We adopted two fur-babies Thursday.
After we got the cats home I wanted to read the humane societies description of each to see if the really knew their cats.
The one for Freddy said
Hi! My name is Freddy Mercury. As you can see, I’m devilishly handsome at first glance and, when you look a little deeper, you’ll see that I’m also such a sweet boy. I’m a people pleaser, and all I want is to be snuggled, loved, and played with. The best type of home for me will be with someone who has had cat experience in their past. I was tested for FIV, and unfortunately, I am positive for it. This doesn’t affect too much of my life, but you should ask for more details if you’d like to learn more about it! I’m really just a big lug who would love a forever home. Maybe with another cat to play with?! Could you see me fitting into your life? Come meet me to find out!
This is spot on. The minute Freddy saw me, he ran up and started rubbing up to my legs. I sat down on the floor; he climbed up onto me. He started rubbing his head against me and basically did not want me to move on to other cats. I didn’t.
This cat is so affectionate we’ve nick named him “Friendly Freddy, the love kitty from hell!” He purrs so loudly I swear you can hear him in the other room!!
Meanwhile, Jim walked to the center of the room. He saw an big fat orange cat whose side was stamped with cinnamon bun swirls. He asked, “Which cat is that?” Well…. it was the same cat he’d seen weeks ago on the humane society web site and said: “He look like a good cat! We should get him!”
I told Jim… no. He has FIV. He’ll get sick. Jim was very disappointed that I had put my foot down about such a cute cat.
We looked further and made pre-selections from the web site. We scheduled our visit with the intention of meeting our pre-selections.
Well… people don’t pick cats. Cats pick people.
Anyway, the ad for Toby said
It was the luckiest day of Toby’s life when a WSHS supporter called the shelter about an injured cat she found. He was an unneutered male stray, trying to make it through outdoor life without being attacked by other males.
Some of his tail was missing and what he did have was raw and painful. We immediately took him to our vet where he got the royal treatment. His wounds were cleaned up and he was neutered, vaccinated and had blood and stool tests. Everything turned out okay EXCEPT that Toby had been bitten badly by a cat that was infected with FIV. Bite wounds are the most common way FIV spreads so free-roaming, aggressive male cats are the most frequently infected and unfortunately, Toby got in the path of one of those. Toby loves to play. He will play with a laser pointer or chase a feather wand. He likes catnip too. He gets a little wary if you are petting him and you go too far down his back near his tail, but if you suffered trauma there, you would be too. He just needs to build trust with people.
If Toby ever had trust issues, they are gone. He specializes in being the first of the two to check out every corner. Freddy follows him more cautiously.
As you can see, the two get along great with each other.
Lucia,
They look big. Remember they can get covid19.
They are big. One is 13 lbs, the other 14 lbs. We had to get big litterboxes so they can fit!
They are staying indoors. . . I know about the covid issue. 🙁
Right now, we’ve got the windows open. So plenty of fresh air to dilute things. I don’t think I’ll succeed in getting them to wear face masks.
🙂 I’m glad for you and Jim and the cats. My pets are worth their weight in gold to me in getting me to chuckle and smile and relax. Congratz to Freddy and Toby on ending up in a happy home!
Lucia,
Better that they stay indoors. My cousin had a cat disappear one night last summer, after several coyote sightings in the area. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/environment/ct-coyotes-chicago-20200109-n5tubflfqjg5jb5fm246xhniuy-story.html?outputType=amp
Lucia,
Unrelated to cats:
Have you seen the growing disconnect between the trends in confirmed cases and deaths in the USA? It is pretty extreme, and has been going on for a while. That disconnect is being duplicated in Florida as well. I am beginning to think people who are much less likely to die are now testing positive compared to 6 weeks ago.
I haven’t looked at USA…. You’d think I would. But I mostly look at Illinois. Our deaths have been flattish– the 7 day average is up this week. Our cases are dropping. Maybe we have people lingering and finally dying?
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My main worry is what happens after the switch to phase 3 and the protest/riots, both of which tipped off almost simultaneously.
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At least we don’t have CHAZ/ CHOP in Chi-town. (Fingers crossed.)
I hate cats…. mostly because I’m severely allergic to them.
skeptical,
That would be a good reason to stay away from cats. I would advise you that Freddy, the grey one, would be a particular danger. He likes to come up, rub all over, and if possible, bump his face into you and rub back and forth.
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I think they have shots to help with allergies. Owners are supposed to give it to the cat. But if you have an allergy induced aversion, you probably aren’t going to say, “Yippe! Now I can get a cat!”
Skeptical,
5mg of cetirizine a day does the trick for me.
Definitely won’t be saying that. I’m so sensitive to cats that I can’t even go into a room where a cat has been recently without reacting. When you react as badly as I do to cats, you just never want to be near cats again… EVER!
Until we took in a kitten (Newt) I thought I was allergic to cats. My eyes would get red and itchy visiting any house with cats. I think Newt acclimated me.
My allergist back in the day didn’t believe me, but my experience is that cats vary a lot in their expression of the protein(s) that cause an allergic reaction. I just searched on hypoallergenic cats and got a lot of hits including one that says there’s no such thing. But know I was very allergic to some cats but seemingly not at all to others. I vividly remember a cat that made me sneeze like mad when it walked into the room.
I don’t have a problem now after taking allergy shots for twenty years or so. My allergist was very conservative and increased the concentration of allergens in the shots very slowly according to the local reaction to the shots. Anything bigger than a quarter and you had to reduce the dose. OTOH, there was another local allergist who apparently used the same schedule for all his patients. One person I knew had a full bore systemic reaction, fortunately, not anaphylaxis.
