Doc Ok studied “science” and had a PHD in Nuclear physics and enough knowledge of robotics and programming to make his arms- so I doubt he studied the social sciences in any depth. Keep in mind he also had trouble “understanding” TS Elliot and his reactor was a failure- so all things considered, I would caution Peter that just because he is a genius or a professor doesn’t mean his opinions on every subject should carry weight. Rocket the Raccoon is also a genius but given his life experiences he wouldn’t be the first person I’d ask for help on a test about 16th century Italy or the US congress. I would hope a genius scientist with a PHD would know better than to draw such spurious or simplistic conclusions based on a single point of data- but maybe that is a big part of how his unsafe lab practices and poor research ended up in tragedy.
There is no reasonable argument or data that can be presented which disputes that men are represented at extremely high percentages in crime vs. women by population make up. It is a fact. However to the point the doctor is trying to make- police and people in general statistically do have gender bias. He uses the term “sexism,” and we can split hairs. But a man is generally more likely to be considered a danger or a threat. Are men arrested for crimes- especially “petty crimes” more often? To know that we’d need numbers on how many people are NOT stopped or arrested for crimes- for example- if there are 20 cars on a stretch of freeway with a speed limit of 65mph and all 20 are doing 75mph- and the police do not stop ALL of them- that’s 19 people who got away with breaking the law right? If a police officers sees a person stumbling around drunk, or entering a “wrong sex” bathroom where such things are unlawful- these are crimes. But… we don’t have any comprehensive records of who…
Doesn’t get stopped or arrested when a crime is committed. We don’t know how many “warnings” are issued to motorists and who is most likely to receive a warning. We DO know of general gender biases and we DO know that many legal systems including the US legal system do have inherent bias on gender. Many family court subjects like custody, divorce, financial support etc. are well documented to be bias towards mothers in most cases because the historical view is that women need protecting or that men are primary earners and worse care givers than women unless proven otherwise. The subjects of rape and sexual assault are full of issues of gender bias. So derp. Yes- there is gender bias in society and police are not magically immune.
But now let’s connect the dots. Even if we include some hypothetical percentage of cases where women “get away” with crime etc, we’d need to come up with an increase of something like 60% or more to female criminals to come close to equaling those numbers out- that’s very unlikely. So we can say that men are more likely to be encountered in the enforcement of the law and one could reason that means men are obviously more likely to be shot- but can we say men are shot because of gender bias? Well…. We need to go deeper.
The big question isn’t how many men are shot by police. That is- sorry to say- an ignorant or just plain dumb question to try and determine things from. I mean- most abortion clinics serve 99.999% female clients- are abortion doctors sexist because they don’t perform the procedure on men or advertise to men more? Derp.
The question isn’t how many people get shot because as grandpa used to say- “sometimes people need to get shot.”
That’s a more important question in exploring bias- how many women are shot or fatality shot as a percentage? How many men? Ok. Now we need to dig much deeper and it can get subjective here- but how many women were shot under “justifiable” conditions vs men? How many women were shot under identical or functionally identical scenarios?
If one person is armed, has discharged their weapon, and is refusing to surrender while endangering lives, that is probably going to be a justified shooting if an officer needs to take them down. If a person is laying on the ground on their back with their empty hands in the air, with no history of violent crime, screaming they surrender and not to shoot, and police shoot them… probably unjustified shooting. So we have to look at how many women were posing a credible threat that would justify deadly force and how many men were posing a credible threat that would justify deadly force. One thing you will find is that gender bias we talked about- the average man tends to be larger and posses more upper body strength than a woman for example. If you are threatened by a 6” tall dude weighing 205lbs and you punch him, people are more likely to think that was in your rights than if you try and say you were scared by a 5” tall 120lb woman no?
So there might be some gender bias found there, but there also likely will be hard data showing wether or not the women in their incidents were armed and posing a danger that justified deadly force for the safety of those involved. That is a MAJOR question and leads us down a road to discovery. So is the percentage of women who commit crimes and the percentage of women who commit crimes in a manner that deadly force is justified compared to the same data for men disproportionate? Are the statistical odds for a woman holding in a shoot out with the police higher or lower or about the same that the police will shoot back as if she were a man? And then, of those shot or who force was used against- how proportionate was that force, how extreme? Are women more likely to be KILLED when force is used compared to men?
So we need to look at these figures and try to mitigate extraneous data and adjust for factors of differences or eliminate those as able, and once we have sifted the data sets so that we have numbers we can compare of like to like situations, we can discuss the issue in an educated manner. There is clearly a bias OF men to commit crime- but that is a separate issue and we need to explore the factors that may make that the case. It has NOTHING to do with our question of police bias however unless we reduce the issue to utter idiocy.
Simply put it theoretically doesn’t matter how many people commit crimes. If 90% of crime was committed by men but 87% of all crime was Jay Walking and 40% of criminals were shot by police- there’s a big problem there most likely right? We wouldn’t expect Jay Walking to be a crime that regularly required deadly force be used no? But if 87% of crimes were armed kidnappings- a 40% incidence of deadly force might make more sense no? So we have to slice up the pie and really get into the data. The analysis of complex data takes some experience and thought most of the time. Complex issues rarely have simple solutions.
The question isn’t how many people get shot because as grandpa used to say- “sometimes people need to get shot.”
That’s a more important question in exploring bias- how many women are shot or fatality shot as a percentage? How many men? Ok. Now we need to dig much deeper and it can get subjective here- but how many women were shot under “justifiable” conditions vs men? How many women were shot under identical or functionally identical scenarios?