Hillary's America needs law and order

But Trump is the one presenting himself as "the law and order candidate."

Disorder helps Trump.

There is a debate going on about police violence toward blacks.   Guest Post writer Thad Guyer yesterday cited evidence saying that, in actual verifiable fact, police don't kill blacks more than whites except insofar as blacks and other minorities are disproportionally bigger share of the poverty cohort.

Click here for the full article

Police target poverty and social disfunction, not race, Guyer wrote, and he had his own fifteen years of anecdotal experience as a litigator on behalf of abused inmates to help inform the statistical evidence.

His Guest Post got pushback and he responded, saying that if progressives ignored data they built their argument on a bad foundation which would ultimately undermine their credibility.   The New York Times yesterday published an article on the subject--showing police are rougher on blacks but do not actually kill them more often.

But first: What this controversy means for the 2016 election.   Disorder helps Trump.    Protests and counter protests help Trump.  Arguments--even "constructive debate" over the facts and nature of police behaviors help Trump.

Here is why:  Hillary has staked out a political base that got her through the primary: Democratic voters who consider themselves part of a racial or gendered group that faces prejudice, plus left-center progressives who have a "practical" orientation and consider Sanders un-electable.    She has failed, so far, to attract her share of blue collar whites, particularly men; she does not offer them big solutions to their problems and she blames them for the oppression of the women and ethnic minorities in her core constituency.   

This voting block is tempted by Trump and they have a particular concern for law and order.

Prosperous people can insulate themselves from disorder by moving to nice neighborhoods.  Blue collar people cannot.  They live in--or near--poor neighborhoods.   They do not just read about poverty and social disfunction.  They see it up close.   Too close for comfort sometimes. 

American neighborhoods and schools are as segregated now as they were pre-civil rights era and they have sorted themselves by money and social class which is inexactly coincidental with ethnicity.   People with the money to do so move to "nice neighborhoods."

Hillary needs Americans to feel safe enough about themselves and the state or race relations that she can preach and encourage multi-cultural integration.  Openness.  Toleration.  Politically correct and morally correct and constitutionally correct equality.    

Hillary needs order for people to consent to this.  It is easier to perceive as enriching or charming customs that are "other" when they seem safe.   Not so when they seem menacing.  

Trump profits from disorder.   If the neighborhood a half mile from your house has youth at night throwing rocks at policemen or blocking streets one wishes one lived further away.  Or out in a nice, safe suburb.  If men are on street corners selling drugs--maybe, possibly, probably--you want police to look into it and stop them if they are up to no good.  One does not need proof to be suspicious.  

If four young people are hanging out in a publicly visible place, just apparently waiting, looking up and down the street casually, maybe smoking cigarettes, what do you wonder?  Or suspect?  Are they discussing their college class material?  Maybe.  But maybe not. Do you feel comfortable thinking that your kids need to pass in front of them?  Or your wife?  Or you?   What it it is at dusk, or at night?   If you see a police car with policemen giving them a close eye, is one's thought: racist profiling?   Or is it, good, those guys look suspicious, I feel safer? 

If your wife goes to a Safeway store, but feels nervous about the neighborhood because of the people she sees standing around in the parking lot, she maybe goes to another Safeway, further out.  Or at least she welcomes the police presence.   Those guys hanging out might be white or black or Hispanic, but they are probably poor, or at least one suspects they aren't working regularly, because why else would they be just hanging out?   Maybe they work a night shift, and there are perfectly innocent reasons for them to be there.  But still.  They are frightening in a way that young men the same age, wearing the green apron smock of a box boy out rounding up shopping carts is not frightening.  

Trump:  No civilization without law and order

The police target poverty and social disfunction and that is exactly what vulnerable people want, and the people who feel most vulnerable are people who live close to this.  As Guyer learned at first hand: white citizens trust the police more than then trust "criminal types."     

Trump is openly calling himself the law and order candidate and he has credibility doing so. Hillary has no credibility as the law-and-order candidate because her base constituency is built around grievance and a presumption--or at least the potential--that the police are handling things improperly.

Hillary is locked in as the candidate unhappy about unfair and targeted policing.   Trump is on the other side.

Trump has the political wind at his back.   Notice to progressives:  Trump can win this election.

Here below is Thad Guyer's long comment:

Who Cares if the Statistics Don’t Show Cops Kill Blacks Disproportionately?

After my recent post showing cops kills blacks proportionately with whites, a reader asked me “who cares, and how is that a contribution to the dialog America needs to have about police racism?” My answer is that a constructive debate about racial justice is diminished by spurious accusations of racism against a key group that is indispensable in reform efforts—the police”. In the end, whether in Congress or state legislatures, once the false narrative is statistically debunked, policy initiatives based on the false statistics will fail in a cloud of cynicism.

A case in point was the Diane Rehm show yesterday, “The Latest On The Shootings In Dallas, Louisiana and Minnesota” (July 11, 2016, http://npr.org/5376c005409da). Ms. Rehm aggressively asserted against a caller, a policeman, that a new Washington Post study proves that cops kill blacks at 2.5 times the rate of whites. Two of her activist panelists chimed in their support, as Ms. Rehm claimed it was time for police chiefs to say they are “apologize” for this systemic and deadly “racism”. The WP “study” she referenced, was reported in “Aren’t more white people than black people killed by police? Yes, but no” (July 11, 2016, https://goo.gl/3eN0oo). It is not a credible statistical study, at least not as reported, and suffered the usual fallacy of using the total national population of blacks and whites, ignoring the required validating “cohort” of those who come into contact with police. Most disappointing to me beyond Ms. Rehm, hurting her own journalistic credibility, was her ignoring the New York Times article on the same morning reporting a Harvard study debunking claims of racial disparity in police killings. See, “Surprising New Evidence Shows Bias in Police Use of Force but Not in Shootings”, (NYT, July 11, 2016, http://goo.gl/4Gml9E). “It is the most surprising result of my career,” said Roland G. Fryer Jr., the author of the study and a professor of economics at Harvard. The study examined more than 1,000 shootings in 10 major police departments, in Texas, Florida and California.  

Professor Fryer, who is the youngest African-American to receive tenure at Harvard, explained that he had undertaken the study fully expecting to find support for racially motivated police killings. Not only did he find no support for the claim of higher rates of blacks being killed by cops, he was surprised to find just the opposite:

"In shootings in these 10 cities involving officers, officers were more likely to fire their weapons without having first been attacked when the suspects were white. Black and white civilians involved in police shootings were equally likely to have been carrying a weapon. Both results undercut the idea of racial bias in police use of lethal force."

Indeed, professor Fryer found that in such situations, officers in Houston, for example, "were about 20 percent less likely to shoot if the suspects were black". He found that "blacks were either less likely to be shot or there was no difference between blacks and whites".

Unsustainable statistical accusations of police racism will only cause more political polarization and cultural insensitivity. Activist groups, politicians and well-intended citizens are not going to advance the cause of racial justice in law enforcement by using false statistics that will ultimately doom policy initiatives which relied on those statistics. Worse, these activists will undermine their reputations at a time when credible voices are most needed to address the real issue—excessive police killings of poor Americans, regardless of race.