DeWitt,
My guess your theory is right. Read about the cat allergy vaccine.
https://www.medicaleconomics.com/vaccines/researchers-eye-vaccination-cats-could-alleviate-human-allergies
P-E Harvey (Comment #186362)
June 14th, 2020 at 12:08 pm
When I was a teenager I was taking antihistamines daily. Now I just prefer to avoid cats altogether. I still keep a supply of antihistamines (I get hay fever in the springtime), but I haven’t had to take one for cat exposure in more than a decade.
I expected the noose found in the black NASCAR driver’s garage to be a hoax hate crime for attention like that of Michael Bennett and LeBron James, but it’s worse.
It appears someone was taken in by a pulldown rope on a garage door. This happened in NASCAR.
You’d think *somebody* would have figured that out before the FBI did. Though perhaps very few saw the alleged noose after it was cut down, I saw a tweet that said Bubba never actually saw it. Still, it’s either embarassing incompetence or a cynical virtue signalling stunt by NASCAR, neither of which is good.
Dale S (Comment #186789): “You’d think *somebody* would have figured that out before the FBI did.”
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Indeed. It seems there was one in every garage at the track. But no normal person would look at such and think it a noose. Once the alleged noose was cut down, it was out of context. That, plus the framing, would have made it more likely that even those few who saw it would have questioned it.
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There have been a number of other such incidents. Most recently in a park in Oakland; it turned out to be some sort of rope swing as part of a set of exercise equipment. Also, in Central Park in NYC; it was just some left over rope from a construction job that had been there for six months before the “noose” scare.
I bet lots of people guessed what the rope really was. Sometimes you “need” an outside expert to come in to convince the people who really, really want to believe something else.
These excessively flagrant hate crimes end up being hoaxes or hysteria more often than not it seems. I learned how to tie a noose and used ropes with a variation on this knot to hang speakers from my ceiling in college. Little did I know I was committing a hate crime against speakers, ha ha.
lucia (Comment #186812): “I bet lots of people guessed what the rope really was.”
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Indeed. And everyone could see that the emperor was naked.
——–
Tom Scharf (Comment #186817): “These excessively flagrant hate crimes end up being hoaxes or hysteria more often than not it seems.”
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Not more often than not. Always, or nearly so.
Bubba Wallace is doubling down and saying he knows what a garage pull is and this was a ‘straight up noose’.
He had any easy out of saying he never saw the ‘noose’ in question and his team went straight to NASCAR with it.
“——–
Tom Scharf (Comment #186817): “These excessively flagrant hate crimes end up being hoaxes or hysteria more often than not it seems.â€
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Not more often than not. Always, or nearly so.”
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/27/us/james-fields-charlottesville/index.html
More often than not is certainly the case — there’s no shortage of mistaken nooses and even hoaxes, but I struggle to recall any *legitimate* cases of intimidation-via-noose. That could be explained by them being common enough not to be newsworthy, except if they were common the faked/mistaken ones wouldn’t get so much publicity *before* they were identified as false.
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Of course, the noose as an actual tool of racial murder isn’t current either; googling it seems the last documented lynching was in 1981. That wasn’t the last racially motivated white-on-black murder, but they remain rare and have been rare for a long time. The lynching statistics from the Tuskegee Institute covering 1882-1968 show a continual downward decline, reaching single digits per year from 1936-1968 and no lynchings at all in 64-68. For black victims specifically, the years 1950-1968 have one year with three victims (1955), six with one victim, and twelve with none.
Thomas Fuller, good to hear from you again. I was starting to worry you might have suffered misadventure in one of the summer of love block parties out there on the west coast.
NASCAR releases photo of noose.
https://www.nascar.com/news-media/2020/06/25/nascar-completes-investigation-into-no-43-garage-stall-at-talladega/?linkId=100000013167655
but video shows it was there in fall 2019. Nonetheless, it sure looks like noose rather than door pull.
Sure looks like a noose knot to me. This is also something he might not have noticed without the anxiety from the abuse he has to be taking from those upset about the comments he made. I’m glad it turned out to not be targeted.
Lucia wrote: “At least we don’t have CHAZ/ CHOP in Chi-town. (Fingers crossed.)”
What distinguishes CHAZ from what happened twice in the Euromaidan Square in Kiev? How can one support the latter but not the former? I suspect we will see more CHAZ’s in the future, so it is valuable to have a good answer to this question.
Frank,
When you cite an incident for comparison, it is standard practice to provide a link or two so everyone reading the blog doesn’t have to do their own search. So I have no answer to your question until you provide more information.
Dewitt asked for a link to Lucia’s comment about CHAZ
Lucia (Comment #186355)
June 13th, 2020 at 9:17 pm
Frank,
And that comment of lucia has what to do with Euromaidan Square in Kiev?
Nothing, as far as I can see. You still haven’t provided sufficient information to allow anyone to formulate a response to your question without doing research.
The closest recent precedent I can think of for the Seattle Autonomous Zone I can think of was the Euromaidan Square in Kiev in 2013-4 and 2004-5. (There have been lots of demonstrators in Hong Kong, but they never occupied any territory.) Tahrir Square and Tiananmen Square are two other occupations I personally supported. What distinguishes the “occupations” one chooses to support from the occupations one opposes?
Frank,
Considering that you personally supported the protests in Tahrir, Tiananmen, and Euromaidan, it would be for you to explain why you chose to support those and oppose others.
