(06-02-2020, 11:26 AM)JagJohn Wrote: I have restrained from getting into a "my stat is bigger than your stat" battle on here, because, frankly, both sides of the argument naturally distrust the sources of the other. It turns into a pissing match that serves no purpose.

But, considering we have people on here who are so sure that statistics have "proved" police violence against black people to be a false narrative, I feel the need to at least post something (and there are many many more sources I could use here) that shows, absolutely, there is no proof of this. You can argue that some studies have shown this, others have shown that... But you simply can't say it has been proven.

https://journalistsresource.org/studies/...white-men/

I'd have to dig deeper but just reading the article which is a summary of the research, I can't tell if they adjusted for the crime rate.  Doesn't sound like they did.  Which invalidates the study.  As someone above said, you'd think cops were sexist as it's only men that are killed.  And you'd think they are ageist as most deaths are those from late teens to mid 30s.  

Nothing is 100% "proven".  There are other studies that do try to show a slight increase in deaths among black americans.  And perhaps the data is compromised in some fashion.  All studies are prone to potential errors.  But the problem is there are so many studies that show the rates of death by cops isn't very dramatic between races of the victim or race of the cop.  The overriding factor is almost always shown to be crime rates in a community.  

The problem is one half of the country believes these facts and the other doesn't.  If you can't even agree on what the problem is, nothing will ever get solved.  This is a problem that will never go away as I see no end in sight for high risk communities getting better.  And too many people are emotionally invested to put aside their feelings and look at the facts.  We're having all the wrong conversations because we can't even agree on what we should be talking about.  And personally I think a big part of the problem is that accusations of racism is such a highly effective political tool.  Giving that up is difficult.

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