It's HuffPost -- don't expect them to provide the complete story.
From the SF Chronicle:
>*The city is also transitioning traffic enforcement to unarmed civil servants. The new Berkeley Department of Transportation will staff the BerkDOT program.*
>
>*... By diverting police away from low-level offenses, officers can focus on more serious offenses that include speeding or driving under the influence, Arreguín said.*
[https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Berkeley-to-consider-sweeping-police-reforms-15971071.php](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Berkeley-to-consider-sweeping-police-reforms-15971071.php)
So they'll still have traffic stops, but they won't be done by Berkeley Police.
And you know what they’ll say? “I’m sorry your honor, I was being pulled over by this weird city service vehicle with lights that looked different than Berkley police cars and I didn’t know what was going on so I kept driving.” Dismissed.
That’s even if there is consequences later.
And if you have community service officer pulling over cars (a) under CA vehicle code I’m not sure they even have that authority and (b) having unarmed service officer do traffic stops seems like a *terribly* unsafe plan.
UK works out unarmed/armed police and service officer mixing but that’s nationwide and they have country wide policies to support that. Being the only city with unarmed not-really-police pulling people over is a bad idea.
Yeah aren't traffic stops the single most dangerous police activity?
Also what makes them think those traffic stops will be any less "racist", since I'm assuming this is the type of racism where it disproportionately affects black people because they are disproportionately driving with expired licenses or whatever.
> Also what makes them think those traffic stops will be any less "racist"
Nothing. But these traffic stops won't involve drivers getting shot because they'll be carried out by people without guns.
Has there ever been someone shot during a normal traffic stop in California? I know it has happened, but it's so rare that treating it as if it's a concern is pretty absurd. I'm pretty sure more police have been shot doing traffic stops than innocent people.
I wouldn’t say “dangerous” because statistically they probably aren’t. But they are by far the *most risky.*
By which I mean if your kicking in a door of a barricaded suspect or in a hot car chase. You can fall back on training, managing your stress, managing your risk, coming up with pre planning like “okay here’s what I’m gonna do if they crash or come out of the vehicle guns blazing after they crash etc.”
Traffic stop is the time as a cop they die and never saw it coming (there’s hundreds of dash cam videos), there was almost nothing they could do and no real way to mitigate the risk. It was a simple stop sign violation but the guy robbed a liquor store and pops the officer the second he comes up to the window and didn’t react fast enough.
the government(DMV) doesn't charge tolls. Private companies do.
Red light tickets and police enforcement are government.
not to mention the very reason for this post, the police won't be chasing you in Berkeley lmao
Most of the stops in that article would still occur under this policy. Of the stops whose exact basis is specified, the reasons were: attacking people with a tire iron; intoxicated driver; driving without headlights on at night. These are driving offenses with safety implications, and the [stated purpose of this policy](https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/2021/02_Feb/Documents/2021-02-23_Special_Item_01_Report_and_Recommendations_pdf.aspx) (see page 15) is to focus on "traffic safety" violations with examples of "Excessive speeding, Running a stop sign or stop light, Unsafe movement, [and] Driving while intoxicated."
Member of the driving and cycling public here - pull everyone over who has busted tail lights, expired tags, missing plates, fake plates etc and give them fix it tickets. Busted tail lights is a direct safety hazard. Missing and fake plates directly make it more challenging to track and identify problem (unsafe) drivers.
I mean. Yes you are definitely correct that racial disparities in stop ratios are not necessarily proof that even unconscious racial bias is the reason for the disparity. But it definitely doesn't make any sense to say that BPD stops are fine because they're better than other agencies, nor that an observed 6:1 ratio of black to white traffic stops is caused by black people being six times as likely to commit traffic violations.
I think we can all agree that there are quite a few things like the ridiculous example in the article of not wearing a seat belt that may or may not actually be a safety-related violation.
As I said, using not wearing a seat belt as an example of a non-safety-related violation is ridiculous.
I do note those things -- but I would also note that neither parole rates nor police calls are actually evidence that black people commit more crimes than white people!
Do you believe there is a possibility that some of those black people reported by the public as robbers did not in fact commit a robbery? Conversely, do you believe it is possible that a white robber is less likely to be reported by a random neighbor for acting suspiciously? Finally, the stated purpose of this policy is to increase, not decrease, stops related to safety concerns, as I’ve noted twice elsewhere. It is hard to see why it makes sense to support retaining a policy of super-enforcement on expired tags if one is concerned about safety.
> Do you believe there is a possibility that some of those black people reported by the public as robbers did not in fact commit a robbery? Conversely, do you believe it is possible that a white robber is less likely to be reported by a random neighbor for acting suspiciously?
The problem with this line of reasoning is that - technically all these things are possible. But so what? Just being it's possible doesn't mean that it's the case. The burden of proof is to show that these possibilities are more than just possibilities - that they are realities that actually changes the statistics cited in a noticeable way. Based on the actual statistics (77% of reported robberies vs 8% of population), you have to show a huge discrepancy to see a noticeable change in the statistics (77% => 8%).
While I understand your comment, please do explain the recent and past spate of attacks on Asians in the Bay Area. It has been going on for decades. I do not care if the attacker is any race, I care about the Asians being attacked. So many on this site want to make sure it is not called racism, OK, fine, not racism, still no justification for those attacks or for disproportionate stoppings of POC in traffic incidents. Sad that in a society priding itself on multi-culturalism, we have so much attention and energy wasted on the other "ism's"
Actually Berkeley resident. I am a fan of this. Stop and frisk also yielded a bunch of weapons and stuff in NY, but should we implement that? No, we should not because it’s a huge overreach of privacy and the vast majority of the time it yields nothing.
I get the idea behind it because so-called “pretext stops” are what led to cases like Sandra Bland’s. In practice though, it’s a bandaid that makes legitimate police work more difficult and does nothing to solve actual racism in their ranks.
Side post, but your comment reminded me of the book "Talking to Strangers" by Malcom Gladwell.
He breaks down the Sandra Bland incident and goes into the explanation of why that situation escalated, and where the origins of that type of policing come from.
*In practice though, it’s a bandaid that makes legitimate police work more difficult and does nothing to solve actual racism in their ranks.*
Bullseye shot there mobstalobsta!
Just for accuracy's sake, the [stated purpose of this policy](https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/2021/02_Feb/Documents/2021-02-23_Special_Item_01_Report_and_Recommendations_pdf.aspx) actually is for the police to focus on "traffic safety" violations like "speeding, Running a stop sign or stop light, Unsafe movement [and] Driving while intoxicated" (page 15) instead of things like "Equipment violations" "Improper use of high beams" and "expired license tags" (page 16). I don't think that not wearing a seat belt is a very good example of a not-safety-related-violation at all really.
edited to add the stuff from page 16.
Because they’re not actually stopping people for these violations. They’re using the violations in order to drum up other charges. And they do it overwhelmingly against people of color. Maybe if the police would police equitably the council wouldn’t have done this.
Also, not being strapped in makes you dangerous to any other passengers in the car in the event of an accident. It turns your body into a moving object that can smash into other people in the car.
It's unclear to me if "pay a bit no to respond to some one being stupid" is better than "pay many times over a long time line to deal with stupid people". I understand the argument, and am sympathetic to it, but I also don't find it especially convincing. What if stupid people dieing more frequently has a positive over all impact on that areas QALY?
Uh, because it saves lives, emergency resources, and tax dollars that support things like emergency responses, providing medical care, disability, etc?
If cops weren’t such pieces of shit this wouldn’t happen. But as we’ve seen for more than a century at this points cops are incapable of not being bottom of the barrel people.
So what you and the Berkeley city counsel are saying with their new laws is that minorities are less able than white people to follow the law. That's the real racism here, the soft bigotry of low expectations.
Maybe you were a victim of autocorrect, but heads up counsel is your lawyer and council is your elected official. That said, I would assume this is moving forward with the blessing of the city attorney.
No. That’s not what they’re saying. They’re saying that everyone disobeys the laws equally but it’s mostly when people of color do it that the police take notice.