It doesn’t trouble me that I haven’t researched these other movements. I don’t dispute that there might be value in comparing and contrasting various protest movements and reflecting on why one supports or opposes. But time is a finite resource, and my judgement call is that this isn’t a productive enough use for my time that I’m going to investigate.
It’s enough for me to note that CHAZ was an exercise in absurdity.
I’ll go on to say this. Maybe I’m wrong, but I get the sense that Frank is after us to present a comprehensive theory of protests and principles for judging them. I used to think like that (wanting to form ideologies to answer questions ahead of time), but the trouble I have is it doesn’t work. Life is too varied and complicated for us to anticipate and answer in advance every twist and turn and branch.
I do like to have rules of thumb. In the case of protests, my rule of thumb is douglas adams esque — ‘mostly pointless’.
Beg pardon; I should have said ‘occupy type protests’ above instead of protests. Doesn’t change my response in any substantial way.
There is a tendency to approve of protests when we agree with their aims and to disapprove when we do not agree. I suppose that is what Frank is getting at. But even setting that aside CHAZ/CHOP was different from his other examples.
Euromaidan and Tiananmen were peaceful until the authorities attacked. Not sure about the ones in Egypt, but they openly said they wanted to overthrow the government.
CHAZ/CHOP had its origin in riots that resulted in the police being ordered to abandoning a precinct, after which CHAZ was formed. Violence continued to be a feature, especially at night.
Lucia,
Cats settling in well?
Very well!!
Freddy wants attention all the time. He likes to play and rushes to his toy. If we are both in the same room, Freddy is always there. He sleeps on the bed He’s a bit of a glutton though.
Toby is more laid back. He spends lots of time with us, but he sleeps in the hall just outside the room. He has a favorite blanket.
1) I had to google Wikipedia to find out what you might possible be referring too. Perhaps this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromaidan
Seems to me lots of things distinguish them. But I have no idea why you are asking this question. And in any case, for all I know you are referring to some entirely different events in that square. So I prefer to let you write your compare and contrast essay first.
2) I have no idea why “one” might support something or other about the former and not the latter. I don’t know who this “one” might be. I guess I’ll just wait for whoever this “one” might be to support one and condemn the latter, and read what they have to say. After that, I can speculate. Maybe they will have a good reason; maybe they won’t.
3) I also suspect we may see more CHAZ/CHOP for good reason. But I think your questions as posed here are unanswerable. I think you may need to craft a clearer questions before anyone can consider attempting to answer them.
The other way in which it is different from many examples is that I suspect the “crowd” doesn’t really have a concrete collective aim. They have some slogans.
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Some police reform seems to be happening. I don’t think CHAZ/CHOP played much of a role in that. I don’t know if that was “their” main aim or if “they” even have a main aim. There are varieties of lists.
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I think most of the police reform is happening because almost everyone agreed that Chauvin’s behavior was outrageous from the start. The protests have probably gotten more movement on reforms faster than otherwise would have occurred. But there was plenty of discussion w/o CHAZ or CHOP and it was happening before that.
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I admit I’ve never really pondered how long citizens should be allowed to peaceably assemble in public areas. I suppose as long as they clean up after themselves and don’t interfere with legitimate governmental functions or private property, why not indefinitely? I don’t think that’s a good description of CHAZ, and I haven’t looked into conditions in long-running protests outside this country.
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Assembling *not* peaceably can be justified in some circumstances, and our country was founded by people doing exactly that. If you believed everything unhinged ever said about Trump, you might well legitimately think rebellion is your only option. The flip side is that suppressing rebellions is a core duty for Presidents.
Dale S,
I’m pretty sure if I lived in or had a business inside the CHAZ/CHOP controlled area my view would be they’ve been there long enough.
At a certain size and scope the protest amounts to an insurrection or rebellion. Even if it’s not that, it’s a property crime against those who can’t enjoy their own property.
People do sometimes support insurrections and rebellions when they think the cause is just. Sometimes they don’t support insurrections and rebellions even if the stated cause is just. (There are reasons to suspect the insurrection and rebellion will not achieve the stated cause.)
To support because of the stated cause, a person first need to figure out what that is. “Defund the police” seems to be the item at the top of CHAZ/CHOP’s list. They seem to want the Seattle Police Budget cut at least 50%. I think that’s a silly thing to want. Cutting budget is not the same thing as reform and Seattle will probably just find “something else” to fund; that thing might be indistinguishable from police. (Or it won’t work.).
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I don’t live in Seattle. I’m just watching. However, I am happy to go as far as to say I’m glad that’s not happening in Chicago.
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Lucia and others: For me, the Euromaidan is the most recent site of protest/occupation that I consider to be a “noble cause”. If my home were near Euromaidan, I hope I would have welcomed those protests and the “Revolution of Dignity” that resulted (though history teaches us that revolutions fail more often than they succeed). There is an informative Amazon e-book on this subject, Ukraine: Witness to Revolution” written by reporters from the Kyiv Post newspaper, who lived the story.
If CHAZ were the catalyst that led to the end of systematic racial discrimination by the police that is killing African-Americans, having a CHAZ in my neighborhood might be a worthwhile price to pay for change. How can we be sure that CHAZ in particular and BLM in general isn’t going to lead to the change we need?
