Numbers and Some Perspective: Is The Coronavirus More Racist Than the Police?

Like most people, I've been mulling over the death of George Floyd and the ensuing protests. As have my friends.

It's really hard to be rational about police violence and brutality, toward black people and people in general. Especially when you are confronted with videos. Videos that elicit emotions. But videos that are also cherry-picked from millions of events. Policing in America is very very difficult. Is the culture of police racist, or is it overly-militarized, or is it simply rational in the face of a violent gun-filled society?

The new episode of The Weeds (Fixing the Police) gets into the nitty-gritty of this. They avoid race. They discuss the pros of a diverse police force, the possibility/impossibility of unbundling the police, the problems with qualified immunity, the simplest way to improve policing (make it easy to get rid of the worst officers) and the difficulty of reform because of police unions. So many of these things apply to teachers as well, so if you are a teacher, this episode is a must-listen. The reforms people want for police unions are often the same reforms people want for teacher unions.

If you want more on how innovative policy could transform policing, Tyler Cowen's new episode with Rachel Harmon covers a lot of stuff:

Rachel Harmon joined Tyler to discuss the best ideas for improving policing, including why good data on policing is so hard to come by, why body cams are not a panacea, the benefits and costs of consolidating police departments, why more female cops won’t necessarily reduce the use of force, how federal programs can sometimes misfire, where changing police selection criteria would and wouldn’t help, whether some policing could be replaced by social workers, the sobering frequency of sexual assaults by police, how a national accreditation system might improve police conduct, what reformers can learn from Camden and elsewhere, and more. 

I obviously think podcasts are a great medium for putting things in perspective. They are unconstrained by time, topical, and often allow smart people who don't come off well on video to express their opinions, with the benefit of audio editing.

Sam Harris puts things in perspective as well as anyone on his Making Sense podcast. He has slow and rational, rather emotionless discussions with smart people. But he does episode "#207: Can We Pull Back From the Brink?" all by his lonesome. He speaks for nearly two hours, in sentences that form logical paragraphs. It's really impressive. Unless you are very focused, it will be hard to listen to in one sitting. I think it's required listening if you want to think about these protests and the death of George Floyd.

Here are some of the questions that the episode (and my resultant reflection) have produced.

First of all, Sam Harris and most everyone has condemned Derek Chauvin's use of force on George Floyd. 

But the question about the scene are myriad: 

Was Chauvin trying to kill George Floyd? Would he have used a different amount of force on a white person? How often do the Minneapolis police (or any police) use this maneuver to restrain people? Why exactly were they restraining Floyd? Is Chauvin a homicidal maniac, a blatant racist, or did he think he was using a standard move to subdue someone resisting arrest?

No matter what the answers, this particular scene was heinous. But are most cops abusing black men like this? Are they doing something different to white people?

Sam Harris points out that there are over 10 million arrests each year in America. About one thousand of these result in lethal force. So one on every ten thousand arrests. Is that too many? It's more than in other developed countries. But we have WAY more guns on the streets than any other developed country.  

Of those that die, most of them are white. About 30 percent of them are black. Black people only make up 13 percent of the population. So there is a disparity. Some claim that this 17 percent disparity is racism. 

Is it?

Perhaps. But black people tend to be more likely to be arrested, and more likely to be involved in criminal activities. If you take this into account, then-- according to Sam Harris and most of what I have read: 

This suggests that officer bias – in terms of officers making different shooting decisions for black and white citizens – is not necessarily the cause of black citizens being shot at higher rates. Even if officers were making the same decisions about whether to use deadly force for black and white citizens, population-level disparities would still emerge given these crime rate differences.

Is some police brutality racist? Perhaps, but that's hard to prove. It's a case by case thing. Is some police violence due to poor training? Absolutely. But there have been police reforms, especially in large cities. FiveThirtyEight has a podcast on police violence that details this. White police are LESS likely to use lethal force on a black person than they are on a white person. Have these reforms in large cities been enough? Do police unions need to be dismantled? Is it possible to dismantle the culture of police in a country as violent and gun-ridden as the United States? The data and numbers are ambiguous . . . although it seems lethal force is going down in major cities, and it is going up in rural areas.

Is some of this police violence because we send a person with a badge and a gun to deal with all sorts of problems that don't necessitate a badge and a gun?

How much of this can be blamed on the war on drugs? Harris talks about "no-knock" drug raids, which are inherently violent for people of any race. Are they necessary?

Harris brings up the largest factor, of course. Median black families have one-tenth of the wealth of median white families. So black families are more likely to live in poverty, in rougher neighborhoods, closer to crime, and closer to hands-on policing. Statistically, much of this inequality is due to slavery, Jim Crow laws, the fables of the Reconstruction, segregation, white supremacy, the KKK, political suppression, lack of civil rights, systemic discrimination, and real estate. Location, location, location. 

This is all well and good to keep in mind until the shit goes down. Then every situation is particular. Radiolab has a fantastic episode that explains the criteria for "reasonable action" by police. It's much more about acting reasonably in the moment, then assessing the totality of the situation. 

Malcolm Gladwell has a great podcast on this archetypal police situation, Descend into the Particular.

