Ten oz

Come on, there is no history of racism and brutality in Germany and the UK? Take black vs white out of equastion and white police officers killing white citizen is still hundreds of times greater than we see elsewhere in the western world.

Hundreds of times over more so than Europe?

Sanders ran a great campaign. I am not saying otherwise. Anything in isolation can feel significant. If you flip a coin 10 times and hit heads 10 times it will be a big deal. Flip it another 90 times and when it all averages out to be within the statistical tolerances that first 10 flips will not turn out to have been significant. Both Sanders and Trump had primary runs that out performed expectations. However it is important in my opinion to separate beating expectations from beating statistical trends. Sanders did great for Sanders but only average for 2nd runner up in the Democratic Primary. Which brings us back on topic. Specific lines of discussion seem very sensible or improtant until messured against the overall trend. We can discuss suicide by cop, behavior in the black community, and other variables but ultimately the stats don't lie; we have a serious issue with cops killing people: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/09/the-counted-police-killings-us-vs-other-countries How can behavior of people during traffic stops, suicidal people wanting to die by cop, and etc be responsible for this overwhelming problem. The trend defies any explanation I have seen. The problem is larger than can be addressed in isolation. In isolation Michael Brown's actions may have XY&Z, Tamire Rice could've should've would've, Dlyan Noble just wanted to die, and etc. Add it all up though and the trend is staggering and defies any explanation that each of the idividual cases can provide.

I voted for Sanders. I like Sanders. However I do not like when his campaign is use to make any type of forecast. The 55% of the popular vote Clinton received in the primary is better than Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale, or Jimmy Carter did. Her win was on the higher side standard of average for a Democratic primary. Even if we scrap the popular vote and look at number of states won she is on the higher side of average. So while I personally supported Sanders statistically his performance is not significant.

At this point it is about turn out. Trump will win 60% of white plus or minus a couple and Clinton will win 90% of blacks, 70% of latinos, and 40% of whites all plus or minus a couple. The deciding factor will be turnout.

In the 1984 general election Walter Mondale won 91% of blacks, 66% of latinos, but only 34% of whites and result was a landslide win for Reagan. That year whites made up 86% of all voters. http://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how-groups-voted/how-groups-voted-1984/ In the 1988 general election Michael Dukakis won 89% of blacks, 70% of latinos, but only 40% of whites and the result was a landslide win for Bush. That year whites made up 85% of all voters. http://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how-groups-voted/how-groups-voted-1988/ In the 2012 general election Barack Obama won 93% of blacks, 71% of latinos, but only 39% of whites and the result was a solid win for Obama. That year whites made up 72% of all voters. http://ropercenter.cornell.edu/polls/us-elections/how-groups-voted/how-groups-voted-2012/ A lot has changed in the world between 1984 and 2012, the wall came down, we have fough 2 wars in Iraq, home phones have disappeared, the EU exists, and etc. And yet a look at how groups in the U.S. vote reflects very little change. Barack Obama basically won a statistically identical demographic split of the vote as did Michael Dukakis, as did Walter Mondale. People, voters, do not flip and vote differently based on issues current news cycle. There is a long term trend that defies current events. Democrats have won the popular vote in 5 of the last 6 general elections. Bush in 2004 is the only time since 1988 Republcans have won. That was post 9/11, Bush was an incumbent, and even still he only won by 1.4%. His electoral college win was the second slimest in history. And whites made up close to 10% more of all votes in 04' than they will in 16'. So while issues matter and there are some votes who will be influenced by fear I don't believe anything either candidate can do will change who votes for them much. Again, the long term trend defies the current news cycle. People are already self identify as one or the other. While I would love to proclaim that I am not partisan I am. There is nothing in the short term (a single election cycle) any republican could do to earn my vote. Just as there are many conservatives that would never flip to Democrats in a single cycle, not matter what. People aren't all so different. I know how I will be voting already and nothing between now and Nov. will change that. I believe that is the case for the overwhelming majority of people and statistics support that belief. Does that guarantee Clinton wins or Trump wins; of course not. People can stay home, voting rules can restrict or discourage voting, and etc. A lot can happen. 2000 went to the Supreme Court. I am not comment on who will win but rather addressing your notion that world events will drive people to vote one way or another. How people vote is actually schockingly consistent over time.

