In the wake of its
report on the Ferguson PD, Eric Holder says the Federal government is prepared to
take any steps necessary to enforce compliance with reforms up to and including dismantling the department entirely. The President has suggested that, while he
doesn't view Ferguson as "typical," he thinks it's not all that uncommon across the country.
It is typical. If anything, Ferguson may be less strict with African-Americans than average. One can find the same statistics in every village and metropolis in the country, because African-Americans have a 4-16x greater incidence of violent crime. Those doing the investigation knew that going in, and knew it was a slam-dunk to make Ferguson look bad, because most readers will assume that unbalanced numbers simply must mean that the police are doing something wrong, because what else could it be? The belief that all police departments are about equally prejudiced, no matter who runs them, what the racial mix is, and what training they've had, is considered more likely than a difference between races in criminality.
ReplyDeleteAs the majority of victims are black, it remains true that the Obama-Holder approach will result in even more black victims, as the decent 90+% are left less-protected than white people would be.
BTW, blue states are even more disproportionate in locking up African Americans than red states are.
I think cops would admit to being a lot jumpier about gauging the threat posed by men than by women, too. Not because they hate or disrespect men, but because people play the averages until they can learn enough about an individual to make an individual judgment. If women in my neck of the woods got in the habit of pulling out concealed weapons at traffic stops and shooting cops, or carrying bombs under our baggy clothes, things would change pretty quick, whether it made feminists mad or not.
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