The NRA and the “responsible” gun owners would say he should have “stood his ground” and that the only way to have done that was to be armed with a gun. Flip flop Freddy is lucky he didn’t get shot.
Step out of your bubble and get some facts and data. Its a really long article. But worth the read. If you want facts and data and to step out of your bubble.
This article has been updated since its original publication in September 2018. If you know of a study I’ve missed or are aware of a forthcoming study, email me.
In 2016, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) gave a powerful speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Scott talked about how he had been repeatedly pulled over by police officers who seemed to be suspicious of a black man driving a nice car. He added that a black senior-level staffer had experienced the same thing and had even downgraded his car in the hope of avoiding the problem. Given that Scott otherwise has pretty conservative politics, there was little objection or protest from the right. No one rose up to say that he was lying about getting pulled over.
The thing is, most people of color have a similar story or know someone who does. Yet, there’s a deep skepticism on the right of any assertion that the criminal justice system is racially biased. In early August, National Review editor and syndicated columnist Rich Lowry wrote a column disputing the notion that our system is racist. Andrew Sullivan wrote something similar in New York magazine. (Interestingly, both Lowry and Sullivan cite criminologist John Pfaff to support their positions. Pfaff has since protested on Twitter that both misinterpreted what he wrote.) And attempting to refute the notion that the system is racist has become a pretty regular beat for conservative crime pundit Heather Mac Donald.
Of particular concern to some on the right is the term “systemic racism,” often wrongly interpreted as an accusation that everyone in the system is racist. In fact, systemic racism means almost the opposite. It means that we have systems and institutions that produce racially disparate outcomes, regardless of the intentions of the people who work within them. When you consider that much of the criminal justice system was built, honed and firmly established during the Jim Crow era — an era almost everyone, conservatives included, will concede rife with racism — this is pretty intuitive. The modern criminal justice system helped preserve racial order — it kept black people in their place. For much of the early 20th century, in some parts of the country, that was its primary function. That it might retain some of those proclivities today shouldn’t be all that surprising.
In any case, after more than a decade covering these issues, it’s pretty clear to me that the evidence of racial bias in our criminal justice system isn’t just convincing — it’s overwhelming. But because there still seems to be some skepticism, I’ve attempted below to catalog the evidence. The list below isn’t remotely comprehensive. And if you know of other studies, please send them to me. I would like to make this piece a repository for this issue.
I, of course, can’t vouch for the robustness or statistical integrity of all of these studies. I’m only summarizing them. But for the most part, I’ve tried to include either peer-reviewed studies or reviews of data that tend to speak for themselves and don’t require much statistical analysis. I will note that most (but not all) of these studies do factor in variables that address common claims such as that the criminal justice system discriminates more by class than by race, or that racial discrepancies in sentencing or incarceration can be explained by the fact that black people commit more crimes. And I’ve also included a section for studies that do not find bias in various aspects of the criminal justice system. There are far fewer of these, though I’m open to the possibility that I missed some.
Finally, none of this is to say that race is the only thing we need to worry about in the criminal justice system. Certainly, lots of white people are wrongly accused, arrested and convicted. Lots of white people are treated unfairly, beaten, and unjustifiably shot and killed by police officers. White people too are harmed by policies such as mandatory minimums, asset forfeiture, and abuse of police, prosecutorial and judicial power.
There are problems here that are inextricable from race. And there are problems that aren’t directly related to race. But even the latter set of problems tend to be exacerbated when you factor race into the equation. On to the evidence.
I’ve had more than one retired police officer tell me that there is a running joke in law enforcement when it comes to racial profiling: It never happens . . . and it works. But the problem with trying to dismiss profiling concerns by noting that higher rates at which some minority groups commit certain crimes is that it overlooks the fact that huge percentages of black and Latino people have been pulled over, stopped on the street and generally harassed despite the fact that they have done nothing wrong. Stop and frisk data, for example, consistently show that about 3 percent of these encounters produce any evidence of a crime. So 97 percent-plus of these people are getting punished solely because they belong to a group that statistically commits some crimes at a higher rate. That ought to bother us.
A New York Times examination after the death of George Floyd found that while black people make up 19 percent of the Minneapolis population and 9 percent of its police, they were on the receiving end of 58 percent of the city’s police use-of-force incidents.
A massive study published in May 2020 of 95 million traffic stops by 56 police agencies between 2011 and 2018 found that while black people were much more likely to be pulled over than whites, the disparity lessens at night, when police are less able to distinguish the race of the driver. The study also found that blacks were more likely to be searched after a stop, though whites were more likely to be found with illicit drugs. The darker the sky, the less pronounced the disparity between white and black motorists. The study also found that in states that had legalized marijuana, the racial disparity narrowed but was still significant.
