Biking while Black: Racial bias in Oakland policing (2019)

https://bike-lab.org/2019/05/20/biking-while-black-racial-bias-in-oakland-policing/

by leephillips • 5 years ago

73 62 5 years ago

bike-lab.org

j_walter• 5 years ago

Lies, damn lies, and statistics...

WarOnPrivacy• 5 years ago

Why is this article flagged?

stefan_• 5 years ago

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that right now 4 of 5 comments categorically deny the existence of racial bias in policing?

TheAdamAndChe• 5 years ago

It's a contentious political issue with a baity title.

MikeUt5• 5 years ago

Another possible explanation is that Blacks are more likely to be criminals, and these stops represent police getting bad guys off the street. [..] City-wide, 68% of no-arrest stops city-wide were of Blacks, the same proportion as arrest stops, which means that Blacks were no more likely to be criminals than others who were stopped.

If, despite being stopped more often, the stop is equally likely to result in an arrest (I'm assuming that's what "no more likely to be criminals than others who were stopped" means, since if they were less likely, the author would surely mention it), doesn't that support this explanation? Of course there are problems with this, since an arrest itself is up to the cop's possibly biased judgement. Which brings me back to

There is more policing in those beats, they argue, because that’s where the crime’s happening. There’s a logical problem with this argument, because more crime will always be found where more policing is done. But leaving that aside

How quickly he moves on! But there is a solution: look at crimes not affected by over-policing, such as homicide, or look at victimization surveys [1], that don't involve the police. Finding the results is left as an exercise for the reader.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Crime_Victimization_S...

nraynaud• 5 years ago

We have the same thing in France, Corsica has the most homicides per capita, but the police is focused on the suburbs of Paris and the borders.

tomnipotent3• 5 years ago

the stop is equally likely to result in an arrest

A study of California police data found that "when the police search black, Latino and Native American people, they are less likely to find drugs, weapons or other contraband compared to when they search white people."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/02/california-p...

MikeUt5• 5 years ago

I.e. a different study in a different location.

slownews452• 5 years ago

"An unbiased sample would be clustered around the dotted line: a beat whose population is about 40% Black would have about 40% of its police stops be of Blacks".

Is this the case? In terms of murders I think it was something like 30 - 1 in terms of per capita likelihood of a suspect being black vs asian for example. Adding in gender / age it got even worse - ie, very few asian women gunning down folks on the street.

I couldn't find good stats on this based on a quick look, but it might be worth it to evaluate if there are different rates of murder by race / age / gender when doing these types of articles -> I wouldn't be surprised if their WAS racial bias, but it would be helpful to have a bit more context perhaps.

athenot• 5 years ago

In terms of murders I think it was something like 30 - 1 in terms of per capita likelihood of a suspect being black vs asian for example.

Suspect perhaps, but not convicted offender. And therein lies the bias & prejudice.

This table shows Race, Sex, and Ethnicity of Victim by Race, Sex, and Ethnicity of Offender, 2019

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

One thing that stands out is that more often than not, the offender and the victim are the same race.

And overall numbers are similar between white and African American.

rastapasta42• 5 years ago

And overall numbers are similar between white and African American.

Am I reading this wrong?

3,299 total murders committed by whites when they make up 76% of population, vs 2,906 by Black or AA when they make up 13.4% of population?

I'm getting the population estimates from here: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219

HideousKojima• 5 years ago

And overall numbers are similar between white and African American.

But we're talking about percentages here, not absolute numbers, and African Americans are ~13% of the US population (and ~23% of Oakland).

slownews452• 5 years ago

Very interesting.

Here is Oaklands rough data for robberies.

Black 8228 Hispanic 575 Unknown 462 White 107 Asian/Other119 -------------- Total 9491

Per 100K Black (non-hispanic) 8,000 Hispanic 575 White (non-hispanic) 89

This is something like a 100-1 difference? Can these numbers be right - I was having some trouble finding good data from Oakland though I know they look at this closely.

thereare5lights• 5 years ago

Is this the case?

No it's not. It assumes that groups have a uniform likelihood to break the law.

This is not an obviously true statement.

The reason people assert this is because of the focus on equal group outcomes rather than equal individual treatment.

cratermoon3• 5 years ago

30 - 1 in terms of per capita likelihood of a suspect being black vs asian for example.

Well, that's exactly illustrating the problem.

h0l0cube• 5 years ago

Not sure why this is getting downvoting, perhaps people are conflating suspect, to being 'found guilty', and then to 'actually guilty'.

vaidhy3• 5 years ago

How is that related to stopping pedestrians or bicyclists? Do you stop random people on the road to check for murder suspects?

endisneigh• 5 years ago

I'm not sure what you should call this phenomenon, but it basically goes like this:

- There are plenty of laws that you may or may not be aware of whose enforcement is disparate across the population, or perhaps not enforced at all.

For example, in Texas it's actually illegal to turn without using your turn signal at least 100 feet before the turn [^1]. There are similar laws that exist in California.

