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Entermaid March 13th, 2014 11:03 PM

Crime Rates of Minorities/Impoverished,
 
Nice article with concerns of public and crime statistics

Spoiler:

Quote:

Amid recent noise about New York City's controversial "stop and frisk" policy, Reuters had done a deep dive into five years of worth of police data to see where (and to whom) the vast majority of searches take place. Unsurprisingly, police concentrate their efforts in the neighborhoods with the highest crime rates — which also happen to be the neighborhoods with the poorest and largely minority residents. Yet, even accounting for the excess violence in those areas, streets stops far outweigh the average for other neighborhoods.

For example, Precinct 73 in Brownsville, Brooklyn, saw the second highest rate of violent crime in the city last year, with 14.1 violent crimes per 1,000 residents. The more affluent Park Slope has one of the lowest, at 4.1 crimes per 1,000 residents. That's a rate about three times lower than the rate in Brownsville. Yet, the rate of stops in Brownsville was 572 per 1,000 residents, which is 16 times higher than the rate in Park Slope.

The stops also tend to be heavily concentrated in public housing projects, even inside the buildings themselves, where police patrols include walking the floors and stairwells. Many residents (who are much poorer than the average New Yorker and overwhelmingly black and Latino) approve of the added police presence, but others complain about being harassed by cops simply for taking out the garbage. Having police so closely monitoring your home creates a dangerous level of animosity between cops and the people they are there to protect. Since some of the Brownsville are kids and old people who almost never get stopped, that aggressively high rate means most young, black men in the area are stopped several times a year. And arrests often meaning handcuffing and hauling away people in front of their families.

The NYPD continues to defend the practice of "stop and frisk" saying it is a necessary tool that must be deployed in high crime areas. And it must be given some credit for the city's plummeting crime rates over the last twenty years. But many still question the way searches are handled, with police coming into their hallways, stopping the same people multiple times, and challenging a person trying to move around their own building. Yet, when one-in-five murders continues to take place on the grounds of public housing and one-in-four guns are seized there, its easy to see why the police have become so aggressive. The challenge for the police department now is to keep up the heavy patrols, while winning back citizens who are tired of feeling like perpetual suspects.


An editorial piece on the misconception of stop and frisk
Spoiler:
Quote:

Stop and Frisk Doesn't Target Minorities, It Protects Them
By Michael Barone - August 23, 2013

New York City seems on the verge of making the same mistake that Detroit made 40 years ago. The mistake is to abolish the NYPD practice referred to as stop and frisk.

It's more accurately called stop, question and frisk. People were stopped and questioned 4.4 million times between 2004 and 2012. But the large majority were not frisked.

The effectiveness of this police practice, initiated by Mayor Rudy Giuliani in 1994 and continued by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is not in doubt. The number of homicides -- the most accurately measured crime -- in New York fell from a peak of 2,605 in 1990 to 952 in 2001, Giuliani's last year in office, to just 414 in 2012.

Nevertheless, the three leading Democratic mayoral candidates in the city's September primary all have pledged to end stop and frisk. And last week, federal judge Schira Scheindlin, in a lawsuit brought by 19 men who have been stopped and frisked, found that the practice is unconstitutional and racially discriminatory.

Bloomberg has promised to appeal, and several of Scheindlin's decisions in high-profile cases have been reversed. But the leading Democratic candidates for mayor promise, if elected, to drop the appeal.

The two leading Republican candidates support stop and frisk, but their chances of election seem dim in a city that voted 81 percent for Barack Obama in 2012.

What riles opponents of stop and frisk is that a high proportion of those stopped are young black and Hispanic males. Many innocent people undoubtedly and understandably resent being subjected to this practice. No one likes to be frisked, including the thousands of airline passengers who are every day.

But young black and, to a lesser extent, Hispanic males are far, far more likely than others to commit (and be victims of) violent crimes, as Bloomberg points out. I take no pleasure in reporting that fact and wish it weren't so.

