The 2020 George Floyd/BLM/Police Brutality Protests Discussion Thread

[Scaff]

Gotta wonder if the guy was white would the dumb cop still be a dumb cop or would the guy have been in handcuffs already? Or worse, let off with a warning and then the cops leave the scene

Well, let's take a look at what happened when a white guy steals a police baton, attacks the police with it and then steals a cruiser.

 

[Tornado]

If a taser is treated as a lethal weapon, why does the department even waste money on them when the cops already have handguns?

 

[Liquid]

For what it's worth, things like Tasers are increasingly and correctly marketed as "less than lethal" weapons which, when used appropriately, is true as a purely disabling weapon.

Non-lethal is too misleading.

 

[UKMikey]

For what it's worth, things like Tasers are increasingly and correctly marketed as "less than lethal" weapons which, when used appropriately, is true as a purely disabling weapon.

Non-lethal is too misleading.

How much less than lethal is "less than lethal"? Are they shoot-him-in-the-back "less than lethal"? I suspect the court case will hinge on this question.

 

[HenrySwanson]

So I asked about statistics many pages ago and the replies showed me towards the WaPo database on cop shootings. I've now done a bit more looking and found some studies/posts/articles that paint an equivocal picture. I'll start with those that support the accusation that non-whites are more at risk, and that this could be because of systemic racism:

1.
A Typology of Civilians Shot and Killed by US Police: a Latent Class Analysis of Firearm Legal Intervention Homicide in the 2014–2015 National Violent Death Reporting System

This study classes shootings into different groups, and finds that:

...black, non-Hispanic people are roughly twice as likely to be victims of LIH compared with their representation in the general US population [21]. Moreover, black, non-Hispanic victims are disproportionately represented across every class, though not to equal extents. For example, only 16% of class 4 (impaired, suicidal, threatening with knives) LIH victims were black, non-Hispanic. Conversely, class 6 (low threat, likely unarmed), which are LIH characterized by an apparent absence of force used by the victim, is the only class in which the plurality of victims is a non-white race (black, non-Hispanic). This finding comports with prior LIH research that finds that black Americans are not only disproportionately likely to be killed by law enforcement but are disproportionately unlikely to present an objective threat of deadly force (as measured both directly by mention of use of force by victim in incident narratives and by proxy through victim’s armed status).

Limitations, however, are that since their sample only deals with those killed and not overall interactions with police they acknowledge that:

As a result, the characteristics (e.g., race, mental illness) we identify as disproportionately present or absent from a given latent class should not be considered risk factors for legal intervention firearm homicide victimization.

2.
A Multi-Level Bayesian Analysis of Racial Bias in Police Shootings at the County-Level in the United States, 2011–2014

It too found bias against black people in shootings, and even tried factoring in crime rates:

It is sometimes suggested that in urban areas with more black residents and higher levels of inequality, individuals may be more likely to commit violent crime, and thus the racial bias in police shooting may be explainable as a proximate response by police to areas of high violence and crime (community violence theory [14, 15, 23, 35]). In other words, if the environment is such that race and crime covary, police shooting ratios may show signs of racial bias, even if it is crime, not race, that is the causal driver of police shootings. In the models fit in this study, however, there is no evidence of an association between black-specific crime rates (neither in assault-related arrests nor in weapons-related arrests) and racial bias in police shootings, irrespective of whether or not other controls were included in the model. As such, the results of this study provide no empirical support for the idea that racial bias in police shootings (in the time period, 2011–2014, described in this study) is driven by race-specific crime rates (at least as measured by the proxies of assault- and weapons-related arrest rates in 2012).

It's limitations however are similar to the first paper:

It is important to reiterate that these risk ratios come only from the sample of individuals who were shot by police and census data on race/ethnicity-specific population information. The USPSD does not have information on encounter rates between police and subjects according to ethnicity. As such, the data cannot speak to the relative risk of being shot by a police officer conditional on being encountered by police, and do not give us a direct window into the psychology of the officers who are pulling the triggers.

Also the crime rates they use to draw that conclusion are from just 2 examples: aggravated assault, and weapons possession.

3.
An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force

Quoting the abstract:

This paper explores racial differences in police use of force. On non-lethal uses of force,blacks and Hispanics are more than fifty percent more likely to experience some form of forcein interactions with police. Adding controls that account for important context and civilianbehavior reduces, but cannot fully explain, these disparities. On the most extreme use of force – officer-involved shootings – we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextualfactors are taken into account. We argue that the patterns in the data are consistent with amodel in which police officers are utility maximizers, a fraction of which have a preference fordiscrimination, who incur relatively high expected costs of officer-involved shootings.

Since this is 62 pages long I haven't gone over how they make those conclusions.

----------------------

Now for the evidence against that theory:

1.
Officer characteristics and racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings

This study took into account the demographics of the shooting officer and also crime rates and found:

We did not find evidence for anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparity in police use of force across all shootings, and, if anything, found anti-White disparities when controlling for race-specific crime. While racial disparity did vary by type of shooting, no one type of shooting showed significant anti-Black or -Hispanic disparity. The uncertainty around these estimates highlights the need for more data before drawing conclusions about disparities in specific types of shootings.

This prompted two letters to the journal instigating a response from the authors

The authors also issued a correction saying:

Although we were clear about the quantity we estimated and provide justification for calculating Pr(race|shot, X) in our report (see also 2, 3), we want to correct a sentence in our significance statement that has been quoted by others stating ‘White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers.’ This sentence refers to estimating Pr(shot|race, X). As we estimated Pr(race|shot, X), this sentence should read: ‘As the proportion of White officers in a fatal officer-involved shooting increased, a person fatally shot was not more likely to be of a racial minority.’ This is consistent with our framing of the results in the abstract and main text.

