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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   33253 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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I Wrote a post about the long term trend in disapproval of police use of force in the US.

"As of 2021, 21% of Americans say it is unacceptable for police to use force against a person which is attacking them! 40% disagree with using force against an escaped suspect"

https://lefineder.substack.com/p/dont-tase-men-bro

  • The trend was ongoing before the 60s looking at opinion by birth cohort.

  • Not elite phenomena, self identified lower class and lower education were most against use of force.

  • Consistent with other trends in attitudes as society becomes more "Liberal" on crime and other social issues.

I wouldn't normally remark on this, but there are a lot of grammatical errors in the linked post. Almost every sentence has at least one error, and it sort of distracts from the (interesting!) information you're trying to present. I'm guessing English might not be your first language, but I would suggest that you might be able to get more people reading and sharing your writing if you spent some more time proofreading (maybe with the assistance of software).

Thanks, I'll do that.

One of the grammatical mistakes is a joke.

"All across the period there is a growing unacceptably of using the force".

I agree, the wording here could be affecting the outcome. "Strike" suggests throwing a punch, or hitting with a baton. When I think of police use of force, my mind goes to tackling a fleeing subject, dragging someone out of a car, forcing someone's hands behind their back, that sort of thing. I guess there could be scenarios where throwing a punch might be the most expeditious way to deter or disable a violent person, but it's not immediately obvious to me.

Why do you think "striking" is an artifact? I think it does a pretty good job of highlighting the reality of use of force in an arrest. While it's possible to control someone strictly with a hold, once we've agreed that a suspect is going to be arrested and that the officer may use force to do so in the event of the suspect resisting, there is a significant chance that the officer will wind up striking the suspect to induce compliance. Having a rule that an officer may use force in the sense of trying to grab and hold someone, but may not strike a suspect is asking for officers to either be ridiculously powerful and well-trained in grappling or to accept that a significant number of these incidents will result in the officer being struck and the suspect fleeing.

So 2021 was only the second time that more people said NO striking someone running from the police than NO striking anyone, ever.

Very silly—but also a better measure of tribalism than of opinion. Put these 21% on a jury and I’d expect much more sober answers.

Do you have a link to your data source?

I would not want to be a police officer tried for misconduct before jury of that 21%.

It's all GSS data. Downloaded from https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/

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