This was recognized by, among others, Jesse Jackson, who in 1993 said, "There is nothing more painful for me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start to think about robbery and then look around and see it's somebody white and feel relieved."

You can get an idea about what could happen in New York by comparing it with Chicago, where there were 532 homicides in 2012. That's more than in New York, even though New York's population is three times as large.

One Chicagoan who supports stop and frisk is the father of Hadiya Pendleton, the 15-year-old girl shot down a week after singing at Barack Obama's second inauguration. "If it's already working, why take it away?" he told the New York Post. "If that was possible in Chicago, maybe our daughter would be alive."

Chicago and New York both have tough gun control laws. But bad guys can easily get guns in both cities.

The difference, as the New York Daily News's James Warren has pointed out, is that frequent stops and frisks combined with mandatory three-year sentences for illegal possession of a gun mean that bad guys in New York don't take them out on the street much.

Stop and frisk makes effective the otherwise ineffective gun control that Bloomberg so strongly supports.

An extreme case of what happens when a city ends stop and frisk is Detroit. Coleman Young, the city's first black mayor, did so immediately after winning the first of five elections in 1973.

In short order Detroit became America's murder capital. Its population fell from 1.5 million to 1 million between 1970 and 1990. Crime has abated somewhat since the Young years, but the city's population fell to 713,000 in 2010 -- just over half that when Young took office.

People with jobs and families -- first whites, then blacks -- fled to the suburbs or farther afield. Those left were mostly poor, underemployed, in too many cases criminal -- and not taxpayers. As a result, the city government went bankrupt last month.

New York has strengths Detroit always lacked. But it is not impervious to decline. After Mayor John Lindsay ended tough police practices, the city's population fell from 7.9 million in 1970 to 7.1 million in 1980.

Those who decry stop and frisk as racially discriminatory should remember who is hurt most by violent crime -- law-abiding residents of high-crime neighborhoods, most of them black and Hispanic, people like Hadiya Pendleton.

Michael Barone is Senior Political Analyst for the Washington Examiner, co-author of The Almanac of American Politics and a contributor to Fox News.

COPYRIGHT 2013 THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER


Case Against Stop and Frisk Effectiveness
Spoiler:
Quote:

The New York Police Department’s controversial “stop and frisk” policy resulted in virtually no convictions after millions of stops, a report released by the New York Attorney General’s office found.

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office reviewed data from 2.4 million stops that took place between 2009 and 2012 and found that out of the 150,000 arrests that resulted from those stops, only 1.5% of them ended in jail sentences and only .1% of those arrests ended in convictions for violent crimes.

While supporters of “stop-and-frisk” have argued that the policy has contributed to dropping crime rates in New York City, the Attorney General’s report found that the stops were not actually finding or preventing crimes. 97% percent of stops resulted in no conviction at all, although they did still utitlize city time and resources to reach those outcomes.

The new report also found that the vast majority of crimes were non-violent and primarily drug-related, and that black and Latino arrestees faced harsher punishments than white defendents. The Attorney General’s office also released a report in 1999 that found black and Latino New Yorkers were stopped at far higher rates than white men and women.

“My office’s analysis of the city’s ‘stop-and-frisk’ practices has broad implications for law enforcement, both in New York City and across the state. It’s our hope that this report–the first of its kind–will advance the discussion about how to fight crime without overburdening our institutions or violating equal justice under the law,” Schneiderman said in a statement about the report. “The vast amount of data we analyzed over four years should serve as a helpful guide to municipalities and law enforcement officials around the state, where ‘stop-and-frisk’ practices are used to varying degrees.”

The NYPD’s use of the “stop-and-frisk” policy has been at the center of a massive court challenge earlier this year that alleged black and Latino men were stopped disproportionately and that it constituted racial profiling and was a violation of constitutional rights. A judge found that the policy did violate constitutional rights and ordered an outside monitor to review the program as well as other remedies, but an appeals court stayed those orders and removed her from the case at the end of October. Another judge will hear an appeal in 2014.