An August 2019 study published by the National Academy of Sciences based on police-shooting databases found that between 2013 and 2018, black men were about 2.5 times more likely than white men to be killed by police, and that black men have a 1-in-1,000 chance of dying at the hands of police. Black women were 1.4 more times likely to be killed than white women. Latino men were 1.3 to 1.4 times more likely to be killed than white men. Latino women were between 12 percent and 23 percent less likely to be killed than white women.
A 2019 study of 11,000 police stops over about four weeks in the District found that while black people make up 46 percent of the city’s population, they accounted for 70 percent of police stops, and 86 percent of stops that didn’t involve traffic enforcement.
An October 2019 report in the Los Angeles Times found that during traffic stops, “24% of black drivers and passengers were searched, compared with 16% of Latinos and 5% of whites.” The same study also found that police were slightly more likely to find drugs, weapons or other contraband among whites.
A 2019 study of police stops in Cincinnati found that black motorists were 30 percent more likely to be pulled over than white motorists. Black motorists also comprised 76 percent of arrests following a traffic stop despite making up 43 percent of the city’s population. It’s worth noting, again, that multiple studies have shown that searches of white motorists are slightly more likely to turn up contraband than searches of black motorists.
A 2020 report by the Austin Office of Police Oversight, Office of Innovation and Equity Office found that blacks and Latinos were more likely than whites to be stopped, searched and arrested despite similar “hit rates” for illicit drugs among those groups.
Another study found that in surrounding Travis County, Tex., blacks comprised about 30 percent of police arrests for possession of less than a gram of an illicit drug from 2017 to 2018, despite making up only 9 percent of the county’s population, and that surveys consistently show that blacks and whites use illegal drugs at about the same rate.
A 2019 study of the Columbus, Ohio, police department found that while black people make up 28 percent of the city’s population, about half of the use-of-force incidents by city police were against black residents.
A 2019 study of policing in Charleston, S.C., found that 61 percent of use-of-force incidents were against black people, who make up about 22 percent of the city’s population. The study did find that the level of force used did not significantly vary by race. White officers were more likely to be involved in a use-of-force incident than black officers. Black people also filed 63 percent of complaints against police. The study also found that black motorists were pulled over at a higher rate than would be predicted based on their involvement in traffic accidents.
A 2019 study in Portland, Ore., found that black motorists and pedestrians were much more likely to be stopped, receive tickets and be arrested for drug possession than white pedestrians and motorists.
A 2019 survey of traffic tickets in Indianapolis and its suburbs found that in the city, black drivers received 1.5 tickets for every white driver. In the suburban town of Fishers, the disparity grew to 4.5 tickets, and in the wealthy suburb of Carmel, black motorists received 18 tickets for every ticket issued to a white motorist.
A 2020 study commissioned by the Charlottesville city council found significant racial disparities in the city and surrounding county’s criminal justice systems in five key areas: “seriousness of charges brought, the number of companion charges, bail-bond release decisions, the length of stay awaiting trial, and guilty outcomes.” In the city, black men were 8.5 percent of the population, but comprised more than half the arrests. In the county, black men were 4.4 percent of the population, but comprised 37.6 percent of arrests.
A 2020 report on 1.8 million police stops by the eight largest law enforcement agencies in California found that blacks were stopped at a rate 2.5 times higher than the per capita rate of whites. The report also found that black people were far more likely to be stopped for “reasonable suspicion” (as opposed to actually breaking a law) and were three times more likely than any other group to be searched, even though searches of white people were more likely to turn up contraband.
A 2019 report in the Intercept found that blacks in South Bend, Ind., were 4.3 times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession.
A study of 542,000 traffic stops in Connecticut in 2017 found that the racial disparity in stops had narrowed from previous years. But it also found that blacks were more likely to be searched after stops for registration, license, seatbelt and cellphone violations. The study found that about 19 percent of searches of black motorists turned up contraband, vs. 29 percent of the searches of white motorists.
A study of police activity between 2012 and 2016 in Springfield, Mo., commissioned by the city’s police chief, found “substantial disparities in the rate at which African-Americans were stopped, and that the disparities increased, from 2012 to 2016 in Springfield. Some of this disparity is attributable to the fact that African-Americans are stopped for investigative purposes than would be predicted given their overall proportion of stops.” The report also found that “when African-Americans are stopped they are more likely to be searched and arrested than would be predicted given their proportion of stops and searches,” and that “it does not appear that the disparity in searches for African-Americans is attributable to a greater propensity to be in possession of contraband."