2.
The Myth of Systemic Police Racism

This article brings up the differences in crime rates between races so adds nothing new in those terms however it also states that:

A 2015 Justice Department analysis of the Philadelphia Police Department found that white police officers were less likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot unarmed black suspects. Research by Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer Jr. also found no evidence of racial discrimination in shootings. Any evidence to the contrary fails to take into account crime rates and civilian behavior before and during interactions with police.

With regards to the Philly PD report, I can't seem to find a statement to back that up but do find that they:

...tested the statistical significance of the difference amongst various suspect racial groups, dependent upon officer racial groups. We found that no group of officers had a significantly different rate of TPFs amongst various suspect races. For example, the difference in the rate at which white officer OISs were TPFs was not significantly different for black, His-panic, white, and Asian suspects. However, given our small sample of TPFs, we caution against overconfi-dence in this finding

* TPF is threat perception failure.

More can be found about the report here

The research by Fryer Jr is actually the analysis posted as number 3 above.

3.


It should be noted that this is for violent crime only.

Here is a response from a person involved in the data collection:


------------

There are obviously more studies for both sides and this really only looks at shootings and not other disparities in policing (see this article for more).

 

[TexRex]

So I asked about statistics many pages ago and the replies showed me towards the WaPo database on cop shootings. I've now done a bit more looking and found some studies/posts/articles that paint an equivocal picture. I'll start with those that support the accusation that non-whites are more at risk, and that this could be because of systemic racism:

1.
A Typology of Civilians Shot and Killed by US Police: a Latent Class Analysis of Firearm Legal Intervention Homicide in the 2014–2015 National Violent Death Reporting System

This study classes shootings into different groups, and finds that:

...black, non-Hispanic people are roughly twice as likely to be victims of LIH compared with their representation in the general US population [21]. Moreover, black, non-Hispanic victims are disproportionately represented across every class, though not to equal extents. For example, only 16% of class 4 (impaired, suicidal, threatening with knives) LIH victims were black, non-Hispanic. Conversely, class 6 (low threat, likely unarmed), which are LIH characterized by an apparent absence of force used by the victim, is the only class in which the plurality of victims is a non-white race (black, non-Hispanic). This finding comports with prior LIH research that finds that black Americans are not only disproportionately likely to be killed by law enforcement but are disproportionately unlikely to present an objective threat of deadly force (as measured both directly by mention of use of force by victim in incident narratives and by proxy through victim’s armed status).

Limitations, however, are that since their sample only deals with those killed and not overall interactions with police they acknowledge that:

As a result, the characteristics (e.g., race, mental illness) we identify as disproportionately present or absent from a given latent class should not be considered risk factors for legal intervention firearm homicide victimization.

2.
A Multi-Level Bayesian Analysis of Racial Bias in Police Shootings at the County-Level in the United States, 2011–2014

It too found bias against black people in shootings, and even tried factoring in crime rates:

It is sometimes suggested that in urban areas with more black residents and higher levels of inequality, individuals may be more likely to commit violent crime, and thus the racial bias in police shooting may be explainable as a proximate response by police to areas of high violence and crime (community violence theory [14, 15, 23, 35]). In other words, if the environment is such that race and crime covary, police shooting ratios may show signs of racial bias, even if it is crime, not race, that is the causal driver of police shootings. In the models fit in this study, however, there is no evidence of an association between black-specific crime rates (neither in assault-related arrests nor in weapons-related arrests) and racial bias in police shootings, irrespective of whether or not other controls were included in the model. As such, the results of this study provide no empirical support for the idea that racial bias in police shootings (in the time period, 2011–2014, described in this study) is driven by race-specific crime rates (at least as measured by the proxies of assault- and weapons-related arrest rates in 2012).

It's limitations however are similar to the first paper:

It is important to reiterate that these risk ratios come only from the sample of individuals who were shot by police and census data on race/ethnicity-specific population information. The USPSD does not have information on encounter rates between police and subjects according to ethnicity. As such, the data cannot speak to the relative risk of being shot by a police officer conditional on being encountered by police, and do not give us a direct window into the psychology of the officers who are pulling the triggers.

Also the crime rates they use to draw that conclusion are from just 2 examples: aggravated assault, and weapons possession.

3.
An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force

Quoting the abstract:

This paper explores racial differences in police use of force. On non-lethal uses of force,blacks and Hispanics are more than fifty percent more likely to experience some form of forcein interactions with police. Adding controls that account for important context and civilianbehavior reduces, but cannot fully explain, these disparities. On the most extreme use of force – officer-involved shootings – we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextualfactors are taken into account. We argue that the patterns in the data are consistent with amodel in which police officers are utility maximizers, a fraction of which have a preference fordiscrimination, who incur relatively high expected costs of officer-involved shootings.

Since this is 62 pages long I haven't gone over how they make those conclusions.

----------------------

Now for the evidence against that theory:

1.
Officer characteristics and racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings

This study took into account the demographics of the shooting officer and also crime rates and found:

We did not find evidence for anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparity in police use of force across all shootings, and, if anything, found anti-White disparities when controlling for race-specific crime. While racial disparity did vary by type of shooting, no one type of shooting showed significant anti-Black or -Hispanic disparity. The uncertainty around these estimates highlights the need for more data before drawing conclusions about disparities in specific types of shootings.

This prompted two letters to the journal instigating a response from the authors

The authors also issued a correction saying:

Although we were clear about the quantity we estimated and provide justification for calculating Pr(race|shot, X) in our report (see also 2, 3), we want to correct a sentence in our significance statement that has been quoted by others stating ‘White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers.’ This sentence refers to estimating Pr(shot|race, X). As we estimated Pr(race|shot, X), this sentence should read: ‘As the proportion of White officers in a fatal officer-involved shooting increased, a person fatally shot was not more likely to be of a racial minority.’ This is consistent with our framing of the results in the abstract and main text.

