Authors Of Study Finding No Bias In Police Killings Ask For Retraction

Submitted by by Sovereign Man

The authors of a study which found no racial bias in police shootings asked for the study to be retracted.  The main findings were:

“1) As the proportion of Black or Hispanic officers in a [fatal officer-involved shootings] increases, a person shot is more likely to be Black or Hispanic than White, a disparity explained by county demographics; 2) race-specific county-level violent crime strongly predicts the race of the civilian shot…”

But the authors don’t want the study to be retracted because their findings were wrong. The data is sound.

Rather, the authors of the study now feel that it is being used improperly in the debate about police killings. They don’t like that people are using their study to discredit the Black Lives Matter narrative.

What this means:

A professor who helped fund parts of the study was the victim of the Twitter mob a couple weeks ago. We talked about how Stephen Hsu was fired from his position as Vice President of Research and Innovation at Michigan State University, essentially for supporting academic freedom.

We are all for police reform.

We’ve discussed many of the needed reforms: ending qualified immunity, reigning in police unions, ending civil asset forfeiture, ending the drug war, and so on. But we’ve always been skeptical of the argument that the way police behave is all about race.

And we are especially skeptical of movements like Black Lives Matter, which goes way beyond racial injustice and promotes a Marxist agenda.

Getting power out of government hands is the best solution, especially if racial prejudice is built into the system.

* * *

Bill in Senate would reform Civil Asset Forfeiture

What happened:

Senator Rand Paul and others have introduced a bill called the Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration, or FAIR Act. If passed, the law would put due process back into civil asset forfeiture.

Civil asset forfeiture is when authorities take property suspected of being involved with or obtained through criminal activities, without convicting or even charging the owner with a crime.

The legislation requires a court date in front of a judge within two weeks from a seizure. Right now, victims of forfeiture are often forced into an administrative appeal with whatever department seized the property, not an actual court.

The bill also would require the property to have been knowingly involved in criminal activity, as opposed to incidentally. In the past, vehicle owners have had their cars seized when someone else was driving, sometimes without permission.

The bill would also end equitable sharing where state and local police keep 80% of property seized for federal agencies– an obvious conflict of interest.

The bill also gives the owner of the seized property the right to counsel, guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment.

What this means:

Reading what the bill changes, most people would be shocked to hear that these are standard practices in law enforcement right now.

Many of these practices with civil asset forfeiture so obviously violate due process and the rights of the accused. It’s unbelievable they have gone on so long.

There are a lot of people demanding criminal justice reform right now.

But somehow it seems like the bills introduced by libertarian-leaning politicians like Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Justin Amash (ending qualified immunity) aren’t getting much traction…

* * *

France bans a bike commercial for discrediting auto industry

What happened:

A Dutch commercial shows a black vehicle, and in the reflection, all the negative things associated with driving.

You see pollution, car crashes, traffic jams and so on. Eventually the car melts away into oil, and a bicycle is revealed. The video is an advertisement for a Dutch bicycle company.

But France’s advertising regulators have banned the commercial from showing in France.

They say it creates a “climate of anxiety,” and attempts to “discredit the automobile sector.”

What this means:

From the same country that brought you a ban on using meat and dairy terms to advertise vegetarian/ vegan alternatives…

This is a reminder that government powers to regulate always turn into cronyism.

The meat industry is more entrenched and powerful than the veggie-burger industry. So they get the government on their side to club the competitors.

Same goes with the automobile industry– more powerful than the bike industry.

Anytime you allow the government the power to regulate speech, this sort of thing is inevitable