity goals. His example was cab drivers not wanting to pick up blacks because they think they're gonna get robbed – it's racial discrimination, but since statistically blacks do commit more violent crimes, it's not purely irrational. Thing is, it's not really rational either. The cab driver isn't looking up statistics on the relative crime rates of blacks and whites, calculating the additional risk involved, and determining what additional risk would be acceptable to him before he doesn't pick that customer up. The process in the driver's head is purely based on having an idea in his head about how black people are, and treating them accordingly; that idea isn't usually very accurate or rationally conceived. In general people consistently overestimate the statistical significance of the differences in crime rates and wind up discriminating way more than would be justified by the facts.

Personally I think the discrimination shouldn't be allowed even if you can make a rational argument for it – most of the damage racial discrimination does to society isn't contingent on how rational it is. The reason blacks have higher rates of violent crime ultimately derives from the prejudiced system that you're perpetuating by discriminating against them, so the only way the system can improve is if that discrimination is lessened. But most of the time that argument doesn't matter anyway, because it's not usually that racial profiling violates our moral principles but it gets the job done. Usually it's that racial profiling violates our moral principles and isn't even effective.

On June 18 2017 06:12 zlefin wrote:

sadly accurate statistics aren't kept, so it's rather hard to tell; depending on what you measure from what info I have ben able to find, you probably get ratios of 5:1, 10:1, or 20:1 with the cops being the ones.

Each year, more law enforcement officers die by suicide than are killed in the line of duty.

It’s actually more accurate to say, “More cops die of suicide than are killed by gunfire and traffic accidents combined.” In 2016, our last study, 108 officers died of suicide, whereas 97 officers died of traffic accidents and gunfire combined. It’s close. A new police suicide study is in progress for 2017.

On June 18 2017 06:15 micronesia wrote:
One other thing you would need to take into account is the number of police officers who weren't shot because of their current rules of engagement or overzealous triggerhappiness... of course it's even harder to get those numbers.

On June 18 2017 06:29 zlefin wrote:

that's not a possible number to get; estimate maybe, but get, no, since it involves a what if scenario.
generally speaking though, from the data I've gleaned; for every cops' life saved by being overzealous, 5-10 innocent civilians die as a rough estimate.
the present numbers we hvae are enough to reach decent conclusions though.

gh -> I was looking at cops killing vs being killed by people; I wasn't looking at suicide at all. so cops kill far more people than people kill cops.

On June 18 2017 06:17 ChristianS wrote:

If someone had some kind of novelty gun-shaped wallet, this conversation starts to make sense. The thing is, wallets and guns don't really look alike. The only way you could confuse them is if through some combination of darkness, fear, and clouded judgment, you really couldn't tell very well what the object was at all. At that point the most you could reasonably conclude is "I can't tell what that object is." But the cop isn't reasonable at this moment, he's scared shitless because he's pulling over a black person and he's heard they like to shoot cops sometimes. Within that state of mind, the only thing going through his head is "is that a gun," and if his perceived probability gets high enough he's going to engage the "defend himself" sequence of actions. As I mentioned, his perceived probability doesn't have to get very high because people are risk-averse when it comes to their own deaths, so as soon as he thinks there's a real possibility it's a gun, it's too late.

+ Show Spoiler [the rest of it] +

On June 18 2017 07:04 ChristianS wrote:
Stop reading whenever you like, I admit I don't take the time to edit my posts a lot and try to boil them down. That would seem excessive for a forum post in such a fast-moving thread.

Edit: I think I misunderstood. If I'm now understanding you correctly, thank you

On June 18 2017 07:04 ChristianS wrote:
Stop reading whenever you like, I admit I don't take the time to edit my posts a lot and try to boil them down. That would seem excessive for a forum post in such a fast-moving thread.

Edit: I think I misunderstood. If I'm now understanding you correctly, thank you

On June 18 2017 07:21 IgnE wrote:


your brother sounds like a real piece of work