Arathain Kelvar wrote:
It's interesting, you don't address the point at all. Comparing me to Monty, suggesting I have anti-police bigotry, etc., isn't going to prove your point. You haven't demonstrated in any way that using disparity is not appropriate - I have seen no indication that it should not be. Further, I don't agree (yet) that they all use this methodology; I haven't looked at it in terms of whether they do or do not (since there's not indication it's inappropriate). If I have time, I'll see if there are others.
I didn't say anything about "using disparity"; I said that disparity is not automatic - or even very strong - evidence that the cause of that disparity is because of bias. That remains to be seen, and its on those arresting bias to demonstrate that the bias exists. Disparity is not automatically or exclusively caused by bias. That's Complex Cause fallacy reasoning.
This is essentially the same as the Gender Wage Gap problem - the gap shrinks to around a quarter of what a simple comparison of gender averages claims it is when controls for experience, education, hours worked, etc. are added. That doesn't, however, mean the remaining 5-7% is automatically the result of discrimination; it means we can start investigating what's causing the unexplained portion. Some, or all, of that may be discrimination, but the mere existence of disparity doesn't demonstrate it.
Similarly, we cannot even begin talking about police (or court) bias without first accounting for the differences in frequency of criminal behavior between black people and other racial/ethnic groups. That has not, so far, been done; only a disparity has been demonstrated, but like the "70 cents ont he dollar" myth, it's simply getting as if it were incontrovertible proof of a problem. More importantly, like the "equal pay" demand, from which the "equal work" portion has suspiciously disappeared, this demand to remedy disparity in police action is devoid of any accompanying demand to address the issue of criminality in the black community - which is being excused and ignored by BLM.
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But no, I'm not going to be suckered into your attempted deflection.
Since there isn't any deflection going on, that should not be hard for you to accomplish. You're in no position to complain seeing as you were blithely dismissing the failures of Democrat run city governments to address these problems in police departments heavily manned by black officers with the handwavery of "oh well they can be biased too" (a more inappropriate overgeneralization and blase dismissal of an inconvenient act is hard to imagine.) Quietly dropping an untenable position as if you'd never stated it in the first place is exactly the sort of behavior I'm talking about, so if you don't like it, don't engage in that sort of behavior.
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There is no widespread Ferguson Effect, despite what Heather Mac Donald says.
"She's wrong because I say so!"
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I'm not sure how she is qualified to make that assessment, from a scientific perspective - she's a political commentator.
You're absolutely right; political scientists and commentators don't know anything about statistical methods or how to conduct research.
You, on the other hand are an engineer - and completely unqualified to hold any opinion whatsoever on this subject -
by the standard you just articulated. The fact that you have the right to vote and voice your opinion does not somehow mean it's a good idea for you to actually have one.
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The theory has been widely debunked, and indeed it doesn't even hold true that murder rates are on the rise overall. They dropped in NY, they dropped in Baltimore, they are through the roof in Chicago. There's other reasons for this.
It has not been "widely debunked" - this is yet another blast-from-the-past tactic. At best, you could claim that Ferguson is too recent to say for sure.
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Now, I'm not saying there's no Ferguson Effect at all - some officers in some areas may be scared. You might be, I don't know. Statistics don't support a widespread affect.
So in other words it hasn't been "widely debunked"; you don't actually know. Now we're getting somewhere.
As for me, I've moved on to bigger and better things than direct enforcement (which is pretty nice since I'm no longer working 8 or 9 days at night, spending half my days off going to drill, then another 8 or 9 days, then starting the cycle over for the next month) so you don't have to worry about me any. Thanks for your concern though, but you can rest assured there's no need to waste the time it take to type out passive-aggressive shots at my personal situation in the future.
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Riiight. None of this proves your point at all. Yes, lots of cops are meatheads. Has nothing to do with this conversation. Nor does what I remind you of, that's also totally unrelated. If you're out of arguments, just say so.
No, but it does prove that you're making broad, unsupportable generalizations about black police officers for no other reason than to avoid admitting the weaknesses in your own terrible position. I don't need to make any counterarguments to what you claim to have talked to some Baltimore cops about any more than I need to argue about what your favorite color is.