The solution to racial disparities in minor arrests
This article on Minneapolis indicates how powerfully the idea of disparate impact has taken over debate about possible racism in policing.
Flawed science is used to prove racism, according to John Hinderaker at Powerline:
But one thing may already have jumped out at you: while the ACLU report goes on and on about “people of color” being victimized by the police, not all people of color are, apparently, created equal. Note that the disparity between population and arrests is greater for Asians than for African-Americans and Indians, only in the opposite direction. Asians account for 6% of the population of Minneapolis, but only 1% of the low-level arrests.
Why might that be? Astonishingly, neither the ACLU report nor the Star Tribune story on it ever mentions the Asian “disparity,” even though the ACLU casually assumes that “[t]he numbers show a startling disparity in the way police enforce low-level offenses.” Would the ACLU have us believe that the Minneapolis police are conspiring to cover up low-level crimes by Asians? Presumably not: it is obvious that Asians are “under-represented” among such arrests because they rarely commit such crimes.
But if that is true, the whole racism hypothesis falls apart…
Well, not necessarily, because there can be selective racism: negative for blacks, positive for Asians. You can do a lot to rationalize the statistics you have to fit your theory, if you so desire.
Hinderaker goes on to explain how the best example the study offers to show that the differences in minor traffic arrests between African American and others is actually due to racism is somewhat suspect. It’s based on a chart that indicates a large disparity between arrests of blacks and others for the months of June, July, and August in Minneapolis. The ACLU says the chart shows a much greater disparity during daylight hours, when the race of the driver can be more easily ascertained, and that this fact points strongly to racism as being the reason.
It’s a very interesting chart:
You can clearly see a big difference during the mid-afternoon to 6 PM between the races in terms of these arrests. By why do the numbers fall back down in the early hours of evening, starting at 6 PM? It’s just as easy to distinguish black drivers from white during those later hours (in summertime) as it is in midday, and there’s usually a lot of traffic at that time. The same for the hours of 6-8 AM, when the falloff is even greater. So what’s going on?
As Hinderaker points out, it’s hard to see racism as the cause here. Does racism increase enormously in the afternoon as opposed to morning or early evening, with the same visibility conditions?
Perhaps there’s something about white drivers that changes in the afternoons. Perhaps the afternoons are when most of the young white men are otherwise occupied, and the driving field for whites is left to the suburban housewife, who tends to drive a lot more cautiously? Or perhaps it’s something about where police tend to patrol in the mid-afternoon as opposed to rush hours?
The ACLU’s suggestion for the remedy for all of this racism is the one that has worked so well in Baltimore: less policing.
Reminds me of Obama’s plan to reduce the racial disparity of students disciplined in the public school system.
[NOTE: I haven’t had a chance to read the actual ACLU report, but I skimmed the data there on the times of traffic stops and racial disparities and found no extra details that would give me an idea of what’s really going on with these numbers. I will try to take more time later to look at it.]
Why does the liberal, tolerant, and enlightened city of San Francisco arrest black women at 13 times the rate of women of other races?
Wringing my hands! The horror!
Nothing is every the fault of the people who get stopped. The police are never patrolling certain areas because that’s where the crime rate is high.Kids like Trayvon Martin never get kicked out of school for their behavior. I am sick of the excuses.
In Madison,WI, black adults are 8 times more likely than white adults to be arrested.
Madison, Libtard land. The horror!
Then there is the Modern Debtor’s Prison wrote:
You don’t get $321 in fines and fees and 3 warrants per household from an about-average crime rate.
You get numbers like this from bullshit arrests for jaywalking and constant “low level harassment involving traffic stops, court appearances, high fines, and the threat of jail for failure to pay.”
The DOJ report on the Ferguson Police Department verifies this in stunning detail:
Ferguson has allowed its focus on revenue generation to fundamentally compromise the role of Ferguson’s municipal court.
The municipal court does not act as a neutral arbiter of the law or a check on unlawful police conduct.
… Our investigation has found overwhelming evidence of minor municipal code violations resulting in multiple arrests, jail time, and payments that exceed the cost of the original ticket many times over.
One woman, discussed above, received two parking tickets for a single violation in 2007 that then totaled $151 plus fees. Over seven years later, she still owed Ferguson $541–after already paying $550 in fines and fees, having multiple arrest warrants issued against her, and being arrested and jailed on several occasions.
Predatory fining was incentivized…
Land of the all knowing, all loving, all feeeeeling …
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/prison.htm
^^^^
The MATH behind disparate impacts has already been laid bare.
The more LIBERAL the society the MORE disparate the impact appears to exist in the crime blotters.
Things equal out only in two states:
Absolute tyranny
Absolute anarchy
&&&&&&
The larger error is that of STILL requiring every single soul to be IDENTICAL in all metrics.
Only then can you apply Deming’s 14 points of (‘social’ ) quality control.
Irony takes us on a Mobius path, here, for Deming dialed in on “understanding variation” as the focal point of quality control / nee out-put and results.
&&&
What’s happening here is that the Do-Gooders are applying quality control metrics to highly complicated, multi-variable, statistics — that are sure to have a high noise to signal content.
The assumption of such studies is that whites and blacks are the same in all ways except color. The truth is they couldn’t be much more different in the aggregate. The black violent crime rate is at least seven times higher than the white rate. Blacks are more likely to be poor and to come from a single parent household. They are more likely to drop out of school and be unemployed. They are more likely to get expelled from school. The differences are great.
Message to Blacks: Stop committing crimes.
At some point, when the evidence has piled up to an insurmountable height, even Liberals might have to admit that The Bell Curve got it right. At that point, and not before, we can start adopting policies that deal with this problem. Until then, we’re just keep throwing money at it, with no discernible positive effect.