If you've ever driven in Texas for even an hour within the city or suburbs you'll know this law is rarely enforced, even when police are present.

Given the lack of enforcement, the (illegal) behavior is normalized. However, despite the normalization the behavior itself is still illegal.

Now here comes the tricky part - since everyone is engaging in illegal behavior, the police, if desired, could focus on any group and trivially reprimand them for their (technically) illegal behavior. This enforcement will be reflected in the demographic likelihood of breaking this particular rule which will reinforce the very focusing on certain demographics. Recursive, if you will.

Unfortunately despite being aware of this I'm not sure what the solution would be, other than mass-surveillance. Ultimately you would need to know (1) the rate at which groups are breaking the rule absolutely, (2) the rate of which enforcement is overlooked and (3) finally the rate at which enforcement occurs. We only have but a small piece of the puzzle here.

As long as this paradox exists police will have plausible deniability backed by their very own (misleading) stats. In my opinion this is the main driver of seemingly racist law enforcement. That is, selective enforcement.

^1 - https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/TN/htm/TN.545.htm

akerl_• 5 years ago

Another solution might be repealing laws that are clearly not important enough to enforce uniformly across demographics.

menzoic• 5 years ago

Homicide stats are immune to discretionary bias

Discretionary bias is still possible if you attempt to correlate the race stastics with the racial group as a whole while ignoring other factors such as social and economic status. For example the majoriry of murders that occur during a robbery are commited by poor people. A group made up of mostly middle/upper class citizens would mostly exclude those type of murder cases. Gang violence is another big driver of murder and also closely correlated to socioeconomic status. The middle class and up don't join gangs and therefore aren't part of organizations where murder is part of operations.

The discretion is on if you choose to rely on a correlation without looking at the actual causation to make conclusions.

jmckib• 5 years ago

Wouldn't the solution be to automatically repeal any laws that are not regularly enforced? A "use it lose it" rule. We could regularly commission studies to see which traffic laws are not being enforced.

finiteseries• 5 years ago

Sounds similar in concept to the Sunset Commission in Texas, which automatically abolishes any state agency unless the legislature passes a bill to continue its existence after review every 12 years.

https://www.sunset.texas.gov/how-sunset-works

Surely an equivalent for automatically abolishing laws/regulations has been tried somewhere?

zdragnar2• 5 years ago

It is a question of even enforcement, not whether or not it is enforced at all.

Take the turn signal law. In suburbs or rural areas where you are probably pulling over a soccer mom whose next worst crime is being disorganized, it may not be worth the time for the stop.

If, however, the same cop is in a neighborhood where stopping someone has a reasonable chance of finding a greater crime- possession of drugs, unregistered weapons, driver has warrants for their arrest for missing court dates etc- they are more likely to enforce the turn signal law.

This is the heart of the Broken Windows theory which leads to disproportionate negative police encounters and claims of racism- presuming one stop will be more fruitful than another leads to stricter enforcement.

Substitute "race" for "area" if you prefer; they are sometimes, but not always, linked. I live just south of the meth capital of my state, and it is very white and rural. Because of that, you wouldn't know that it has much stricter enforcement of various laws than other parts of the state, but it doesn't get much attention because the whole county's population could fit inside a few blocks of NYC.

SilverRed• 5 years ago

How would that work? You would have to track all of the times it should have been enforced but wasn't. And what about laws that do not have to be enforced because their existence prevented infractions?

FreeKill• 5 years ago

I sometimes think this is intentional, in the sense that trivial laws like these are kept on the books long term simply because they provide such a convenient mechanism to justify stops and other police activities that would otherwise not meet the burden needed to make them legal. I wonder if a solution might be to have certain categories of laws require re-evaluation every so often, in order to stay relevant. Almost like an expiry date, if they aren't explicitly renewed, they are no longer enforceable, thereby necessitating at least some kind of discussion on their continued relevance at regular intervals.

cratermoon3• 5 years ago

DING! There are several good arguments against cops as traffic law enforcers. But being able to stop anyone on a pretext of forgetting to signal or having a tail light out is a significant part law enforcement's ability to target and control so-called "undesirables".

armchairhacker• 5 years ago

This is exactly what I think of when I hear "police being racist".

As a white person, I've never had a bad interaction with the police. At worst they are very authoritative, but never obnoxious.

Hearing about black people getting stopped for jaywalking, "loitering", and just generally yelled at, it's not right. Before the famous Starbucks case, I've never imagined someone could get arrested and handcuffed for using a restaurant's public bathroom (I guess technically for "customers only" but that's a dumb rule anyways).

I get the cops' side too, they deal with a lot of actual dangerous criminals (that maybe "look similar" because they're also black men) who have no morals and try to catch them off guard. That can drain empathy and make every situation tense. But that's no excuse for the blatant disregard of black people's humanity. If you can't approach someone both in control of the situation and respecting their humanity, then you're not qualified to be a cop.

seph-reed2• 5 years ago

I'm a volunteer fire fighter. So, first-responders to most 911 calls are us, unless there's a known violent actor in which case cops are sent.

