Whenever there is some political dust-up, I always ask three questions (as an initial screen) - 1) What is the problem to be addressed and how do we know it is a problem?, 2) What is the solution being proposed?, and 3) Why do we think it would work?
As BLM/Antifa protests have spread into Europe, I am struggling to understand what exactly is being protested.
Marking the tragedy of George Floyd's death I understand. But by all accounts, this has little appearance of malicious racism. The four arresting officers were white, Asian, Hispanic and African-American. Reforms of police departments over the past couple or three decades have made police departments look much more like America than they may once have.
Four officers from four different racial groups make an arrest in a fashion that leads to the death of the suspect. Pure callousness? Bad departmental policies? Poor training? All these seem possible. Malicious racism? Seems improbable.
In Atlanta two officers have been dismissed for injurious arrest of two drivers and four others are under charge. The two drivers were African American as well as five of the six police officers. Malicious racism? Again, seems improbable.
Fog of war and loss of situational awareness would actually be my causal candidates, pending actual facts. The police have a horrendously difficult job, the light is always shining on them, they routinely deal with life and death situations (involving their own lives as well as those of civilians), weak political and institutional support, being targeted by Antifa and other anarchist assassins, suffering from mayors and City Counsels unwilling to manage budgets in a fashion to compensate them appropriately. It is no wonder tensions run high and officers become overstretched.
As Mangual points out, ever since Rodney King and especially after Ferguson, more and more has been invested in improving selection and training of officers with pretty dramatic results.
Historical context is important, too. In 1971, New York City Police discharged their firearms 810 times, wounding 221 people and killing 93. By 1990, those numbers were down to 307, 72, and 39, respectively. In 2016, police discharged their weapons just 72 times, wounding 23, killing 9. This is real progress; but it would come as news to anyone observing the mobs that have spent the last few days hurling insults, rocks, and Molotov cocktails at exhausted and demoralized members of the NYPD.While the numbers differ, across the nation, death and injury resulting from arrest are down by orders of magnitude.
And post-Ferguson, much research has demonstrated that not only are police departments looking more and more like America but it has become clear that death and injury when arrested is in proportion to crime commission. In other words, with a crude example, if African-Americans commit half of all murders which lead to an arrest, one might expect one half of the arrest victims of violence to also be African American despite the fact that African Americans are only 13% of the population. It is plain, if unpleasant, statistics.
So if everyone agrees that George Floyd's death was a tragedy, if we all agree that police have a dangerous job, if we all agree that civilian deaths at the hands of the police are an equally important issue as police deaths at the hands of the public, if we all acknowledge that police training has led to dramatic improvements and continuing declines in injuries when arrested, then what is being protested?
Can't be institutional racism - police forces are integrated and arrests are proportional to race by crime commission.
Can't be institutional wagon circling - the direct officers were fired directly even before a full investigation or trial and peripheral officers put on desk duty.
Can't be lack of progress on improvement of police training - the training is clearly being delivered and the resulting improvements have often been dramatic.
So what is being protested? What warrants the assassinations of at least two officers (both African American) and dozens of assaults on police?
Of my three screening questions: 1) What is the problem to be addressed and how do we know it is a problem?, 2) What is the solution being proposed?, and 3) Why do we think it would work?; we can't even move past the first one.
We know people are taking the opportunity to express anger, but anger at what? Unless we have a defined problem to fix, we can't fix it.
And for all the nattering, I am not hearing anyone define what the problem is that the protestors are protesting.
UPDATE: Additional data rebutting the charge of structural racism: The Myth of Systemic Police Racism by Heather Mac Donald
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