2.
The Myth of Systemic Police Racism

This article brings up the differences in crime rates between races so adds nothing new in those terms however it also states that:

A 2015 Justice Department analysis of the Philadelphia Police Department found that white police officers were less likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot unarmed black suspects. Research by Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer Jr. also found no evidence of racial discrimination in shootings. Any evidence to the contrary fails to take into account crime rates and civilian behavior before and during interactions with police.

With regards to the Philly PD report, I can't seem to find a statement to back that up but do find that they:

...tested the statistical significance of the difference amongst various suspect racial groups, dependent upon officer racial groups. We found that no group of officers had a significantly different rate of TPFs amongst various suspect races. For example, the difference in the rate at which white officer OISs were TPFs was not significantly different for black, His-panic, white, and Asian suspects. However, given our small sample of TPFs, we caution against overconfi-dence in this finding

* TPF is threat perception failure.

More can be found about the report here

The research by Fryer Jr is actually the analysis posted as number 3 above.

3.


It should be noted that this is for violent crime only.

------------

There are obviously more studies for both sides and this really only looks at shootings and not other disparities in policing (see this article for more).

Is it necessary to even casually scan this claptrap (full disclosure, I have declined to do so) to come to the conclusion that it makes no mention of police officers killing people when they can't be reasonably said to have been in imminent danger?

 

[Scaff]

So I asked about statistics many pages ago and the replies showed me towards the WaPo database on cop shootings. I've now done a bit more looking and found some studies/posts/articles that paint an equivocal picture. I'll start with those that support the accusation that non-whites are more at risk, and that this could be because of systemic racism:

1.
A Typology of Civilians Shot and Killed by US Police: a Latent Class Analysis of Firearm Legal Intervention Homicide in the 2014–2015 National Violent Death Reporting System

This study classes shootings into different groups, and finds that:

...black, non-Hispanic people are roughly twice as likely to be victims of LIH compared with their representation in the general US population [21]. Moreover, black, non-Hispanic victims are disproportionately represented across every class, though not to equal extents. For example, only 16% of class 4 (impaired, suicidal, threatening with knives) LIH victims were black, non-Hispanic. Conversely, class 6 (low threat, likely unarmed), which are LIH characterized by an apparent absence of force used by the victim, is the only class in which the plurality of victims is a non-white race (black, non-Hispanic). This finding comports with prior LIH research that finds that black Americans are not only disproportionately likely to be killed by law enforcement but are disproportionately unlikely to present an objective threat of deadly force (as measured both directly by mention of use of force by victim in incident narratives and by proxy through victim’s armed status).

Limitations, however, are that since their sample only deals with those killed and not overall interactions with police they acknowledge that:

As a result, the characteristics (e.g., race, mental illness) we identify as disproportionately present or absent from a given latent class should not be considered risk factors for legal intervention firearm homicide victimization.

2.
A Multi-Level Bayesian Analysis of Racial Bias in Police Shootings at the County-Level in the United States, 2011–2014

It too found bias against black people in shootings, and even tried factoring in crime rates:

It is sometimes suggested that in urban areas with more black residents and higher levels of inequality, individuals may be more likely to commit violent crime, and thus the racial bias in police shooting may be explainable as a proximate response by police to areas of high violence and crime (community violence theory [14, 15, 23, 35]). In other words, if the environment is such that race and crime covary, police shooting ratios may show signs of racial bias, even if it is crime, not race, that is the causal driver of police shootings. In the models fit in this study, however, there is no evidence of an association between black-specific crime rates (neither in assault-related arrests nor in weapons-related arrests) and racial bias in police shootings, irrespective of whether or not other controls were included in the model. As such, the results of this study provide no empirical support for the idea that racial bias in police shootings (in the time period, 2011–2014, described in this study) is driven by race-specific crime rates (at least as measured by the proxies of assault- and weapons-related arrest rates in 2012).

It's limitations however are similar to the first paper:

It is important to reiterate that these risk ratios come only from the sample of individuals who were shot by police and census data on race/ethnicity-specific population information. The USPSD does not have information on encounter rates between police and subjects according to ethnicity. As such, the data cannot speak to the relative risk of being shot by a police officer conditional on being encountered by police, and do not give us a direct window into the psychology of the officers who are pulling the triggers.

Also the crime rates they use to draw that conclusion are from just 2 examples: aggravated assault, and weapons possession.

3.
An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force

Quoting the abstract:

This paper explores racial differences in police use of force. On non-lethal uses of force,blacks and Hispanics are more than fifty percent more likely to experience some form of forcein interactions with police. Adding controls that account for important context and civilianbehavior reduces, but cannot fully explain, these disparities. On the most extreme use of force – officer-involved shootings – we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextualfactors are taken into account. We argue that the patterns in the data are consistent with amodel in which police officers are utility maximizers, a fraction of which have a preference fordiscrimination, who incur relatively high expected costs of officer-involved shootings.

Since this is 62 pages long I haven't gone over how they make those conclusions.

----------------------

Now for the evidence against that theory:

1.
Officer characteristics and racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings

This study took into account the demographics of the shooting officer and also crime rates and found:

We did not find evidence for anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparity in police use of force across all shootings, and, if anything, found anti-White disparities when controlling for race-specific crime. While racial disparity did vary by type of shooting, no one type of shooting showed significant anti-Black or -Hispanic disparity. The uncertainty around these estimates highlights the need for more data before drawing conclusions about disparities in specific types of shootings.

