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Milestones — they seem so important when they’re far away and then you arrive at them and then it suddenly doesn’t seem such a big deal. At the start of the year, we had some big plans to mark this achievement (if that’s what you can call it), but then the lockdown happened, and well, the rest is…But, don’t fear — we actually put together a great show with a great guest: Roland Fryer, Professor of Economics at Harvard –making his Ricochet Podcast debut. His studies on changing the behavior of cops and racial differences in police use of deadly force are the gold standard and are used by police departments all over the world to write policies on training and engagement with civilians. It’s a fascinating conversation. We also do some reminiscing, some teasing, and some looking ahead to the next 500 (!) shows. Thanks for listening, sticking with us, and for all the thousands of great comments. We’ll do this again in 2030.
Music from this week’s show: The Proclaimers – I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)
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Maybe we should have a post of the month by the members of Ricochet for the members of Ricochet.
In my opinion, it should be used as a marketing tool, mostly.
Well, post of the WEEK rather than MONTH isn’t a bad idea. But… a post of the week with 4 likes? c’mon.
Watch out Rob. Your governor is calling you out. What did Rob call it, a walktini?
“People with open containers in the street can be fined.”
Walktail.
That makes more sense.
And “NUTRAFOL” on Peter.
Which is either funny or the best marketing ploy, since he seems to be the one who needs it least.
Maybe they’re placing him as the “after” model, the “success story?”
Ya, see above.
How progressive are New York police captains and police unions?
It seems to me that the disparity of restrictions involving crowds — one set of rules for BLM protestors and one set of rules for everybody else — is easily solved by police officers sensibly prioritizing real crimes over enforcement of petty political whims.
Whatever the mayor and governor want, police departments can refuse to treat different crowds by different standards.
Because the Supreme Court has, largely by chance, remained in the hands of Republicans for so many years, anti-Trumpers like Rob Long come across as obtuse.
For example, Rob speaks of there being no significant issues in the election of 2000 when, as always, the Supreme Court was in play.
With progressives taking over the reins from the old-style liberals on the Court, I shudder to think what kind of social engineering and rewriting of the Constitution will take place the next time the Democrats get control. (A racial caste system, anyone?)
This is probably the reason Justice Anthony Kennedy retired when he did, permitting Donald Trump and the Republican Senate to select his successor, thereby protecting the Constitution for a few more years.
Policemen have a saying, “Better tried by twelve than carried by six.”
A policeman knows that a random black male motorist is going to be several times more dangerous to him than a random white male motorist.
Because of the much higher crime rate in the black community, the black motorist is more likely to have illegal drugs in his car, more likely to have an illegal gun, more likely to be a fugitive, more likely to be violating probation or parole, more likely to have a criminal record.
If he’s a two-time loser, for example, he knows that, if he’s caught with drugs or a gun, it’s his third felony and he goes to prison for life. On the other hand, if he kills the patrolman he goes to prison for life, too – but only if they catch him!
As a result, when a traffic cop pulls somebody over for speeding at night and, as he gets closer, he realizes the driver is a black male — the cop takes a step back, his heart rate soars, and he puts his hand on his gun. I would expect even a black traffic cop to react this way.
I was listening to this while doing something else, so maybe I heard wrong….but. The guest made a pretty big deal out of the 53% statistic on blacks being the recipients of excessive force by police. Which is a big deal. Then Peter tried in an oh-so-delicate way to ask if maybe there was a possibility that excessive force may in some ways be necessary or perhaps based on something other than the person’s race. The guest said “yes….and no,” and then proceeded to explain about his millions of bits of data, etc, etc, etc, finally admitting that after a lot of controlling the 53% number was greatly reduced – but not completely eliminated. Ok, was it reduced to 40%? 25% 12% 2%. None of those means it wouldn’t be a problem if black people were still policed worse.
But still….if your big headline number is 53% and then you admit, only after questioning, that the percentage may actually be quite a bit lower? That is what makes people distrust you.
And even if that final number isn’t actually zero, the previous “adjustments” would seem to explain why imperfect people would do things based on experience, instinct, and perhaps even self-preservation.
Just for a simple example, if I knew that there was, say, a 1% change of any particular person I encountered, maybe injuring or killing me, and my options were to treat EVERYONE with “excess caution,” or treat NO ONE with “excess caution,” I would go with treating EVERYONE with “excess caution,” “every day of the week, and twice on Sunday.”
So, my apologies for coming to the discussion late and I don’t know (and haven’t read all the comments) if it’s been asked or raised, but if it’s a given based on Prof. Fryer’s “raw data” that black men and young men are roughed up by police how many of those police officers are black themselves? I ask because most of the major metropolitan police forces in America – have a substantial number of black police officers – especially in the Midwest, the South, and on the East Coast. Until we know the answer to that question, the raw data implies “racism” when racism may not be a factor at all.
I also want a definition of “roughed up.”
More data from Professor Fryer:
https://www.thecollegefix.com/harvard-professors-research-defunding-the-police-could-cost-thousands-of-black-lives/
The political activists and the street criminals in the black community — often the same people — want the police out; while the victimized silent majority of blacks wants more policing, not less.
All these comments, and nobody has pointed out how the Indy 500 logo was used in front of what are CLEARLY not open-wheel Indy Car racing cars? :)
You are mistaken. The logo was adapted from the Daytona 500 NASCAR race. The Indy logo uses different colors and shapes.
For some reason, I love the phrase, “Disobedient Jews!”
If I were remotely Jewish, I would wear “Disobedient Jew” as a button and a bumper sticker.
Unfortunately my sister did a DNA thing and our family came back as Boring, Humdrum Slav.
Oh, well. May a million Disobedient Jews bloom!
It was cringe listening to the white conservative hosts beg for permission from the black guest to talk about race. What’s coming after conservatism’s – we don’t give a beep about being called racists because we have been since grade school.
I question the guests findings. I trained in a related field and the model determines the outcome. In sociology they make the theoretical assumption that fathers add nothing but economic benefit and so their models are designed so that the father is basically removed from the model and the chain of causality. I suspect the guests models work the same. Since they are snapshots and causality is not known lots of collinear terms are removed by the assumptions of the theoretical model leaving race as the explanatory variable when the model could be constructed to show propensity for violence, low time horizon preference, impulsiveness, fatherlessness, etc are all driving the model. The data doesn’t give us answers, it allows us to make models which have theoretical assumptions. I hope he published all the models used with robustness analysis.
Not that racism could not be alive and well and a partial explanation. Its a natural human trait and our modern obsession with it is craven. We should work against it but not obsess about it. Every dollar spent fighting racism gets us about 1 cent of public good so the efforts are much better spent fixing other problems like looting and lawlessness and fatherlessness.
It’s another angle on what I mentioned about sociologists especially, claiming their studies “control for” one thing or another. It’s really just BS from top to bottom.
Me too. I’d love to hear that podcast.
It was March 2, 2012. Podcast #108. One of the oldies with Jonah instead of Peter.
That one doesn’t appear to be available for download on the site any more, but here you go:
https://www.adrive.com/public/Pdcyuh/Ricochet%20Podcast%2003-02-12%20Andrew.mp3
Wow.
Thanks.
You’re very welcome. I’ve saved them all, going back to #1.