Realizing that I get to deal with all the thankful people (or tragically heart broken) while cops get to deal with -- frankly -- the biggest assholes around... it doesn't validate shitty police in any way, it just made me understand that the system itself is broken.

The people cops are dealing with (most of the time) should have never gone so long without proper mental/physical health care. Or so little opportunity. Or whatever it is that makes is so you need someone with a gun to show up instead of someone with medical/fire training.

And being American themselves, the cops also don't have proper mental health care. There's just no way for a setup like this to not create a bad situation.

throwaway535105• 5 years ago

In the Starbucks incident neither man actually used the restroom, rather they were arrested for refusing to leave:

"Two black men walked into a Starbucks in downtown Philadelphia on Thursday afternoon and sat down. Officials said they had asked to use the restroom but because they had not bought anything, an employee refused the request. They were eventually asked to leave, and when they declined, an employee called the police" (1)

The charge of racism rests on the claim that they would not be asked to leave had they been white. But what is the evidence for that claim? Has no white person ever been asked to leave a Starbucks for sitting at a table without buying anything?

(1) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/15/us/starbucks-philadelphia...

klyrs• 5 years ago

The mass surveillance is already underway. Police have body cameras and dash cams in many jurisdictions. But good luck getting enough of that footage through an FOIA request -- so it's up to the police to decide whether or not this is an issue worthy of investigation.

rvz• 5 years ago

They could try out the CHAZ/CHOP idea then? No police officers stopping you. No problem.

A summer of love utopia without getting stopped over. Think about it.

EDIT: Care to further elaborate what is exactly wrong with this idea? Surely the goal is to 'self-organize' yourself as a community without the involvement of the 'police', given that they complain of 'biased policing'.

Might as well just set one up since it won't be the last time that this will happen again.

fencepost• 5 years ago

And now it's back!

While comments are possible, updated data from 2019 shows changes (fewer overall stops) and limited improvement as noted in this October 2020 article https://bike-lab.org/2020/10/15/racially-biased-policing-in-...

Between the pandemic, George Floyd, etc any numbers for 2020 may bear no resemblance to anything from years before or after.

vaidhy3• 5 years ago

Why is there so much hate on this thread? Is it hard to accept that blacks are discriminated against in US?

Part of being intellectually curious is that data should be able to change your mind or have the opinion be reasonably falsifiable.

If you want to find fault on the methodology in the OP, then comment/criticize the analysis. @athenot posted the stats for convicted crimes that shows blacks are not more likely than whites to do commit crimes.

thaumasiotes2• 5 years ago

@athenot posted the stats for convicted crimes that shows blacks are not more likely than whites to do commit crimes.

You might want to read the stats before describing them.

CheezeIt• 5 years ago

I have no doubt there’s racial bias, because the police are trying to catch gang members or other serial troublemakers with a weapon, drugs, or some other pretext to put them away. So they don’t just police a space more, they police it with the intent of creating stops. I am pretty sure that bias targets men. What would be interesting is to see how big the racial disparity is looking only at women.

seph-reed2• 5 years ago

I couldn't find the data on what the stops were "for."

Tbh, I don't even know what kind of things you can get stopped on a bike for except swerving around traffic, so it seems like a good thing to know about.

Is there any data on what the "reasons" were for stopping these different bike riders?

ultimoo2• 5 years ago

I found this article difficult to understand. Though I was able to eventually follow along with the theme, perhaps a quick explainer of what a "beat" is? Hint: in police terminology, a beat is the territory that a police officer patrols.

If you're not up to speed on the jargon, parsing graph titles like "Police beat resident population" become confusing (are we talking assault?).

Also, a summary of the findings and assertions at the beginning would have been helpful.

/rant

Karrot_Kream3• 5 years ago

The problem with highly-charged reporting like this is that anything other than carefully justified claims and technical jargon will immediately bring a torrent of complaints. Each group that has a conclusion without looking at the data will try to poke any hole in any aspect of the argument and staying dry and technical helps stave off this sort of criticism.

ultimoo2• 5 years ago

That's an interesting take and I hadn't considered how the subject matter is such that staying clear of summaries is the best recourse -- thanks. But perhaps there is a way to add the very TL;DR that would have been near the bottom of the article at the top. I usually have no trouble skimming and digesting the reporting on wsj and nyt.

Aa9C4xPz43Gg7k6• 5 years ago

As a person living in Oakland: lots of homeless have sketchy (stolen?) bikes. I don't see that many sketchy white people on them. No one ever said that different populations in Oakland are comparable in the first place. Articles like this are usually written by wealthy liberals living in nice suburbs.

Karrot_Kream3• 5 years ago

I sure hope the police have a better reason to stop you than a sketchy bike.

fallingknife• 5 years ago

The charts seem to show that the police are biased in favor of Hispanics and Asians, and against blacks and whites. I wouldn't have expected that result. But of course the only thing the article focuses on is black people.

Biking while Black: Racial bias in Oakland policing (2019)

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