(05-01-2015 12:09 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  

(05-01-2015 12:04 PM)Fitbud Wrote:  

(05-01-2015 12:01 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  

(05-01-2015 11:59 AM)I45owl Wrote:  

(05-01-2015 11:49 AM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  So, what was the answer to the math problem?

here...

executive summary: blacks 450-800% as likely to receive a traffic citation. Burden for blacks due to cost of citations can be 800-1500%.

(05-01-2015 11:13 AM)I45owl Wrote:  This is the part of the analysis that I had hidden above...

When I skimmed the article this word stuck out.

So you aren't going to comment on I45Owl's conclusions?

I don't have anything to add to them so no.

Why would I?

I just thought the conclusions were eye opening. I figured a person of your intelligence would have something to say about that.

(05-01-2015 12:09 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  I don't have anything to add to them so no.

Why would I?

I guess my goal in this is (1) to make a point that there is a pretty big problem, (2) to provoke discussion about what, if anything, to do about it.

(05-01-2015 12:21 PM)ODUgradstudent Wrote:  Certainly not disagreeing with the conclusion, just the figure.

I'm more of a reader than a poster in the Spin Room and your posts are some of the most informative on this issue.

Part of understanding statistics and how to interpret them is just getting the math right, and part of it is pointing out where statistics don't tell the whole story. "Other factors" should always be mentioned in any kind of analysis, and it's something I left out altogether. The man-hours on the road thing did occur to me after I posted, the others not necessarily.

The picture of what these stats paint had occurred to me when I first read the report, and I've brought it up with both of my kids by way of (1) explaining what's going on in the world, and (2) explaining how important that math is and that intuition doesn't necessarily give the right first impression with statistics (certainly intuition from someone that's never dealt with statistics runs polar opposite to someone with a good bit of experience, but I was even surprised after I ran some numbers on this).

(05-01-2015 12:23 PM)Fitbud Wrote:  

(05-01-2015 12:09 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  

(05-01-2015 12:04 PM)Fitbud Wrote:  

(05-01-2015 12:01 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  

(05-01-2015 11:59 AM)I45owl Wrote:  here...

executive summary: blacks 450-800% as likely to receive a traffic citation. Burden for blacks due to cost of citations can be 800-1500%.

When I skimmed the article this word stuck out.

So you aren't going to comment on I45Owl's conclusions?

I don't have anything to add to them so no.

Why would I?

I just thought the conclusions were eye opening. I figured a person of your intelligence would have something to say about that.

Well, thank you for the compliment but I don't have anything to add.

He makes a strong case.

Other than a pat on the back this guy has nothing to add.

(05-01-2015 12:33 PM)I45owl Wrote:  

(05-01-2015 12:09 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  I don't have anything to add to them so no.

Why would I?

I guess my goal in this is (1) to make a point that there is a pretty big problem, (2) to provoke discussion about what, if anything, to do about it.

You hit a home run with number 1.

As to number 2, I don't really have anything to say. My honest assessment is that there is no answer at the present time.

Why are they being pulled over? That's the $1,000,000 question. Just because a group of people is pulled over more often doesn't really tell me anything.

And this.... [/quote]... only 67% of the population[quote]

Really, ONLY? The town is 2/3 black. The police probably do concentrate their efforts on the poor side of town so of course they're more likely to get pulled. If I want to catch a big bass I'm not going to spend a lot of time hanging out by a noisy boat dock.

(05-01-2015 01:27 PM)blunderbuss Wrote:  Why are they being pulled over? That's the $1,000,000 question.

I think you answered the question yourself. The Police there and elsewhere are pressured to issue citations in order to meet city funding goals.

(05-01-2015 01:27 PM)blunderbuss Wrote:  Really, ONLY? The town is 2/3 black.

That's not an isolated statement, and it's silly to object to it. Read it in the same manner as 80% of income in the US is earned by only 1% of the population... the qualifier emphasizes some disparity that does, in fact, exist.

