Black Male speaks about Illinois cop who was shot yesterday. (on topic)

[billvon 2,392]

>If you think black lives matter means nothing else matters, then the problem is
>with you. My kids matter. It doesn't mean my wife doesn't matter.

Exactly.

Lawrocket matters!

[wmw999 2,120]

Good wording by Lawrocket. Just consider that the anti-abortion folks are part of the "fetal lives matter" movement, and PETA is part of the "animal lives matter" movement
Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[BartsDaddy 4]

I agree n But why was Bernie Sanders made to apologize because he said white lives matter, all lives matter. But some how that requires,an appolgy.

Handguns are only used to fight your way to a good rifle

[wmw999 2,120]

Oh, there are PC police. There are idiots on every side of every issue, and people who oversimplify on every issue.

Of course, people who try to understand every nuance before starting to fix something never gat started, do they .

Wendy P.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[skypuppy 1]

GeorgiaDon

Quote

"The fact that blacks make up about 25% of Boston's population, but are stopped 63% of the time raises serious concerns of racially biased policing," said Nusrat Choudhury, an attorney with the ACLU Racial Justice Program.

Statements like this are founded on the assumption that police stops are (or should be) comparable to a random sampling of the population, so any one individuals chance of being stopped is exactly the same as any other individual. Of course, the ACLU would also be upset if the police actually did stop people at random, with no reason other than "today it's just your turn".

It is of course possible that some conscious or unconscious bias is at work. It is also possible that certain demographics are disproportionately likely to present valid reasons to be pulled over. These could include things like no tail lights, cracked windshield, no license plate, driving with headlights off after dark, speeding, excessively loud music, and so on, up to driving a vehicle that matches the description of a suspect vehicle near to where a crime has been reported. In my city we have a "no cruising" ordinance in the downtown area, which allows police to ticket you if they see you drive around the block more than twice within 10 minutes. I think it's a dumb law, as you may just be looking for a place to park, but it was intended to discourage "cruising".

A lot of these things are (it seems to me) related to poverty; people with little money drive old worn out cars and may not have money to immediately fix a burned out headlight or a cracked windshield. Some of them are, frankly, related to age and cultural attitudes, such as playing music so loud the bass makes you think there is an earthquake happening and you are five cars back from the source of the noise. As we all know there is a relationship between wealth and race in this country. Where I live (college town) it seems most of the white kids are college students whose parents have provisioned them with a car worth about ten time what I can afford as a mere professor. If you see a 1970s era ragged-out Cadillac with one headlight, no functioning backup lights, no plates (except maybe an obviously ancient "Tag Applied For"), the hood held down with a piece of rope, and shiny new chrome hubcaps, the odds are overwhelming that the driver will be black. A stereotype for sure, but one you can see every day around here. Who is more likely to be pulled over, the person driving the old Cadillac with a half-dozen safety violations, or the person driving a fresh off the lot Lexus?

It is possible that there is a bias at work driving the police to target minorities. I just don't think you can say that so definitively based on nothing other than a comparison to the demographic makeup of the population. I think you would have to actually examine the probable cause for the stops. You could also do an experiment, such as have white or black drivers drive the same vehicle with the same red flags around town for similar amounts of time. If the black drivers get pulled over more often than the white drivers do, driving the same vehicle in the same neighborhoods, then you would have a strong argument that bias was at work.

Don

It's also possible that blacks and whites live in different areas of the city, and that there are more complaints of vandalism and crime in certain areas of the city, leading to an increased police presence by request of the inhabitants. If police patrol the black areas of town more often and on foot as well as in cars, it's indeed possible that they will naturally stop more blacks than whites.

I think it's also possible, although I don't know that there are stats kept on it, that certain demographics may well be more involved in crime than other demographics, so it may well be that the reason more are stopped is because more crimes are being committed by them. I'm not saying it is so, I'm saying it is possible. And that doesn't even mean that a higher percent of a certain demographic commit crimes, it could be the same percent committing more crimes each... Without statistics one won't know.

Of course some people would then say, doesn't matter, they've had a rough time, so we shouldn't bother them about the way they live....

If some old guy can do it then obviously it can't be very extreme. Otherwise he'd already be dead.
Bruce McConkey 'I thought we were gonna die, and I couldn't think of anyone

[kallend 1,622]

Turns out that it was a suicide set up to look like a murder. The cop had been on the take.

All the folks who Rushed to denounce BLM before the investigation was complete now look pretty silly.

www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/lake-county-news-sun/news/ct-fox-lake-cop-suicide-20151104-story.html

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[skycop 0]

Don't think anyone saw this coming.
Good people do bad things, bad people do bad things, only one person (maybe two depending on your religious beliefs) know what the deal was with this guy.
Some things just make you shake your head...................

"Just 'cause I'm simple, don't mean I'm stewpid!"