A 2019 report from Burlington, Vt., found that black drivers were slightly more likely than white drivers to be pulled over, but six times more likely to be searched. The report did find that the racial disparities were shrinking, and that since the legalization of marijuana, stops and searches of all drivers had dropped significantly.
In their book “Suspect Citizens,” Frank R. Baumgartner, Derek A. Epp and Kelsey Shoub reviewed 20 million traffic stops. In an interview with The Post, they shared what they found: “Blacks are almost twice as likely to be pulled over as whites — even though whites drive more on average,” “blacks are more likely to be searched following a stop,” and “just by getting in a car, a black driver has about twice the odds of being pulled over, and about four times the odds of being searched.” They found that blacks were more likely to be searched despite the fact they’re less likely to be found with contraband as a result of those searches.
In March of 2019, researchers compiled and analyzed data from more than 100 million traffic stops in the United States. What they found: Police were more likely to pull over black drivers. The researchers were able to confirm racial bias by measuring daytime stops against nighttime stops, when darkness would make it more difficult to ascertain a driver’s race. As with previous studies, they also found that black and Latino drivers are more likely to be searched for contraband — even though white drivers are consistently more likely to be found with contraband. They also found that legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington has caused fewer drivers to be searched during a stop, but that it did not alter the increased frequency with which black and Latino drivers are searched.
A 2014 telephone study of urban men found that “participants who reported more police contact also reported more trauma and anxiety symptoms, associations tied to how many stops they reported, the intrusiveness of the encounters, and their perceptions of police fairness,” and that “overall, the burden of police contact in each of these cities falls predominantly on young Black and Latino males.”
Though blacks make up just under 12 percent of the population in Texas, according to a database kept by the Texas Justice Initiative, they comprise 29 percent of deaths in police custody since 2005, and 27 percent of civilians shot by police officers. Hispanics were underrepresented in both categories.
A 2013 Justice Department study found that black and Latino drivers are more likely to be searched once they have been pulled over. About 2 percent of white motorists were searched, vs. 6 percent of black drivers and 7 percent of Latinos.
In 2015, the Charleston Post and Courier looked at incidents in which police stopped motorists but didn’t issue a citation. These are sometimes called “pretext stops,” because they suggest that the officer was profiling the motorist as a possible drug courier or suspected the motorist of other crimes. The paper found that after adjusting for population, blacks in nearly every part of the state were significantly more likely to be the subject of such stops.
A 2017 study of 4.5 million traffic stops by the 100 largest police departments in North Carolina found that blacks and Latinos were more likely to be searched than whites (5.4 percent, 4.1 percent and 3.1 percent, respectively), even though searches of white motorists were more likely than the others to turn up contraband (whites: 32 percent, blacks: 29 percent, Latinos: 19 percent).
According to the Justice Department, between 2012 and 2014, black people in Ferguson, Mo., accounted for 85 percent of vehicle stops, 90 percent of citations and 93 percent of arrests, despite comprising 67 percent of the population. Blacks were more than twice as likely as whites to be searched after traffic stops, even though they proved to be 26 percent less likely to be in possession of illegal drugs or weapons. Between 2011 and 2013, blacks also received 95 percent of jaywalking tickets and 94 percent of tickets for “failure to comply.” The Justice Department also found that the racial discrepancy for speeding tickets increased dramatically when researchers looked at tickets based on only an officer’s word vs. tickets based on objective evidence, such as vs. radar. Black people facing similar low-level charges as white people were 68 percent less likely to see those charges dismissed in court. More than 90 percent of the arrest warrants stemming from failure to pay/failure to appear were issued for black people.
These figures are similar to others throughout St. Louis County. For example, in the town of Florissant, 71 percent of the motorists pulled over by police in 2013 were black. Blacks make up 27 percent of the town at the time (they now make up 33 percent). Blacks were also twice as likely to be searched after a stop, even though white motorists were more likely to be found with contraband.
A study of “investigatory” traffic stops — that is, stops that did not result in a citation — by police in Kansas City found that blacks were 2.7 times more likely to be pulled over in an investigatory stop, and five times more likely to be searched.
A 2018 study of traffic stops in Vermont found that black drivers are up to four times more likely than white drivers to be searched during a traffic stop, even though white drivers are 30 to 50 percent more likely to be found with contraband.
A study of 237,000 traffic stops in Rhode Island in 2016 found that blacks comprised 11 percent of those stopped, significantly higher than their 6.5 percent share of the population at large. The study also found that blacks were more likely to be pulled over during the day, when the race of a driver is more easily ascertained.
A study of traffic stops in Connecticut in 2013 and 2014 found that blacks made up 13.5 percent of police stops — again, significantly higher than the black population at large (9.9 percent). This study also found that minority drivers were more likely to be pulled over during daylight hours.
