http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18383182/

Quote :

"WASHINGTON - Black, Hispanic and white drivers are equally likely to be pulled over by police, but blacks and Hispanics are much more likely to be searched and arrested, a federal study found. Police were much more likely to threaten or use force against blacks and Hispanics than against whites in any encounter, whether at a traffic stop or elsewhere, according to the Justice Department. The study, released Sunday by the department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, covered police contacts with the public during 2005 and was based on interviews by the Census Bureau with nearly 64,000 people age 16 or over."

4/29/2007 5:14:11 PM

Does this really surprise anyone?

4/29/2007 5:16:48 PM

Quote :

"Black, Hispanic and white drivers are equally likely to be pulled over by police, "

Good, that means there is no profiling.

Quote :

"but blacks and Hispanics are much more likely to be searched and arrested"

Is that something new? The crime and incarceration rate among blacks and hispanics is magnitudes of order higher than among whites. FBI stats regarding this have been known for ages.

4/29/2007 5:21:19 PM

Where have Al and Jesse been on this issue?

4/29/2007 5:22:38 PM

thought i was having a Entertainment flashback.

4/29/2007 5:53:27 PM

magnitudes of order?

Did they factor in income at all?

4/29/2007 7:16:28 PM

so you are blaming the police for blacks and hispanics for breaking the law, or for them being arrested? Or just pointing it out?

4/29/2007 7:18:45 PM

NO WAY!!!

4/29/2007 7:23:48 PM

I NOE RITE!!!111@@@

4/29/2007 7:24:15 PM

Quote :

" “The available data is sketchy but deeply concerning,” said Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP’s Washington bureau. The civil rights organization has done its own surveys of traffic stops, and he said the racial disparities grow larger, the deeper the studies delve. “It’s very important to look at the hit rates for searches — the number that actually result in finding a crime,” Shelton said"

That's what I was thinking...

According to this study: http://pier.econ.upenn.edu/Archive/05-004.pdf
Of the searches conducted, whites were far more likely to be found in violation of firearm, and alcohol/tobbacco laws, slightly more likely to be found with stole property than blacks, and slightly more likely to be found with other weapons than blacks. Blacks however outpaced whites or hispanics in being caught for "Other" violations, and blacks and hispanics both outpaced whites in being caught with "drugs and paraphernalia." The 3 groups were about the same in being caught with currency violations.

So, weighing the 2 studies against each other, it would be valid to conclude that there is some other bias against blacks and hispanics that is not due to either race being more likely to be committing a crime.

Basically, eyedrb is wrong (big surprise huh?) in thinking that blacks and hispanics are committing more crimes at a rate consistent with the increasing searches of them.

Hit Rates by Race/Ethnicity 
(Total Number of Observations in parenthesis) 
 
           Percentage 
Black       22.69 
              (811) 
Hispanic   18.87 
             (318) 
White     22.03 
            (1262) 

P-values from Pearson Chi-Squared 
Tests of Hypothesis that Proportion 
Equal: 0.365 

4/29/2007 7:34:19 PM

moron, you are suggesting that there is no reason to search one group more than the other I take it?

4/29/2007 8:03:54 PM

I'm not suggesting it, i'm interpreting the statistics, and that's what the statistics suggest.

4/29/2007 8:05:22 PM

stats of one study, look at the FBI crime reports stats, I think you will draw a different conclusion.

4/29/2007 8:07:08 PM

2 studies actually.

And the FBI studies practically suggest the same thing: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/05cius/data/table_43.html

Whites commit crimes about representative of their percent of the total population, blacks commit crimes about 2x more representative of their total population. That should mean blacks, at worst should be 2x more likely to be searched by percentage than whites (assuming the whites are a valid baseline for valid searches), but they are 3x more likely to be searched. Hispanics have it really bad off.

The problem with this idea though is that not all the crimes the FBI tracks are crimes that can be detected by searching a car. So it's more valid to use just the hit rate of search data, which shows a more drastic disparity that weighing it with the FBI data. If you want to mix the FBI data in, then the acceptable amount of searches is somewhere in between the hit rate data and the FBI data.