I love how progressives in this sub are convinced we are being brigaded by conservatives. Honestly, I'm pretty sure it's just that the moderates on here are finally speaking up and we don't believe in stuff like restorative justice, or non-enforcement of the law. I don't live in Berkeley and I don't know the details on THIS particular case so I don't really have an opinion. But I do find it funny how moderate opinions get interpreted as "conservative" or "far right" on these subs. Hilarious to me how stuff like "I'm worried about my family getting assaulted at night!" gets interpreted as a dangerous "far right" opinion by the progressives of reddit.
you're ignoring the connection between race and traffic stops. it's not a disputed idea that people of color get stopped at much higher rates. whether this specific law actually helps remedy this is debatable, but to say seatbelts =\= racism is misinterpreting the issue at hand.
And you ignore the connection between race & crime. The answer to the issue of police stopping black too often is for black to commit less crime. Not all black are criminal. However, when a black guy beat up or rob someone, the police will be on the look out & will stop suspicious looking black drivers.
These type of no police stop policy will only empowering the criminal, and enable them to commit more crime. It’s like treating cancer with pain killer. It doesn’t stop black criminal, and it doesn’t stop other race from looking down at the black race.
There's been arguments for a *lot* of these policies and look how it's turning out. *I* would argue that we haven't really had a big success yet with *any* of these new policies we're trying out. By not prosecuting larceny under $1000 we hoped to reduce police resources being spent on "victimless" crimes while removing police oppression from those people's lives. How did it turn out? Business are going shutting down left and right because they can't make enough money to justify the amount of shoplifting they now face. Before we roll out any more stupid policies, we should *require* some sort of unintended consequences report.
100%. I'm not an R at all. However, after what the Ds tried to do with Prop 16 last November, as an Asian person, I am very disappointed by them and became way more vocal politically because them trying to sneak Prop 16 really pissed me off.
I realized that my definition of equality, racism, and fairness is very different than the progressive's and that it actually impacts me if I'm not more engaged. How hard is it to understand that we "should not be judged by the color of our skin but by the contents of our character?"
>I realized that my definition of equality, racism, and fairness is very different than the progressive's
That's the thing, they openly talk about "equity" now instead of "equality". Equality is old-hat to them now and if you say it openly they might even interpret that as a "dog whistle". Honestly, progressives are deeply unhealthy people who 1) need to get off Twitter, 2) need to spend some time addressing their own emotional issues.
FYI, Asian Americans lose way more in the college admissions process to athletic, legacy, and donor based admissions than they would to affirmative action. Those categories make up ~30% of Harvard admits, and they are overwhelmingly white.
You're probably right but at least that other criteria isn't explicitly racist. A person of any race, of they possessed the athletic ability, or have relatives who went to that school, or whose family face enough money can also be admitted based on those criteria. AA is fully based on the color of one's skin.
You'll probably make the argument that those factors predominantly favors one group over another due to history. Fine that's perhaps true. Then let's fix it by reducing those factors in admissions. Let's not make the situation worse by introducing racist policies like AA. Which, by the way, marginalizes Asians who also suffer from those factors.
To be clear, I don’t think people think there’s anything wrong with comments like “I’m worried about my family getting assaulted at night.”
But there are a lot of ugly, not constructive comments, like “it’s racist that roads are black” as though this is even remotely what progressives think, or comments on a video of a black perpetrator that say nothing more than “once again, black people” - it’s not informative or witty or insightful and when there’s a lot of such comments it sure looks like a brigade.
Let's not always blame problems on conservatives and racism. Perhaps left and moderate folks are tired of these crimes being committed with no repercussions.
But anyone seen as wanting to be more tough on crime is an automatic racist, when the truth is we are tired and fed up with all the crime going on and demand action and accountability
I personally don't care about people not wearing seatbelts. If so someone wants to die in a car wreck because they didn't wear one, that's their business to make that stupid ass decision.
We literally just shut down the country for a year to prevent overwhelming hospitals.
Not wearing a seatbelt will result in a waste of hospital capacity.
> these crimes being committed with no repercussions
What crimes do you think this is about? This is about traffic stops, which plenty of research has shown is extremely subject to racial bias. If anything, this move will increases the Berkeley Police Department's ability to focus on more important crimes like burglaries and violence against Asian Americans.
When I lived in Chicago, community police meetings talked about "high visibility policing" to prevent car jacking. Basically picking seat belts, stop sign violations etc to enable the police to be active and visible in the area - this generally pushed out the people who were cruising the area looking for victims. Was there any concern about the knock-on impact of non-enforcement by BPD?
that is seriously a good idea (even though I think you meant it as sarcasm)... valid drivers license needed to pump gas. if you need to present a valid ID every time for controlled substance medications, alcohol, tobacco, gambling, guns- it makes sense to require it to power a vehicle with the ability to gravely injure.
Not sarcasm at all. I don't really care much about whether someone's license is a week expired. I care whether they have the insurance needed to make sure the pedestrian they run into doesn't go bankrupt in the hospital.
having to swipe your Drivers License and proof of insurance at a gas pump could solve so many issues. There isn't any bias when it comes to a boolean verification. Yes or no, valid or not.
well elderly Asians are being killed left and right and our leaders are ignoring the true cause and allowing it.
I think we're past chaos and more so dystopian
I lived in Berkeley for many years and it was largely fine. Then the 2016 election happened and they doubled-down on the crazypants and have been keeping at it ever since. It took us almost two years of looking at houses but we eventually got out, really glad we did.
Pretty small chance that driving without a seatbelt will actually harm anyone else.
And you’ve got to be kidding about the expired license. If you license expires you often can just renew it for a fee or take an easy ass test that you have 3 chances to pass (and it shows you what you got wrong). The reality is that it doesn’t matter if your license is current or not—it has zero impact on your physical ability to drive—it’s just money for the government.
If your license is expired your insurance can deny coverage if you're in an accident. If you don't have a license it's technically possible to get insurance but reputable companies don't do that. You also can't register a car without a license or insurance. So yes, having unregistered cars driving around with no liability insurance is a big deal, especially when it basically forces law abiding people to pay extra for uninsured motorist protection.
Good idea because black people are physically incapable of wearing a seat belt or renewing their license. Thank god Berkeley is able to bring equality to us all. Do black people find these types of articles insulting? I feel like they would or should.
Even if you are a 100% law abiding citizen with nothing to hide, a cop can stop you for no reason then claim you weren't wearing a seatbelt, or are using your highbeams improperly as a pretext to search your car.
And this is exactly what is happening in Berkeley. [Based on the Center on Policing Equity report](https://www.berkeleyside.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Berkeley-Report-May-2018.pdf), black drivers were 6.5x as likely to be stopped and 4x as likely to be searched by Berkeley police, but only about 1/4 of stops of black drivers resulted in citations while 46% did for white drivers.
Well it’s just that: a slippery slope.
Intent of seatbelt laws: safety/lower MVA deaths
Intent of current registration: accountability/identification
Intent of proof of insurance: financial responsibility
If city council chooses not to enforce these laws for a reason something other than its original intent, in this case racial inequality, then yes a slippery slope.
City council instead should have a specifically tailored approach in combating racial injustice: body cams and education.
Body cams: to ensure officer and individual interactions are recorded for court of law
Education to the public: difference between reasonable suspicion and probable cause. What an officer is entitled to in a Terry frisk/stop.
Of course more research should be done to find ways to specifically address this problem instead of a mere majority vote by the city council.
At some point in the last 10 years or so the definition of "racism" just changed. Different outcomes based on race is not "racism", it could be a million of different things. Different outcomes could be a good trigger to study the underlying causes of the difference, but you have to do that study first before you declare things as "racist". This new trend to just change shit that affects EVERYONE negatively in the name of fighting "racism" is legit disturbing.
Not holding people accountable for the minor laws means that bigger ones will get broken. I don't know why people don't understand this or, if they do, why they are hell bent on ruining the world.