A study of about 260,000 traffic stops in San Diego between 2014 and 2015 found that police more likely to search black and Latino drivers than white drivers, even though they were more likely to find contraband on white drivers.
A 2016 review of traffic stops in Bloomfield, N.J., found that though the city is 60 percent white and non-Hispanic, 78 percent of ticketed motorists were black or Hispanic. The study also found that police disproportionately stopped drivers around the city’s southern border, which it shares with towns and cities with larger minority populations.
A study of stop and frisk incidents in Boston between 2007 and 2010 that did not result in a citation or arrest found that 63 percent of such stops were of black people. Blacks made up 24 percent of the city’s population. Incredibly, 97.5 percent of these encounters resulted in no arrest or seizure of contraband.
A 2015 county-level study of police shootings from 2011 to 2014 found “a significant bias in the killing of unarmed black Americans relative to unarmed white Americans, in that the probability of being black, unarmed, and shot by police is about 3.49 times the probability of being white, unarmed, and shot by police on average.” The study also found “no relationship between county-level racial bias in police shootings and crime rates (even race-specific crime rates), meaning that the racial bias observed in police shootings in this data set is not explainable as a response to local-level crime rates.”
A 2015 statistical analysis of police shootings from 2011 to 2014 found that the racial disparity in police shootings of black people could not be explained by higher crime rates in majority-black communities.
A 2018 Post investigation found that murders of white people are more likely to be solved than murders of black people. There’s also a strong correlation between areas that are black-majority and low-income and the areas with the lowest clearance rate for homicides.
Similarly, a study published in June reviewed every reported homicide between 1976 and 2009 and found that “homicides with white victims are significantly more likely to be ‘cleared’ by the arrest of a suspect than are homicides with minority victims.”
A 2019 study of policing in Charleston, S.C., found that 61 percent of use-of-force incidents were against black people, who make up about 22 percent of the city’s population. The study did find that the level of force used did not significantly vary by race. White officers were more likely to be involved in a use-of-force incident than black officers. Black people also filed 63 percent of complaints against police. The study also found that black motorists were pulled over at a higher rate than would be predicted based on their involvement in traffic accidents.
A 2019 study in Portland, Ore., found that black motorists and pedestrians were much more likely to be stopped, receive tickets and be arrested for drug possession than white pedestrians and motorists.
A 2019 survey of traffic tickets in Indianapolis and its suburbs found that in the city, black drivers received 1.5 tickets for every white driver. In the suburban town of Fishers, the disparity grew to 4.5 tickets, and in the wealthy suburb of Carmel, black motorists received 18 tickets for every ticket issued to a white motorist.
A 2020 study commissioned by the Charlottesville city council found significant racial disparities in the city and surrounding county’s criminal justice systems in five key areas: “seriousness of charges brought, the number of companion charges, bail-bond release decisions, the length of stay awaiting trial, and guilty outcomes.” In the city, black men were 8.5 percent of the population, but comprised more than half the arrests. In the county, black men were 4.4 percent of the population, but comprised 37.6 percent of arrests.
A 2020 report on 1.8 million police stops by the eight largest law enforcement agencies in California found that blacks were stopped at a rate 2.5 times higher than the per capita rate of whites. The report also found that black people were far more likely to be stopped for “reasonable suspicion” (as opposed to actually breaking a law) and were three times more likely than any other group to be searched, even though searches of white people were more likely to turn up contraband.
A 2019 report in the Intercept found that blacks in South Bend, Ind., were 4.3 times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana possession.
A study of 542,000 traffic stops in Connecticut in 2017 found that the racial disparity in stops had narrowed from previous years. But it also found that blacks were more likely to be searched after stops for registration, license, seatbelt and cellphone violations. The study found that about 19 percent of searches of black motorists turned up contraband, vs. 29 percent of the searches of white motorists.
A study of police activity between 2012 and 2016 in Springfield, Mo., commissioned by the city’s police chief, found “substantial disparities in the rate at which African-Americans were stopped, and that the disparities increased, from 2012 to 2016 in Springfield. Some of this disparity is attributable to the fact that African-Americans are stopped for investigative purposes than would be predicted given their overall proportion of stops.” The report also found that “when African-Americans are stopped they are more likely to be searched and arrested than would be predicted given their proportion of stops and searches,” and that “it does not appear that the disparity in searches for African-Americans is attributable to a greater propensity to be in possession of contraband."
A 2019 report from Burlington, Vt., found that black drivers were slightly more likely than white drivers to be pulled over, but six times more likely to be searched. The report did find that the racial disparities were shrinking, and that since the legalization of marijuana, stops and searches of all drivers had dropped significantly.