Either way, it's pretty clear that undue prejudice factors in to a cops decision to search people, yet another area where whitey has it easier.

[Edited on April 29, 2007 at 8:34 PM. Reason : ]

4/29/2007 8:17:47 PM

"representative of thier population." LOL

The facts of actually doing a crime are higher in those groups, and vastly so. If a police has a reason to search a vehicle and FINDS something and arrests them, what is the problem?

Have you ever played roulette?

4/29/2007 8:35:00 PM

^ We'd be pulling in more criminals though if the cops weren't giving white people a pass. That's the point. Statistically, a white person is more likely to get away with a crime than a black or hispanic.

If your main interest is pure numbers of criminals off the streets, the most efficient group to target is the whites.

Quote :

"The facts of actually doing a crime are higher in those groups, and vastly so."

No, not "vastly so" especially not for the hispanics.

[Edited on April 29, 2007 at 8:46 PM. Reason : ]

4/29/2007 8:40:07 PM

Quote :

"If your main interest is pure numbers of criminals off the streets, the most efficient group to target is the whites."

It'd be better if cops arrested fewer of other races.

The last thing America needs is more folks in jail.

4/29/2007 8:50:10 PM

I got away with speeding twice.....by the same state trooper! I was in rural Alabama, and there is this long stretch of nothing, i guess that is where he patrols...the first time he was actually after a coworker in front of me, but he pulled me b/c i didnt have my lights on.....so he gave me a warning on that and speeding....then a week later, the same trooper pulled me for speeding this time(technically, the first time was for lights, when he asked the first time did i know why he pulled me over, i said speeding...and then he said that and my lights are off). He told me three strikes your out, so i found another way to get back to the hotel....the hotel was a hr and a half away and after work all you think about is getting there. I work for the fed gov so maybe i got a pass! The same trooper pulled almost everyone I was working with sometime or another, they all got passes(there was a token black guy)

[Edited on April 29, 2007 at 8:56 PM. Reason : w]

4/29/2007 8:56:03 PM

Ok moron, Im going to use your last link and numbers, and I want you to follow me on this one. At some point people are going to have to start talking about this. Its just taboo, to discuss anything negative about minorities, and that needs to change. If there is a problem, it needs to be addressed, regardless of race.

Ok, here we go.
According to the census, whites make up 80.2% of population, blacks 12.8%. Ill only address those two, bc your last link doesnt have hispanic numbers.

1. Total crimes: From your FBI stats, whites 69.8, blacks 27.8. Now divide that by percentage of population. So, roughly 69/80=.86, and 27/12=2.25. If you divide those it will give the the ratio that blacks are 2.6 more likely to commit a crime. You can apply those for the rest of the stats.

2. Murder: 6.5 times more likely
3. Robbery: 8.97 times
4. Motor vehicle theft: 3.5 times

You are right on the drunk drivers and drunkness. More likely to be white 1.4 times. Of which we do have drunk driving checkpoints, of which you have probably taken part in. Can you imagine the shitstorm from a strategically place "stolen vehicle" checkpoint?

That was my point about roulette, police have to play thier odds. You have limited resources, you cant afford to put a chip on every number and color, just to be PC. THat was my point. It seems you want to blame police for the numbers and not the actually offenders. Either way, it would be real stretch to assume that the national numbers are so influenced by racist cops all across the country.

At any rate, this topic should not be taboo, which it obviously is in todays PC society.

4/29/2007 8:59:33 PM

Quote :

"Either way, it would be real stretch to assume that the national numbers are so influenced by racist cops all across the country."

Agreed. I know I'd be shocked by evidence of widespread racism in the United States of America.

4/29/2007 9:21:03 PM

^^ As you correctly calculated, overall, blacks are 2.6 times more likely to commit a crime per their representation in society.

This would mean that if you took a random sample of the population, and randomly arrested people, you'd want to arrest 2.6 times the percentage of whites you arrested of blacks. So if you had a room of 100 people, 80 white, 12 black, and 8 zombies, and you arrested 10 of the whites (I don't know how many whites would usually be arrested, but it's not relevant), that's about 12%. So, you'd have to arrest about 2.6 x 12%, or 30 percent, of the blacks, which is 3 blacks. This means that on an average day, for a cop that sees an average amount of people, he should focus on trying to catch whites (since he'll see more of them) if his primary concern is brining in a raw number of criminals.

