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April 9

Rate of murder conviction against police, compared to civilians in the US

It was suggested at ITN that police in the US being arrested for murder is rare (as compared to arrests of 'civilians'). I was unable to come up with any statistic on it. Can anyone find any reliable sources on the issue? Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 03:18, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Do you mean just in the line of duty, or also in the course of their private lives? If the former, this 1979 study found three convictions stemming from 1500 police killings over the previous 5 years, but doesn't seem to mention arrests (and also notes that its data may be incomplete). A more recent news article found that "at least 17" police officers have been charged with murder over the last 20 years (but none of those 17 convicted), but they also cautioned that their data is probably incomplete. It looks like the available data is not complete enough to get a reliable exact rate, but it seems likely based on what we do have that it's definitely rarer than the overall arrest and conviction rates at least. -Elmer Clark (talk) 07:02, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

According to ProPublica, FBI's Supplementary Homicide Report documents >12,000 police homicides between 1980 and 2012 including 1,217 deadly police shootings between 2010 and 2012 although that database is "terribly incomplete" since it is not mandatory for police departments to supply that data, and many don't. List of killings by law enforcement officers in the United States#Crowd-sourced projects to collect data lists some efforts to compile more comprehensive stats. Abecedare (talk) 07:16, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Further, for the comparison, you need to know how many killings have been attributed to non-police (civilians). That will be incomplete. It is not a requirement to report it, so it is simply a guess. However, it is clear that the point of the question is to cherry-pick data to claim that police can shoot anyone they like whenever they like and not be arrested while civilians get arrested every time they think about shooting someone. In case you don't have access to American media, that is the hot topic now. Police have overtaken radical Islam as the worst threat to Americans. 209.149.113.89 (talk) 12:57, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Your analysis is incredibly ignorant, offensive and baseless. I have both seen police brutality and false arrest, and had the police solve the murder of a loved one and swarm my building in NYC within 30 seconds when my neighbor was shot to death by his wife. I am not trying to make a case for any claim, I am asking for evidence. That my asking for reliable sources amounts to "cherry picking" is a self-contradiction. You need to go analize yourself. μηδείς (talk) 19:00, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Unlike what the IP implies, stats about homicide in general (an overwhelming majority of which are by "civilians") are regarded as the most well-kept and trustworthy of all crime statistics since homicides are the hardest to miss, not report, hide, reclasify etc in real-life, ie, outside of novels, films, TV shows and our imagination. You can find homicides stats for US from 1990-2012 here. Note also that while reporting crime data to FBI is not mandatory, police organizations covering about 95% of US population do participate in the Uniform Crime Reports program. So while not "perfect", the total homicide stats are well-regarded in general and have been used is 1000s of academic studies over the past 80 years (in stark contrast to the "homicide by cops" numbers as the ProPublica article linked above and this Fivethirtyeight column note). Abecedare (talk) 16:57, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

off topic
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
So, this boils down to this claim: If a civilian kills someone, it is hard to hide it, so police report it. If a cop kills someone, police hide it and don't report it. 209.149.113.89 (talk) 17:42, 9 April 2015 (UTC) You asked about both arrests and convictions. Presumably police are less likely to be arrested, charged by a grand jury, and convicted, given the same evidence against them, than civilians, especially if the victim is black. For example, we had video evidence of the police choking a man to death with a baton ([1]), yet the grand jury didn't bring charges. What are the chances that would have happened had the chokers been black civilians and the victim been a white police officer ? Without video evidence against them, chances of being convicted is far lower, still. Also, when charges are brought, they are likely to be lesser charges, like manslaughter. However, the increase in civilians with camera phones means there is more likely to be evidence against police, which they can't as easily destroy as their own video (assuming whoever took the video is smart enough to send it to the media instead of the police), so this might somewhat improve things. StuRat (talk) 13:51, 9 April 2015 (UTC) There is no need to bring black and white into it. James Whitehead was white. He was unarmed when he was shot and killed by a black police officer. The police officer was not reprimanded, let alone arrested. Simply because media is cherry-picking cases of white officers and black victims does not mean that black officers are not killing white civilians. To put it simply, do not assume that anecdotes from the media indicate data. 209.149.113.89 (talk) 14:15, 9 April 2015 (UTC) I'd argue that's an unusual case due to the races: [2]. However, there is such a bias in favor of police officers that, in this case, it seems to have been more important than the bias against blacks. StuRat (talk) 17:13, 9 April 2015 (UTC) My argument is that it isn't race. It is poverty. The best I heard it explained was by a past police chief Reuben Greenberg (if I remember his name correctly). He stated, to the best of my memory: There will always be heated conflict between people on the East side and the police because the people on the East side are poor and mostly criminals. Criminals hate police. 209.149.113.89 (talk) 17:33, 9 April 2015 (UTC) I am not looking for anecdotes and what a four day-old single purpose IP says is "his argument". Please take the race debate elsewhere. μηδείς (talk) 19:00, 9 April 2015 (UTC) Recall WP:HUMAN, and perhaps refresh your memory on how dynamic IP addresses work. Or just treat IPs with prejudice, whatever. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:17, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