First, as best I can tell, BLM hasn’t identified the right problem. Statistical studies by Roland Fryer and others have shown that there is a need for more use of force by the police in minority communities than in white communities, AND widespread racial discrimination in the use of non-lethal force by the police. That discrimination APPEARS to be protected by a Mafia-like code of silence and retaliation against those who rat on fellow officers. As best I can tell, this is the real problem. As a result, minorities are growing up in high-crime communities where up to half of maturing males end up incarcerated at some point and where they have direct or indirect personal contact with the police perhaps as often as once a month. In about 25% of those contacts, minorities are treated more harshly than white. The failing schools and the discriminating police are the face of our government in these these communities.
Frank,
I question the cause and effect there. Is it that minorities are treated more harshly than whites that drives the high crime in such communities, or the high rate of crime that drives the harsh treatment? I suspect it’s the latter. My understanding of the academic view of this is that essentially poverty drives crime, not discriminatory treatment by police.
I don’t think CHAZ/CHOP really had anything to do with any of that, anyway, regardless of what abstractions people might look for in the inkblot. What it mostly demonstrated AFAICT is that when we remove the police, violent crime increases, vigilantism increases, and the vigilantism fails to control the crime.
[Edit: To the surprise of few conservatives, I’d add. Basically an unnecessary experiment.]
Is this the solution?
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https://nypost.com/2020/07/02/teen-shot-dead-in-seattles-chop-was-chased-after-stealing-jeep/
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Is this the solution?
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https://youtu.be/5vEh3SisyBw?t=40
Begging indulgence, one more remark.
As far as I can tell, the only thing the BLM organization is aiming at is exploiting concerns about racism to degrade the capacity of law enforcement to enforce the law and to help foster an environment where political leaders are frightened of taking effective measures to secure order. This is unsurprising, considering that Patrisse Cullors is an unabashed Marxist.
No good is going to come of this. I feel no need to wonder if another Marxist revolution is going to lead to the change we need. History has demonstrated repeatedly that it will not.
mark bofill,
The relationship of poverty to crime is complex. The simple correlation does not prove causation. But even if you accept the relationship, what causes poverty? Poverty is associated with broken families. Single mothers are much more likely to be poor. And then there’s this:
IOW, giving single mothers more money won’t help. Likely it will make things worse.
DeWitt,
I agree. It’s why I said ‘my understanding of the academic view’. My point of course was that AFAIK nobody seriously believes that the root cause of minority crime is police discrimination.
[Edit: Well. The grievance studies people maybe. Critical theory B.S. artists. Perhaps people who substitute anecdotal ‘lived experience’ for actual evidence and who believe logic and critical thinking to be artifacts of the patriarichal tyranny. But one might as well discuss the scientific views of religious fundamentalists…]
When you see white creatures screaming racial slurs at black people for stepping off the mental plantation, what more needs to be said? The “anti-racists” are just a different kind of racist, kind of like how the anti-fascists are just a different kind of fascist. There are no solutions to be found there, only revolutions.
DeWitt, thanks for the link BTW! Interesting material there.
Leaderless movements appear to be fatally flawed as it is so easy for any opposition to paint the entire group with pronouncements of the clowns and extremists in the movement. The proponents are quite reticent to distance themselves from the bad actors because solidarity becomes almost religious in nature.
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Defund the police, Abolish ICE, and so forth. It is nearly impossible to determine what the movement is actually asking for beyond expressions of rage and silly naive demands that are self destructive to the movement. How about “Always on body cams, Now!”.
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Police free zones? Opponents laugh when these concepts come up. The most outspoken in these leaderless movements tend to be the borderline mentally ill and people who are completely ignorant of why these systems are in place to begin with.
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Many bureaucratic systems have ideological rot that need swept out occasionally, and many times that needs to come from outside those systems. A leaderless mob is useful to call attention to those problems, but woefully inadequate to providing solutions.
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Nobody is against making police more effective and less violent. It’s difficult to take seriously a movement whose calls to defund police occur simultaneously with looting and rioting. They can’t control the wicked impulses of their own mob, why should they be trusted to do the same for society? Sane leaders and structure can formally disavow these people. They will lose to structured and organized opposition every time.
Tom,
The thing is, it’s not as easy as I’d like for it to be to dismiss the notion that the protesters are asking for literally and precisely what they want, thanks to these doofuses:
Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police (NYT opinion piece)
Defunding the police means defunding the police (AOC).
AOC is an asset to the Republicans. “Ocasio-Cortez said that cutting the police budget is not effective if it does not result in the reduced presence of law enforcement.” This is a response to DeBlasio saying $1B cut won’t reduce police headcounts. The best thing to do is give them exactly what they are asking for, less police and less law enforcement.
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This isn’t what they want, they want perfect law enforcement without any negative hassles. Just get the bad guys and make sure to instantly magically know who those people are upon inspection and get them without any violence ever taking place.
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I’m sure police would be more than happy to offload mental illness calls to social workers. However mental illness calls tend to be during severe breaks and what is suppose to happen when the mentally ill person is brandishing a weapon? As soon as the first social worker gets injured within about a week a “physical enforcement authority” will be required to attend these calls who isn’t very interested in taking a knife in a moment of doubt and … oh wait … it’s not so simple anymore.
Got to wonder how they can slash 1 billion in funding and have no effect on headcount.
Tom Scharf (Comment #187234): “It is nearly impossible to determine what the movement is actually asking for beyond expressions of rage and silly naive demands that are self destructive to the movement.”
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It is not at all hard to determine what they are after. Their leaders (BLM is not leaderless) are open about it. They seek the destruction of American civil society. They are not silly or naive. They are deadly serious and ruthless.