I don't think killers have a "right to life" but rather that they are already alive and the Gov't should not be in the business of revenge. I have nothing against infastructure improvements to prevent prisoners from assualting each other. I think it such imporvements are needed.

Rape and other forms of assualt in prison are a huge problem. I am not sure how executing prisoners would change it? Prisoners sentenced to die are not housed in the general popluation. So they are not involved in the numbers you referenced. Those who are, unfortunately, end up back out on our streets. So statistics that reflect rape, murder, and other acts of violnce do not provide much insight for the purpose of this discussion: Corrections Compendium (‘Death Row,’ 1999) summarized data from a recent survey of 37 state and federal corrections departments. This report detailed death row policies regarding accommodations, time outside cell per day, inmate mingling, visitation, programming and other issues. Specifically, in 35 jurisdictions death row inmates are housed in individual cells. In 18 jurisdictions these death row inmates average less than an hour daily of activity outside of their cells, and in five other jurisdictions out- of-cell time is less than three hours daily. Social visitation is non-contact in 21 of 37 jurisdictions. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/CunninghamDeathRowReview.pdf

Did your Gov't execute those people for you?

I find this response odd. You are in the UK. So you do not know what it is like to have a Gov't that currently puts people to death yet are couseling me on evil people whom need to be vanquished from the earth by their Gov't. Does the UK have these truly bad people you reference? What about Canada, Germany, France, and etc? If your home manages to exist without the death penalty, if "people like you" are getting on just fine without the death penalty, why can't my home get on without it?

It is random to the person being pulled over but not to the Law Enforcement Officer who knows that they are about to stop a person and why they are stopping them. Officers are well trained and practiced at traffic stops. The common citizen is not. 10 per 100,000 people in the USA die in car accidents every year. That is significantly down from the late 1960's when it was 26 per 100,000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year While driving habits can reduce the risk of accidents it is changes in infrastructure, vehicle safety, and medical response that has accounted for the biggest reduction in fatalities. Everyone is required to wear seat belts, cars have airbags, glass is shatter proof, more roads have lights, more roads have reflectors, more roads have road medians, and etc. And we are not done many newer cars will alert drivers when someone in in their blind spot, have breaking systems that activate automatically when the vehicle gets to too close to an object, and GPS systems that know what the environment is like and can advise safer routes. A lot more energy went into improving the safety or our roads and vehicles than went into changing the way people drive. Which only makes sense because the average person isn't prepared all day everyday for all possible circumstances. In isolation most things have various outcomes which may have been possible if those involved just did X,Y, and Z. Most of the turn of the century construction workers who fell to their deaths would have lived had they just watched their footing better and held on to something right? Unfortunately humans are not that exacting. We do things like walk into the kitchen and then forget why we walked into the kitchen. When city workers have manhole and other street level cover open they have someone stand by it and direct foot traffic, why; street cones and tapes have statistically proven to not be enough. Sure people can and should pay attention to where they are walking but they don't and people have gotten hurt so for the sake of public safety a person stands by and directs foot traffic. In a perfect world everyone would just do everything right all the time but that is not the world we live in. Not losing ones cell phones seems easy enough until you are running late to work and your scrambling around looking for cell phone. Giving a brief at work seems easy until you are up in front of everyone and suddenly your vioce doesn't want to work. Doing everything a police officer says the way they say it seems easy enough until you have flashlights in your face, a gun drawn on you, and hearing stern vocal demands.

In past incidents we have often seen debates flurish about how militarized Police Departments have become. The debates often center around police usining tanks, camouflage uniforms, robots, and etc. One thing I think that often gets missed in the culture. Many police officers are former military. There is a who industry of law enforcement recruiters and military liasons that network to transition soldiers from the battlefield to our city streets. To Military and Law Enforcement perspective the transition and relationship seems natural. http://www.military.com/veteran-jobs/search/law-enforcement-jobs/military-transition-to-police-force.html http://www.policemag.com/channel/careers-training/articles/2014/01/military-vets-joining-law-enforcement.aspx Yet our own Constitution actually limits our military from policing us. The Posse Comitatus Act and its various revisions over the years limits military powers ability to be used in domestic policing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act Not only are we militarizing our Police Departments around the country but we are also hiring soldiers as our police. Soldiers who trade their M-16s for AR-15s. Many Police Departments have default military standards for hair, facial hair, tattoos, uniform insigna, rank designation, prior drug use, and etc. Departments are also often filled with people who do not live in the communities they police. The military standards disqualifying community residence. Police offices, with military training (thank to Iraq and Afghanistan often training is real war zones), commute into communities to police then akin to the way a military force occupies and polices territories under their control. There is nothing wrong with veterans becoming Police Officers.Many are terrific candidates. What I am saying is that is it wrong for there to be such a fuzzy line between being a Soldier and being a Police Officer. Departments should do a better job ensuring community participation. Some reasonable amount of police hired should actually live in the cities they police. Attempts should be made to allow Officers to exercise some of the same basic cultural behaviors as the communities they polices; let them grow facial hair, wear their how how they'd like, have some tattoos, etc. They should be part of the community and not feel like foriegn invaders with an imagine and culture that is entirely separate. In the civilian world we have supervisors, managers, directors, and etc. In the majority of Police departments we have sergeants, captins, lieutenants, and etc. Surely if there were greater familiarity between Police and citizens they police it would improve things. Witness would be more likely to speak to someone they see as a neighbor rather than an occupier, an Officer of a comminuty familiar with its routine would be less likely to shoot a 12yrs playing in a park, and etc, etc, etc.

@ arc, this thread is 11 pages in and despite everyone acknowledging that police should not beat or kill innocent people the primary debate has been about how young black males can potentially behave to mitigate being beaten or killed by police. It has been passively framed as something that shouldn't have to be done but may be a good idea meanwhile it is monopplizing the discussion. To the extent we are discussing the way victims may have reduced risk it is passive aggressively critical of the victims. Are there no other solutions posters can imagine? Risk mitigating behavior in a sole demographic is the only thing worth discussion here? Are there no solutions that might be found in changing our gun laws, drug laws, police training, or the way we investigate and handle reports of police violence? Is this even solely about police violence or are there a bigger problems in the USA. It is not a coincidence that as a nation we are host to violent gun related tragedy after gun related tragedy. The violence has been focused at college students, child, the LGBT community, in Dallas it was focus at police, this is not a white vs black issue only nor an issue that can be resolved by the black community midgating risk factors when interacting with police.we have a hundred different dead canaries in the coal mine and we are going canary by canary in isolation debating how each one may have died from natural causes. Violence begets violence. As a soceity we always acknowlegde various shootings as sad but then are always very fast to discuss how we will capture or kill in reaction. Fast to point out that while sad perhaps some had it coming. We must want to change if we are going to change and thus far in this thread all we have done is argued that perhaps it may help mitigate some violence if yound blacks males change. No clear acknowledgement that anything else needs to change just thoughts on what young blacks males might consider doing. Which mimics what we see in politics. The issue is radical Islam, blacks mans without fathers, illegal immigrants, or etc. The problem never seems to be us (society at large).

Right, people bring the behavior of the victim into the discussing without actually being able to quantify the extent of changes to behavior needed or how effective those changes might be. Rather it is more of an argument that seems to try and find common ground. Cops shouldn't kill innocent people and innocent people should behave. Simple enough yet completely redundant. If a person is innocent than they are behaving; innocent? If a police officer kills an innocent person than it is they who should change and not the other other way around. We have too many instances in this country of police killing people. It impacts the black community more than any other but even if we subtract minorities away the numbers are still way too high. We are in the thousands of people shoot by police per year while other western nations are in the single digits. It is outrageous yet the average person isn't outraged. IMO that apathy toward violence is part of the reason why we also have so many mass shootings. Sandy Hook and the Dallas shootings are part of the same problem. Tamir Rice and Trayvon Martin are part of the same problem. If all blacks behaved this way, all muslims behaved that way, and etc we would still have a big, big, big, problem. As a matter of culture we love guns and have a vengeful mindset towards too many things.

But what is being said is that people, specifically black youths, "may need to be more careful when". Being careful in general applied to anything always seems like a good idea. But ultimately there are expectations people in society should have and not having to fear being killed in one of them. If I do not need to be "more careful" than I will not ask, recommend, suggest, imply, or etc that other may need to.

But you don't recommend others do? Rather you say they "may need to be more careful when".

A more effective way to save lives would be to adjust the way we training police officers and the degree to which we hold them accountable.

More people like her, willing to stand against what is wrong, is superior to asking a generation of young people to accomodate the fears and biases of an overly aggressive police force. If not for BLM, if not for people refusing to be passive, would we even be having this conversation?

Not a huge difference between saying someone should do something vs "may need to be more careful when' doing something.

She was arrested. She also became the face of a movement that saw many of it participants killed.

So maybe Rosa Parks should have just moved to the back of the bus until the root cause (segregation) had been dealt with? If everyone lays passive who will deal with the problem? What was segregation other than a state sponsored requirment that blacks behavior with additional care for the needs of whites? Now we are arguing that blacks should self impose additional behavior requirements on themselves to avoid being killed by police.

Are min-skirts the issue? 1-5 women in this country say they have been sexually assualted at somepoint in their life. If we banned mim-skirts how much do you honestly think those numbers would change? http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/health/nearly-1-in-5-women-in-us-survey-report-sexual-assault.html?_r=0 Focusing more appeasing behavior from victims is never the answer. Millions of people in abusive (emotional or physical) relationships go home everyday with the intention to not upset the abuser. It never works. Tip toeing around abusive people is no way to live. Police should not beat up citizens, tase citizens, shoot citizens, kill citizens unless they absolutely have to in order to save their own life or the lives of others. That is what I believe is a better thing to focus on. I do not believe it makes them safer. Conceding ones rights when they should not have to an aggressive authority normally leads to having to concede more and more rights. You are assuming that once black children start behaving is whatever manner you are imagining they should that policing will change. I do not believe that.

Blacks are killed at a higher rate but in general the rate for all Americans kill by police is much higher. Singling out one victimized demographic to change their behavior solves nothing. I think the objective BLM is to draw focus on the ones pulling the trigger which seems legitimate in my opinion. Police are professionals. They are paid above the per capita average generally, they are unionized, and receive regular organized training. Effecting change amongst them is the more logical course of action in my opinion. You are right that I should not have to adjust me behavior. That is why I stated I would consider suing. I should not have to entertaining being extra careful because a security guard may shoot me. No one in this country should have to.

And yet this isn't a black problem is it? As previously stated if we only look at the number of whites killed by police that number is still significantly higher overall and per capita than that of other western nations. So why are we focusing on the way black people bahave? Would a national movement aimed at making black child more careful lead to a per capita rate of police shooting that mirror the UK? In my opinion it is a distraction. I disagree. We once enslaved people here too. Eventually people stood up and refused to behave. Many died but we are a better nation today. Telling peiople to adjust their behavior to accommodate aggressive acts that they should not have to accommodate is simply never the answer. If the property manager of the building I live in told me to be extra careful in the morning exiting the building because they had hired a new security guard and that security might shoot and kill me I would move and consider suing for any expenses the move cost me.

In various countries in the Middle East women cover themselves completely from head to toe and guess what; they still get raped. Concessions to aggressors is not a solution.