Debunking the Lie: US's cops are racist

submitted by Zednix from self.KotakuInAction

this is taken from /r/sargonofakkad

Since it's wrongfully quarantined by that shit-site I copy pasta'd it. Credit belongs to /u/xahnel for all the excellent work. Link to original post is here.

Today, I got mad at some idiots and decided to hit them repeatedly with sourced facts and math until they shut up, and now I'd like to help you do the same thing.

We will be using three sources. One is a government source, the other two are far left sources just so leftists can't reject them.

Source 1: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/tables/table-43 Source 2: https://www.theroot.com/heres-how-many-people-police-killed-in-2017-1821706614 Source 3: https://www.diversityinc.com/data-police-disproportionately-killed-black-people-2017/

All sources are about 2017.

Using just these sources, I will disprove outright that the claim that police disproportionately kill blacks. To do this, I am going to compare populations. I will not do the dishonest thing, and compare total populations. Rather, I will compare criminal populations. This is an important distinction, because it completely sidesteps dishonest arguments based on the per capita population, because no population is made entirely of criminals except the criminal population.

According to the FBI, the total number of arrests in 2017 was 8,162,849. According to The Root, the total number of people killed by the police in 2017 is 1,129. We are going to add those together to get a total attempted arrests, presuming that any incident that ended in death would have otherwise ended in arrest. This total is 8,163,978.

1129 is 0.0138290427% of 8163978, or ~0.014%. That is 14 in 100000. That puts your odds of surviving any arrest at ~99.986%.

According to the FBI, in 2017, blacks were arrested 2,221,697 times. According to DiversityInc, blacks made up 27% of people killed by police. Please note, they do not give a number, but a percentage. 27% of 1129 is 304.83, or ~305. Adding those deaths to the arrests, we get 2,222,002.

2222002 is 27.2171483069% of 8,163,978, or ~27%.

Please note the proportions. 2222002 is 27% of 8,163,978. 305 is 27% of 1129.

These numbers are proportional. Blacks are not being disproportionately killed by the police. 305 is 0.0137263603% of 2222002. Please recall that 1129 is 0.0138290427% of 8163978. Blacks are actually killed slightly less than the total percentage. But those percentages are both ~0.014%, or 14 in 100000. Black criminals have a nearly equal survival rate as the total survival rate. In fact, their chances are slightly better.

In conclusion: blacks made up ~27% of the total crime, and ~27% of the total death. The odds of surviving a police encounter were ~99.986% in total. The odds of surviving a police encounter were ~99.986% as a black person. It's time to stop letting people lie about this.

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[–]Werpogil 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

The thing people point out is that disproportionate part is about their % from the total US population. They are 12,6%, according to just a dumb google search. So 12,6% of population represents 27% of deaths from police shooting. This is what gets people riled up when presented like this. The thing is, as you say (without checking the sources) blacks also represent 27% of total crimes. So the cursory glance suggests that everything is as it's supposed to.

We need to dive deeper into other statistics and see if there is some category of crimes that breaks this proportion either in terms of % of blacks committing it or % of blacks killed during arrest, particularly the non-violent crimes.

Another facet of the problem we have to examine is whether the justice system addresses the blacks the same way it does any other race for similar crimes. I don't have the sources at hand, just pointing out where there might not be such a straight-forward picture as they one you outlined.

[–]RatMan29 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

If anything, the system on average treats blacks more leniently than whites once caught. Mostly this just reflects the fact that black people on juries usually will not vote to convict a black person of anything, regardless of the merits.