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Addition: Many of the followers are silly and naive. They are useful idiots for those who seek the destruction of the USA.
“Got to wonder how they can slash 1 billion in funding and have no effect on headcount.”
The same way they can throw 1 Trillion at the Climate and have the GAT not go up or down a fraction of a degree. Or not.
Andrew
We lost our orange tabby last week. Brain tumor at 20 years of age. Best docs we could find said they might be able to do surgery because apparently it was in the lining, which I wasn’t a fan of but the old fart never recovered from MRI anesthesia. Better health care than humans though.
I’m sorry Jeff.
I’m sorry Jeff. That’s so hard!
He was a normal cat even into his oldest years. A rescue per my veterinarian sis. Im the runt in that house. It was pretty tough and a surprise but it’s fun seeing you with these guys. Thanks tho.
Jeff id (Comment #187272): “We lost our orange tabby last week. Brain tumor at 20 years of age.”
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Too bad. But isn’t 20 ancient for a cat?
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“Better health care than humans though.”
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Intriguing comment. In what way?
Speed of care even during shutdown. MRI within hours. That sort of thing.
Jeff id (Comment #187286): “Speed of care even during shutdown. MRI within hours. That sort of thing.”
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That would have been my guess.
So let me make another guess: You paid out of your own pocket, no insurance, no government program.
Nailed that one.
About 2k for cat scan- ‘waiting to use that anywhere’ but 4.5 for total in a few days. He was my bud but we feel good about his amazing longevity. Twenty is amazing.
I put one of my cats in a patent. Still too scared of government and doxie news papers to do more on line. But it was cool.
This reminds me, clicking on the cat goes to a site store, where one of the choices if if you don’t like dogs, you are wrong.
Hahaha.
Trying to convince the wife that we NEED a dog.:D
Not winning! Not quitting yet tho.
Jeff,
Jim says absolutely no to the idea of a dog. But he loves cats. He was so heart broken when Duma died he wasn’t sure he’d ever want one again. So I waited… When I could tell he was ready, I started showing him cats at the shelter.
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Toby was his first pick on screen. I told him “NO! He has FIV! He’ll get sick. Plus he’ll give it to another cat!” ( We did plan to get two cats. Jim forgot I told him this.) Then we went to the shelter walked in. Saw this big orange cat there, pointed at him and asked the lady, “Tell me about this cat?” Of course, it was still Toby. Jim loves big orange cats and Toby is huge. (He weighs 14 lbs, and is not fat.)
Freddy on the other hand chose me. I sat on the floor, and he walked up to me and just started climbing all over me, rubbing his head on me and so on. Turns out they both have FIV. So they are more susceptible to other illnesses. But they can’t give it to each other. So there is that.
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Freddy weighs 13 lbs. He is fat chonk. Then notes in his adoption papers said they’d been trying to keep him away from the food bowl but couldn’t in the cattery. Well… if we put two bowls down, Freddy runs to try to eat Toby’s and then his own! He’s just a big eater.
Jeff,
I’ve come to appreciate cats too since I rescued one last year and decided to keep him. But stick to your guns! I’m rooting for the dog! (Got three dogs to my one cat, seems like the proper ratio to me…)
mark bofill (Comment #187221) July 2nd, 2020 at 7:13 am said:
“I question the cause and effect there. Is it that minorities are treated more harshly than whites that drives the high crime in such communities, or the high rate of crime that drives the harsh treatment? I suspect it’s the latter. My understanding of the academic view of this is that essentially poverty drives crime, not discriminatory treatment by police.”
It’s BOTH. Roland Fryer obtained a large number of detailed police reports of incidents, removed all references to race, and had trained law enforcement officials evaluate how much force was appropriate and how much was actually used – without knowing the race of the officer or the suspect. He found that more force was appropriate given the reported circumstance during the average encounter between minority suspects and the police. However, he ALSO found that about 25% of the time, police officers used more force against minorities than they did against whites UNDER SIMILAR CIRCUMSTANCES. In other words, the police do work in a somewhat more hostile environment in minority communities, but – when you correct for that problem, the police discriminate in the use of non-lethal force.
Some examples of how the severity non-lethal uses of force was judged: putting hands on civilians (which includes slapping or grabbing), pushing individuals into a wall or onto the ground, handcuffing, drawing or pointing a weapon, or using pepper spray or a baton.
Much to Fryer’s surprise, using similar methodology, he found no statistically significant difference between the use of lethal force against minorities and whites under similar circumstances. In interviews, almost every officer described pulling the trigger of the weapon – no matter how justified – as a “life-altering event”. As I see it, the police might causally rough up a male minority suspect in a domestic violence complaint or a pimp, because experience has shown that the criminal justice system almost always fails to convict such abusers. Or rough up a member of a gang, recognizing that their victims are usually too scared to testify. Or assume someone is a suspect because he fits a stereotype taught by years of hard experience. Such officers are unlikely to suffer a serious penalty for indulging in anger or frustration or misjudgment, and the system will protect them. The consequences of pulling a trigger, however, are huge. No one becomes a police officer because they want to shoot other humans. Fear, instinct and training, not prejudice, are the likely motivations.
https://www.hoplofobia.info/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/2016-An-Empirical-Analysis-of-Racial-Differences-in-Police-Use-of-Force.pdf
Since I’m hopefully anonymous here, I’ll say it is idiotic to think Chauvin was trying to kill Floyd, while he was being videoed on cell phones. He was dealing with a physically intimidating, drugged suspect refusing to get into a police car. Since Floyd was a former college tight end (allegedly with pro potential), there was no way the police could get him into their car against his will, even in handcuffs, and they could get hurt trying. Looking impotent in front of a crowd wasn’t appealing and could prompt onlookers to get involved. So Chauvin did something he had PROBABLY done dozens of times before – physically hurt Floyd until he was willing to cooperate, couldn’t resist, or passed out. In this case, he casually and recklessly applied NON-LETHAL force – a knee to the side of the neck (a hold some sources say was taught and tolerated) – and Floyd’s cardiovascular system (with one coronary artery already 90% blocked) gave out under the extended abuse (without a heart attack). An extreme example of excessive use of non-lethal force. (Freddie Gray’s rough ride is another example of non-lethal force that resulted in a death.)