This prompted two letters to the journal instigating a response from the authors

The authors also issued a correction saying:

Although we were clear about the quantity we estimated and provide justification for calculating Pr(race|shot, X) in our report (see also 2, 3), we want to correct a sentence in our significance statement that has been quoted by others stating ‘White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers.’ This sentence refers to estimating Pr(shot|race, X). As we estimated Pr(race|shot, X), this sentence should read: ‘As the proportion of White officers in a fatal officer-involved shooting increased, a person fatally shot was not more likely to be of a racial minority.’ This is consistent with our framing of the results in the abstract and main text.

2.
The Myth of Systemic Police Racism

This article brings up the differences in crime rates between races so adds nothing new in those terms however it also states that:

A 2015 Justice Department analysis of the Philadelphia Police Department found that white police officers were less likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot unarmed black suspects. Research by Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer Jr. also found no evidence of racial discrimination in shootings. Any evidence to the contrary fails to take into account crime rates and civilian behavior before and during interactions with police.

With regards to the Philly PD report, I can't seem to find a statement to back that up but do find that they:

...tested the statistical significance of the difference amongst various suspect racial groups, dependent upon officer racial groups. We found that no group of officers had a significantly different rate of TPFs amongst various suspect races. For example, the difference in the rate at which white officer OISs were TPFs was not significantly different for black, His-panic, white, and Asian suspects. However, given our small sample of TPFs, we caution against overconfi-dence in this finding

* TPF is threat perception failure.

More can be found about the report here

The research by Fryer Jr is actually the analysis posted as number 3 above.

3.


It should be noted that this is for violent crime only.

------------

There are obviously more studies for both sides and this really only looks at shootings and not other disparities in policing (see this article for more).

On point 3 did you miss this part of the tweet feed from the author of the data used.

 

[HenrySwanson]

Is it necessary to even casually scan this claptrap (full disclosure, I have declined to do so) to come to the conclusion that it makes no mention of police officers killing people when they can't be reasonably said to have been in imminent danger?

It's looking at racial disparity/bias in shootings, not "bad shoots". I have a feeling that the riots were predicated more on the former issue rather than the latter.

Remember too that Floyd wasn't a shooting, so wouldn't have even counted in the majority of the statistics found in my post.

I think you dismissing it as "claptrap" says more about you than it does the post.

On point 3 did you miss this part of the tweet feed from the author of the data used.

Thanks will add.

I don't understand his expansion of his point:

There is not evidence to suggest that there is correlation between fatal violent crime rates and police shootings. In terms of which cities (police shootings don’t only happen in high crime areas) or nationally (the most violent cities don’t lead nation in police shooting)

and find it odd neither Leonydus nor him defended their positions further

 

[TexRex]

It's looking at racial disparity/bias in shootings, not "bad shoots". I have a feeling that the riots were predicated more on the former issue rather than the latter.

Remember too that Floyd wasn't a shooting, so wouldn't have even counted in the majority of the statistics found in my post.

I think you dismissing it as "claptrap" says more about you than it does the post.

Does it go into corruption by officers, departments, unions and the criminal justice system who make every effort to ensure criminals on the force aren't held accountable for their actions?

 

[Jezza819]

Does it go into corruption by officers, departments, unions and the criminal justice system who make every effort to ensure criminals on the force aren't held accountable for their actions?

I don't know who has the stronger union, the police or the Catholic Church.

 

[HenrySwanson]

Does it go into corruption by officers, departments, unions and the criminal justice system who make every effort to ensure criminals on the force aren't held accountable for their actions?

As stated before, it looks into differences in the racial makeup of victims where police have used force.

I guess we can look into what you want but I'm not sure that was the main reason for the riots?

 

[TexRex]

As stated before, it looks into differences in the racial makeup of victims where police have used force.

I guess we can look into what you want but I'm not sure that was the main reason for the riots?

How is it anything but deflection from and obfuscation of the issue of police brutality?

Is there even any mention of police brutality in the post?

 

[HenrySwanson]

How is it anything but deflection from and obfuscation of the issue of police brutality?

Is there even any mention of police brutality in the post?

Most are shootings. The Harvard one may have the most information with regards to force.

It's not meant to detract from the issue of police brutality - rather it's to highlight what evidence there is for/against the idea of racial bias in fatal police encounters.

 

[TexRex]

Most are shootings. The Harvard one may have more information with regards to force.

It's not meant to detract from the issue of police brutality - rather it's to highlight what evidence there is for/against the idea of racial bias in fatal police encounters.

"It isn't that, but it's definitely that."

Got it.

 

[HenrySwanson]

"It isn't that, but it's definitely that."

Got it.

Sigh

I'm not sure what you want. Most killings, the ultimate expression of police brutality, are shootings. If people want to look at whether the cops are or are not targetting certain sections of the population wouldn't looking at shootings be a logical starting point?

 

[TexRex]

Sigh

I'm not sure what you want. Most killings, the ultimate expression of police brutality, are shootings. If people want to look at whether the cops are or are not targetting certain sections of the population wouldn't looking at shootings be a logical starting point?

I got what I wanted from you. We're done.

 

[Scaff]

Sigh

I'm not sure what you want. Most killings, the ultimate expression of police brutality, are shootings. If people want to look at whether the cops are or are not targetting certain sections of the population wouldn't looking at shootings be a logical starting point?

Not entirely sure I would agree that limiting it to shooting would given an accurate picture, just as limiting it to shootings involving violet crime arrests would.

I would argue quite the opposite, particularly when the two are combined, as most (not all) of the cases that have raised issues around police conduct have involved either deaths outside of shootings and/or non violent crimes/no crime at all.

Narrowing it to only violent crime interactions and then removing population percentages from the analysis is always going to stack the odds in one direction.

As is ignoring the causes behind the levels of violent crimes and the reasons why people from deprived backgrounds are more likely to be incarcerated (and while not uniquely a POC situation, they are again over represented in terms of deprivation).