If you were to assume that searching someone's car while pulling them over would result in finding out a crime equal to the rate that crimes are committed in general, then you'd want to search 2.6x more by percentage of white cars as black cars (which is how the numbers of searches works out actually). But this is a flawed method, because you usually can't determine things like money laundering, vandalism, sex offenses, etc., by searching a car. A better metric is looking at the hit-rate of what results from searching a car. By this measurement, whites and blacks are equally likely to be caught with something (and hispanics less likely). So when a cop pulls someone over, there's no good reason for them to be more likely to search a black person than a white person (and they should be less likely to search a hispanic, which is not the case either). No matter how you cut it, there is clearly something else going on with the traffic stops, which is very likely to be racism.

Of course, dividing the data by race might be a complete red herring in general, depending on what factors cause who to be pulled over when.

I'm also a little puzzled why hispanics don't show up on FBI data. They might be ignoring them all together, or lumping them in with blacks.

edit:
http://law.jrank.org/pages/1909/Race-Crime-Data-sources-meaning.html

This document talks about why the FBI doesn't track hispanics (they don't legally have to record hispanic crimes, so they don't), and weighs the FBI stats to the census bureau stats (which tracks crime by sampling).

[Edited on April 29, 2007 at 9:42 PM. Reason : ]

4/29/2007 9:31:45 PM

Quote :

"or lumping them in with blacks."

That wouldn't make any sense at all.

4/29/2007 9:44:38 PM

^ It wouldn't, and it's not what they do, as I implied in my edit.

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/html/ntcm.htm

This talks about the differences though between the 2 reporting systems the gov. uses that are mentioned in the last link I posted.

4/29/2007 9:47:20 PM

Just as an FYI, Hispanic people are lumped in the White category on the FBI's page. This has been discussed before on TWW, and is also borne out by this:

Quote :

"According to the census, whites make up 80.2% of population, blacks 12.8%"

Whites make up 68% max of the total population, and Latinos make up around 13%, more than Black people (they recently surpassed Blacks as the largest minority several months back).

4/29/2007 9:49:49 PM

they are lumped in for the crime stats. But not census. Whites 80, blacks 12, hispanics 14. I know it doesnt add up. But they put this "disclaimer"

Percentages do not add up to 100% due to rounding and because Hispanics may be of any race and are therefore counted under more than one category

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762156.html

[Edited on April 29, 2007 at 10:08 PM. Reason : .]

4/29/2007 9:55:15 PM

^ Actually, they are lumped in for census. I thought 80% seemed wrong...
http://www.census.gov/population/projections/nation/summary/np-t5-b.pdf

There is a separate category for whites, non-hispanics, which is 68%. Just counting white-looking hispanics as white gives the 80% number (which I guess should be good enough, if you're not a racist). For the FBI crime stats, it would depend on how the individual dept. reported it. I was listed as "white" on a speeding ticket before though and i'm not white.

This tries to explain it: http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/race/racefactcb.html



[Edited on April 29, 2007 at 10:06 PM. Reason : ]

4/29/2007 9:58:00 PM

^^ dude, whites are NOT 80% of the population. haven't been for 10 years or so.

that's a known fact.

and if i am not mistaken, asians and arabs are also lumped into "white".

[Edited on April 29, 2007 at 10:14 PM. Reason : ]

4/29/2007 10:13:24 PM

^ You should rephrase that as "whites of european descent."

Or as the census bureau might say, "whites non-hispanic non latino."

[Edited on April 29, 2007 at 10:45 PM. Reason : ]

4/29/2007 10:43:51 PM

All those statistics are messed up.

http://ncfindoffender.com/details.aspx?SRN=001834S3
http://ncfindoffender.com/details.aspx?SRN=008811S11
http://ncfindoffender.com/details.aspx?SRN=006927S7
http://ncfindoffender.com/details.aspx?SRN=003635S9

These guys obviously look white and are not hispanic.

5/1/2007 1:41:46 PM