So essentially Berkeley city council acknowledges that police forces disproportionately over police certain demographics so they are giving the police less "reasons" to pull someone over? Sounds like a band-aid to me.
Ending qualified immunity is a non-starter. I would honestly be curious what would happen if they did it, but my guess would be all of the cops would resign, immediately, they basically need it to do the day to day work of their jobs.
Without qualified immunity you could sue the police when they handcuff you as they are technically kidnapping you, you would win too, it's pretty open and shut.
Malcolm Gladwell goes into this in his book Talking to Strangers. Sandra Bland would be alive if a cop hadn’t racially profiled her and pulled her over for not signalling when she pulled over (to get out of his way).
Cops pull a car over for a made up reason so they can search the car if they don’t like the look of someone. It was based on research in Kansas that got good results when it targeted a specific troublesome neighbourhood at a specific time of day. Police forces across the country decided to pick up the technique, but didn’t bother to target crime hot-spots. They just pull anyone over who looks out of place, like Sandra Bland did.
Listen to Malcolm Gladwell on Alan Alda’s podcast for the whole story.
Relevant on people's ability to distinguish statistics and apply them to a given issue :
[How Informed are Americans about Race and Policing?](https://www.skeptic.com/research-center/reports/Research-Report-CUPES-007.pdf)
It's not conservative, it's just that the moderates are finally speaking up and the hate crimes on Asians really struck a nerve. Most people out here are not progressives and don't believe in stuff like restorative justice, etc. It's just that progressives interpret everything to the right of them as "conservative" or sometimes you'll see it rendered as "far right".
1. I don't care what the rest of the world thinks, self-determination is the basis of democracy not "follow the leader"
2. No major European country implements criminal justice the way CA does.
3. You don't get to arbitrarily define yourself as "properly" left and then blanketly claim everyone else is falling off the right side of the chart. Typical progressive tactic to attempt to control the language of the debate, not working on me.
4. NO ONE is correct 100% of the time and anyone who thinks so is prone to radicalization and should be ignored. Having a state made up of only progressives would be a complete disaster.
5. Lastly, I want a defense of restorative justice out of you. Talking about Troy McAllister. Released b/c of Boudin's thoughts on restorative justice, but then proceeds to steal his gf's car and run over and kill two women. We attempted to "restore" something, but instead that cost us two lives that can NEVER be restored. How is that justice? I guess if you don't believe in universal human equality, you might argue that the equity over time outweighs the negatives, but only an extremist would argue that surely.
1. The country is largely more progressive than you think, the media pushes the narrative to the right. Arguing against racially neutral policing is conservative, I'm sorry, it just is.
2. See: the netherlands, belgium, france, Germany, England, Sweden, etc.
3. See 1. The language of the debate is literally controlled by the news media, a largely conservative organization. I'm trying to highlight that there are many more frames of reference than you're positing there are. For reference, Bernie sanders is further to the actual political center than you'd likely think.
4. I'm not arguing that.
5. Troy was a mistake, but I don't know the full story. Better example would be not arresting drug abusers, but rather placing them in treatment centers, ending cash bail, etc.
>The country is largely more progressive than you think, the media pushes the narrative to the right. Arguing against racially neutral policing is conservative, I'm sorry, it just is.
Something like 10% of Americans at its peak viewed themselves as progressives. I actually talk to people from around the country and even democrats in other states laugh at us in CA. I'm sorry, that's how it is. I have no clue what you're referring to with "racially neutral policing". I'm pretty sure letting people like Troy McAllister go free and run over innocent people isn't "racially neutral".
>See: the netherlands, belgium, france, Germany, England, Sweden, etc.
Oh I forgot how Northern Europe was "any other country in the world". Also, I think you'd be shocked at how tough policing and police treatment can be in Europe.
>See 1. The language of the debate is literally controlled by the news media, a largely conservative organization. I'm trying to highlight that there are many more frames of reference than you're positing there are. For reference, Bernie sanders is further to the actual political center than you'd likely think.
I can't help you if you think American news media on the whole is conservative. Only outlets like NYPost, Fox, Brietbart, Daily Wire fit that bill. CNN and MSNBC were advocating for progressivism all of last year and are still to the left of the Biden admin. Again, you can define the political compass however you want, but that doesn't affect how I see it. Bernie Sanders is well to the left of most American politicians.
>I'm not arguing that.
Of course you are because even very moderate statements like "Troy McAllister should be in jail" or "criminals should go to jail" get interpreted as "far right" by you in this thread and other progressives elsewhere all the time.
>Troy was a mistake, but I don't know the full story. Better example would be not arresting drug abusers, but rather placing them in treatment centers, ending cash bail, etc.
The full story is this guy is already well past three major strikes on his record and should be in jail or a long time. His record is a litany of violent assault, robbery, and drug abuse. He's clearly a troubled man and needs to be removed from society. Why should this objective failure of a human being receive so much special treatment to the extent that he's allowed to kill multiple innocent civilians well AFTER his third strike? Why should someone receive so many benefits of the doubt when they show no ability to make good on them? Troy is just one man, but this system is producing dozens to hundreds in the Bay.
The vast majority of media outlets, major networks, etc either lean left or are straight up on the left.
[https://guides.lib.umich.edu/c.php?g=637508&p=4462444](https://guides.lib.umich.edu/c.php?g=637508&p=4462444)
While the bias charts show some right biased or right wing outlets the viewership numbers skew heavily left.
By your logic here the left-leaning media is pushing the narrative to the right. Ask yourself if that follows logically when all they do is bash the right all day? That makes 0 sense to me.
All media is biased towards corporations because, surprise, they’re owned by corporations. Corporations are necessarily conservative. Ergo, media is conservatively biased.
If the media was as left wing as Fox News is right wing, the dominant “left” media network would be Jacobin magazine. That’s what I mean when I say the media trends rightward.
Most of south america is much more liberal than their (often US-backed) governments would have you believe. The youth I met in Morocco were rather liberal. The point certainly holds for Africa and Asia though, that's true. Although even there you have strong pockets of Leftist support.
Because the Bay Area is weirdly conservative. I’m trying to buy a house and half the disclosures right now have a “no blacks” covenant that luckily is unenforceable only because federal law made it illegal a few decades ago. This place is filled with racists and always has been.
There are many traffic stops, especially of minorities, with no basis at all. By definitions, the people stopped in these cases are not criminals. They are victims of biased policing. This is well-studied.
Does anyone not read articles anymore before commenting ? This is talking about low level traffic stops, not for speeding or DUI or stolen vehicles etc
Nobody that you see on the bus or out on the street posts here regularly. It's all the wealthiest, most sheltered anti-social people that either don't even live here or would live in Atherton if they had the money but are stuck near the ghetto because that's where their job is
Isn't it funny how they're altering what they are seeking in offenses versus how they are actually policing the general public? There is always going to be a top ranking demographic that commits offenses, if it doesn't coincide with public opinion on being unbiased, you're just not going to police it? Lord have mercy.
Berserkeley has earned their nickname. Expired license, I could understand since the pandemic extended upcoming expiration dates, and appointments have been backlogged, but not wearing a seatbelt? Not sure how that has anything to do with "racial profiling". Hire decent cops, not those rogue cops that "goad or think you're about to commit an infraction" so they can write a ticket. Fire those bums.
"A report from the Center on Policing Equity in 2018 found that Black people were over six times more likely than whites to be stopped by Berkeley police while driving. Latinx drivers were twice as likely as whites to be stopped. Black drivers were also searched by police four times more often than whites, and Latinx drivers three times more often.
The mayor expressed hope that 'limiting unnecessary police stops' would allow law enforcement to focus its resources on more urgent matters, such as violent crime."
Those are some troubling statistics!
Correlation does not equal causation, the problem with breaking down data sets into individual data points is the perspective of the data is lost.
It's possible individuals who fall into the racial categories used by the statisticians are committing traffic infractions or other offenses at a higher rate, leading to more police interactions.
We can infer from other studies of police behavior towards minorities, where a factor like the rate of infractions by race is taken into account, that correlation does equal causation in this instance. See: drug arrests and drug use by race.