Remove these factors and you will always stack the argument in a direction that favours the police, actually account for these factors and it moves in the opposite direction.

In addition, regardless of which of the outcomes you wish to accept as correct, it doesn’t change the fact that police accountability for these actions is so heavily stacked against them being actually held accountable that the situation we have come to was always an inevitable one.

 

[Danoff]

I don't understand his expansion of his point:

There is not evidence to suggest that there is correlation between fatal violent crime rates and police shootings. In terms of which cities (police shootings don’t only happen in high crime areas) or nationally (the most violent cities don’t lead nation in police shooting)

and find it odd neither Leonydus nor him defended their positions further

He's saying that there is not a reason to narrow it to violent crime statistics only, as routine stops or non-violent arrests apparently change the statistics. Basically he's saying the data was filtered in a way it should not have been.

Why would you expect to see police brutality in a case of a violent crime arrest vs. a non-violent arrest? George Floyd, for example, was being arrested for suspicion of using counterfeit bills. That's a non-violent crime, and he was killed during the arrest. In fact, one might expect the statistics to head the other direction for violent arrests, since there may be more "backup" on the scene, and additional body cameras focused on a violent crime arrest as compared to something more pedestrian.

 

[Dotini]

There has been a shooting in Seattle's CHOP zone. A fresh high school graduate has died. Few detail are known at this hour.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/after-early-morning-shooting-in-chop-occupied-area-returns-to-its-new-normal

By
David Gutman
,
Brendan Kiley
,
Hannah Furfaro
and
Mike Carter
Seattle Times staff reporters


A shooting on Capitol Hill early Saturday left one teenager dead, another person critically injured and raised new questions about the city’s capacity to provide emergency and medical services to the protest zone that has taken over the heart of the neighborhood for the last 12 days.

There is no public evidence to suggest the shooting was connected to the protest, but neither Seattle police detectives nor Seattle fire medics reached the scene after the shootings, according to city officials and videos of the aftermath.

For nearly two weeks, protesters, campers, activists and onlookers have turned the heart of Seattle’s Capitol Hill into a living experiment in urban policy.

What does a neighborhood look like with no armed law enforcement?

The answer, if nothing else, was peaceful. Graffiti abounded. So did camping and litter. The area sometimes felt more like a festival than a sit-in. But, after nearly two weeks of daily hostile standoffs between police and protesters, the tear gas was gone, replaced by daily lectures, guerrilla gardens and a block-long Black Lives Matter mural.

That came to an abrupt halt with Saturday’s violence at the Capitol Hill Organized Protest, the area known as CHOP or CHAZ, which protesters have occupied since Seattle police abandoned its East Precinct.


Mayor Jenny Durkan did not comment on the shooting or the protest area Saturday. Neither did Police Chief Carmen Best.

Kelsey Nyland, a Durkan spokeswoman, said the mayor was in close contact with the leaders of the police and fire departments.

Gov. Jay Inslee said the future of the protest zone is up to the city and his role is to give support.

“Clearly we need to have a way to provide adequate police and fire protection everywhere in the state of Washington, including in that area,” Inslee said. “There may have been an adequate response, we don’t know that.”

In a Facebook video, capturing the scene, the person filming describes a confrontation on 10th Avenue and says he saw someone with a “12-inch” knife. People begin to flee and moments later at least seven shots can be heard, fired in under three seconds

The first 911 calls came in at 2:19 a.m., according to a timeline put together by the fire department. When fire department medics arrived at the shooting site at 10th Avenue and East Pine Street, they waited a block away for police to arrive to ensure the safety of the area, officials said.

“This is a standard procedure for any scene of violence and is also currently in place for any fire and medical emergency inside the area deemed the CHOP due to firefighter safety,” the fire department said.

A video posted to Instagram by Seattle musician Raz Simone, who’s been a frequent presence at CHOP, shows fire department medics waiting a block away, despite the filmer’s desperate pleas for them to respond to the scene of the shooting.

“I want to be sure that we have not been cleared to move into the scene,” an ambulance driver says into the radio. “That’s negative,” comes the response.

Police arrived at 2:26 a.m., according to the timeline, but staged at 12th and Cherry, at least seven blocks away. Video shot by Omari Salisbury, a citizen journalist with Converge Media, shows police arriving at the shooting scene in a phalanx, guns drawn, behind shields. They were met by angry, yelling protesters, who told them the victim had already been taken to the hospital.

Body camera video released by police Saturday shows yelling protesters, many using profanities and several coming right up to the marching officers, as an officer says into a bullhorn, “Please move out of the way so we can get to the victim! All we want to do is get to the victim!”

Protesters can be heard shouting at the officers to “put your guns down!”

At one point, a group of protesters formed a human chain to try to stop other protesters from following the retreating police.

Meanwhile, volunteer medics, who have been a fixture in the area since protests began, were treating the first gunshot victim, a 19-year-old man. A private car took him a mile south to Harborview Medical Center. He arrived at 2:43 a.m. and was pronounced dead 11 minutes later, according to the fire department timeline.

The Seattle Times is not naming the man until officials or family confirm his identity. But close friends and teachers say he graduated from high school Friday. They described him as someone who persevered despite a difficult childhood: He’d landed a job and dreamed of someday having a family. More than anything, he “wanted to be loved,” a former teacher said.

At 2:51, another flurry of 911 calls came in, reporting another victim, two blocks away, at 11th Avenue and East Pike Street.

Alex Bennett, a former nurse, said she was walking her dog with a friend when she came across the second victim on the hood of a car, bleeding from a wound in his arm.

Bennett said she used her sweatshirt as a tourniquet to try to stanch the bleeding and asked someone to call 911. When a volunteer CHOP medic came by with a first aid kit, Bennett said they examined the man and found another wound in his chest.