I live in a third – tier burb of the Twin Cities and have spent a good amount of time in Minneapolis itself since moving here in ’76.
I have no strong opinions one way or the other on Ms. Harteau who is the Chief of Police.
I did notice her very strong objection to the survey methodology…
http://kstp.com/article/stories/s3809193.shtml
“Minneapolis Police Chief Janeé Harteau said Thursday the report lacks context.
“There are at least 35 individuals that have been arrested 50-75 times within 5 years. So that one person that was arrested 51 times would be counted as 51 African American males being arrested, when in reality it is one person with 51 arrests” Harteau said.”
Figures can lie and liars can figure….
Democrats are guilty.
So instead of wasting time analyzing their guilt, we just skip to the end and start the solution.
Roll-aide…
The mayor is insistent that ALL racial disparate impact is to be eliminated — it’s a big thing with her.
See above:
Total anarchy
Total tyranny
The ONLY two social conventions that will reduced disparate out comes to zero.
LIBERALISM increases disparate impact.
It HAS to.
Read the link op. cit.
These liberal birdbrains and their theories. They never stop to think that it’s absurd to imagine that cops are always and everywhere just out looking to arrest innocent blacks.
Anyone ever been on grand jury duty? I have. Man, it’s OBVIOUS which communities generate the lion’s share of the crime. It’s also obvious that they never bring in people with Zero Reason. (Not always right, but I think we failed to indict in just two cases, and one came back with more evidence that did nail it.)
And before anyone starts talking about ham sandwiches, that’s not the way it was at all. Like Richard Pryor said, “Man, those m*****f**s beLONG in jail!!!”
I’ve also observed over at Noos for Yahoos that in the Comments sections, John and Jane Q. Public aren’t buying the BS that the liberal bleeding hearts are selling — At All. In fact, the news about the black male crime rate being at least an order of magnitude worse than anyone else’s (and even three orders of magnitude in a couple of categories) is, like, you know, Out There.
The public isn’t buying this bull. Which is good.
Looking at causes, including the nature of violations, would undermine the narrative and therefore weaken their leverage.
Still, they can always rely on redistribution or creation (e.g. money/credit/debt/Obamacare) of secular opiates to suppress integrity and conscience. And where people resist the intoxicating effects, there are executive orders, judicial decrees, and the social complex to force a consensus. Secular opiates are far more potent than religious/moral philosophies to motivate individuals to choose self-moderating, responsible behavior.
The missing link of recycling is that it is a reductive process.
Unless the person crosses in front of you, as in an intersection, you have no idea what you are pulling over, until you walk up to the car.
There’s a simple solution to all of that.
Living apart.
For years people have been fighting for the right to divorce. That was seen as progressive. Why shouldn’t communities have this same right too?
By the way, there’s an obvios explanation to the graph.
9AM to 5PM is worktime. If you’re in the office, you can’t comming any driving offense.
So basically the graph shows that whether a community has a higher unemployement, they have more spare time to drive around and get driving offenses.
All I can say is that Baltimore is presenting us a very interesting social science experiment in real time. I assume the Minneapolis ACLU is standing four-square behind what is happening there.
The people driving around between 9AM and 5PM tend to be MORE UNEMPLOYED than those driving around during morning and evening rush hours!!
Black crime rates have NOTHING to do with race. It’s ALL about culture. The urban black culture is VASTLY different than the urban non-black culture.
Reminds me of the large study undertaken in 2002 by the Justice Department of traffic stops by New Jersey state troopers. They had found previous evidence of racial profiling, and did the new study to prove that the troopers were stopping black drivers for speeding based on racial profiling. It was a well-designed study, using radar to identify speeders and high-speed cameras to take pictures of drivers. Three impartial people reviewed the photographs and, if at least 2 of them agreed on the driver’s race, they accepted the photograph and only then did others match up the photos to the recorded speeds. Surprise!! Black drivers were about twice as likely as white drivers to be speeding, and they were actually stopped and ticketed in slightly LESS proportion to the number of actual speeders than were whites. The Justice Department refused to publicly release the study. Unbelievable.
RigelDog:
Do you have a link to something about the study? That’s certainly interesting.
Do you have a link to something about the study? That’s certainly interesting.
Had bookmarked it at the time for it amused me greatly, here.
Looking into this right now. Somewhat OT but amazing. Jeez!
Me, myself and I, dug into the CDC site a tad.
Roughly:
Blacks only make up about 12-14% of the US population.
But children and elderly are half of that. So blacks that are sexually active make up 6% of US population. Split that in two for males and females and you get 3%.
Digging further in the CDC site, blacks account for 70% of all reported cases of gonorrhea. And that’s just the dudes who got treated for it… the others, hmmm …
Same goes for clamydia and syphilis. Blacks accounted for 50% of ALL cases. That’s an insane number.
In toto If 100 people in a room with 3 of them accounting for over half of all STD’s and those 3 are always black people … hmmm.
Same for AIDS. The aids rate among black males is astounding. Consider that at least 30% of all black males in the above 3% group are locked away in prison and the numbers become even more astounding. It seems that 2% of our entire population is responsible for almost all diseases and all violent crime, rape, murders, and robbery.
I’m not going to list every CDC statistic. Basically, there is roughly a 100% probability that any random black has some type of or multie STD’s.
Many for which there is no cure for like AIDS, Herpes, and Hep-C. Hmmm… serious pathology.
A plague on themselves since they mostly seem to go after each others. Paging Al and consorts ….
Not sure I can blame the voters on that one.
Astounding.
Yann nailed my immediate thoughts precisely.
(And my the way, I’m from Minneapolis; I used to live in the Congressional district now filled by the only Muslim, Keith Ellison – my old university roomie, turned prof, still lives there.)