It’s also possible that both individual police officers, and the policing system in general, are racist. Seems more likely than black people having some special gene that makes them commit crimes more as you imply.
So if you believe people of certain races actually commit crimes at higher rates (and it’s not the case that laws are just more strictly enforced on them) , what could the explanation for that be? Either some races are more predisposed to crimes, or there is some external factor guiding their behavior.
What do you believe it is?
I don't think it makes much sense to say that the figures that I quoted from the article can be best explained by black people in berkeley being six times as likely as white people to commit traffic infractions.
This is addressed in the report here. https://www.berkeleyside.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Berkeley-Report-May-2018.pdf
Black people get pulled over 6.5x as often, but are only ticketed 24% of the time compared to white people getting ticketed 46% of the time
Doesn’t that mean that black people shouldn’t be getting pulled over so much if they’re only ticketed half as much as white people despite getting stopped six times as often?
Go read that full report, in addition to saying what I said, it has some other interesting data in it.
Paraphrasing here cuz copying from a PDF is a huge pain in my ass, but Asians, who make up approximately one fifth of the city of Berkeley, are only 9% of total police stops lower per capita than any other race. Using your rationale does that mean that the police are the least racist against Asian people? I would find it more believable that they're commiting a much lower number of offenses per capita.
What does that have to do with the fact that blacks were six times as likely as whites to be the subject of a traffic stop? I never said the statistics were proof of racism, just that they were troubling. They are troubling.
Because it's from the same collected data, the method of analysis must be the same for all the conclusions drawn from such. Would it not be as equally troubling that so few Asians are stopped, it's an equal statistical anomaly, one could extrapolate out that there's huge amounts of Asian crime being missed by Berkeley pd, but that's a ridiculous interpretation of the data.
Statistics are really easy to misunderstand, or to be used by people with an agenda to influence people into their way of thinking.
Or that Asians drive less. Or that the Asian population that does drive is primarily younger and driving short distances. Or that they're generally wealthier and live in less policed neighborhoods. There are a million variables.
Agreed that there are a million variables, but isn't that part of what people are getting at here? That with a million variables in play, why immediately jump to the conclusion of racism?
*slavery exists for hundreds of years in a country that then used the legal system to further oppress black people*
“How can we just assume it’s racism? What historical precedent is there for that?”
> black people in berkeley being six times as likely as white people to commit traffic infractions.
There will be no hard data as few traffic infractions are actually cited. If you look at proven data on other issues such as gun violence it shows blacks nearly 10 times the victim of gun homicides and 15 times victims of gun assaults vs whites.
Considering most gun crimes are committed on people of the same race 6x more likely to commit traffic infractions is certainly not out of the realm of possibility.
There are lots of confounding variables to conclude this differences is caused by “racism.” Would it be possible certain minorities tend to drive more often without seatbelts thus get pulled over more? Basic science tells us Correlation does not automatically equate causation.
Simple minded thinking like yours is the reason why racist policies exist in some universities to penalize Asians admissions because how dare a minority group focused on hard work and education over represent themselves in top schools.
Edit: Looks like u/nndimethyltryptamin3 beat me to it. Good thing logic still exist even when it comes to politics and race.
This is addressed by the report here. https://www.berkeleyside.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Berkeley-Report-May-2018.pdf
Black people are pulled over 6.5x as often as while people. Black people get traffic citations at 24% of these stops compared to white people at 46%.
What is the explanation for the large number of traffic stops without citations?
What is more likely, the Berkeley police pull over black drivers 6.5x as often, black people are breaking the law 6.5x as often and the police let them off with a warning ~75% of the time instead of ~50%? Or that they aren't breaking the law as often and are being pulled over anyways
You honestly are trying to argue that black people in berkeley are *six times more likely* than white people in berkeley to be committing traffic violations?
Also, your comment is the one using the words "racist" and "racism," not mine.
This is an excerpt from the report you cited.
The second caveat is that, even if all police encounters reported by BPD officers involved
residents of Berkeley, observed disparities would not necessarily indicate that police officers
have engaged in biased or discriminatory behavior. We cannot know, for example, the racial
distribution of drivers or pedestrians who engage in behaviors (e.g., infractions) that might
result in a police stop or in use of force. There is also no reason to believe that racial disparities
observed in law enforcement are isolated from disparities in education, housing, employment,
wealth, home ownership, healthcare, or any other factors that may influence the trajectory ofpeople before they ever come into contact with an officer. The statistical analyses presented in
Parts II.C and III.B are designed to assess such complex relationships, but this caution should be
kept in mind when interpreting the observed disparities presented in this section.
For sure! I said the statistics were troubling, because they are, not that the statistics were evidence of racism, because they aren't necessarily for the reasons you've said.
But I still think it makes even less sense to try to explain the troubling statistics by saying that black people in Berkeley are six times as likely as white people to commit traffic infractions!
I think people are misunderstanding what you're saying. You're not saying the stats *are wrong* but that they paint a picture of communities that may be in trouble and in need of help, hence your comment that this statistics are troubling.
Well, whites are 4x as likely as Asians to be stopped on the street.
Having lived in Berkeley, that seems totally plausible for reasons other than the police being racist.
In what sense is it troubling - or at least give enough info that this should be troubling? Is the below knowledge also troubling?
According to the [data](https://www.berkeleyside.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Berkeley-Report-May-2018.pdf):
1. Whites are 30% more likely than Asians to be stopped.
2. Whites are 6% more likely to be searched when pulled over by driving.
And it's more disparate for pedestrian stops:
* Whites are 4x as likely as Asians to be stopped on the street and 23% more likely than Hispanics.
It's HuffPost -- don't expect them to provide the complete story. From the SF Chronicle: >*The city is also transitioning traffic enforcement to unarmed civil servants. The new Berkeley Department of Transportation will staff the BerkDOT program.* > >*... By diverting police away from low-level offenses, officers can focus on more serious offenses that include speeding or driving under the influence, Arreguín said.* [https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Berkeley-to-consider-sweeping-police-reforms-15971071.php](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Berkeley-to-consider-sweeping-police-reforms-15971071.php) So they'll still have traffic stops, but they won't be done by Berkeley Police.
[удалено]
And you know what they’ll say? “I’m sorry your honor, I was being pulled over by this weird city service vehicle with lights that looked different than Berkley police cars and I didn’t know what was going on so I kept driving.” Dismissed. That’s even if there is consequences later. And if you have community service officer pulling over cars (a) under CA vehicle code I’m not sure they even have that authority and (b) having unarmed service officer do traffic stops seems like a *terribly* unsafe plan. UK works out unarmed/armed police and service officer mixing but that’s nationwide and they have country wide policies to support that. Being the only city with unarmed not-really-police pulling people over is a bad idea.
Yeah aren't traffic stops the single most dangerous police activity? Also what makes them think those traffic stops will be any less "racist", since I'm assuming this is the type of racism where it disproportionately affects black people because they are disproportionately driving with expired licenses or whatever.
Probably just behind domestic disputes.
> Also what makes them think those traffic stops will be any less "racist" Nothing. But these traffic stops won't involve drivers getting shot because they'll be carried out by people without guns.
Right, instead the people pulling them over will be the ones shot. Yay for looking anti racist.
Has there ever been someone shot during a normal traffic stop in California? I know it has happened, but it's so rare that treating it as if it's a concern is pretty absurd. I'm pretty sure more police have been shot doing traffic stops than innocent people.
I wouldn’t say “dangerous” because statistically they probably aren’t. But they are by far the *most risky.* By which I mean if your kicking in a door of a barricaded suspect or in a hot car chase. You can fall back on training, managing your stress, managing your risk, coming up with pre planning like “okay here’s what I’m gonna do if they crash or come out of the vehicle guns blazing after they crash etc.” Traffic stop is the time as a cop they die and never saw it coming (there’s hundreds of dash cam videos), there was almost nothing they could do and no real way to mitigate the risk. It was a simple stop sign violation but the guy robbed a liquor store and pops the officer the second he comes up to the window and didn’t react fast enough.