Thanks Frank. I’ve got a deadline looming on a project where all hell is breaking loose, so I’m not going to dive into your link right now. I do appreciate it and the time you spent on your argument though.
On a different note, right or wrong, I don’t think you’re saying anything so outrageous about either recent police incident that you should worry about anonymity or repercussions. I loathe the fear our culture promotes towards open and honest speech. I don’t know you or your circumstances, but still. I urge you not to be a party to it, as far as you’re able.
Frank (Comment #187314): “However, he ALSO found that about 25% of the time, police officers used more force against minorities than they did against whites UNDER SIMILAR CIRCUMSTANCES. In other words, the police do work in a somewhat more hostile environment in minority communities, but – when you correct for that problem, the police discriminate in the use of non-lethal force.”
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Interesting. It seems like a very good study. It could be that the difference is not race but something that correlates with race. For instance, maybe officers are rougher with people they believe to be gang members, or who they know to have prior criminal records, or who have given them trouble in the past. I don’t see such things in the variables considered. But I only skimmed through the paper.
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Even if the difference is down to race; that would not automatically indicate racism. It might be that black officers treat suspects the same way that white officers do.
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To me, the disturbing think about the Floyd-Chauvin encounter is not the knee to the neck. It is that Chauvin maintained that after Floyd was handcuffed.
MikeM.
Chauvin also seems to have maintained the neck to the knee after Floyd was not struggling. We know he wasn’t struggling because he was dead.
What bunch of Cat racists we have here. Notice I properly capitalize Cats and Dogs, unlike some of you who tend to toward pet disparagement that I would consider violence from Cat Supremacists.
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I can attest to the fancy equipment Dog hospitals have. I recently had a $6,000 bone removed from my Dogs throat. They even have a special room where they present you with their estimate that has a fainting couch readily available.
Well, I might be a bit of a canine supremacist, I guess that’s true. I don’t believe I systemically oppress my feline pet, but being the supreme white male Patriarch of my pet hierarchy I’m probably just blind to it.
My cat doesn’t complain about it, he seems pretty happy with the arrangement.
Officers no doubt rough up people who disrespect them more often. People who get roughed up by officers will disrespect them. There is no doubt a lot of bidirectional causation here, but the blame game is culturally restricted to one direction. This is why is doesn’t make much progress IMO. The recent banning of TV cop shows was ridiculous in nature. only one narrative is being allowed.
Frank (Comment #187314) In addition to Roland Fryer study, a PNAS study reaches the same conclusion with respect to lack of bias in police shootings.
…..
“A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demolishes the Democratic narrative regarding race and police shootings, which holds that white officers are engaged in an epidemic of racially biased shootings of black men. It turns out that white officers are no more likely than black or Hispanic officers to shoot black civilians. It is a racial group’s rate of violent crime that determines police shootings, not the race of the officer. The more frequently officers encounter violent suspects from any given racial group, the greater the chance that members of that racial group will be shot by a police officer. In fact, if there is a bias in police shootings after crime rates are taken into account, it is against white civilians, the study found.
The authors, faculty at Michigan State University and the University of Maryland at College Park, created a database of 917 officer-involved fatal shootings in 2015 from more than 650 police departments. Fifty-five percent of the victims were white, 27 percent were black, and 19 percent were Hispanic. Between 90 and 95 percent of the civilians shot by officers in 2015 were attacking police or other citizens; 90 percent were armed with a weapon. So-called threat-misperception shootings, in which an officer shoots an unarmed civilian after mistaking a cellphone, say, for a gun, were rare.
Earlier studies have also disproven the idea that white officers are biased in shooting black citizens.” https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/white-cops-dont-commit-more-shootings/ “
Yeah, count the bullet holes in Floyd. It’s almost as if police understand that shooting black people engenders unwanted investigations, publicity, etc., while if they die on the way to the hospital it is just misfortune.
Thomas Fuller (Comment #187344): “It’s almost as if police understand that shooting black people engenders unwanted investigations, publicity, etc., while if they die on the way to the hospital it is just misfortune.”
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And that is why I shall be voting straight Republican for the foreseeable future, no matter how dismal the Republican candidates.
Thomas,
What’s your view on the rioting going on in downtown Portland over the past few days?
Whatever can be said about Floyd’s death, seeing it as a product of avoiding “unwanted investigations, publicity, etc” is actively counterfactual. Killing or letting someone die in public while being recorded by multiple bystanders is not a way to avoid publicity!
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While Chauvin allowed Floyd to die, and the policemen he was with did nothing, it is not certain that he intended to kill Floyd, let alone that he had any racial animus against Floyd. The circumstances are very similar to Tony Timpa’s death, which was a purely local story. The policemen there had charges dropped after being indicted (misdeamonor deadly conduct); the victim was white. I fear that overcharging will let Chauvin get off completely.
