That wasn't what I meant, but to answer your question:
"Ever"? Sure, they have. "Do they regularly?" - It depends on the context.
I like listening to economics and business podcasts, and a lot of those guys could accurately be described as right-leaning Vulcans - and, believe it or not, I say that with a lot of respect and affection. It amuses me to no end that so many in the field of economics are so hung up on data and logic and eschewing emotion that they'll still argue against incorporating human psychology into their economic models of human behavior. (Arguably, that is itself an illogical position, but that's another story)
So, I don't think you'll ever see me argue that conservatives are wholly incapable of using statistics properly.
That's fair...I won't argue this point. I will add though, that while it may be more prevalent on the right, it's not exclusive to them. I've seen plenty of incidents where liberals use proportional statistics to make one point, then ignore them to make another. For example, claiming that black men are disproportionately killed by police....and then claiming that white men commit more murders violent crimes (which is true...but ignores proportionality). It's not a one-sided problem.
IMO, it's not great evidence, but it's better than nothing.
Then is it right to call out conservatives for using anecdotal evidence in the arguments made on this thread?
You're saying that a lack of good statistical data is the reason why there's so many arguments made based on anecdotal evidence against police. Well there's just as little, if not less, good statistical data for illegals and crime. We know that the closer you get to the border, the more common some crimes are...like car theft...but even though the logical conclusion is that it's because illegals can quickly get stolen cars into Mexico, it's hard to directly link them to the crimes.
I just want to see consistency. You shouldn't use, and justify, anecdotal evidence in your arguments against police for years....and then suddenly act like anecdotal evidence is no good when the other side uses it the same way.
For a long time, claims about police abuse (racialized or not) were often met with outright denial or dismissal. Cops are overwhelmingly given the benefit of the doubt, and the people they hurt face long odds when seeking justice. The public supports the police; the system supports the police; and the two reinforce each other: if police aren't held accountable, then the public isn't made aware of their wrongdoing, which allows them to continue supporting the police and fails to encourage them to institute greater oversight. So, when we'd hear about police abuse, we often believed that the charges were just false and that whatever happened was justified.
Now that cameras are ubiquitous, we're starting to see that some of these charges are justified and that, in many cases where external oversight is lacking, departments are content to sweep the charges under the rug.
What are the rates of the incidents? I don't know. I don't know that we have good enough data to determine that yet. But the anecdotal evidence at least suggests that it's greater than the near-zero rate that we previously believed it to be.
I'll agree that a large part of the public had serious misconceptions about the police until recently...but that's really their fault. I don't expect the police to stop people from praising or thanking them to remind them that a small number of their community is either corrupt or racist or otherwise a "bad cop". Last I checked, there was about half a million cops in this nation....and I'm just talking about regular PD, not sheriffs, not feds....just regular police. If someone is so ignorant that they never think a cop does anything wrong, or that mistakes don't happen in a population of 500,000...that's their fault, not the cop's.
Ironically, I've seen the same mistaken perceptions about the military in my discussions on here. We'll be talking about the police after a shooting...I suggest that it's possible that it wasn't racial, that the cop simply made a mistake...and someone else pops in talking about how the military never makes these kinds of mistakes and if they do, they never get covered up or swept under the rug or otherwise brought to light. They're completely ignorant of the realities of life and the realities of these situations where we give someone a gun and tell them to make quick decisions about who should live and who should die.
I sincerely hope that we see a push to greatly increase data collection and reporting among all LEO at all levels, so that we can ultimately put these sorts of questions to bed.
No disagreement with that. I just think that people need to realize that no matter how perfect we can get a situation...there's always going to be mistakes/problems. There's no real way to rid the world of racism....so there's always going to be a racist cop somewhere. That's not to say we shouldn't call it out when we see it...but it also doesn't matter if we tear down the entire institution and rebuild it...it's still going to be there somewhere.
I get it. But the same argument could be made for nearly any detainment program. Should we let people out on bail or detain them indefinitely? Recidivism would plummet if every sentence was a life sentence.
I'm not sure if you read my post to TLK about this, but if you didn't, I'll give you the short version. When ICE puts a detainer on someone, all that means in practical terms is they want to be notified of when the person will be released. They aren't saying the person is to be kept in jail by the county sheriff until they get him a hearing....they're literally just saying "let us know when you're done with him so we can pick him up."
Now, it varies from case to case....but in this case in the OP....the guy probably got charged with domestic violence and if he had no prior record, he probably only did a little time for it. So all that county had to do was tell ICE that he's in this jail, for this amount of time, and he should be released on this date.
If they did that, then ICE would be there to pick him up when he's set to be released. They'd probably take him to the local US marshal's office, throw him in their jail for a day or two until they can put him in front of an immigration judge and kick him out of the country. Immigration courts are backed up....but this guy with his violent crime conviction would've gotten priority. He wouldn't be sitting there for weeks and months....he would have been gone rather quickly.
They didn't do that because they're a sanctuary city/county. They don't follow up on
any detainers that ICE puts on
anyone. Frankly, if I were one of the family members of one of the victims...I'd sue that county into poverty. I'd want to ruin their lives like they ruined mine.
Obviously, that's an extreme case, but on some level, policy makers have to play the odds rather than try to cover every single case. Does complying with every single ICE request make the population, on average, safer? I don't know the answer to that, but I wouldn't automatically assume that the answer is yes.
Why not? Even if only 1 in 100 aliens was a violent criminal....or otherwise engaged in some sort of life threatening crimes like drunk driving....you only get rid of that person and avoid the damage they'll do by removing all of them. This isn't Minority Report...Tom Cruise isn't there to tell us which ones are going to kill or injure someone in the future. The only way to get the potentially dangerous ones out is to remove all of them.
If you removed 10,000 of them from a county...and only 10 of them would have killed someone at some point in the future, then congratulations...you just saved whoever the victims of those 10 people are. That is, by definition, making the county safer.
Take your pick.
What I mean is that I'd prefer to solve our problem with people coming here illegally by making it easier to come here legally. i.e. you won't have a problem with speeders if you get rid of the speed limit.
What exactly is the problem with the way we allow people to come here legally now?
I'm willing to consider your position here...but I'm not entirely sure what you think the problem is.
Last I checked, we allow about a million people to come here legally every year....of which about 600,000 are here to stay. On average, I think around 32 million people are legally immigrants in the US. That's 1/10th of the population...which frankly, is a lot by just about any nation's standards.
As I said, if you want to allow for more...I'm more than willing to consider any argument you have for it. What I want to know though is what you think the current problem with immigration is, and how it would benefit us to allow more in.
Yeah, that would be interesting.
I think it's inevitable. There's 7.5 billion people on the planet...of which 6 billion live in far worse conditions than we do. Even in the best possible scenario, with the most egalitarian government, that provided the best standards of living for the average person....we could never support a population of 6 billion. I don't think we'll get to half a billion people without serious problems and sliding down towards the standard of living these people are running from now. It's not as if we're sitting on more resources than 100 years ago....or that global climate change isn't about to make things a lot harder for most of those 6 billion people.
We'll have to shut our doors eventually....it's just a matter of when.