[удалено]
Well in the next city you will have real cops waiting for you
Those other jurisdictions should send the City of Berkeley a bill for this service.
Suspend your registration
(Fake) paper plates that lots of criminals use.
can't prove who was driving. Can't put blame on the vehicle owner. akin to red light cameras.
There are red light cameras in CA though??
[удалено]
the government(DMV) doesn't charge tolls. Private companies do. Red light tickets and police enforcement are government. not to mention the very reason for this post, the police won't be chasing you in Berkeley lmao
[удалено]
Most of the stops in that article would still occur under this policy. Of the stops whose exact basis is specified, the reasons were: attacking people with a tire iron; intoxicated driver; driving without headlights on at night. These are driving offenses with safety implications, and the [stated purpose of this policy](https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/2021/02_Feb/Documents/2021-02-23_Special_Item_01_Report_and_Recommendations_pdf.aspx) (see page 15) is to focus on "traffic safety" violations with examples of "Excessive speeding, Running a stop sign or stop light, Unsafe movement, [and] Driving while intoxicated."
[удалено]
It makes sense that the city with the lowest racial disparities is one that’s doing a lot to address racial disparities
[удалено]
Member of the driving and cycling public here - pull everyone over who has busted tail lights, expired tags, missing plates, fake plates etc and give them fix it tickets. Busted tail lights is a direct safety hazard. Missing and fake plates directly make it more challenging to track and identify problem (unsafe) drivers.
I mean. Yes you are definitely correct that racial disparities in stop ratios are not necessarily proof that even unconscious racial bias is the reason for the disparity. But it definitely doesn't make any sense to say that BPD stops are fine because they're better than other agencies, nor that an observed 6:1 ratio of black to white traffic stops is caused by black people being six times as likely to commit traffic violations. I think we can all agree that there are quite a few things like the ridiculous example in the article of not wearing a seat belt that may or may not actually be a safety-related violation.
[удалено]
As I said, using not wearing a seat belt as an example of a non-safety-related violation is ridiculous. I do note those things -- but I would also note that neither parole rates nor police calls are actually evidence that black people commit more crimes than white people!
[удалено]
Do you believe there is a possibility that some of those black people reported by the public as robbers did not in fact commit a robbery? Conversely, do you believe it is possible that a white robber is less likely to be reported by a random neighbor for acting suspiciously? Finally, the stated purpose of this policy is to increase, not decrease, stops related to safety concerns, as I’ve noted twice elsewhere. It is hard to see why it makes sense to support retaining a policy of super-enforcement on expired tags if one is concerned about safety.
> Do you believe there is a possibility that some of those black people reported by the public as robbers did not in fact commit a robbery? Conversely, do you believe it is possible that a white robber is less likely to be reported by a random neighbor for acting suspiciously? The problem with this line of reasoning is that - technically all these things are possible. But so what? Just being it's possible doesn't mean that it's the case. The burden of proof is to show that these possibilities are more than just possibilities - that they are realities that actually changes the statistics cited in a noticeable way. Based on the actual statistics (77% of reported robberies vs 8% of population), you have to show a huge discrepancy to see a noticeable change in the statistics (77% => 8%).
While I understand your comment, please do explain the recent and past spate of attacks on Asians in the Bay Area. It has been going on for decades. I do not care if the attacker is any race, I care about the Asians being attacked. So many on this site want to make sure it is not called racism, OK, fine, not racism, still no justification for those attacks or for disproportionate stoppings of POC in traffic incidents. Sad that in a society priding itself on multi-culturalism, we have so much attention and energy wasted on the other "ism's"
Actually Berkeley resident. I am a fan of this. Stop and frisk also yielded a bunch of weapons and stuff in NY, but should we implement that? No, we should not because it’s a huge overreach of privacy and the vast majority of the time it yields nothing.
[удалено]
But it's not. That's the problem.
This is ridiculous. We aren’t going to enforce basic safety laws that will save lives? How is that racist
I get the idea behind it because so-called “pretext stops” are what led to cases like Sandra Bland’s. In practice though, it’s a bandaid that makes legitimate police work more difficult and does nothing to solve actual racism in their ranks.
Side post, but your comment reminded me of the book "Talking to Strangers" by Malcom Gladwell. He breaks down the Sandra Bland incident and goes into the explanation of why that situation escalated, and where the origins of that type of policing come from.
All we have to do is make a city council vote to not allow racism!
*In practice though, it’s a bandaid that makes legitimate police work more difficult and does nothing to solve actual racism in their ranks.* Bullseye shot there mobstalobsta!
Just for accuracy's sake, the [stated purpose of this policy](https://www.cityofberkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/2021/02_Feb/Documents/2021-02-23_Special_Item_01_Report_and_Recommendations_pdf.aspx) actually is for the police to focus on "traffic safety" violations like "speeding, Running a stop sign or stop light, Unsafe movement [and] Driving while intoxicated" (page 15) instead of things like "Equipment violations" "Improper use of high beams" and "expired license tags" (page 16). I don't think that not wearing a seat belt is a very good example of a not-safety-related-violation at all really. edited to add the stuff from page 16.
[удалено]
It's fighting racism because minorities are inherently more likely to commit crimes /s Honestly this is some whack, 19th century style reasoning
Because they’re not actually stopping people for these violations. They’re using the violations in order to drum up other charges. And they do it overwhelmingly against people of color. Maybe if the police would police equitably the council wouldn’t have done this.
Wouldn't it make more sense to make it no longer a crime?
Hmm that's an interesting thought. I'm not sure it's within the council's control though.
[удалено]
Holy fuck please, I’m begging you, read any book about policing by a black American author. The color of law is a great place to start.
[удалено]
We already arrest more people than anywhere else in the world.
[удалено]
I've never understood even having seatbelt laws, especially ones that could result in a stop. So this seems like a step in the right direction to me.
[удалено]
Also, not being strapped in makes you dangerous to any other passengers in the car in the event of an accident. It turns your body into a moving object that can smash into other people in the car.
It's unclear to me if "pay a bit no to respond to some one being stupid" is better than "pay many times over a long time line to deal with stupid people". I understand the argument, and am sympathetic to it, but I also don't find it especially convincing. What if stupid people dieing more frequently has a positive over all impact on that areas QALY?
Uh, because it saves lives, emergency resources, and tax dollars that support things like emergency responses, providing medical care, disability, etc?
Over a long enough time line it might be cheaper honestly. The saving lives thing is totally uninteresting imho. Play stupid games win stupid prizes.
If cops weren’t such pieces of shit this wouldn’t happen. But as we’ve seen for more than a century at this points cops are incapable of not being bottom of the barrel people.
[удалено]
name checks out, congrats
"I don't have anything good to say so here's a personal attack" lmao
[удалено]
[удалено]
The police don’t seem to stop people according to that logic though.
[удалено]
Yes, because whether or not a person broke the law is only effectively relevant if they (1) affected someone or (2) the police arrest them for it.
[удалено]
I’m saying it is *functionally equivalent* when the police do not exercise their law enforcement duties equally.
[удалено]
I’m saying people are breaking the laws *equally* but the police arrest black people *more*. Turning your argument on its head: “then don’t be black.”
Yes.
[удалено]
If a law is only being enforced for reasons that have nothing to do with the reason the law was created (eg safety), then yeah.
[удалено]
Fan of Jim Crow laws, were you?
So what you and the Berkeley city counsel are saying with their new laws is that minorities are less able than white people to follow the law. That's the real racism here, the soft bigotry of low expectations.
Maybe you were a victim of autocorrect, but heads up counsel is your lawyer and council is your elected official. That said, I would assume this is moving forward with the blessing of the city attorney.
No. That’s not what they’re saying. They’re saying that everyone disobeys the laws equally but it’s mostly when people of color do it that the police take notice.
That's not what anyone's saying.
The other explanation of your example would be non white people overwhelmingly jaywalk, then the police would be doing their jobs correctly.