In their book “Suspect Citizens,” Frank R. Baumgartner, Derek A. Epp and Kelsey Shoub reviewed 20 million traffic stops. In an interview with The Post, they shared what they found: “Blacks are almost twice as likely to be pulled over as whites — even though whites drive more on average,” “blacks are more likely to be searched following a stop,” and “just by getting in a car, a black driver has about twice the odds of being pulled over, and about four times the odds of being searched.” They found that blacks were more likely to be searched despite the fact they’re less likely to be found with contraband as a result of those searches.
In March of 2019, researchers compiled and analyzed data from more than 100 million traffic stops in the United States. What they found: Police were more likely to pull over black drivers. The researchers were able to confirm racial bias by measuring daytime stops against nighttime stops, when darkness would make it more difficult to ascertain a driver’s race. As with previous studies, they also found that black and Latino drivers are more likely to be searched for contraband — even though white drivers are consistently more likely to be found with contraband. They also found that legalization of marijuana in Colorado and Washington has caused fewer drivers to be searched during a stop, but that it did not alter the increased frequency with which black and Latino drivers are searched.
A 2014 telephone study of urban men found that “participants who reported more police contact also reported more trauma and anxiety symptoms, associations tied to how many stops they reported, the intrusiveness of the encounters, and their perceptions of police fairness,” and that “overall, the burden of police contact in each of these cities falls predominantly on young Black and Latino males.”
Though blacks make up just under 12 percent of the population in Texas, according to a database kept by the Texas Justice Initiative, they comprise 29 percent of deaths in police custody since 2005, and 27 percent of civilians shot by police officers. Hispanics were underrepresented in both categories.
A 2013 Justice Department study found that black and Latino drivers are more likely to be searched once they have been pulled over. About 2 percent of white motorists were searched, vs. 6 percent of black drivers and 7 percent of Latinos.
In 2015, the Charleston Post and Courier looked at incidents in which police stopped motorists but didn’t issue a citation. These are sometimes called “pretext stops,” because they suggest that the officer was profiling the motorist as a possible drug courier or suspected the motorist of other crimes. The paper found that after adjusting for population, blacks in nearly every part of the state were significantly more likely to be the subject of such stops.
A 2017 study of 4.5 million traffic stops by the 100 largest police departments in North Carolina found that blacks and Latinos were more likely to be searched than whites (5.4 percent, 4.1 percent and 3.1 percent, respectively), even though searches of white motorists were more likely than the others to turn up contraband (whites: 32 percent, blacks: 29 percent, Latinos: 19 percent).
According to the Justice Department, between 2012 and 2014, black people in Ferguson, Mo., accounted for 85 percent of vehicle stops, 90 percent of citations and 93 percent of arrests, despite comprising 67 percent of the population. Blacks were more than twice as likely as whites to be searched after traffic stops, even though they proved to be 26 percent less likely to be in possession of illegal drugs or weapons. Between 2011 and 2013, blacks also received 95 percent of jaywalking tickets and 94 percent of tickets for “failure to comply.” The Justice Department also found that the racial discrepancy for speeding tickets increased dramatically when researchers looked at tickets based on only an officer’s word vs. tickets based on objective evidence, such as vs. radar. Black people facing similar low-level charges as white people were 68 percent less likely to see those charges dismissed in court. More than 90 percent of the arrest warrants stemming from failure to pay/failure to appear were issued for black people.
These figures are similar to others throughout St. Louis County. For example, in the town of Florissant, 71 percent of the motorists pulled over by police in 2013 were black. Blacks make up 27 percent of the town at the time (they now make up 33 percent). Blacks were also twice as likely to be searched after a stop, even though white motorists were more likely to be found with contraband.
A study of “investigatory” traffic stops — that is, stops that did not result in a citation — by police in Kansas City found that blacks were 2.7 times more likely to be pulled over in an investigatory stop, and five times more likely to be searched.
A 2018 study of traffic stops in Vermont found that black drivers are up to four times more likely than white drivers to be searched during a traffic stop, even though white drivers are 30 to 50 percent more likely to be found with contraband.
A study of 237,000 traffic stops in Rhode Island in 2016 found that blacks comprised 11 percent of those stopped, significantly higher than their 6.5 percent share of the population at large. The study also found that blacks were more likely to be pulled over during the day, when the race of a driver is more easily ascertained.
A study of traffic stops in Connecticut in 2013 and 2014 found that blacks made up 13.5 percent of police stops — again, significantly higher than the black population at large (9.9 percent). This study also found that minority drivers were more likely to be pulled over during daylight hours.
A study of about 260,000 traffic stops in San Diego between 2014 and 2015 found that police more likely to search black and Latino drivers than white drivers, even though they were more likely to find contraband on white drivers.
A 2016 review of traffic stops in Bloomfield, N.J., found that though the city is 60 percent white and non-Hispanic, 78 percent of ticketed motorists were black or Hispanic. The study also found that police disproportionately stopped drivers around the city’s southern border, which it shares with towns and cities with larger minority populations.
A study of stop and frisk incidents in Boston between 2007 and 2010 that did not result in a citation or arrest found that 63 percent of such stops were of black people. Blacks made up 24 percent of the city’s population. Incredibly, 97.5 percent of these encounters resulted in no arrest or seizure of contraband.
A 2015 county-level study of police shootings from 2011 to 2014 found “a significant bias in the killing of unarmed black Americans relative to unarmed white Americans, in that the probability of being black, unarmed, and shot by police is about 3.49 times the probability of being white, unarmed, and shot by police on average.” The study also found “no relationship between county-level racial bias in police shootings and crime rates (even race-specific crime rates), meaning that the racial bias observed in police shootings in this data set is not explainable as a response to local-level crime rates.”
A 2015 statistical analysis of police shootings from 2011 to 2014 found that the racial disparity in police shootings of black people could not be explained by higher crime rates in majority-black communities.
A 2018 Post investigation found that murders of white people are more likely to be solved than murders of black people. There’s also a strong correlation between areas that are black-majority and low-income and the areas with the lowest clearance rate for homicides.
Similarly, a study published in June reviewed every reported homicide between 1976 and 2009 and found that “homicides with white victims are significantly more likely to be ‘cleared’ by the arrest of a suspect than are homicides with minority victims.”
Another ACLU study, this time on the use of stop-and-frisk in Milwaukee between 2010 and 2017, found that in nearly half of the more than 700,000 such stops, the police failed to demonstrate reasonable suspicion as required by the Constitution. The study found that between pedestrian stops and traffic stops, black people were six times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people, and that less than 1 percent of those searches turned up any contraband. Here again, while black and Latino drivers were more likely to be searched, they were 20 percent less likely to be in possession of any contraband.
Going back to 2002, data show that when New York City was implementing its stop-and-frisk policy, white people generally made up only about 10 percent of such stops, despite making up about 45 percent of the city. Black and Latino people made up more than 80 percent of the stops, despite making up just over half the city population. Consistently, between 85 and 90 percent of such stops produced no arrest, citation or evidence of criminal activity. Fewer than 1 percent of stops produced a gun, the alleged reason for the policy.
Between 2012 and 2014, the Los Angeles Police Department received more than 1,350 citizen complaints of racial profiling. The department didn’t uphold a single complaint.
A 2016 report found that between 2011 and 2015, black drivers in Nashville’s Davidson County were pulled over at a rate of 1,122 stops per 1,000 drivers — so on average, more than once per black driver. Black drivers were also searched at twice the rate of white drivers, though — as in other jurisdictions — searches of white drivers were more likely to turn up contraband.
A 2017 study of interactions between officers and citizens taken from footage captured by police officer body cameras found that “officers speak with consistently less respect toward black versus white community members, even after controlling for the race of the officer, the severity of the infraction, the location of the stop, and the outcome of the stop.”
An NAACP survey of citizen complaints against police officers in North Charleston, S.C., between 2006 and 2016 found that complaints by white citizens were about two-thirds more likely to be sustained than complaints filed by black citizens. When the complainant alleged excessive force, white complaints were sustained seven times more often than black complaints.
A 2015 study found that though black women are just 6 percent of the female population of San Francisco, they account for 45.5 percent of female arrests.
And that's all just on "Policing and Profiling." Imagine those facts and data.
Most of this story is full of falsehoods , it was the front page headline on Fox News this morning , I would go to a different news outlet since right below it was an article from Tucker Carlson calling Covid a hoax and mind you this was TODAY JUNE 11 2020.
https://twitter.com/i/events/1273301427394244608 This will drive the good old boyzzzz crowd crazy here once the NBA Football Baseball leagues get started they will all kneel! Not sure about hockey players and I don’t think every white athlete will.
I will admit I never heard it called this until a few days ago. Freedom day, yes. Juneteenth, no.
Anyone else care to admit they never heard it called that before?
Did some reading on it and it is quite fascinating. It has been in Black community for over 100 years and started off in Texas. https://www.juneteenth.com/history.htm
It has been celebrated in TX for as long as I can remember. I always wondered why it was not a federal holiday, though, until reading a little more about its history.
I will admit I never heard it called this until a few days ago. Freedom day, yes. Juneteenth, no.
Anyone else care to admit they never heard it called that before?