My thanks to Elmer and Abecedere. To answer Elmer, no, I am not looking for only charges in the line of duty, but for any murders, like domestic violence, etc. This can be compared to the general population rate, since it will very closely match the non-police civilian rate. Let me repeat my question: "It was suggested at ITN that police in the US being arrested for murder is rare (as compared to arrests of 'civilians'). I was unable to come up with any statistic on it. Can anyone find any reliable sources on the issue?" I am not interested in politicking or a race debate, just (preferably peer-reviewed) statistics. Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 19:07, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

The ITN claim is easy to justify. There are approximately 20,000 police in the United States. That leaved at least 308,000,000 civilians. If every single police person was arrested for murder, that would be equivalent to 0.006% of the U.S. population. This is a fallacy of comparing quantities in disproportionate population sizes. The claim, as you wrote it, doesn't indicate that they are looking at percent of police. It simply states that arrests (total quantity) are rare. 209.149.113.89 (talk) 19:17, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

I have made no claim, I have asked a question. You are not answering that question, you are making an irrelevant argument on the assumption I didn't learn ratios in elementary school. If you think the question should be different, start your own thread with your own question. I am interested in comparing the murder arrest or conviction rate of civilians in general to that of police. Please stop disrupting this thread. If you continue the disruption I will close your responses and report you for disciplinary action. μηδείς (talk) 19:52, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

• Does This lead you anywhere interesting? --Jayron32 20:10, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Using Elmer Clark's statistics, there were about 4.7 murders per 100,000 citizens per year. I'm guessing the number of murderers per murder victim is only slightly less than one (i.e. multiple murderers are rare). In which case there might be roughly 4 murderers per 100,000 people per year. According to [3] there are about 700,000 officers in US. So there ought to be roughly 30 officers who commit murder per year (excluding any killings deemed justifiable). In the general population, about 60% of murders lead to an arrest [4], suggesting that roughly 18 officers should be arrested for murder per year to stay proportional. I don't know the exact numbers but news accounts make it seem unlikely to me that a police officer is arrested every few weeks for murder; hence, it seems plausible that police officers are charged with murder less often than the general population. Though one can't say from this data whether any difference is because they commit murder less often or simply that they get caught and charged less often. Dragons flight (talk) 20:28, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Some more data and estimates:

• Number of police killings: although the number recorded by FBI's Supplementary Homicide Report is about 400/year that is known to be a vast undercount and more recent estimates based on Bureau of Justice Statistics data is closer to 1240/annum, and even that may be low by around 25%.
• Arrest and conviction stats: According to this presentation by Philip M Stinson (the expert source cited in the article linked by User:Jayron32 above) et al, between 2005 and 2011, 104 police-officers (ie, 15/annum) were charged with murder or non-negligent manslaughter, although only 31 of those (ie 4 annum) were for shootings by on-duty officers (Aside: most of the violent crimes for which police officers are charged are committed off-duty, often involving domestic disputes, and with women constituting >60% of the victims). The conviction stats for these cases is unavailable, although the linked presentation does have conviction rates for violent crimes by police officers in general.
• WP:OR bottomline: Based on the above numbers between 0.3% and 1.0% of police officers involved in a killing are charged with murder or non-negligent manslaughter; the conviction rate is necessarily even lower.

PS: I predict that there will be many more sources available if Medeis re-asks this question a year from now. Abecedare (talk) 02:00, 10 April 2015 (UTC) