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Even Snopes confirms that Biden thinks that Floyd’s death is more meaningful than MLK’s. Where is this country headed?
Did Biden Say George Floyd’s Death Had Greater ‘Worldwide Impact’ Than MLK’s?
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This is not a formal database, but it’s interesting nonetheless. It purports to track people killed in the custody of police. It’s kept in a Google sheet, and you can track by ethnicity, state, county, agency involved, gender, name, and date range.
http://www.fatalencounters.org
According to the database, there’s been about 10k caucasians killed in police custody, 6,600 african americans, about 4,000 latinos.
Data on deaths in police custody haven’t been formally required until the Death in Custody Act of 2013.
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Mick, you almost had me. I was going to post that there is no way that more than 20 thousand people have died “in custody.” And that any analysis that claims these deaths “in custody” was propaganda. Then I checked the site. It is about any death that had a police officer present of any kind:
from the site: “We try to document all deaths that happen when police are present or that are caused by police: on-duty, off-duty, criminal, line-of-duty, local, federal, intentional, accidental–all of them.”
That is a very broad swath that includes not only George Floyd’s death which was very much in custody, but also the death of a person in an automobile accident with a police officer who is off duty. Those are two very different things.
That said, policing is a multi faceted thing. Some demographics have police encounters all the time. Some do not. I have lived in the same neighborhood for ten years and can’t remember ever seeing a police car in it. Any demographic analysis of police related fatalities has to be normalized to the encounter rate of that demographic. My hunch is, in the Floyd case, even leaving race out of it, the chance of dying at the hands of police as a violent felon on drugs and actively resisting arrest is significantly elevated.
That doesn’t absolve the police, but it does call into question the “societal” issues that are often implied by analysis of such data.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work) -
To what extent are police on the street analogous to Israelis in Palestine/Israel? A minority, operating in “hostile” territory with violent individuals sprinkled through the community. There are repeated confrontational incidents in NY City. Threats of violence if trial outcomes don’t conform to the narratives of the lawless elements; see Minneapolis.
Israel has mandatory service in the military. Everyone is required to confront/understand the risks and the risk mitigation alternatives. When young people return to civilian life after service they have a deeper understanding and certainly not a narrow and uniform set of principles and opinions. Political debate around Arab relations is robust.
why don’t we consider requiring service in law enforcement upon high school graduation? Why not upgrade the frame of reference of our voters to be. I wonder how exposure to this all too regular abusive behavior, who knows, perhaps on both sides, might improve our policy selection over time?
Here's a toast with one last pour, may it last forever and a minute more;
Good fortune seems to you have sung, to live and love way past long -
I would be comfortable with simply requiring a few ride alongs on Saturday night graveyard shifts.
the crap the police have to deal with is unreal. But it IS their job to deal with it. Thankless though that may be.
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Sic transit gloria mundi (so shut up and get back to work)
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