Listening to the local news this morning, and this story was reported. Minorities (blacks) were disproportionately pulled over by the Durham police. Advocacy groups to meet with city leaders today.
Those were the headlines. In the discussion, if you can call 45 seconds discussion, it was revealed that the traffic enforcement unit had not shown disproportionate rates of minority pull over. So, the folks patrolling the streets to keep traffic safe and enforce vehicle laws, were pulling over offenders based on offending, not skin color.
The disproportionate traffic stop pattern was in the HEAT unit. I missed the exact definition of the acronym, but it is basically a unit established to police in high crime areas and impact the increased crime rate in certain areas of the city. The traffic stops from this unit were disproportionately minority.
The obligatory crowd of reverends and activists were interviewed and all talked in somber tones about needing to hear what the city leaders would say to stop this practice. Remember that, they want to hear how city leaders will stop this. Sounds reasonable at the surface, right. One also has recently been quoted as saying that the police are not doing enough to protect the citizens in the high poverty neighborhoods in the city.
Now, for those of you not familiar with Durham, let me explain a couple of relevant facts. Durham houses Duke University and associated hospitals and professionals associated with that university. With its proximity to Chapel Hill, also a big teaching center, there are concentrations of high income citizens and low risk business. These are integrated communities that are generally quiet and relative free of trouble. There is not a racial basis of this, it is an economic basis.
The rest of Durham really resembles some of the Third World enclaves I have visited over the course of my life. Actually, some of the seedier cities in some of the seedier places in the world, are better than some of the ghettos of Durham. These areas are high poverty, high drug use rates, high government assistance, high free school lunch, high free preK program enrollment, high single parent households.
In areas that are described that way, there is a general correlation to a higher crime rate. If you watch the news in the Raleigh/Durham/Fayetteville news market, you hear the same 5 or 6 neighborhoods mentioned every week around some violent crime. You see a continually stream of less than 25 year old men, the vast majority of which are minority (black and latino, not a big Asian component) wanted in connection with the various felonies reported.
In the interest of full disclosure, not all crime gets reported on TV. Many of the people wanted for heinous crimes are white. Many white folks are just as poor, income wise and character wise as anyone in a minority community. Crime is not a race issue, all races commit crimes. However, in the highly urban areas of Durham, Raleigh, Fayetteville (and Norfolk, Portsmouth, Newport News, and the DC Metro area, all places I am very familiar with) the population has a much greater minority percentage.
This is due to many societal constraints and proclivities. And that is not the point of this post. However, the highest concentration of crime in the area occurs in these highly urban, highly impoverished areas. So, the police tasked with impacting that higher crime rate, in areas that are a larger percentage of minority than the norm, should be expected to pull over more minorities than would otherwise be expected. Comparing the entire area, or the entirety of North Carolina, to the results in Durham is apples to oranges.
It does not make all minorities criminals, or all minority concentrations scary. It is just a fact of demographics and statistics. These are not concepts that translate easily to the high poverty communities. They do not, understandably, want to be lumped into a stereotype. There is not any desire to be treated by the color of their skin, and that is entirely understandable, and should be the requirement.
However, what the news never reports, is that most of these stops by units like the Durham HEAT unit, are stops related to observed activity. It is much safer for neighbors, the community at large, to apprehend suspects in a traffic stop. They are not in a home that may have multiple weapons, hiding places and risk neighbors in a cross fire. They do not usually have accomplices close by that could overwhelm the police doing the arrest. They generally are able to be observed, evaluated and dealt with in the safest and least likely way to end up in physical injury to anyone, police included.
Just looking at the total number of stops, by race, is not a credible way to evaluate the data. Look at the total number of stops by traffic patrol, and evaluating that by race is instructive and should not show a divergence due to race. Stops by units like HEAT need to be seperated. The stops that are random, can be normalized to race with some credibility. Stops that are tactical and part of ongoing investigations are not able to be normalized to race. The unfortunate truth is that in these neighborhoods, a large percentage of the drugs are dealt by minorities. A large percentage of the thefts and violent assaults are by minorities. A large percentage of the stops and arrests associated with these issues will need to be minorities.
The bleating and blathering of the press, and the activists whose income depends on rousing the masses regardless of accuracy, translates to ratings. It is what we see constantly. There is not a good reason to do anything based on race. But there is a good reason to arrest a criminal, regardless of race.
Studies that show correlations to convictions and pleas, to arrests are instructive. I do not believe that the Durham HEAT unit is arresting large numbers of people that are not ultimately charged and convicted or pled to the charges. This kind of half truth mess has to stop.
It builds racial animosity over doing the right things to protect the citizens that are most at risk to being the victims of crime, regardless of their skin color. It continues to divide us over issues and tactics that should unite us. We should all want to get the gangs and dealers and felons and murderers off our streets. We should all want to make our communities safe to sit on your front porch or walk from you car to your house. We should all want our children not to be at risk of being caught up in this never ending cycle of poverty and crime.
None of that is racial, it is just good citizenship. Cops are not bad because in the inner cities they arrest more minorities, at least not until those communities are not disproportionately violent and drug ridden. It is poor citizenship on the part of the press and the activists to perpetuate this false narrative. We end up angry at the cops for arresting a legitimate felon and violent offender, because we think it is just about them being latino, and not about them being a suspect in a murder or robbery.
We had a black man shot by the Raleigh police about two weeks ago. It turned out he was unarmed. What the news does not put out, and the activists gloss over, is that he was being picked up for a felony warrant. This was no altar boy or stranger to the police or policing. In that environment, non-compliance or resistance, shady actions and legitimate movements that are easily confused, can end up in death. The family claims he was shot in the back. They were not there.
Multiple stories about families being upset because their family member was shot by a home owner in the commission of the robbery. They have no right to do that, they assert. There is an assumed right that he/she can break in and steal, in that statement. Because they are owed something? Because they are overwhelmed? Because they are entitled?
Until we talk apples to apples and use our common sense, and the principle of right and wrong, and make our citizenry understand that you have a right to a trial by your peers and due process, not a right to refuse to cooperate with law enforcement, we will continue this fruitless debate. The only people that profit from that are Sharpton, Jackson, Rev? Barber and their ilk. They make their way on the backs of the suffering by confusing them about the path forward. As long as they are the "leadership" of the minority communities, this will not get better, because they are the champions of the entitlement culture.
Just saying.
GLYASDI
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