Did some reading on it and it is quite fascinating. It has been in Black community for over 100 years and started off in Texas. https://www.juneteenth.com/history.htm
First I heard if it, but I'm Canadian so it's not my fault.
i have had a basic knowledge of what it meant but it wasn't something i was taught in school. i had heard the word juneteenth a few times in college so i looked it up online about 20 years ago. i think it should be a national holiday.
"You can tell the greatness of a man by what makes him angry." - Lincoln
i have had a basic knowledge of what it meant but it wasn't something i was taught in school. i had heard the word juneteenth a few times in college so i looked it up online about 20 years ago. i think it should be a national holiday.
Ii is recognized as a state holiday since 1980 in Texas.
i have had a basic knowledge of what it meant but it wasn't something i was taught in school. i had heard the word juneteenth a few times in college so i looked it up online about 20 years ago. i think it should be a national holiday.
Ii is recognized as a state holiday since 1980 in Texas.
This explains why I have known about it for as long as I can remember.
i have had a basic knowledge of what it meant but it wasn't something i was taught in school. i had heard the word juneteenth a few times in college so i looked it up online about 20 years ago. i think it should be a national holiday.
Ii is recognized as a state holiday since 1980 in Texas.
This explains why I have known about it for as long as I can remember.
I literally just learned this but makes sense why you would have heard of it.
i have had a basic knowledge of what it meant but it wasn't something i was taught in school. i had heard the word juneteenth a few times in college so i looked it up online about 20 years ago. i think it should be a national holiday.
Ii is recognized as a state holiday since 1980 in Texas.
This explains why I have known about it for as long as I can remember.
I literally just learned this but makes sense why you would have heard of it.
Never knew it was only a state holiday, I just assumed it was celebrated nationally. Education is good!
Comments
Flip flop Freddy gets knocked the F out, racist prick and the man who knocks him out ,tries to help him out by moving him away from traffic!
#BLM
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/opinions/systemic-racism-police-evidence-criminal-justice-system/?itid=hp_save-opinions-float-right-4-0_opinion-card-c-right:homepage/story-ans
By
This article has been updated since its original publication in September 2018. If you know of a study I’ve missed or are aware of a forthcoming study, email me.
In 2016, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) gave a powerful speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Scott talked about how he had been repeatedly pulled over by police officers who seemed to be suspicious of a black man driving a nice car. He added that a black senior-level staffer had experienced the same thing and had even downgraded his car in the hope of avoiding the problem. Given that Scott otherwise has pretty conservative politics, there was little objection or protest from the right. No one rose up to say that he was lying about getting pulled over.
The thing is, most people of color have a similar story or know someone who does. Yet, there’s a deep skepticism on the right of any assertion that the criminal justice system is racially biased. In early August, National Review editor and syndicated columnist Rich Lowry wrote a column disputing the notion that our system is racist. Andrew Sullivan wrote something similar in New York magazine. (Interestingly, both Lowry and Sullivan cite criminologist John Pfaff to support their positions. Pfaff has since protested on Twitter that both misinterpreted what he wrote.) And attempting to refute the notion that the system is racist has become a pretty regular beat for conservative crime pundit Heather Mac Donald.
Of particular concern to some on the right is the term “systemic racism,” often wrongly interpreted as an accusation that everyone in the system is racist. In fact, systemic racism means almost the opposite. It means that we have systems and institutions that produce racially disparate outcomes, regardless of the intentions of the people who work within them. When you consider that much of the criminal justice system was built, honed and firmly established during the Jim Crow era — an era almost everyone, conservatives included, will concede rife with racism — this is pretty intuitive. The modern criminal justice system helped preserve racial order — it kept black people in their place. For much of the early 20th century, in some parts of the country, that was its primary function. That it might retain some of those proclivities today shouldn’t be all that surprising.
In any case, after more than a decade covering these issues, it’s pretty clear to me that the evidence of racial bias in our criminal justice system isn’t just convincing — it’s overwhelming. But because there still seems to be some skepticism, I’ve attempted below to catalog the evidence. The list below isn’t remotely comprehensive. And if you know of other studies, please send them to me. I would like to make this piece a repository for this issue.
I, of course, can’t vouch for the robustness or statistical integrity of all of these studies. I’m only summarizing them. But for the most part, I’ve tried to include either peer-reviewed studies or reviews of data that tend to speak for themselves and don’t require much statistical analysis. I will note that most (but not all) of these studies do factor in variables that address common claims such as that the criminal justice system discriminates more by class than by race, or that racial discrepancies in sentencing or incarceration can be explained by the fact that black people commit more crimes. And I’ve also included a section for studies that do not find bias in various aspects of the criminal justice system. There are far fewer of these, though I’m open to the possibility that I missed some.