He comes to the conclusion that we might police laws far too rigidly, especially in neighborhoods where there is a constant police presence. Howard "Bunny" Colvin from The Wire would agree.

Gladwell breaks down the findings about the shooting of Michael Brown and the Ferguson riots and makes two assertions:

1) the white cop that shot Michael Brown was truly threatened by him

2) the policing system in Ferguson oppressed, terrorized, extorted, and enraged the people of the town, most of whom were black.

The Indicator has a heartbreaking episode on how fees and fines often target people of color and destroy their finances and their relationship with the police. Defunding the police could compound this problem-- if the police have less money, they are going to rely on fees and fines more. The fix for this is something no one wants to hear: higher taxes and a better-funded, more professional, better trained, less militarized, less statistically oriented police department. A department that is incentivized to have good community relations, media presence, and ethical standards, rather than high arrest rates and other conflict-ridden incidents. The Wire covers this.

So in the moment, it's really hard to deescalate a situation when the people you are trying to police despise you. In fact, it's really hard to police any situation that might lead to violence or gunplay.

Now there is Rayshard Brooks. Another video. And with ten million arrests, there will always be another video. Arrests will go awry and people will get shot. Black and white. Videos will surface.

Videos don't indicate the totality of truth. Were the George Floyd protests peaceful or were they riotous? Depends on which videos you watch. This is a major problem. 

For most of the Brooks video, it's a typical DUI stop. Fairly cordial and boring. The Daily podcast "The Killing of Rayshard Brooks" summarizes the incident, if you don't know the details. And then things go wrong. And then there are the questions:

Would the cops have let a white guy walk home? Maybe, maybe not. Once the cops ascertained that brooks was drunk, they couldn't let him go. Brooks also had an outstanding warrant, which was probably weighing on his mind. When they try to cuff Brooks, a scuffle ensues, Brooks punches an officer, grabs a taser, runs, and then turns and shoots the taser at the cop in pursuit, and then he gets shot three times. 

Can a cop let a drunk guy run away with his taser? Does a cop have to arrest a person who has been driving drunk, white or black? Could he have let him move his car out of the drive-thru and then sleep in it? Are the police now liable for this guy? He was drunk. The officer, Garrett Rolfe, was fired for the shooting. If a social worker showed up on the scene, how would it have played out? 

For most of the body-cam video, which is 45 minutes long, Rolfe seemed polite and in control, but once the scuffle ensued and Brooks grabbed his taser, things got ugly quickly. This one seems different than the George Floyd case. The shooting was probably legal, but unnecessary. Brooks was running away. But when he points the taser at the cop, the cop reacts. In that split second, what is running through the cop's mind? If he is shot by the taser, is Brooks going to grab his gun? I would not want to be in that situation.

These are interesting discussions to have. You could discuss this one case for a long long time. But with ten million arrests per year, Harris points out that there WILL be another one. It's the law of averages. And another. 

People are angry. The new episode of This American Life, "Here Again" begins and ends with angry black women. 

The monopoly analogy really gets at just how shafted black people have been in America . . . but so have native Americans, folks in Appalachia, Japanese during WWII, etc. American capitalism shafts a lot of people. 

If you go too far down this road of anger and white guilt and searching for racism, you end up with this . . . a Minneapolis councilwoman saying that calling 911 when you are being burgled comes from a place of privilege. 

This is how Trump gets reelected. As the law and order president. Yikes. So everyone needs to listen to the Beastie Boys and check your head.

Defunding the police is possible, if you can replace them with something. Camden has done this, with some success. But it's a huge job. Police unions hold a lot of power, political and otherwise. And many people genuinely like and respect the police. Starting over is a monumental task, and maybe not the right task during a pandemic. 

Coronavirus seems far more racist than the police, by the numbers. Here is some data from Brookings:

Whites comprise 62% of people in the U.S. between ages 45-54.  In that age group, 1,013 white people have died from Covid-19 (22% of the total) compared to 1,448 Black people and 1,698 Hispanic/Latino people.

This is abominable and gets back to how black people have been shafted by the system. And these numbers are something we can improve immediately, with federal leadership, testing, contact tracing, etc. 

If you go by the numbers, black people should probably be a little angrier about police brutality than white people, but not THAT much angrier. We should all be angry that we live in a country that needs militarized police. We should all be angry that we live in a country with such a prevalence of guns and violent crime.

But black people should be very VERY angry about how they have fared during coronavirus.

Who is to blame for that? How could this be remedied? Does our Federal Government even care? It seems Trump and his cronies are only reactionary and won't address this until there are people in the streets chanting about this issue. But of course, going to the streets to protest a virus is the very thing that might increase the virus. It's an ugly dilemma.

Sam Harris thinks the only way forward is to make things LESS about race, with the ultimate goal that the pigmentation in your epidermis is no more important than the color of your hair. I agree with him. Identity politics is the death of us. We should focus on reforms that reduce inequality for our entire society. But that's not how politics and protests work.

I hope things calm down soon and smart people discuss this in a reasonable manner. . . but holding that opinion might put me in the minority.