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“Die on the way to the hospital” without shootings is probably quite rare compared to shooting deaths. This study looks at police deaths in 17 states from 09-12:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6080222/
Shootings account for 93.6% of deaths, deaths from injury capturing/restraining account for just 2.0% of deaths. I believe studies of shootings have showed white officers are not more likely to shoot blacks than black officers; it seems unlikely to me that they’re hiding the racist killings in the much rarer non-shooting deaths.
Thomas Fuller,
Floyd didn’t die on the way to the hospital.
Not sure what the point of your comment is.
There was also an excellent Wall Street Journal article on the subject of bias in policing that is pretty convincing. Generally, I believe that police are pretty well trained and act professionally. Just like any other profession, there are bad apples. Just look at medicine where there are a lot of practitioners who are incompetent or venally motivated. However, police are much more restrained in the use of violence than they were 60 years ago. Just review what happened in Chicago in 1968.
Frank, There is also a cultural component to criminality. This is a taboo subject in America right now, but Black culture has been pretty dysfunctional over the last 30 years. Single parent households are strongly correlated with criminality. Poverty also plays a role, but poverty is also a product of dysfunctional families. Just look at rap music which is vile, mysoginistic, and normalizes violence and criminality. Just like homelessness, as a society we have become enslaved to the most wrong ideas about how to address cultural issues.
The PNAS study was criticized by Mummolo and Knox. Their response is helpful in understanding the statistics. Here is one relevant passage from the rebuttal entitled “Reply to Knox and Mummolo and Schimmack and Carlsson: Controlling for crime and population rates”
…..
“Although in both cases our estimate of Pr(S|B) / Pr(S|W)
differs in magnitude from the estimate of Pr(B|S) / Pr(W|S),
neither discrepancy results in a Type S error where Pr(S|B) /
Pr(S|W) identifies anti-Black disparity and Pr(B|S) / Pr(W|S)
anti-White disparity, or vice versa. However, this example
analysis demonstrates that claims about anti-Black disparity
in the likelihood of being shot depend strongly on the bench-
mark for exposure used and it is difficult to identify the most
appropriate benchmark at the national level.
We have tackled this issue in the past. Rather than try to
identify one single benchmark for exposure to police in vio-
lent crime situations, we came up with 14 different proxies
for exposure, some of which were generated from police data
and some independently (Cesario et al., 2019). We used these
proxies to analyze racial disparities (i.e., Pr(S|B) / Pr(S|W))
in three types of fatal shootings across two years (all shoot-
ings, unarmed and nonaggressing shootings, and shootings
where a civilian was reaching for an object). Using a multi-
verse analysis, we found only one significant anti-Black dis-
parity in 144 possible tests.
Thus, when using benchmarks for police exposure, we
again find no significant evidence of anti-Black disparity in
the likelihood of being fatally shot by police. These results
are consistent with the findings that a person fatally shot by
police is not more likely to be Black than White, even when
controlling for relevant covariates.” https://www.pnas.org/content/117/3/1264
SteveF,
Sounds like stinky fish, otherwise known as a red herring, to me.
8 year old girl shot to death near Brooks shooting. Mother was driving in car, entered crowded parking lot that was blocked off, and two people shot into the car. Mayor not happy that there are no leads.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/05/us/atlanta-shootings-secoriea-
turner-rayshard-brooks/index.html
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75 shootings in Atlanta over the past several weeks.
Her life mattered.
The thuggery needs to stop. This is what police are for. The police don’t need to be defunded, just adjusted or reformed. But the stupidity of allowing open anarchy is being paid for with the lives of children, and it needs to stop.
mark bofill,
Be careful, ‘thug’ is likely going to be a forbidden word soon, if it isn’t already.
Better late then never, ha ha.
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NYT: Are Protests Unsafe? What Experts Say May Depend on Who’s Protesting What
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/06/us/Epidemiologists-coronavirus-protests-quarantine.html
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“Public health experts decried the anti-lockdown protests last spring as dangerous gatherings in a pandemic. Health experts seem less comfortable doing so now that the marches are against racism.”
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This falls into the category of it would be journalistic malpractice to never write this story. Realistically this corruption of science is a much bigger problem in climate science, but I suspect that journalism river will never be crossed.
~grins~ Probably.
I don’t care.
[Edit: More people have been shot since that little girl was killed, next door to the Wendy’s. At least one more has been killed. ]
Mike M. (Comment #187321) July 4th, 2020 at 6:41 am wrote about the Fryer study:
“Interesting. It seems like a very good study. It could be that the difference is not race but something that correlates with race. For instance, maybe officers are rougher with people they believe to be gang members, or who they know to have prior criminal records, or who have given them trouble in the past. I don’t see such things in the variables considered. But I only skimmed through the paper.”
If suspects appear to fit the stereotype of a gang member, are the police entitled to treat them with more force than they would have used under the same circumstances against someone who didn’t fit that stereotype? I don’t think so. Are officers entitled to the benefit of the doubt if those stereotypes cause them to use lethal force to defend themselves and other citizens? Absolutely. However, police departments should be training their officers to resist stereotypes and unconscious bias and apply the same procedures to everyone.
Mike continued: “Even if the difference is down to race; that would not automatically indicate racism. It might be that black officers treat suspects the same way that white officers do.”