The man’s skin was turning clammy and his breathing was shallow, she said, and when it became clear an ambulance wasn’t coming — or wouldn’t be there fast enough — she and others loaded him into a van and raced to Harborview, arriving at 3:06 a.m., where a medical team was waiting outside. He remained in the hospital, with life-threatening injuries, Saturday evening, according to police.

Bennett said she was questioned by a police officer, who she said “told me that when they responded to the first victim they were chased out of there, which is why they didn’t come for the second one.”

Salisbury’s video later shows protesters, but no police, looking for bullet casings at the site of the second victim.


Seattle City Councilmember Lisa Herbold said it was premature to suggest a connection between the protests and the shooting but that the current situation — Seattle fire has generally been asking people in medical distress to walk to the edges of the protest area — was untenable.

“Fire department medics have to be able to respond, regardless of where the need is located,” Herbold said in an interview. “The bottom line is first responders have to be able to respond.” She said she was asking protesters to work with police and fire to ensure that happens.

Councilmember Kshama Sawant, in a prepared statement, said there are “indications that this may have been a right-wing attack,” but offered no evidence and did not respond to follow up questions. She called for “immediate solidarity with the protest at the CHOP.”

None of the other seven members of the Seattle City Council responded to requests for comments Saturday.

Black Lives Matter Seattle-King County, in a series of tweets Saturday evening, said it was concerned about white supremacist violence.

“For Black people, please consider gathering elsewhere in Black led events and spaces for the important and critical work of community gathering and protest,” the organization wrote.

Even before the shootings, angst about the protest area has been rising among some local business owners and residents.

Molly Moon Neitzel, whose namesake ice cream shop on Capitol Hill has been an attraction for protesters and sightseers alike, said the workers manning that store have expressed concerns about safety in the past few days.

“All of us are all super supportive of the [Black Lives Matter] movement, and we’ve wanted to say open, but the last few days things have felt different,” she said. She said shifting leadership within the movement has made it difficult for businesses to communicate with the protesters and she wasn’t sure when she would reopen her shop.

“I no longer feel it’s safe, and I’m worried for my team and other small businesses,” Neitzel said.

Linda Chaw, the owner of BobaBucha Cafe on 15th Avenue and East Pine Street, said she was thinking of closing up early on Saturday, after the shootings.

“It just doesn’t feel safe,” Chaw said. “[The protests] are perfectly fine. They’re just trying to voice their feelings. But it’s different than when you have somebody shooting.”

Another small business owner in the area, who declined to be named for fear of retribution, said CHOP is detracting from the rest of the movement battling racism and police brutality

“I think it’s been a total distraction. It’s destroyed the neighborhood, it’s made people feel unsafe,” he said. “There’s a 50,000-person march which I feel got less coverage than CHOP did.”

On Saturday morning, three hours before Seattle police announced that one of the victims had died, Michael Solan, president of the Seattle Police Officers Guild, appeared on Fox News to rebuke the mayor for allowing protesters to take over the area.


“This is a direct result of city leadership, elected officials, failing the reasonable community of Seattle to enforce the rule of law,” Solan said. “We’re in a very very troubling time in Seattle and it’s deeply concerning.”

At CHOP, Saturday morning, a crowd of demonstrators formed a large circle in the ballfields south of Cal Anderson Park for a somber and at times tense group meeting.

“We lost another Black man last night,” activist Jaiden Grayson, who has emerged as a leader over the past several days, told the crowd through a megaphone. “That is the very reason we are out here.”

She urged demonstrators to stop drinking and using drugs at the protest, citing the double threat of police sweeping out demonstrators and violence from white supremacists.

Shortly after the meeting, additional volunteer security showed up, and guards patrolled the premises wearing body armor and openly carrying handguns and long guns.

Organizers spent the day trying to collect protesters’ cell phone footage to figure out what happened. By early Saturday evening, things seemed back to the new normal: Activists were giving speeches, people were grilling and handing out free food, volunteer teams worked to calm the occasional flared tempers.


No consensus emerged on the future of the area or how the shootings might alter that.

But many agreed on at least one thing: CHOP asked for ambulances that never arrived.

“We have this unprecedented opportunity to experiment with living in a non-policed area,” said activist David Lewis, who had been onsite when the shooting happened. “But we never thought we’d live in a world without access to health care, without access to first responders.”

“We’re all still here,” he said. “Because we want to make a change.”

 

[HenrySwanson]

Not entirely sure I would agree that limiting it to shooting would given an accurate picture, just as limiting it to shootings involving violet crime arrests would.

No, no - not limiting it to shooting. Starting from there, since the statistics for shootings are more readily available.

I would argue quite the opposite, particularly when the two are combined, as most (not all) of the cases that have raised issues around police conduct have involved either deaths outside of shootings and/or non violent crimes/no crime at all.

I'm not disagreeing.

In fact I want to next look at:

1) Use of force statistics
2) Number of complaints

My post was not about police brutality as a whole, but rather statistics for/against the claim that the police are inherently racist.

If you remember back in the thread my question was if there was proof for @CLowndes888 statement:

Saying that the injustice is "minor" is a massive insult to all black people who have been murdered at the hands of scummy white policemen. If it was minor, we wouldn't be seeing these protests.

Narrowing it to only violent crime interactions and then removing population percentages from the analysis is always going to stack the odds in one direction.

As is ignoring the causes behind the levels of violent crimes and the reasons why people from deprived backgrounds are more likely to be incarcerated (and while not uniquely a POC situation, they are again over represented in terms of deprivation).

Remove these factors and you will always stack the argument in a direction that favours the police, actually account for these factors and it moves in the opposite direction.

In addition, regardless of which of the outcomes you wish to accept as correct, it doesn’t change the fact that police accountability for these actions is so heavily stacked against them being actually held accountable that the situation we have come to was always an inevitable one.