Vince Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, is arguing that case on behalf of plaintiffs who were stopped and frisked. “To the extent that the City and courts care about facts, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s report is quite significant,” Warren told msnbc. “The report supports Judge Scheindlin’s findings at our trial, and adds to the body of evidence showing that Mayor Bloomberg is just plain wrong in asserting that ‘stop-and-frisk,’ as currently practiced, is an effective crime-fighting policy.”

Warren was part of Sunday’s Melissa Harris-Perry panel examining, among several topics, the protest against NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly at Brown University. See that part of the discussion below.


Has stop and frisk policy ignored the high-risk that poor black communities face. With high crime, high school drop out, and death rates of young black males especially, does targeting these area, and thus, more black Americans, reduce the risk of poor outcomes for black youth in America?

Other solutions, or additional solutions to reduce these poor outcomes of black Americans, especially, young Black and Hispanic men?

How do both Republicans and Democrats approach these issues well and poorly? (Try avoiding too much absolutes even if you believe one party does ultimately address the issue of minority crime rates better; to say one party has done this without flaw would be naive.)

Stand your ground? Thoughts? Misconceptions? Does it help protect victims of black-on-black crime? Yes, no, to what extent?
Again, to add perspective, stand your ground has been invoked by those of the same racial backgrounds in the vast majority of cases. Avoid using too many case examples, statistics of the general population better encompass some of these issues. Though, cases do well do point out certain flaws and misconceptions of what the law does and does not permit. For instance, it's often invoked imperfectly.

This is a broad topic. So, answer some questions I provide, address the articles above, or break off into other issues pertinent to the topic.

P.S. - Derogatory racial remarks are not tolerated. However, statistics are fine. Often, and understandably, some Black Americans will take offense to addressing, "Black crime" for instance. However, it's an unfortunate product of significantly high drop out rates among other factors. Ignoring the outcomes of minorities and low-income families isn't going to help find solutions. Essentially, address why the structure of countries, such as the United States, leads to poor outcomes for minorities and impoverished families. This is not a discussion to promote nonsense on inherent inferiority or violence/non-intelligence of any group.

BadPokemon March 14th, 2014 3:40 AM

I like the stop and frisk method of reducing crime. I don't go around supporting it in any way, but from reading these articles, I like the idea. I wouldn't say it is racist to do so, it is just that there are more people of those races in those communities. I don't know if officers do purposely target those people. They don't frisk every time they stop. The crime rates in those areas of plummeted! The Republics have a slight advantage over the Democrats because they did that. If I were living in those communities, I would find the stop and frisk annoying. Still, it would probably save my life and I would have no idea. The democrats' argument of very little arrests isn't very effective. You don't need to arrest all the time. It is the fear factor. People carry around illegal (or legal), and drugs because of fear of being searched. This is why the crime rates have slowed drastically.

Corvus of the Black Night March 14th, 2014 4:05 AM

As someone who literally lives within 30 miles of freaking Detroit, I can tell you personally that a huge reason why that area is loaded with crime while the areas that I live in are not is because they are generally decayed communities where people from poorer areas congregate since they're unable to pay for safer areas. Unfortunately this causes a feedback loop with minorities since minorities are often born into areas like this and aren't able to financially escape areas like this.

A big problem with Detroit is that Detroit is ♥♥♥♥ing huge and has barely any money. Detroit is larger than Boston and Philadelphia combined. Because of that and the fact that Detroit is more corrupt than a blown up hard drive, Detroit literally does not even have the police force to take on the literal amount of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that happens in the city every day. There's a lot of crimes in Detroit because Detroit is really big and cannot be managed. Of course, this isn't every city's problem.

Flint is a much smaller and actually considerably more dangerous community. Flint used to be a center for automotive business but that died down in the 80's. Now, it's a mere scab of what it once was. Crimes occur here more often relative to area in flint as opposed to Detroit.