(05-01-2015 01:27 PM)blunderbuss Wrote:  The police probably do concentrate their efforts on the poor side of town so of course they're more likely to get pulled. If I want to catch a big bass I'm not going to spend a lot of time hanging out by a noisy boat dock.

This is almost certainly a big part of the problem, and you make a good point that there may be no intentional racist bias here, but that does not change the fact that there is a very substantial bias, and it has unintended consequences. Those are - simmering resentment over being several times more likely to get a citation merely because you live in a different neighborhood and/or have a different skin color.

The problem with broken windows policing (basically what you describe above, if not advocate) is that it does not necessarily follow that you reduce shoplifting by handing out more "failed to yield" citations.

I see two big problems with the situation at hand:
1. The system appears patently unfair both in terms of the number of citations and the expense (and I did not even address insurance costs due to the citations, which adds a multiplier effect)
2. We have a system that imposes a heavy tax (in this case, traffic, but it also applies to other misdemeanors) on people that live in poverty and are then both critical and bewildered that people are unable to turn their lives around and escape the cycle of poverty. I think our country suffers because of it.

I hope to have time to respond better later... as I don't have the actual facts... I'm on a mobile....

but the first things that come to my mind in studies like this are that while black people may be 67% of the population in Ferguson, empirical evidence (that blacks are over-represented among poorer populations) suggests that they could be 90+% of the poor population.

If you assume that 25% of the population is poor and 75% is 'not poor', (and I suspect that may be VERY optimistic) that means that perhaps 22.5% of the population is black and poor, and 2.5% white and poor. Even at 67% of the entire population black, that means that 45% of the population is black and 'not poor' and 30% is white and 'not poor'.

It seems obvious that there is a greater police presence in the poor neighborhoods and often traffic stops are pretenses for other reasons.... I saw an Austin study that 'stops' in poor neighborhoods was 4 times what it was in wealthier ones... so if we apply that here, then purely by the numbers with no bias, we have:

1 stop in the wealthier neighborhood that is 1.5 times more likely to be on a black person and
4 stops in the poor neighborhood that is 10 times more likely to be on a black person

I can probably do that math with pad and paper but not in my head... but it seems obvious that black people will be stopped far more often than whites when they dominate the population, not merely because they are black, but because they are over-represented in poor and often higher crime areas... and 90% sounds like it would be close.

I'm not disagreeing with your analysis... I don't have the facts or time to even question you... I'm merely stating some of the presumptions I would look into in order to analyze the data.

I'm not saying it's fair or just by any measure... I'm merely saying that 'poor' and 'living in high crime areas' where a concentration of police forces is actually arguably prudent could lead to an APPEARANCE of racial bias that is really merely borne out by the reality of the situation. It's not fair, but it shows the 'injustice' of being poor... not racism.

(05-01-2015 05:07 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  1 stop in the wealthier neighborhood that is 1.5 times more likely to be on a black person and
4 stops in the poor neighborhood that is 10 times more likely to be on a black person

I didn't really follow your numbers. But, this is a variant of the scenario that I had posted in my analysis, which assumed that of the three people in mini-Ferguson, one black was poor and the other middle class, implying a 50% poverty ratio... kind of an artifact of the way that I illustrated it, but it's an arbitrary assumption.

(05-01-2015 05:07 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  I'm not saying it's fair or just by any measure... I'm merely saying that 'poor' and 'living in high crime areas' where a concentration of police forces is actually arguably prudent could lead to an APPEARANCE of racial bias that is really merely borne out by the reality of the situation. It's not fair, but it shows the 'injustice' of being poor... not racism.

Separate the presence of bias and the cause of the bias. The numbers show a clear bias.

Likely causes are income levels and institutional if not overt racism. Like most whites, I probably tend to believe the former rather than the latter. I can't speak for blacks, but I'd guess (1) they probably think the reverse, (2) they don't care about the cause so much as the fact.

The good news is that if you're right - the bias is due to institutional causes, then there is a lot of opportunity to provide relief for everyday citizens. Maybe be more judicious with the citations that they do hand out, even if they keep making the same number of stops. Possibly having the courts offer probation in more cases, recognizing that they are handed out disproportionately in certain areas.

I think it is a worthy goal to reduce highly regressive taxes even if broken window policing is still a worthy tactic.

(05-01-2015 11:13 AM)I45owl Wrote:  This is the part of the analysis that I had hidden above...

(04-30-2015 01:38 PM)I45owl Wrote:  Assume Ferguson has three people - two black, one white. (66% African American).

Assume 10 traffic stops... White guy gets stopped once, the other two combine for 9 stops. Either they get stopped 4.5 times the number of times as the white guy, or assume that the white guy and one black guy are middle class and each get stopped one time (the economic bias, but no racial bias scenario). Then, the poor guy is stopped 8 times as many times as the other two. That goes way beyond what you may expect from normal behavior... I can't imagine that over the population of a city, one class of driver is that much worse than the others around them.

Now for fines. In once scenario, the black guys both pay $1125 in fines to the white guy's $250. Accounting for defensive driving, the ratio is: $125:$1000, or 800%. In the other scenario, it's $125:$1875, or a highly regressive 15 times higher for the poor guy than the two middle class guys.

So, the racial bias in Ferguson is 4.5 times the traffic stops, and 8 times the tax burden from the PD.

The economic bias is 8 times the traffic stops and 15 times the tax burden.

The truth is somewhere between racial bias and economic bias, but those statistics paint a much more damning picture than a small time drug dealer with a broken neck in mysterious circumstances does.

The immediate conclusion is that the current system of putting pressure on police forces to raise funds for the city is extremely harmful to minorities and poor people. The second conclusion is that mandating body cameras everywhere will make that situation a lot worse (I doubt the purported benefits as well, aside from mass media crime porn... it will be a huge subsidy to cable news).

Owl, while I get your argument here, and the principle of the post is reasonable, you have one statistical problem.

Your traffic stop numbers in your example is simply way too low. Simply because you're already raising the "crime" percentage above the percentage from the DOJ report.

You either have to up the number of people in your sample, or lower the 'traffic stop' number. I don't remember the % of stops that were applied in the DOJ report, but I'm pretty sure that there weren't 300% more traffic stops than there was population of Ferguson.

I might be way off here but has anyone considered the possibility that many poor blacks don't have cars. Therefore, those that drive are likely much less than the actual population. Wouldn't that also change the numbers a bit?

(05-01-2015 12:33 PM)I45owl Wrote:  

(05-01-2015 12:09 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  I don't have anything to add to them so no.

Why would I?

I guess my goal in this is (1) to make a point that there is a pretty big problem, (2) to provoke discussion about what, if anything, to do about it.

One of my first thoughts are: I think it's fairly well know that cops often pull over a car for a "traffic infraction" when they have some suspicion of maybe something more - drinking & driving or posession of drugs. In other words - they often all but make up some traffic issue to get more "up close" to the driver seeing if they can find more.

While the numbers alone would certainly lead one to believe that there is a bias issue in Ferguson, I'm not yet ready to pin it solely on race. It's possible it's race biased, and if I were on the receiving end I'm guessing I might perceive it that way, but while the traffic citations "by the numbers" are biased, I'm not sure it is only about race.

I also HATE that police departments (not just in places like Ferguson, but all over) have basically been tasked with raising revenue by their political bosses, largely because those same bosses don't have the balls to go get more money from the community through legitimate tax increases. Think about it - almost nothing honks folks off more than feeling railroaded by some bullcrap traffic citation that is the result of a police force's required "revenue enhancement".

(05-01-2015 05:53 PM)I45owl Wrote:  

(05-01-2015 05:07 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  1 stop in the wealthier neighborhood that is 1.5 times more likely to be on a black person and
4 stops in the poor neighborhood that is 10 times more likely to be on a black person

I didn't really follow your numbers. But, this is a variant of the scenario that I had posted in my analysis, which assumed that of the three people in mini-Ferguson, one black was poor and the other middle class, implying a 50% poverty ratio... kind of an artifact of the way that I illustrated it, but it's an arbitrary assumption.

Sorry about that.... I'm only repeating it because i think it shows where much of the bias lies... I agree with most of what you say.


Simple statistics give you an incredibly high propensity to 'stop' black people.... NOT because they are black, but because they are 67% of the total population and then you magnify that by the empirical over-representation of blacks among the poor, PLUS the propensity for far more 'stops' to be in poor/high crime areas (because they are high crime areas), you can get some pretty wide swings based on something OTHER than police racism.

I wasn't trying to actually predict a number.... I was merely trying to give the numbers scope. I don't think I've made any outlandish assumptions... and yet I come up with a MASSIVE bias.

(04-30-2015 01:38 PM)I45owl Wrote:  Here is a thought experiment: 66% of the population of Ferguson is African American. 90% of traffic stops in Ferguson were done on African Americans. 1) How much more likely is an African American to be stopped by a policeman than a white (assuming the other 34% are white)? 2) How much more tax (by way of traffic fines) does the average African American pay to Ferguson PD than the average white? For bonus points, assume that fines-taxes are $250 (that's what my recent ticket cost, granting that it was allegedly in a school zone), but that you can reduce the fine-tax to $125 by taking defensive driving... what does that ratio become?

After all, 67% on the one hand is not that much different from 90%... a delta of 23%.

Assume Ferguson has three people - two black, one white. (66% African American).

Assume 10 traffic stops... White guy gets stopped once, the other two combine for 9 stops. Either they get stopped 4.5 times the number of times as the white guy, or assume that the white guy and one black guy are middle class and each get stopped one time (the economic bias, but no racial bias scenario). Then, the poor guy is stopped 8 times as many times as the other two. That goes way beyond what you may expect from normal behavior... I can't imagine that over the population of a city, one class of driver is that much worse than the others around them.

Now for fines. In once scenario, the black guys both pay $1125 in fines to the white guy's $250. Accounting for defensive driving, the ratio is: $125:$1000, or 800%. In the other scenario, it's $125:$1875, or a highly regressive 15 times higher for the poor guy than the two middle class guys.

So, the racial bias in Ferguson is 4.5 times the traffic stops, and 8 times the tax burden from the PD.

The economic bias is 8 times the traffic stops and 15 times the tax burden.

The truth is somewhere between racial bias and economic bias, but those statistics paint a much more damning picture than a small time drug dealer with a broken neck in mysterious circumstances does.

The immediate conclusion is that the current system of putting pressure on police forces to raise funds for the city is extremely harmful to minorities and poor people. The second conclusion is that mandating body cameras everywhere will make that situation a lot worse (I doubt the purported benefits as well, aside from mass media crime porn... it will be a huge subsidy to cable news).

After months of protesting, there are finally some tangible policy recommendations that protesters are pursuing: Campaign Zero ... I'm sure it's something that President Obama - as our nation's leader - can get behind. (As a side note, they really should've thought more about the website name).

Jokes notwithstanding, here is the basic proposal...



Here are some of the issues that I have with their recommendations:

End Broken Windows Policing — Campaign Zero

http://www.joincampaignzero.org/brokenwindows Wrote:bans on both intentional profiling and practices that have a disparate impact on protected groups

The idea of "protected groups" and defining "disparate impact" seem like problems to me.

I think ending for-profit police enforcing should be much higher in the list (assuming they are prioritized 1-10).

Community Oversight — Campaign Zero

http://www.joincampaignzero.org/oversight Wrote:The Police Commission should:

• receive full-time, competitive salaries for all members
• not have current, former or family of police officers as members
• select its members from candidates offered by community organizations
  

The Civilian Complaints Office should:

• be funded at an amount no less than 5% of the total police department budget
• have at least 1 investigator for every 70 police officers or 4 investigators at all times,whichever is greater
• have its Director selected from candidates offered by community organizations
• not have current, former or family of police officers on staff, including the Director
  

:grumble: ... blatant political pandering, attempt at a power move, and attempt to manufacture highly paid positions out of nothing. On the one hand, they propose to limit funding the police force, offer no alternative funding, and place dual demands of body cameras and 5% draw of funds for community organizers. Also, noticeably absent from the criteria for these two bodies are lack of criminal background or history of organized crime and the like. Positive or productive experience in the legal system...

http://www.joincampaignzero.org/film-the-police Wrote:The Right to Record Police

... this is good.

Something missing is a mandate to collect and report to the federal government statistics on police violence - including race of the victim and results of internal investigations and determinations. IMHO, this is central to identifying patterns and determining how big the problem is.

There are probably other items that are problematic, and this is early on in the process... I wouldn't expect all of their demands to make it into an actual policy platform or into a bill, but it is something that is productive, as opposed to just burning **** to the ground.

(08-22-2015 01:09 PM)I45owl Wrote:  

(04-30-2015 01:38 PM)I45owl Wrote:  Here is a thought experiment: 66% of the population of Ferguson is African American. 90% of traffic stops in Ferguson were done on African Americans. 1) How much more likely is an African American to be stopped by a policeman than a white (assuming the other 34% are white)? 2) How much more tax (by way of traffic fines) does the average African American pay to Ferguson PD than the average white? For bonus points, assume that fines-taxes are $250 (that's what my recent ticket cost, granting that it was allegedly in a school zone), but that you can reduce the fine-tax to $125 by taking defensive driving... what does that ratio become?

After all, 67% on the one hand is not that much different from 90%... a delta of 23%.

Assume Ferguson has three people - two black, one white. (66% African American).

Assume 10 traffic stops... White guy gets stopped once, the other two combine for 9 stops. Either they get stopped 4.5 times the number of times as the white guy, or assume that the white guy and one black guy are middle class and each get stopped one time (the economic bias, but no racial bias scenario). Then, the poor guy is stopped 8 times as many times as the other two. That goes way beyond what you may expect from normal behavior... I can't imagine that over the population of a city, one class of driver is that much worse than the others around them.

Now for fines. In once scenario, the black guys both pay $1125 in fines to the white guy's $250. Accounting for defensive driving, the ratio is: $125:$1000, or 800%. In the other scenario, it's $125:$1875, or a highly regressive 15 times higher for the poor guy than the two middle class guys.

So, the racial bias in Ferguson is 4.5 times the traffic stops, and 8 times the tax burden from the PD.

The economic bias is 8 times the traffic stops and 15 times the tax burden.

The truth is somewhere between racial bias and economic bias, but those statistics paint a much more damning picture than a small time drug dealer with a broken neck in mysterious circumstances does.

The immediate conclusion is that the current system of putting pressure on police forces to raise funds for the city is extremely harmful to minorities and poor people. The second conclusion is that mandating body cameras everywhere will make that situation a lot worse (I doubt the purported benefits as well, aside from mass media crime porn... it will be a huge subsidy to cable news).

After months of protesting, there are finally some tangible policy recommendations that protesters are pursuing: Campaign Zero ... I'm sure it's something that President Obama - as our nation's leader - can get behind. (As a side note, they really should've thought more about the website name).

Jokes notwithstanding, here is the basic proposal...



Here are some of the issues that I have with their recommendations:

End Broken Windows Policing — Campaign Zero

http://www.joincampaignzero.org/brokenwindows Wrote:bans on both intentional profiling and practices that have a disparate impact on protected groups

The idea of "protected groups" and defining "disparate impact" seem like problems to me.

I think ending for-profit police enforcing should be much higher in the list (assuming they are prioritized 1-10).

Community Oversight — Campaign Zero

http://www.joincampaignzero.org/oversight Wrote:The Police Commission should:

• receive full-time, competitive salaries for all members
• not have current, former or family of police officers as members
• select its members from candidates offered by community organizations
  

The Civilian Complaints Office should:

• be funded at an amount no less than 5% of the total police department budget
• have at least 1 investigator for every 70 police officers or 4 investigators at all times,whichever is greater
• have its Director selected from candidates offered by community organizations
• not have current, former or family of police officers on staff, including the Director
  

:grumble: ... blatant political pandering, attempt at a power move, and attempt to manufacture highly paid positions out of nothing. On the one hand, they propose to limit funding the police force, offer no alternative funding, and place dual demands of body cameras and 5% draw of funds for community organizers. Also, noticeably absent from the criteria for these two bodies are lack of criminal background or history of organized crime and the like. Positive or productive experience in the legal system...

http://www.joincampaignzero.org/film-the-police Wrote:The Right to Record Police

... this is good.

Something missing is a mandate to collect and report to the federal government statistics on police violence - including race of the victim and results of internal investigations and determinations. IMHO, this is central to identifying patterns and determining how big the problem is.

There are probably other items that are problematic, and this is early on in the process... I wouldn't expect all of their demands to make it into an actual policy platform or into a bill, but it is something that is productive, as opposed to just burning **** to the ground.

Baltimore has essentially done this by going to a reactive model of policing as to the wishes of their citizens as evidenced during the riots in April. The result? Two of the top five months in their history for murder with 45 murders in July and 42 in May. June was a slow month with only 30.

The citizens never asked for a reactive model of policing. That's what the police decided was the alternative to profiling.

(08-23-2015 11:48 AM)Fitbud Wrote:  The citizens never asked for a reactive model of policing. That's what the police decided was the alternative to profiling.

no, not even close.....they don't want to deal with that bs anymore....

any cop killing is now demonstratively and defined as a negative by the media.....

you take offense to teachers being blamed as the 'reason for fail' by many parents....

you don't understand the parallels of contradiction and why that makes you a troll....

you personify a libtard troll....if I had your portrait in my possession, I would market it as the background for a dart board or shooting target....

(08-23-2015 11:48 AM)Fitbud Wrote:  The citizens never asked for a reactive model of policing. That's what the police decided was the alternative to profiling.

For the most part policing is reactive anyway. They mostly respond after the crime has already occurred.

These sound like solid ideas. Just what I'd want if I were walking my son or daughter to the local 7-11 for a Summer Slurpee. This is sure to add significantly to the better quality of life and solid influences/ role models on the younger generations.

Consumption of Alcohol on Streets
Marijuana Possession
Disorderly Conduct
Trespassing
Loitering
Disturbing the Peace (including Loud Music)
Spitting

Effing degenerates. IF you can't NOT do these in the general public, (okay spitting aside, that's ridiculous), then I'd just assume welcome you to the general population.

(05-01-2015 11:28 AM)I45owl Wrote:  

(05-01-2015 11:25 AM)Fitbud Wrote:  

(05-01-2015 11:24 AM)TheEagleWay Wrote:  

(05-01-2015 11:19 AM)Fitbud Wrote:  I think you make an excellent point. What if there was a federal mandate to give cops body cams and the feds pick up the bill? Would that work?

What you described above is the reason why the rhetoric about the Gray story is so disturbing. What happened to him is just the straw that broke the camel's back. People can't see passed the police brutality or the rioting to see the bigger problem here.

It's a catch 22. Cops patrol these poor areas because there is more crime and there is more crime because the cops are constantly patrolling the area.

Cops cause crime, got it.

A clear indication that you have not been paying attention to anything that has been going on all week.

I think that's all avoided if you just say there are more arrests (higher crime statistics) because of police presence.

But, you're free to carry on with that kind of dialog if it's therapeutic to you...

Said another way....

Lots of 'crime' goes unreported because most people don't care if you signal to change lanes or if your brake lights are out or if you just look 'suspicious'... but do it in front of a cop and it gets reported. The more cops, the more of those stops.