Is this in reference to the Leonydus tweet?

He's saying that there is not a reason to narrow it to violent crime statistics only, as routine stops or non-violent arrests apparently change the statistics. Basically he's saying the data was filtered in a way it should not have been.

Why would you expect to see police brutality in a case of a violent crime arrest vs. a non-violent arrest? George Floyd, for example, was being arrested for suspicion of using counterfeit bills. That's a non-violent crime, and he was killed during the arrest. In fact, one might expect the statistics to head the other direction for violent arrests, since there may be more "backup" on the scene, and additional body cameras focused on a violent crime arrest as compared to something more pedestrian.

Hmmm, that goes against what the authors found in my first "against" study:

“Many people ask whether black or white citizens are more likely to be shot and why. We found that violent crime rates are the driving force behind fatal shootings,” Cesario said. “Our data show that the rate of crime by each racial group correlates with the likelihood of citizens from that racial group being shot. If you live in a county that has a lot of white people committing crimes, white people are more likely to be shot. If you live in a county that has a lot of black people committing crimes, black people are more likely to be shot. It is the best predictor we have of fatal police shootings.”

But then if you look here (WaPo), just mapping violent crime against fatal cop shootings you get this:

Also consider that WaPo went with this in that same article:

A 2015 study by a University of California at Davis researcher concluded there was “no relationship” between crime rates by race and racial bias in police killings.

citing my 2nd "pro" study but didn't mention that:

the results of this study provide no empirical support for the idea that racial bias in police shootings (in the time period, 2011–2014, described in this study) is driven by race-specific crime rates (at least as measured by the proxies of assault- and weapons-related arrest rates in 2012).

in other words they were basing their conclusion on only 2 metrics of arrest rates.

I think what we really need are the encounter rates per racial group. We already know, rightly or wrongly, black people are stopped by police far often than white people. If all other things were equal that gives a higher chance that a black person could have a fatal interaction with police.

 

[UKMikey]

I don't know statistics but this statistician discounts the higher rate of police encounters for African-Americans as a factor in their getting fatally shot more often.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/06/11/opinion/statistical-paradox-police-killings/



Perhaps black people just make them more suspicious or nervous than white people do if this anecdote carries any weight at all:

 

[Dotini]

The followings vids present limited perspectives of a bigger picture unfolding in Seattle and across the nation.

 

[DesertPenguin]

I saw that Fox video and how it's worded. "Proved" as in they were looking for something to push their narrative.

 

[HenrySwanson]

I don't know statistics but this statistician discounts the higher rate of police encounters for African-Americans as a factor in their getting fatally shot more often.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/06/11/opinion/statistical-paradox-police-killings/



Perhaps black people just make them more suspicious or nervous than white people do if this anecdote carries any weight at all:

Thanks I may ask him on Twitter to answer some queries I have.

 

[Dotini]

Reporting by outsider who got inside the zone.

My terrifying five-day stay inside Seattle’s cop-free CHAZ

By Andy Ngo

June 20, 2020 | 1:32pm | Updated

TikTok teens claim to have discovered human remains on Seattle beach

1 killed, another injured as bullets fly inside Seattle's cop-free zone

‘Saluting’ the Republic of CHAZ and other commentary

In Seattle, we may be seeing the future of NYC: Devine
SEATTLE — On June 8, Seattle police frantically loaded what they could from the east precinct onto trucks and cars. Within hours, they boarded up and abandoned the station. That night, left-wing protesters from Black Lives Matter and Antifa declared ownership of the six-block neighborhood in the middle of the Pacific Northwest’s largest city. They named their new territory the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone,” or CHAZ. No laws or rules applied here except for one: “No cops allowed.”

During five undercover days and nights in the zone, I witnessed a continuing experiment in anarchy, chaos and brute-force criminality. In order to avoid being exposed as a journalist — several reporters have been barred or expelled — I slept and showered outside the zone. (Those inside have no showers but they do have portable bathrooms.) I took meals, and most of my water breaks, elsewhere because I was reluctant to remove my mask and risk being recognized. Every day I entered the zone twice through its semi-porous borders — once in the early afternoon, and again after sundown, staying until the wee hours.

Crime has surged inside and outside the zone.

On Saturday morning, a shooting erupted that left at least one person dead and another injured near a border checkpoint. Police were reportedly met with resistance when they tried to get to the victims, who apparently were then taken in private cars to the hospital. Cops made it into the zone to gather shell casings and evidence, some reports said, as police in riot gear stood at the border.

On Thursday, police arrested Robert James after he left the CHAZ. He is accused of sexually assaulting a deaf woman who was lured inside a tent. The same day, former city council candidate Isaiah Willoughby was arrested on suspicion of starting the arson attack on the East Precinct June 12.

Police Chief Carmen Best has stated that police response times to 911 calls in the surrounding area have “more than tripled” because they are down a station.

1 killed, another injured as bullets fly inside Seattle's cop-free zone
Lacking agreed-upon leadership, those who have naturally risen to the top have done so with force or intimidation. For example, rapper Raz Simone, real name Solomon Simone, patrols CHAZ on some nights with an armed entourage. Simone, originally from Georgia, has an arrest record for child cruelty and other charges. He usually conducts his patrols carrying a long semi-auto rifle and sidearm. Last weekend, a live stream recorded Simone handing another man a rifle from the trunk of a car.

Not everyone in CHAZ recognizes Simone’s police-like presence, but no one is willing to stand up to him and his group. There have been consequences to those perceived as challengers or threats. Independent Los Angeles-based journalist Kalen D’Ameida recorded Simone and his crew in the early hours of Monday morning. He was spotted by one of Simone’s men, who manhandled him and demanded he turn over his mobile device. Simone’s team chased D’Ameida and tried to drag him to the security tent. He escaped by hiding in a construction site outside CHAZ until police responded to his 911 call.