I’m not sure that “even if” is the appropriate phrase when the statistical evidence is this strong … at least for the cities Fryer and others have studied. How about starting with: “Given that the police (as a whole) treat minorities with more non-lethal force than whites under the same circumstances …” Starting with this phrase (assuming you agree that it summarizes the findings of the paper correct), makes it difficult to add qualifying thought beginning with, “but”, “however”, “it might be”. And unlike us – who might be in contact with the police once a decade – those living in high crime communities are exposed perhaps once a month to a police force that discriminates, a police force where one officer is likely under pressure to lie (even under oath) to protect another officer, and a police force that currently sends about half of the males in the community to jail at some point in their lives.
IMO, this is the root cause of why inner city blacks wrongly believes (at least in the case of several cities that have been studied) that racial discrimination by the police is systematically killing blacks. Given their lived experiences, they have good reasons for this belief. The social justice warriors and fellow travelers have been indoctrinated at college by the liberal media who fail to recognize the difference between the Jim Crow era and today don’t have as good an excuse. They certainly aren’t focused on solving the real problems, so we are destined for another 1968. The Republicans, of course, don’t want to annoy their supporters by candidly discussing problems with the police.
David Young (Comment #187357) July 5th, 2020 at 10:30 pm wrote: “There was also an excellent Wall Street Journal article on the subject of bias in policing that is pretty convincing.”
The recent WSJ editorial was written by Roland Fryer, the author of the study I cited.
David also said: “There is also a cultural component to criminality.”
I recognize this, but can’t do much about black culture. There are problems with police culture, and the police are a part of MY government. I’m a little disappointed that Obama has said little about black culture, but I suspect he recognizes that his words would be rejected because he grew up as “Barry” (with middle class white grandparents), not Barack. Obama lost his first election to a more authentically black candidate in a majority black district. IIRC, poorly educated black immigrants from the Caribbean are more successful than blacks who grow up in our inner cities. I suspect that growing up with police that discriminate contributes to a sense of black victimhood and hopelessness. A few who perceive themselves as victims are driven to overachieve, but most are not. However, the few people who are bold enough to immigrant to another country are often driven optimists, which is why we should continue to steal them from the rest of the world – when practical.
Until around 1950, Asians were subject to discrimination that appears to be far worse than blacks have suffered from in the past few decades. Japanese-Americans were sent to concentration camps during WWII. Elite colleges apparently still discriminate in admissions. Obviously discrimination isn’t the only probelm plaguing our inner cities.
David wrote: “Generally, I believe that police are pretty well trained and act professionally. Just like any other profession, there are bad apples. Just look at medicine where there are a lot of practitioners who are incompetent or venally motivated. However, police are much more restrained in the use of violence than they were 60 years ago. Just review what happened in Chicago in 1968.”
Basic training for the US Army is about 10 weeks of 12-14 hours, 6 days a week. Unless fighting in the field, soldiers train continuously. According to the internet, police are typically trained for 12-14 weeks for jobs that appear more challenging, though many have taken courses at local colleges to prepare for a career in law enforcement. I doubt anyone is trained or tested to see if they will report discrimination or inappropriate behavior by their peers. Doctors take two years of classes, two years of clinical rounds, a year? of residency, and perhaps advanced study in a specialty.
Well Frank, Police culture has been getting better over time as the decrease in police shootings has shown.
By consenting to the mob and not mentioning or discussing black culture we are all complicit in it.
The problem here is the BLM don’t have a list of police reforms and the Democrats rejected Tim Scott’s very reasonable bill. The left is too busy exploiting the issue in a demogogic way to actually try to help. Talk about cynical and despicable.
Frank (Comment #187420): ” How about starting with: Given that the police (as a whole) treat minorities with more non-lethal force than whites under the same circumstances …â€
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I reject that starting point because there is no real evidence for it.
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Frank: “Starting with this phrase (assuming you agree that it summarizes the findings of the paper correct)”
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That may be the findings of the paper, but it does not mean the findings are correct. To believe that, you have to believe that the police had no information that was not also available to a reader of the report. A totally implausible assumption.
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Frank (Comment #187427): “Basic training for the US Army is about 10 weeks of 12-14 hours, 6 days a week. Unless fighting in the field, soldiers train continuously. According to the internet, police are typically trained for 12-14 weeks for jobs that appear more challenging”.
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Basic training needs to tear people down and rebuild them, so that they will obey orders without question and be willing to kill other human beings. And they must operate in an incredibly hostile environment. Far more difficult than being a cop.
Soldiers train when not in combat *because* they are not in combat. Cops train constantly, both by doing their jobs and by actual time spent training.
The big difficulty for a cop is dealing with a wide range of people in the real world. You don’t learn that in a classroom, you learn it by doing. After getting out of the police academy, they spend months in on the job training with a training officer, then get assigned to a more experienced partner.
———–
David Young (Comment #188614): “Police culture has been getting better over time as the decrease in police shootings has shown. … The problem here is the BLM don’t have a list of police reforms …”
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Indeed. BLM is not about police reform or improving the lives of black people. It is a Marxist group dedicated to tearing down America.
MIkeM
I do NOT think this is more difficult than being a cop!! Using judgement, enforcing rules and not killing is quite difficult.
In principle. In practice, two of the cops with Chauvin were “trainees”. Well… that might explain the crap “training” that results in cops applying pressure someone’s neck and orienting them face down when the cop claims they think they “should” do this because they suspect excited delirium. Yet this behavior is specifically counseled against when someone is experiencing excited delirium!!!
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The problem with this sort of “training” is it has no quality control to ensure the trainees are being taught to do correct things. Cops who act inappropriately merely “train” other cops to act similarly inappropriately!