Finally, none of this is to say that race is the only thing we need to worry about in the criminal justice system. Certainly, lots of white people are wrongly accused, arrested and convicted. Lots of white people are treated unfairly, beaten, and unjustifiably shot and killed by police officers. White people too are harmed by policies such as mandatory minimums, asset forfeiture, and abuse of police, prosecutorial and judicial power.
There are problems here that are inextricable from race. And there are problems that aren’t directly related to race. But even the latter set of problems tend to be exacerbated when you factor race into the equation. On to the evidence.
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Policing and profiling
I’ve had more than one retired police officer tell me that there is a running joke in law enforcement when it comes to racial profiling: It never happens . . . and it works. But the problem with trying to dismiss profiling concerns by noting that higher rates at which some minority groups commit certain crimes is that it overlooks the fact that huge percentages of black and Latino people have been pulled over, stopped on the street and generally harassed despite the fact that they have done nothing wrong. Stop and frisk data, for example, consistently show that about 3 percent of these encounters produce any evidence of a crime. So 97 percent-plus of these people are getting punished solely because they belong to a group that statistically commits some crimes at a higher rate. That ought to bother us.
- A New York Times examination after the death of George Floyd found that while black people make up 19 percent of the Minneapolis population and 9 percent of its police, they were on the receiving end of 58 percent of the city’s police use-of-force incidents.
- A massive study published in May 2020 of 95 million traffic stops by 56 police agencies between 2011 and 2018 found that while black people were much more likely to be pulled over than whites, the disparity lessens at night, when police are less able to distinguish the race of the driver. The study also found that blacks were more likely to be searched after a stop, though whites were more likely to be found with illicit drugs. The darker the sky, the less pronounced the disparity between white and black motorists. The study also found that in states that had legalized marijuana, the racial disparity narrowed but was still significant.
- An August 2019 study published by the National Academy of Sciences based on police-shooting databases found that between 2013 and 2018, black men were about 2.5 times more likely than white men to be killed by police, and that black men have a 1-in-1,000 chance of dying at the hands of police. Black women were 1.4 more times likely to be killed than white women. Latino men were 1.3 to 1.4 times more likely to be killed than white men. Latino women were between 12 percent and 23 percent less likely to be killed than white women.
- A 2019 study of 11,000 police stops over about four weeks in the District found that while black people make up 46 percent of the city’s population, they accounted for 70 percent of police stops, and 86 percent of stops that didn’t involve traffic enforcement.
- An October 2019 report in the Los Angeles Times found that during traffic stops, “24% of black drivers and passengers were searched, compared with 16% of Latinos and 5% of whites.” The same study also found that police were slightly more likely to find drugs, weapons or other contraband among whites.
- A 2019 study of police stops in Cincinnati found that black motorists were 30 percent more likely to be pulled over than white motorists. Black motorists also comprised 76 percent of arrests following a traffic stop despite making up 43 percent of the city’s population. It’s worth noting, again, that multiple studies have shown that searches of white motorists are slightly more likely to turn up contraband than searches of black motorists.
- A 2020 report by the Austin Office of Police Oversight, Office of Innovation and Equity Office found that blacks and Latinos were more likely than whites to be stopped, searched and arrested despite similar “hit rates” for illicit drugs among those groups.
- Another study found that in surrounding Travis County, Tex., blacks comprised about 30 percent of police arrests for possession of less than a gram of an illicit drug from 2017 to 2018, despite making up only 9 percent of the county’s population, and that surveys consistently show that blacks and whites use illegal drugs at about the same rate.
- A 2019 study of the Columbus, Ohio, police department found that while black people make up 28 percent of the city’s population, about half of the use-of-force incidents by city police were against black residents.
Article and the data continue.Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
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https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/11/politics/seattle-mayor-trump-protests/index.html
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Most of this story is full of falsehoods , it was the front page headline on Fox News this morning , I would go to a different news outlet since right below it was an article from Tucker Carlson calling Covid a hoax and mind you this was TODAY JUNE 11 2020.
FUCK FOX NEWS ( sorry that off topic )
My wife was just telling me about this earlier today. Good move, Quaker Oats!
Even if now she got a perm"
Big Daddy Kane wrote that back in 1990.
This will drive the good old boyzzzz crowd crazy here once the NBA Football Baseball leagues get started they will all kneel! Not sure about hockey players and I don’t think every white athlete will.
Great artist he totally nails it!
I will admit I never heard it called this until a few days ago. Freedom day, yes. Juneteenth, no.
Anyone else care to admit they never heard it called that before?
Did some reading on it and it is quite fascinating. It has been in Black community for over 100 years and started off in Texas.
https://www.juneteenth.com/history.htm
😉
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-sports/twins-remove-calvin-griffith-statue-from-target-field