Those unfortunate enough to have homes or businesses within CHAZ — an estimated 30,000 residents — have no say over their new overlords. Residents have discreetly voiced their concerns to local media. Gunshots and “screams of terror” at night have been reported. A resident of an apartment building came out twice to ask protesters to leave the alley where the entrance is. They brushed him off.

Every business and property inside CHAZ has been vandalized with graffiti. Most messages say some variation of “Black Lives Matter” or “George Floyd,” but other messages call for the murder of police. Most businesses are boarded up. “ACAB” — all cops are bastards, an Antifa slogan — is written over them.

Businesses outside CHAZ are also suffering. Last week, the Trader Joe’s in Capitol Hill announced it was closing immediately and indefinitely because of “safety and security concerns.” Then last Sunday night, around 100 angry protesters sprinted toward a nearby auto repair shop to “rescue” a comrade who had been detained. All it took to sic the mob on the business was one man yelling into a microphone inside CHAZ. According to the police report, the store’s owner, John McDermott, stopped Richard Hanks after he allegedly broke into the business, stole property and tried to start a fire. The owner and his son said they called police “multiple times” but cops and firefighters never responded.

SEE ALSO
Cops allegedly refused to respond to shop under attack near Seattle CHAZ
Rioters from CHAZ broke down the gate to the business lot and began rushing the owner. A large team of CHAZ volunteers successfully de-escalated the situation by forming a human chain where the fence once stood. It was one of the rare occasions the community was able to police itself. Private security for the business said they found a cache of weapons, including a rifle, hidden in a nearby bush.

In the midst of the restlessness and drug abuse that arises in and around CHAZ, acts of kindness and community support also flourish. Donations from outside have poured in every day, supplying the camp with multiple food and supply stations. The “No Cop Co-Op,” the largest supply booth, distributes raw meat and fresh vegetables. Next to the tents in Cal Anderson Park, denizens have started rudimentary “farms” to grow lettuce and herbs. One farm is only for “black and indigenous folks.” Those looking to make new friends can sit on one of the many sofas at the “Decolonization Conversation Cafe.” Free coffee is served.

Left-wing political groups have capitalized on the opportunity to recruit new members. The Democratic Socialists of America features prominently in addition to the Seattle Revolutionary Socialists. But in the absence of any vetting, perhaps intentionally, extremists have also set up shop. One station that operates off-and-on distributes extremist anarchist-communist agitprop — the political ideology of Antifa. In one manual titled, “Blockade, Occupy, Strike Back,” instructions show how to use human shields against police, and make rudimentary “bombs” using light bulbs and paint.

Another booklet is titled “Against the Police and the Prison World They Maintain.” It features short essays on why police, capitalism and the state must be destroyed by any means necessary, including through violence. One section explains how the media are enemies used to “pacify” revolutionaries.

“Our contempt for the media is inextricable from our hatred of this entire world,” the booklet reads. Attacks on journalists who are accused of not toeing the line have become commonplace. On Monday, a masked Antifa militant pointed me out to her comrades and tried to assemble a mob. I left before I could be injured. The following day, a Fox News crew was forced out of the zone.

Enlarge Image

A man sits in the Conversation Cafe while carrying a firearm in the police-free zone in Seattle.
Getty Images

Knowing the danger journalists faced in CHAZ, I tried to blend in by dressing in the “black bloc” uniform popularized by Antifa. I avoided speaking to people on the chance they would recognize my voice. When they viewed me as one of their own, they were incredibly kind. They offered me water and snacks throughout the day. Suspicious “outsiders,” on the other hand, were immediately tailed by security.

Despite the pleas from those who live and work inside Capitol Hill for law and order to be restored, Seattle’s city council has determined that CHAZ should continue. On Tuesday, the city even provided upgrades to CHAZ, including street blockades that double as graffiti canvases, along with cleaning services and porta-potties.

It is difficult to decipher what CHAZ occupants want. Each faction, whether liberal, Marxist or anarchist, has their own agenda. But one online manifesto posted on Medium demands no less than the abolishment of the criminal justice system.

What will happen if demands aren’t met? Jaiden Grayson, a young black woman who has developed a large following in CHAZ, told a filmmaker: “Respond to the demands of the people or prepare to be met with any means necessary. … It’s not even a warning. I’m letting people know what comes next.”
https://nypost.com/2020/06/20/my-terrifying-5-day-stay-inside-seattles-autonomous-zone/

 

[UKMikey]

^Andy Ngo

 

[Scaff]

Reporting by outsider who got inside the zone.


Enlarge Image

A man sits in the Conversation Cafe while carrying a firearm in the police-free zone in Seattle.
Getty Images

Quality independent source!

Nope.

 

[Dotini]

Possible NSFW audio on vids.

Here's the latest reporting by trusted local sources on the Saturday day night shootings , first two vids. 3rd vid is Sunday night shooting.



Obviously the occupation is not sustainable. The question is how it will end. Bang or whimper?

Companion video:


Sunday night shooting.

 

[JKgo]

...Absolutely disgusting and concerning at the same time.

https://www.news24.com/news24/south...ne-metro-cop-assaulted-throttled-him-20200621

'I'll kill you like George Floyd' - doctor says Tshwane metro cop assaulted, throttled him

A South African doctor of South Sudanese origin claims he was choked by TMPD officers while on his way to hospital to assist with a Covid-19 emergency.

 

[Dotini]

Breaking news from the social revolutionary CHOP zone.
Beware NSFW images/words

^this may be the best of the 3

An extended tour on foot.

EDIT:
After a 3rd night of gun violence and a 4th shooting victim, the mayor has reluctantly signaled intent to do her job and gradually end the occupation.