The strange death of Freddie Gray

[somerfrost]

Originally Posted by dellinger63

We are also seeing young white men die at the hands of police, in fact more frequently than young black men.

What's really sad is we are seeing far more young black men and women being killed by young black men than by police. However many of those victims aren't being chased or pursued for crimes, real or suspected but walking to school, playing in the park, sitting on their front steps and even lying in their beds.

There definitely is a problem in this country but making police the scapegoat is absurd.

Dell, don't you ever get tired of parroting the same old tired line? Yes, we all know the stats regarding black on black crime and I'm not scapegoating the police but you have to have your head stuffed way up your anal cavity to not recognize the animosity between the black community and predominately white police departments. You cannot disregard history and that history is full of lawless behavior by white policemen against black men, women and children. For decades, so called law enforcement folks were involved in lynchings, torture and abuse of power with the black community enduring same. Sure much of this abuse occurred in the south but it was by no means restricted to there. Today, black folks, especially young men, are still considered guilty of something if seen in the "wrong" place (code for upscale white neighborhoods). I worked in the prison system and was an MP in the service, I understand that law enforcement is a tough job and I respect the vast majority of policemen who do their best to protect law-abiding citizens but there is no defense for those who disgrace the badge and behave like thugs. Some of problems are simply related to lack of proper training but others result from racist ideologies and macho behavior. When police authorities refer to citizens as "lynch mobs" or "enemy combatants" it is not only inflammatory but an indication of a mindset that is dangerous to ALL citizens. We need the police, they protect us and enforce the law...but they are not above the law!

[Danzig]

Among those we do know were shot by police, black teens were 21 times more likely to be shot dead than their white counterparts.

“The 1,217 deadly police shootings from 2010 to 2012 captured in the federal data show that blacks, age 15 to 19, were killed at a rate of 31.17 per million, while just 1.47 per million white males in that age range died at the hands of police,” a new ProPublica report explains, noting that if whites were killed at the same ratio there would have been another 185 white deaths, just during that three-year period, just of those in that narrow age range.

To arrive at this statistic, ProPublica analyzed the list of 12,000 police shooting deaths that were self-reported by agencies to the Federal Bureau of Investigation between 1980 and 2012. Because this data is self-reported and departments are not required to submit information, this data likely significantly undercounts the number of shootings. Florida departments, for example, haven’t submitted data since 1997 and New York City hasn’t submitted data since 2007. And the FBI asks only for “justifiable homicide” figures, meaning in those instances where the shootings are most overtly viewed as unjustified or the litigation is ongoing, departments are less likely to report.

[Danzig]

and of course we know that prison sentences are longer for blacks than whites for the same crime, that blacks are more likely than whites to be given prison sentences...death row is also racially biased. those are facts....but some still believe race is no factor, when in fact study after study shows it very much is.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014...04463789858002

that's just one of many articles on the subject.
people need to quit pretending there's not an issue here. it needs to be accepted, faced, addressed. note in that article that since the scotus ruling, sentences returned to what they'd been before the guidelines were adopted.


here's another:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/we...ater.html?_r=0

note the disparity of searches conducted...and so often, whites are shown to be caught more often than others wih contraband, yet they are still searched less often! talk about perception vs reality!!

[dellinger63]

Originally Posted by Danzig

and of course we know that prison sentences are longer for blacks than whites for the same crime, that blacks are more likely than whites to be given prison sentences...death row is also racially biased. those are facts....but some still believe race is no factor, when in fact study after study shows it very much is.

Current U.S. Death Row Population by Race
BLACK 1,267 41.75%
WHITE 1,305 43.00%


Death Row Population Figures from NAACP-LDF "Death Row USA (October 1, 2014)"

Since the vast, vast majority of death row inmates are in for murder and not because of race, it seems necessary to determine what the racial makeup is of offenders committing murders. Using 2013 FBI stats (the latest available)

Total Murders 5,655
Whites 2,730 48.27%
Blacks 2,681 47.40%

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr...ender_2013.xls

So with whites committing 48.27% of all murders they occupy 43% of death row. While blacks committing 47.45% of all murders occupy 41.75% of death row. Doesn't seem to get any fairer than that!