Most crime-ridden communities are very poor and this causes a severe feedback effect where people do NOT want to spread wealth to these environments because they are dangerous and wealthy individuals would rather live in more affluent areas.

Kanzler March 16th, 2014 11:32 AM

I think people turn to crime because there's nothing else for them to do. I guess I take a kinda Marxist view that the social phenomenon of crime is part of the superstructure on top of the economic base - it's reflective of the poor economic conditions and will only change if these economic conditions change. Stop and frisk sounds like a good idea if it's getting some of the violence and crime off the streets, but it's only going to be an oft-replaced Band-Aid over a profusely bleeding wound until opportunity comes back to these crime-ridden areas. And like diagonite said, there is a positive feedback loop - poverty begets more poverty, crime begets more crime.

I don't think stop and frisk is bad in itself. These community needs a police presence to teach them that crime shouldn't be tolerated. But the police presence should be welcomed, not accepted grudgingly. Any amount of stop and frisk, which has the potential to pit the police as the "bad guys", should be backed up with a healthy amount of community outreach - people have to perceive that this is done for their own good. I'm not sure if these police departments in troubled cities can afford such a program, I'd think they're stretched thin enough.

zakisrage March 23rd, 2014 6:27 AM

I can't speak for black Americans because we don't really have those in Australia. (We do have blacks from the West Indies and Africa, though.) Over here, it's Aborigines who have the highest crime rate in our country. People here complain about Lebanese Muslim men having such a high crime rate, but Aborigines have a MUCH higher crime rate. Here are some statistics as per Wikipedia:

- Aborigines are 25% of the prison population despite being less than 3% of the population.
- 15.7% of homicides are committed by Aborigines.
- Aborigine children were 7.5 times more likely to be abused than non-indigenous children.
- The imprisonment rate for Aborigines is 1,891 people per 100,000 - meaning that nearly 2 percent of adult Aborigines are in jail. For non-indigenous people it's 136 people per 100,000.

I don't think that Aborigines are bad people, and I actually do sympathise with their plight (unlike many Australians). And it's not just Anglo-Celtic Australians who are prejudiced against them - I know Australians of many ethnicities (including Lebanese) who have said mean things about Aborigines. One anti-Aborigine comment I remember came from a Sudanese woman I was on the bus with. I think that Aborigines need to address this problem. It's a real shame that their community has such a high crime rate.

Sage Ebock March 24th, 2014 7:34 AM

Hmmm, very interesting topic. As a concerned and proud black man, I'll try to stay on point and be very concise.

I was born and raised in Detroit Michigan. My life there was magical, violent, and very enlightening.
Here is what I have to say:

Reported crimes rates are different from "actual" crime rates(I know this because I have witnessed a few crimes in my time as a city dweller).

Has stop and frisk policy ignored the high-risk that poor black communities face. With high crime, high school drop out, and death rates of young black males especially, does targeting these area, and thus, more black Americans, reduce the risk of poor outcomes for black youth in America?

`The simple answer is no. I am certain of this because this "stop and frisk" policy is targeting the wrong issue. Black Americans face CULTURAL issues. Deeply rooted, and reinforced daily. There is also a resource issue. Land, clean water, and air... something everyone needs. Currently monetary resources are drained from the city by way of a commuting non resident populace. That is to say, people make money in Detroit at jobs that people who live there could never get, then drive back home away from the city and invest their money at home, thus draining the life from the economy there (not to mention corrupt politics and police).


Other solutions, or additional solutions to reduce these poor outcomes of black Americans, especially, young Black and Hispanic men?

Easy. Support a cultural rebirth (which by the way, is currently happening slowly despite unfavorable conditions). Everyone could attempt to become more conscious of the issues that led Detroit to where it is. Keeping track of the past makes sure we don't return there and also that we learn from mistakes.


How do both Republicans and Democrats approach these issues well and poorly?

Both do poorly because they have their hands tied. They are followers of money first, self interest second, and people somewhere far down the list. I have seen it with my own two eyes in many a meeting with them. after 5 years of actively attempting to communicate with them I realized that politics, in this situation, is simply barking up the wrong tree.




Ultimately, I do not know everything. But I am comfortable calling myself an expert on issues of race, crime, and city life. I have lived its "highs" and "lows". Somewhere in all the chaos, there is hope, I have seen it.

If you would like me to clairify anything, simply ask, I don't bite :D (unless you happen to be very close minded).



Tek April 4th, 2014 9:50 PM

Stop and frisk is a bit of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it seems to serve as a deterrent to crime to some degree. But it also creates resentment. No conclusions here, just observations from afar.



What I think would be useful is necessary to really resolve the prevalence of crime among minorities is an approach (or set of approaches) that addresses individual interiors and exteriors, as well as collective interiors and exteriors. Respectively, we can call these intention, behavior, culture, and society.

What often happens is that people and organizations will claim that one of these four zones is the "real" source of the problem. We just need to motivate people. We just need to give them more economic opportunity. We just need to change the neighborhood kids' perceptions of gangs.

It should be fairly self-evident that all four zones affect one another. If cultural consensus among teens shifts so that gangs are not considered cool, we should see a decrease in gang activity in local neighborhoods. But if we also provide these kids with something fun or productive or meaningful to do with their time? The effects begin to resonate. The approaches work better in conjunction than they can individually.



This isn't so much a solution as it is a framework, an orienting generalization, in which competing approaches become complementary and synergistic. It frees up time and energy that was once spent debating whether individual attitudes or societal infrastructure is the "real" source of the crime.

We no longer need to argue that one zone is significant to the exclusion of all the others, or that any one of them is primary, or that only one actually exists! All four zones are equally significant, because they are mutually arising and mutually determinant. All four zones are also present in one's direct awareness, so we have the additional advantage of discarding any metaphysical baggage. In this day and age, only a post-metaphysical framework will suffice.


Sage Ebock April 7th, 2014 6:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tek (Post 8183451)
Stop and frisk is a bit of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it seems to serve as a deterrent to crime to some degree. But it also creates resentment. No conclusions here, just observations from afar.



What I think would be useful is necessary to really resolve the prevalence of crime among minorities is an approach (or set of approaches) that addresses individual interiors and exteriors, as well as collective interiors and exteriors. Respectively, we can call these intention, behavior, culture, and society.

What often happens is that people and organizations will claim that one of these four zones is the "real" source of the problem. We just need to motivate people. We just need to give them more economic opportunity. We just need to change the neighborhood kids' perceptions of gangs.

It should be fairly self-evident that all four zones affect one another. If cultural consensus among teens shifts so that gangs are not considered cool, we should see a decrease in gang activity in local neighborhoods. But if we also provide these kids with something fun or productive or meaningful to do with their time? The effects begin to resonate. The approaches work better in conjunction than they can individually.



This isn't so much a solution as it is a framework, an orienting generalization, in which competing approaches become complementary and synergistic. It frees up time and energy that was once spent debating whether individual attitudes or societal infrastructure is the "real" source of the crime.

We no longer need to argue that one zone is significant to the exclusion of all the others, or that any one of them is primary, or that only one actually exists! All four zones are equally significant, because they are mutually arising and mutually determinant. All four zones are also present in one's direct awareness, so we have the additional advantage of discarding any metaphysical baggage. In this day and age, only a post-metaphysical framework will suffice.


My hero. Beautifully put :D

twocows April 8th, 2014 11:06 AM

I understand there to be two problems that cause the numbers to be skewed here: economic and cultural. And a lot of the cultural is influenced heavily by the economic. Past that, I don't think there's much to say on the issue. Anyone who suggests skin color has anything to do with it is just wrong. Skin color's a genetic switch on a gene. It has nothing to do with anything meaningful.


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