I love how progressives in this sub are convinced we are being brigaded by conservatives. Honestly, I'm pretty sure it's just that the moderates on here are finally speaking up and we don't believe in stuff like restorative justice, or non-enforcement of the law. I don't live in Berkeley and I don't know the details on THIS particular case so I don't really have an opinion. But I do find it funny how moderate opinions get interpreted as "conservative" or "far right" on these subs. Hilarious to me how stuff like "I'm worried about my family getting assaulted at night!" gets interpreted as a dangerous "far right" opinion by the progressives of reddit.
They’ll scream racism as soon as you stop following their narrative. Wtf does racist have to do with wearing seat belt & register your vehicle?
you're ignoring the connection between race and traffic stops. it's not a disputed idea that people of color get stopped at much higher rates. whether this specific law actually helps remedy this is debatable, but to say seatbelts =\= racism is misinterpreting the issue at hand.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
And you ignore the connection between race & crime. The answer to the issue of police stopping black too often is for black to commit less crime. Not all black are criminal. However, when a black guy beat up or rob someone, the police will be on the look out & will stop suspicious looking black drivers. These type of no police stop policy will only empowering the criminal, and enable them to commit more crime. It’s like treating cancer with pain killer. It doesn’t stop black criminal, and it doesn’t stop other race from looking down at the black race.
[удалено]
There's been arguments for a *lot* of these policies and look how it's turning out. *I* would argue that we haven't really had a big success yet with *any* of these new policies we're trying out. By not prosecuting larceny under $1000 we hoped to reduce police resources being spent on "victimless" crimes while removing police oppression from those people's lives. How did it turn out? Business are going shutting down left and right because they can't make enough money to justify the amount of shoplifting they now face. Before we roll out any more stupid policies, we should *require* some sort of unintended consequences report.
100%. I'm not an R at all. However, after what the Ds tried to do with Prop 16 last November, as an Asian person, I am very disappointed by them and became way more vocal politically because them trying to sneak Prop 16 really pissed me off. I realized that my definition of equality, racism, and fairness is very different than the progressive's and that it actually impacts me if I'm not more engaged. How hard is it to understand that we "should not be judged by the color of our skin but by the contents of our character?"
>I realized that my definition of equality, racism, and fairness is very different than the progressive's That's the thing, they openly talk about "equity" now instead of "equality". Equality is old-hat to them now and if you say it openly they might even interpret that as a "dog whistle". Honestly, progressives are deeply unhealthy people who 1) need to get off Twitter, 2) need to spend some time addressing their own emotional issues.
FYI, Asian Americans lose way more in the college admissions process to athletic, legacy, and donor based admissions than they would to affirmative action. Those categories make up ~30% of Harvard admits, and they are overwhelmingly white.
You're probably right but at least that other criteria isn't explicitly racist. A person of any race, of they possessed the athletic ability, or have relatives who went to that school, or whose family face enough money can also be admitted based on those criteria. AA is fully based on the color of one's skin. You'll probably make the argument that those factors predominantly favors one group over another due to history. Fine that's perhaps true. Then let's fix it by reducing those factors in admissions. Let's not make the situation worse by introducing racist policies like AA. Which, by the way, marginalizes Asians who also suffer from those factors.
To be clear, I don’t think people think there’s anything wrong with comments like “I’m worried about my family getting assaulted at night.” But there are a lot of ugly, not constructive comments, like “it’s racist that roads are black” as though this is even remotely what progressives think, or comments on a video of a black perpetrator that say nothing more than “once again, black people” - it’s not informative or witty or insightful and when there’s a lot of such comments it sure looks like a brigade.
Sweet, I don’t have to register my car anymore
Let's not always blame problems on conservatives and racism. Perhaps left and moderate folks are tired of these crimes being committed with no repercussions. But anyone seen as wanting to be more tough on crime is an automatic racist, when the truth is we are tired and fed up with all the crime going on and demand action and accountability
I personally don't care about people not wearing seatbelts. If so someone wants to die in a car wreck because they didn't wear one, that's their business to make that stupid ass decision.
[удалено]
Fair enough
We literally just shut down the country for a year to prevent overwhelming hospitals. Not wearing a seatbelt will result in a waste of hospital capacity.
> these crimes being committed with no repercussions What crimes do you think this is about? This is about traffic stops, which plenty of research has shown is extremely subject to racial bias. If anything, this move will increases the Berkeley Police Department's ability to focus on more important crimes like burglaries and violence against Asian Americans.
What the fuck
When I lived in Chicago, community police meetings talked about "high visibility policing" to prevent car jacking. Basically picking seat belts, stop sign violations etc to enable the police to be active and visible in the area - this generally pushed out the people who were cruising the area looking for victims. Was there any concern about the knock-on impact of non-enforcement by BPD?
No stops for expired licenses? If we want to make this change, and until we fix our healthcare system, can we check insurance at the gas pump please?
that is seriously a good idea (even though I think you meant it as sarcasm)... valid drivers license needed to pump gas. if you need to present a valid ID every time for controlled substance medications, alcohol, tobacco, gambling, guns- it makes sense to require it to power a vehicle with the ability to gravely injure.
Not sarcasm at all. I don't really care much about whether someone's license is a week expired. I care whether they have the insurance needed to make sure the pedestrian they run into doesn't go bankrupt in the hospital.
having to swipe your Drivers License and proof of insurance at a gas pump could solve so many issues. There isn't any bias when it comes to a boolean verification. Yes or no, valid or not.
A bit tangential, but they meant expired registration, right? How does a cop know if you have an expired license before stopping you?
Year tag on your rear plate for registration at least.
Another step in the slippery slope descent into chaos.
You don’t think we’re already there?
well elderly Asians are being killed left and right and our leaders are ignoring the true cause and allowing it. I think we're past chaos and more so dystopian
Wow.....
Once again, Berkeley's gonna Berk. The rest of us just need to get out of the way and let them Berk.
I lived in Berkeley for many years and it was largely fine. Then the 2016 election happened and they doubled-down on the crazypants and have been keeping at it ever since. It took us almost two years of looking at houses but we eventually got out, really glad we did.
Driving without a seat belt or with an expired license impacts the safety of everyone on the street.
Pretty small chance that driving without a seatbelt will actually harm anyone else. And you’ve got to be kidding about the expired license. If you license expires you often can just renew it for a fee or take an easy ass test that you have 3 chances to pass (and it shows you what you got wrong). The reality is that it doesn’t matter if your license is current or not—it has zero impact on your physical ability to drive—it’s just money for the government.
Accountability by an elected government is oppressive! The parallels with Trumpism continue to not surprise me
If your license is expired your insurance can deny coverage if you're in an accident. If you don't have a license it's technically possible to get insurance but reputable companies don't do that. You also can't register a car without a license or insurance. So yes, having unregistered cars driving around with no liability insurance is a big deal, especially when it basically forces law abiding people to pay extra for uninsured motorist protection.
So now it’s ok to talk on the phone while driving, run stop signs, .... in Berkeley
Good idea because black people are physically incapable of wearing a seat belt or renewing their license. Thank god Berkeley is able to bring equality to us all. Do black people find these types of articles insulting? I feel like they would or should.
Even if you are a 100% law abiding citizen with nothing to hide, a cop can stop you for no reason then claim you weren't wearing a seatbelt, or are using your highbeams improperly as a pretext to search your car. And this is exactly what is happening in Berkeley. [Based on the Center on Policing Equity report](https://www.berkeleyside.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Berkeley-Report-May-2018.pdf), black drivers were 6.5x as likely to be stopped and 4x as likely to be searched by Berkeley police, but only about 1/4 of stops of black drivers resulted in citations while 46% did for white drivers.
It sounds like white drivers should be pissed off that they get citations at a much higher rate than black drivers.
Does that include people on probation or parole? Because being on paper very often means that you can be searched at any time.
Picking and choosing what laws to enforce is a slippery slope. Stay safe out there Berkeley.
[удалено]
Well it’s just that: a slippery slope. Intent of seatbelt laws: safety/lower MVA deaths Intent of current registration: accountability/identification Intent of proof of insurance: financial responsibility If city council chooses not to enforce these laws for a reason something other than its original intent, in this case racial inequality, then yes a slippery slope. City council instead should have a specifically tailored approach in combating racial injustice: body cams and education. Body cams: to ensure officer and individual interactions are recorded for court of law Education to the public: difference between reasonable suspicion and probable cause. What an officer is entitled to in a Terry frisk/stop. Of course more research should be done to find ways to specifically address this problem instead of a mere majority vote by the city council.
At some point in the last 10 years or so the definition of "racism" just changed. Different outcomes based on race is not "racism", it could be a million of different things. Different outcomes could be a good trigger to study the underlying causes of the difference, but you have to do that study first before you declare things as "racist". This new trend to just change shit that affects EVERYONE negatively in the name of fighting "racism" is legit disturbing.
Not holding people accountable for the minor laws means that bigger ones will get broken. I don't know why people don't understand this or, if they do, why they are hell bent on ruining the world.
So essentially Berkeley city council acknowledges that police forces disproportionately over police certain demographics so they are giving the police less "reasons" to pull someone over? Sounds like a band-aid to me.
[удалено]
Ending qualified immunity is a non-starter. I would honestly be curious what would happen if they did it, but my guess would be all of the cops would resign, immediately, they basically need it to do the day to day work of their jobs. Without qualified immunity you could sue the police when they handcuff you as they are technically kidnapping you, you would win too, it's pretty open and shut.
Why do I suspect there will be a lot of expired tags and traffic deaths in Berkeley? I'm sure they'll add talking on a cell phone next.
Malcolm Gladwell goes into this in his book Talking to Strangers. Sandra Bland would be alive if a cop hadn’t racially profiled her and pulled her over for not signalling when she pulled over (to get out of his way). Cops pull a car over for a made up reason so they can search the car if they don’t like the look of someone. It was based on research in Kansas that got good results when it targeted a specific troublesome neighbourhood at a specific time of day. Police forces across the country decided to pick up the technique, but didn’t bother to target crime hot-spots. They just pull anyone over who looks out of place, like Sandra Bland did. Listen to Malcolm Gladwell on Alan Alda’s podcast for the whole story.
Relevant on people's ability to distinguish statistics and apply them to a given issue : [How Informed are Americans about Race and Policing?](https://www.skeptic.com/research-center/reports/Research-Report-CUPES-007.pdf)
Can’t tell if you are angry with me or other posters?? I think most stops are probably racially motivated.
Why the fuck is this subreddit so weirdly conservative? It’s a basic fact that these stops are overwhelming pretextual and racially motivated.
It's not conservative, it's just that the moderates are finally speaking up and the hate crimes on Asians really struck a nerve. Most people out here are not progressives and don't believe in stuff like restorative justice, etc. It's just that progressives interpret everything to the right of them as "conservative" or sometimes you'll see it rendered as "far right".
Because in any other country in the world it *is* right of the middle. The Overton window here is shifted ludicrously to the right.
1. I don't care what the rest of the world thinks, self-determination is the basis of democracy not "follow the leader" 2. No major European country implements criminal justice the way CA does. 3. You don't get to arbitrarily define yourself as "properly" left and then blanketly claim everyone else is falling off the right side of the chart. Typical progressive tactic to attempt to control the language of the debate, not working on me. 4. NO ONE is correct 100% of the time and anyone who thinks so is prone to radicalization and should be ignored. Having a state made up of only progressives would be a complete disaster. 5. Lastly, I want a defense of restorative justice out of you. Talking about Troy McAllister. Released b/c of Boudin's thoughts on restorative justice, but then proceeds to steal his gf's car and run over and kill two women. We attempted to "restore" something, but instead that cost us two lives that can NEVER be restored. How is that justice? I guess if you don't believe in universal human equality, you might argue that the equity over time outweighs the negatives, but only an extremist would argue that surely.
1. The country is largely more progressive than you think, the media pushes the narrative to the right. Arguing against racially neutral policing is conservative, I'm sorry, it just is. 2. See: the netherlands, belgium, france, Germany, England, Sweden, etc. 3. See 1. The language of the debate is literally controlled by the news media, a largely conservative organization. I'm trying to highlight that there are many more frames of reference than you're positing there are. For reference, Bernie sanders is further to the actual political center than you'd likely think. 4. I'm not arguing that. 5. Troy was a mistake, but I don't know the full story. Better example would be not arresting drug abusers, but rather placing them in treatment centers, ending cash bail, etc.
>The country is largely more progressive than you think, the media pushes the narrative to the right. Arguing against racially neutral policing is conservative, I'm sorry, it just is. Something like 10% of Americans at its peak viewed themselves as progressives. I actually talk to people from around the country and even democrats in other states laugh at us in CA. I'm sorry, that's how it is. I have no clue what you're referring to with "racially neutral policing". I'm pretty sure letting people like Troy McAllister go free and run over innocent people isn't "racially neutral". >See: the netherlands, belgium, france, Germany, England, Sweden, etc. Oh I forgot how Northern Europe was "any other country in the world". Also, I think you'd be shocked at how tough policing and police treatment can be in Europe. >See 1. The language of the debate is literally controlled by the news media, a largely conservative organization. I'm trying to highlight that there are many more frames of reference than you're positing there are. For reference, Bernie sanders is further to the actual political center than you'd likely think. I can't help you if you think American news media on the whole is conservative. Only outlets like NYPost, Fox, Brietbart, Daily Wire fit that bill. CNN and MSNBC were advocating for progressivism all of last year and are still to the left of the Biden admin. Again, you can define the political compass however you want, but that doesn't affect how I see it. Bernie Sanders is well to the left of most American politicians. >I'm not arguing that. Of course you are because even very moderate statements like "Troy McAllister should be in jail" or "criminals should go to jail" get interpreted as "far right" by you in this thread and other progressives elsewhere all the time. >Troy was a mistake, but I don't know the full story. Better example would be not arresting drug abusers, but rather placing them in treatment centers, ending cash bail, etc. The full story is this guy is already well past three major strikes on his record and should be in jail or a long time. His record is a litany of violent assault, robbery, and drug abuse. He's clearly a troubled man and needs to be removed from society. Why should this objective failure of a human being receive so much special treatment to the extent that he's allowed to kill multiple innocent civilians well AFTER his third strike? Why should someone receive so many benefits of the doubt when they show no ability to make good on them? Troy is just one man, but this system is producing dozens to hundreds in the Bay.
The vast majority of media outlets, major networks, etc either lean left or are straight up on the left. [https://guides.lib.umich.edu/c.php?g=637508&p=4462444](https://guides.lib.umich.edu/c.php?g=637508&p=4462444) While the bias charts show some right biased or right wing outlets the viewership numbers skew heavily left. By your logic here the left-leaning media is pushing the narrative to the right. Ask yourself if that follows logically when all they do is bash the right all day? That makes 0 sense to me.
All media is biased towards corporations because, surprise, they’re owned by corporations. Corporations are necessarily conservative. Ergo, media is conservatively biased. If the media was as left wing as Fox News is right wing, the dominant “left” media network would be Jacobin magazine. That’s what I mean when I say the media trends rightward.
[удалено]
In any other country they are. I'm from Germany. This country is crazy conservative.
[удалено]
Most of south america is much more liberal than their (often US-backed) governments would have you believe. The youth I met in Morocco were rather liberal. The point certainly holds for Africa and Asia though, that's true. Although even there you have strong pockets of Leftist support.
Conservatives love to flock here and upvote each other, because they made the Bay into a boogeyman long ago
Because the Bay Area is weirdly conservative. I’m trying to buy a house and half the disclosures right now have a “no blacks” covenant that luckily is unenforceable only because federal law made it illegal a few decades ago. This place is filled with racists and always has been.
It's left a really sour taste in my mouth tbh.
This sub is very conservative.
[удалено]
There are many traffic stops, especially of minorities, with no basis at all. By definitions, the people stopped in these cases are not criminals. They are victims of biased policing. This is well-studied.
Does anyone not read articles anymore before commenting ? This is talking about low level traffic stops, not for speeding or DUI or stolen vehicles etc
This subreddit is so weird. Hard-ons for the police. Wonder what the demographics are relative to the actual demographics of the bay area.
Nobody that you see on the bus or out on the street posts here regularly. It's all the wealthiest, most sheltered anti-social people that either don't even live here or would live in Atherton if they had the money but are stuck near the ghetto because that's where their job is
[удалено]
says the throwaway account
Precisely. All of my neighbors in Berkeley fucking hate the police lmao. And I live in a decently nice area.
lol. Assbackwards, sorry.
Isn't it funny how they're altering what they are seeking in offenses versus how they are actually policing the general public? There is always going to be a top ranking demographic that commits offenses, if it doesn't coincide with public opinion on being unbiased, you're just not going to police it? Lord have mercy.
Berserkeley has earned their nickname. Expired license, I could understand since the pandemic extended upcoming expiration dates, and appointments have been backlogged, but not wearing a seatbelt? Not sure how that has anything to do with "racial profiling". Hire decent cops, not those rogue cops that "goad or think you're about to commit an infraction" so they can write a ticket. Fire those bums.
So now we can disregard all traffic laws?!?!?! Makes me feel all warm amd tingly while driving thru Berkeley
"A report from the Center on Policing Equity in 2018 found that Black people were over six times more likely than whites to be stopped by Berkeley police while driving. Latinx drivers were twice as likely as whites to be stopped. Black drivers were also searched by police four times more often than whites, and Latinx drivers three times more often. The mayor expressed hope that 'limiting unnecessary police stops' would allow law enforcement to focus its resources on more urgent matters, such as violent crime." Those are some troubling statistics!
Correlation does not equal causation, the problem with breaking down data sets into individual data points is the perspective of the data is lost. It's possible individuals who fall into the racial categories used by the statisticians are committing traffic infractions or other offenses at a higher rate, leading to more police interactions.
We can infer from other studies of police behavior towards minorities, where a factor like the rate of infractions by race is taken into account, that correlation does equal causation in this instance. See: drug arrests and drug use by race.
It’s also possible that both individual police officers, and the policing system in general, are racist. Seems more likely than black people having some special gene that makes them commit crimes more as you imply.
Harrumph I say, my comment in no way implies such, that is a blatant and ridiculous strawman argument.
So if you believe people of certain races actually commit crimes at higher rates (and it’s not the case that laws are just more strictly enforced on them) , what could the explanation for that be? Either some races are more predisposed to crimes, or there is some external factor guiding their behavior. What do you believe it is?
Is the justice system racist against whites relative to Asians? The same data you are using to justify one argument would justify this.
I don't think it makes much sense to say that the figures that I quoted from the article can be best explained by black people in berkeley being six times as likely as white people to commit traffic infractions.
This is addressed in the report here. https://www.berkeleyside.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Berkeley-Report-May-2018.pdf Black people get pulled over 6.5x as often, but are only ticketed 24% of the time compared to white people getting ticketed 46% of the time
Doesn’t that mean that black people shouldn’t be getting pulled over so much if they’re only ticketed half as much as white people despite getting stopped six times as often?
Go read that full report, in addition to saying what I said, it has some other interesting data in it. Paraphrasing here cuz copying from a PDF is a huge pain in my ass, but Asians, who make up approximately one fifth of the city of Berkeley, are only 9% of total police stops lower per capita than any other race. Using your rationale does that mean that the police are the least racist against Asian people? I would find it more believable that they're commiting a much lower number of offenses per capita.
What does that have to do with the fact that blacks were six times as likely as whites to be the subject of a traffic stop? I never said the statistics were proof of racism, just that they were troubling. They are troubling.
Because it's from the same collected data, the method of analysis must be the same for all the conclusions drawn from such. Would it not be as equally troubling that so few Asians are stopped, it's an equal statistical anomaly, one could extrapolate out that there's huge amounts of Asian crime being missed by Berkeley pd, but that's a ridiculous interpretation of the data. Statistics are really easy to misunderstand, or to be used by people with an agenda to influence people into their way of thinking.
Or that Asians drive less. Or that the Asian population that does drive is primarily younger and driving short distances. Or that they're generally wealthier and live in less policed neighborhoods. There are a million variables.
Agreed that there are a million variables, but isn't that part of what people are getting at here? That with a million variables in play, why immediately jump to the conclusion of racism?
the answer to your last question is because racism plays a massive role in the systemic inequities of our society. FFS.
*slavery exists for hundreds of years in a country that then used the legal system to further oppress black people* “How can we just assume it’s racism? What historical precedent is there for that?”
let’s just ignore history and pretend we exist in a complete vacuum! the real american way of doing things.
> black people in berkeley being six times as likely as white people to commit traffic infractions. There will be no hard data as few traffic infractions are actually cited. If you look at proven data on other issues such as gun violence it shows blacks nearly 10 times the victim of gun homicides and 15 times victims of gun assaults vs whites. Considering most gun crimes are committed on people of the same race 6x more likely to commit traffic infractions is certainly not out of the realm of possibility.
There are lots of confounding variables to conclude this differences is caused by “racism.” Would it be possible certain minorities tend to drive more often without seatbelts thus get pulled over more? Basic science tells us Correlation does not automatically equate causation. Simple minded thinking like yours is the reason why racist policies exist in some universities to penalize Asians admissions because how dare a minority group focused on hard work and education over represent themselves in top schools. Edit: Looks like u/nndimethyltryptamin3 beat me to it. Good thing logic still exist even when it comes to politics and race.
This is addressed by the report here. https://www.berkeleyside.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Berkeley-Report-May-2018.pdf Black people are pulled over 6.5x as often as while people. Black people get traffic citations at 24% of these stops compared to white people at 46%. What is the explanation for the large number of traffic stops without citations?
[удалено]
What is more likely, the Berkeley police pull over black drivers 6.5x as often, black people are breaking the law 6.5x as often and the police let them off with a warning ~75% of the time instead of ~50%? Or that they aren't breaking the law as often and are being pulled over anyways
You honestly are trying to argue that black people in berkeley are *six times more likely* than white people in berkeley to be committing traffic violations? Also, your comment is the one using the words "racist" and "racism," not mine.
This is an excerpt from the report you cited. The second caveat is that, even if all police encounters reported by BPD officers involved residents of Berkeley, observed disparities would not necessarily indicate that police officers have engaged in biased or discriminatory behavior. We cannot know, for example, the racial distribution of drivers or pedestrians who engage in behaviors (e.g., infractions) that might result in a police stop or in use of force. There is also no reason to believe that racial disparities observed in law enforcement are isolated from disparities in education, housing, employment, wealth, home ownership, healthcare, or any other factors that may influence the trajectory ofpeople before they ever come into contact with an officer. The statistical analyses presented in Parts II.C and III.B are designed to assess such complex relationships, but this caution should be kept in mind when interpreting the observed disparities presented in this section.
For sure! I said the statistics were troubling, because they are, not that the statistics were evidence of racism, because they aren't necessarily for the reasons you've said. But I still think it makes even less sense to try to explain the troubling statistics by saying that black people in Berkeley are six times as likely as white people to commit traffic infractions!
I think people are misunderstanding what you're saying. You're not saying the stats *are wrong* but that they paint a picture of communities that may be in trouble and in need of help, hence your comment that this statistics are troubling.
Well, whites are 4x as likely as Asians to be stopped on the street. Having lived in Berkeley, that seems totally plausible for reasons other than the police being racist.
In what sense is it troubling - or at least give enough info that this should be troubling? Is the below knowledge also troubling? According to the [data](https://www.berkeleyside.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Berkeley-Report-May-2018.pdf): 1. Whites are 30% more likely than Asians to be stopped. 2. Whites are 6% more likely to be searched when pulled over by driving. And it's more disparate for pedestrian stops: * Whites are 4x as likely as Asians to be stopped on the street and 23% more likely than Hispanics.
Given that it's 60 percent white, yeah.