Re: Police brutality
On Apr 16, 2007, at 4:32 PM, Dennis Claxton wrote:
I’m not anti-cop, but I think what Wojtek says about abuse of authority being minimal and the work of a few bad apples is bogus.
A white guy simply has no experience of what it’s like to be treated =
rudely by the cops. I’ve never been stopped and frisked in my 54 =
years on planet earth, and 27 in planet NYC. In 2006, the NYPD =
stopped and frisked over 500,000 people - 55% of them black, and 30% =
Hispanic. That’s not “brutality,” but it is an index of differential =
treatment based on race, and one that would give whites and blacks =
very different views of how the NYPD operates.
But I’m guessing that Woj might agree with the Manhattan Institute’s =
Heather Mac Donald eon2007-02-07hm.html>:
Heather Mac Donald
Why Cops Stop and Frisk So Many Blacks
Blame high black crime, not police racism.
7 February 2007 Here we go again: another specious racial-profiling controversy. Al = Sharpton has announced his intention to sue the New York Police = Department for allegedly racially profiling black New Yorkers, based = on recently released data on police stop-and-frisks. In fact, the = data show that police are stopping blacks too seldom and whites too = often. But even if the numbers didn=92t so completely undermine = Sharpton=92s claim, the real scandal of his anti-police demagoguery = would remain his refusal to acknowledge the black community=92s most = pressing problem: sky-high crime rates. As long as blacks commit crime in numbers wildly disproportionate to = their representation in the population, police data are going to show = higher involvement with blacks than with whites. According to victims = and witnesses, blacks committed 68.5 percent of all murders, rapes, = robberies, and assaults in New York last year, though they are only = 24 percent of the city=92s population. Whites, who make up 34.5 percent = of New Yorkers, committed 5.3 percent of those crimes. Blacks are = nearly 13 times more likely to commit violent crimes than whites. In light of this massive disparity in crime rates, the police stop- = and-frisk data are not just reasonable but inevitable. Last year, 55 = percent of police stops were of blacks=97a proportion far below the = 68.5 percent of violent crime that blacks commit=97while 11 percent of = stops were of whites, nearly double their 5.3 percent contribution to = violent crime. There are two reasons that the high black crime rate affects the = chance that black men will be stopped in greater numbers than whites. = First, the NYPD focuses its resources where crime is highest, and = that is in black neighborhoods. In recent years, the NYPD has = saturated high-crime areas with rookie cops, whose job is to = intervene in crime early by stopping suspects. (It isn=92t just the = NYPD that wants more cops in those neighborhoods; their law-abiding = minority residents constantly beg the department for more police = protection.) Second, because police officers are 13 times more likely to be = searching for a black than for a white suspect for any given violent = crime=97based, again, on the victim=92s own identification of his = assailant (or, in the case of homicide, on that of witnesses)=97their = rate of stopping blacks, as they search for suspects, will be far = higher than that for whites. So black men do face a higher chance of = getting stopped in New York. The blame for that does not rest with = the police, however; it rests with the criminal element within the = black community that is terrorizing the hundreds of thousands of law- = abiding minority New Yorkers. If Sharpton really wanted to get the black stop rate down, he would = be working day and night to bring the crime rate down. He would be = telling young men to stay in school and to marry the mothers of their = children, so that boys do not grow up without fathers. He would be = demonizing criminals, not the police. Until that happens, New Yorkers = should regard his concern for the well-being of the black community = with skepticism.