Police Racism

Yeah, I don't really get it. I'm an engineer with a degree in mathematics so I tend to rely on numbers.

Life is hard. I get that. Some people don't act the way you would want them to act. I get that too. They say you shouldn't judge a man until you walk a mile in his shoes. That sounds reasonable but not always practical.

Yes, a cop pinned a black man by kneeling on his neck in a act of pure barbarity. He has been arrested and charged. The officers that were with him, and didn't do enough to prevent the crime, have been arrested and charged as well. It remains to be seen if they will be convicted.

Police make something like 10 million arrests a year in this country. About 1,000 of them result in the death of a suspect. Around 400 are white and 250 are black. This sounds skewed until one realizes that whites account for 58% of violent crime arrests and blacks account for 38%. Of all suspect deaths about 860 suspects were armed, or appeared to be armed (had a toy gun). At most 75 were unarmed (55 known to be and 20 with no data). In the meantime there are about 6,200 single victim/single offender homicides a year in the US.

So the probability of a police arrest resulting in the death of an unarmed suspect is about 75 out of 10 million or 0.00075%. There are some 496,000 violent crime arrests in the US. So assuming that all fatalities were associated with violent crime arrests, which is almost certainly not true, the probability of a police arrest for a violent crime resulting in the death of an unarmed suspect is about 75 out of 496,000 or 0.015%. Now, zero would be better but probably also unachievable.

I see no evidence here of systemic police racism. There are clearly a few folks in uniform that have no business being in uniform. So maybe that's what we should be focusing on.

OK, now all the woke folk can call me names. Go ahead, enjoy yourselves. Just remember, sticks and stones folks, sticks and stones.