You should probably check out Barry Latzer’s post at Law and Liberty on race, crime, and the use of force by police in the United States. Here’s as good a summary as any:
Police are probably no more racist than the average American. Rather, it is that African Americans—low-income, young, male, urban African Americans, to be precise—engage in violent misconduct at higher rates than other groups, and violent crime begets police violence. As I will show, the more a group engages in violent crime, the more the police will use violence against members of the group.
Multiple studies are cited in the post. You might retort with your own statistics about non-violent crime—more about that later.
What, then, should be done? IMO there are several things that are clear:
- There is significant mutual distrust between black people and police officers regardless of the officers’ races.
- The distrust is counter-productive and hurts black people more than it does the police.
- Gangs are a major factor if not the major factor behind the volume of violent crime in neighborhoods where black people live.
- That will be the case as long as the forces which lead to the formation and continuity of gangs continue.
I think that one of the things that needs to happen is that we need to pare back the criminal code to include only offenses for which there will be a consistent good faith attempt to enforce. Although there are lifestyle reasons to want minor offenses like littering, loitering, jaywalking, and so on to be on the books they also serve as offenses for which a police officer so inclined can enforce the law on a selective basis. Police officers exploit such laws to make life hard for people they think are up to no good. That’s beyond their authority but it’s done. The activities of the police need to be focused on crimes against persons and property, particularly violent crimes.
‘I think that one of the things that needs to happen is that we need to pare back the criminal code to include only offenses for which there will be a consistent good faith attempt to enforce.’
The more laws, the more lawbreakers. Period. Back in 2009 Harvey Silverglate detailed it in his book ‘Three Felonies a Day’, and it has almost certainly increased in number since then. Look at how the FBI has been misusing 302 interview recollection notes to charge people with crimes they didn’t know they committed (and this goes back long before OMB).
The fewer laws the better. And even more importantly those laws should be STRICTLY enforced. Irregular enforcement of laws, or selective enforcement of them, is worse than having no law at all, because that state of enforcement tilts the scales of justice towards the lawbreakers who aren’t going to obey them anyway. Few things anger people more than a perception of unfairness.
To me the first and most important law should be ‘Thou shalt not steal’. Not thou shalt not kill, for murder is but a theft of life.
The Reyshard Brooks shooting nags at me because you can see the legal issues piling on him with first the domestic violence conviction for which he served time and was on probation for the remainder. As the officers attempted to arrest him for DUI, he knew he’d violated probation and would go back to prison for three years.
I might consider only a violation similar to his conviction to be a trigger violating his probation.
I might, that is, if he hadn’t revealed his soul in his attempt to kill the officer arresting him.
Someone once said lots of laws, selectively enforced, is one of the hallmarks of a police state.
Steve
I stumbled onto this blogging heads discussion between Glenn Loury and John McWhorter, neither of whom I believe I was previously familiar with, but appear to occupy the Booker T. Washington wing of the African-American political debate. I think some of the main points made were:
The real threat to black people is crime.
Police misconduct is not primarily a racial issue.
Theft, arson, and violence must be condemned unequivocally.
Medical science isn’t contingent upon political favoritism.
Embarrassment of privileged blacks taking advantage of the conditions facing those living in poverty.
I have been following both gentlemen for some time. I believe I have cited Mr. McWhorter favorably here on several occasions.
Although I think that crime is a major risk for black people that is aggravated by the mutual mistrust I wrote about above, I don’t think it’s the gravest threat. I think the gravest threat is race war.
McWhorter does interesting linguistics work. We have some of his lectures, linguistics being an interest in our family.
Just commenting on your title, I think that the racism in police departments has changed. In the past most, or a large minority of police were racist. The extent to which they acted on those feelings was variable and variably tolerated by the community. Today, few police are racist, but both by culture and bay union rules, all aberrant police behavior is protected, including racist behavior.
Steve