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cruisinforsnoozin t1_ja8yehm wrote

Did this control for behavior, possession of weapon, or nature of the suspected crime?

Racial differences can mean lots of things

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dont_care- t1_ja96kyk wrote

It ruins his narrative to adjust for "per violent crime committed"

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Lake_Spiritual t1_jaajefw wrote

Another thing I’d like considered is that since these racial groups tend to be geographically clustered, isn’t this more of a testament of the policing in a region rather than nationwide? Surely the likelihood of a black person being killed by police in Greenwich CT is less than in New Orleans LA?

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ComplexInflation6814 t1_ja8zi71 wrote

"In the absence of [Variable], the results would be the same across [Variable]."

Technically correct, but the statement is meaningless. The assumption that we can reliably design statistical controls for something as pervasive to society as racial differences is rather optimistic, to say the least

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PompiPompi t1_ja9jhxb wrote

Need to also compare it to the crimes committed by each race, as you are more likely to get shot if you are committing a crime.

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PredictorX1 t1_ja8w0lw wrote

Is this data available, breaking out whether the individual in question was armed at the time of shooting by police or not?

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YouTheSexRealPervert t1_jaauj3w wrote

Sure, if you want to point out that cops violate your right to own firearms. That's what you mean by that, right? That you have a constitutional right to own a firearm making the excuse "they had a gun" a violation of those rights, right?

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draypresct t1_ja93ryd wrote

Does it count if the person had a toy, or a phone, and the police claim the victim was armed?

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datacriminal t1_ja8zb9c wrote

One piece of context you're losing is that the us population is not an equal distribution across all cities and police involved shootings occur more often in larger communities. You'd need to check the population subsets for the demographics of those communities to figure out if there is significance.

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possiblynotthefbi t1_ja90vwj wrote

I feel like a better context would be how this data compares to the total number of police interactions by race. I feel like we can disregard the geography for a moment and just focus on the people involved with the police, since it doesn't really matter to the population that never interacts with them.

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Newish_Username t1_ja9nv8v wrote

Overlap this chart with another chart that shows violent crimes committed per capita based on race, and what type of crimes.

Also, give a chart that shows resisting arrest reports per capita based on race.

Don't just throw all this out there without context.

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dog_superiority t1_jaa09j4 wrote

But that wouldn't push the proper agenda.

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Sweaty-Willingness27 t1_jaaj6g6 wrote

Well, there's more to it than just that, even.

"Crimes committed" would, I assume, mean convictions. Convictions are not without bias either, both in terms of the procurers (witnesses, judge, jury) but also available representation and means.

This isn't saying the OP doesn't have an agenda, just that with any comparison, it's going to be fraught with bias even without intention.

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dog_superiority t1_jaaoqb8 wrote

Actually, the FBI victimization surveys, where victims report the race of the offender (even if they never got caught), show the same proportions as the arrest records.

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calloutfolly t1_ja9ff7z wrote

That makes sense, because African Americans commit more crimes than Asian Americans, according to FBI statistics.

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rogbk85 t1_ja9g2d9 wrote

Now do men vs women. Are cops sexist? Or are men more likely to be in situations where they can get shot?

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GreatNoodleLord t1_ja90lrt wrote

You never hear about the native Americans...wonder why ?

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5littlewhitevicodin t1_ja9rxop wrote

Is it cause African Americans are 1.5 times more likely than whites to be commiting violent crime? (I actually don't know, but that would explain it)

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microphohn t1_jaa0ou4 wrote

This just in-- people who speed more get more tickets.

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TargetMost8136 t1_ja9jf6i wrote

Didn’t know native Americans were up there with black people. Why is this?

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laserdicks t1_ja9ma43 wrote

Their population is so small that any activity results in a much higher average. Also why it has so much variation

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TargetMost8136 t1_ja9pm2c wrote

It does have a lot of variance I agree, but it has been consistently very high though. Doesn’t seem like it’s just due to a small sample

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laserdicks t1_jaa7te1 wrote

True, that's certainly not the only factor.

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bulletbassman t1_ja9sj5b wrote

Reservations can be very difficult and dangerous depending. Lots of drugs, alcohol, and often very few options of meaningful employment. Very similar to the issues that plague underprivileged black communities due to this countries strong past of segregation (whether by law or simple social norms).

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MelissaMiranti t1_jaa19jl wrote

Now keep in mind that men make up about 95% of all police shooting victims. We should have a movement to protect men from police, too.

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lufalo t1_jaaywda wrote

Thanks mrs officer 💀 keep doing a good work.

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ultramilkplus t1_ja9n29h wrote

Control for income/education. I bet it really tightens everything up and you'd end up with a meaningful number.

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bobert13581 t1_ja9x17t wrote

meaningless activism when it's just per population

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Work_Federal t1_ja9yr2z wrote

“But why?” Should be the question then

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kompootor t1_jaa9kb4 wrote

The visualization is imo ineffective because I'm not sure there is anything too surprising that's related on the horizontal (time) axis, which is given prominence. If the racial disparity in this metric is what is of interest to people (which it almost certainly is), then as it does not vary significantly by time -- or at least, a variation that's somehow important to point out is not made obvious -- any more effective representation would not show time on an axis.

(The staggering of the Native American line is almost certainly an artifact of a small N, particularly compared to the other race segments. The confirmation would be to see whether or how those dramatic rises and falls track any other statistics in that population or areas.)

The WaPo dataset is used in a ton of criminology and other social science research papers devising metrics to shed some light on police shooting as a phenomenon. If you're interested in doing more visualizations on this topic, poke around Google Scholar and see what they've come up with in terms of interesting statistics.

(As this is a data visualization sub, I'm commenting on the visualization and providing feedback. The criminology research on this is vast and complex -- pointing out that one metric doesn't illuminate the problem or represent everything is not particularly useful.)

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PixieBaronicsi t1_jac21jv wrote

The variances are big, but they’re nothing compared to the gender disparity

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alwaysmyfault t1_ja9cmul wrote

What is the "other" race?

Eskimo?

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TargetMost8136 t1_ja9jb39 wrote

Eskimo would be Native American, just any of the people not mentioned before I suppose

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JPAnalyst t1_ja8wng7 wrote

The Veil of Darkness study also shows that just by being black, someone is more likely to be pulled over by police. This suggests to me that a persons race alone, is a factor which influence how much contact one has with the law.

> The Stanford team decided to repeat the analysis using the much larger dataset that they had gathered. First, they narrowed the range of variables they had to analyze by choosing a specific time of day -- around 7 p.m. -- when the probable causes for a stop were more or less constant. Next, they took advantage of the fact that, in the months before and after daylight saving time each year, the sky gets a little darker or lighter, day by day. Because they had such a massive database, the researchers were able to find 113,000 traffic stops, from all of the locations in their database, that occurred on those days, before or after clocks sprang forward or fell back, when the sky was growing darker or lighter at around 7 p.m. local time.

>This dataset provided a statistically valid sample with two important variables -- the race of the driver being stopped, and the darkness of the sky at around 7 p.m. The analysis left no doubt that the darker it got, the less likely it became that a black driver would be stopped. The reverse was true when the sky was lighter.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200507094621.htm

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LSeww t1_ja9lfws wrote

There are different kinds of crimes, some of them can't be over-policed, like a murder.

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Sweaty-Willingness27 t1_jaakkje wrote

Any situation can be over-policed.

If you detained every single person in America and strip-searched them based on a single murder, I think most people would say that's over-policing.

The problem is that many people are defensive based on the data provided, and assume the OP's intent is to show that Black and Native Americans are profiled. I think it's a safe assumption, but speaking in generalities in the other direction isn't going to be of any benefit.

The study that's linked here is very different, in my mind. It shows a different problem (and one that I think is clearer) where there is a disparity with little prescient knowledge beyond race. The fatal shootings probably have a lot of variables (and differences in lead-up and situation that caused the shooting) that makes them less useful to compare all together as they are here.

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LSeww t1_jac0lbv wrote

> If you detained every single person in America and strip-searched them based on a single murder, I think most people would say that's over-policing.

That won’t increase the number of observed murders.

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AxeAndRod t1_ja9m7ev wrote

This assumes that the chances of speeding for any race is equally likely. If white people speed less then they will likely get pulled over less. Same for any races and vice versa. It doesn't imply racism.

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JPAnalyst t1_ja9notq wrote

Yeah, you didn’t read the study. Not like you’re going to.

Nor did you even at the very least read/comprehend the part that I posted in my comment. That would have been more than enough to stop your from typing what you did.

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the_ill_buck_fifty t1_jabuvx0 wrote

Who knew a subreddit devoted to data would be filled with people who immediately throw up ridiculous canards when confronted with "America is shitty to non-whites."

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HaroldGodwin t1_ja9cj49 wrote

It's obvious what's going on; Racism.

Just imagine if it was rich people being shot at 4.5 times the rest of the population! The police would have been disbanded years ago.

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brendonap t1_ja9hizi wrote

Just imagine if non violet people were shot at 4.5 times the violent people, the police would be disbanded years ago

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HitchHux OP t1_ja8x2g3 wrote

Data source: The Washington Post Fatal Force Database.

Analysis and visualization: R

Comments: The aim of the plot is to show the differences in fatal police encounters across races, after adjusting for population size, and how the trend has evolved over time. The denominator is the race and year specific population. The differences in rates are explained by both differences in number of encounters, and how deadly those encounters are.

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