When I see things like someone calling the cops because a black man is wearing socks in a swimming pool, I remember why we made the @StreetCredPKIC database: so that there would be data about this.

In our book based on the PKIC data, We pointed out that in more than 80% of 2015 cases in which a cop shot an unarmed person, the cops had been called to the scene by a citizen — either through a 911 call, or by a citizen flagging down an officer.

Note, this is not “cops selecting black people” — this is the community selecting black people and calling the cops.

This is consistent with every dataset I have seen: Citizens call the police on black people at a remarkably higher rate than that of citizens calling the cops on white people.

Now, this is not always racism: more than 70% of the unarmed civilians killed by police in 2015 were in the middle of committing crimes such as robbery, carjacking, assault, serious destruction of property or burglary.

But the fact remains that citizens call the fuzz on black people more than others.

And as we have seen, a significant minority of the time, it’s about utter horseshit, like “selling water without a permit” .

I am saddened that our data has not been used by reporters to study this kind of thing, and in many cases, that’s because reporters didn’t like that our data did not support their narrative (hear me, Wesley?)

In this political climate, though, the fact is that no one on either side of the political fence gives a toss about facts. My forehead is bruised from smacking it on my desk. If you want the data, it’s free and open.

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Socks in the Pool