Joe speaks out

[CJD]

(05-29-2020, 08:58 PM)Whatever Wrote: African Americans are statistically more likely to resist arrest.  Because of that, they are more likely to be slain while being taken into custody.

In '15, San Francisco did a study on those charged with resisting arrest for misdemeanor charges.  While African Americans made up only 6% of the population, they accounted for 45% of those cases.  White/Hispanics made up roughly half of the population and accounted for 39% of these cases.  Asians accounted for only 3% of those cases despite accounting for 1/3 of the population.

You basically have a self-perpetuating cycle.  Police tend to be more aggressive with African American suspects because they have a tendency to resist arrest.  Because of that, African American suspects wind up getting needlessly killed, which makes African Americans distrust the cops and more likely to resist.  It's easy to say that the cops shouldn't be more aggressive with African Americans, but 43% of the police officers murdered in the line of duty in '15 were murdered by African Americans. That number is also vastly out of whack compared to the 13% of the population African Americans represent. It's easy to say when it's not our asses out there.

Unfortunately, there are a large number of cultural and socio-economic factors that play into all of this.  There are no easy solutions.  

It doesn't matter at all that black people resist more than white people. That statement ignores the history of police violence towards black people and it is the policeman's job to break that cycle, not the black people.

We live in a world where a cop can claim that he was scared and feared for his life as a reason to killing an unarmed person and then that same unarmed person is told (or rather, people who are outraged at his death are told) that if they just followed the rules and didn't resist arrest/panic, they'd still be alive.

We're literally victim blaming victims of police brutality and then wondering why people are pissed off at the police right now.

Police are paid and trained to de-escalate situations. It is not the job of the victims of police brutality to de-escalate the situation. The victims are unarmed, untrained and scared. It should be expected that they act irrationally when a gun (or taser, or whatever) is being waved in their face.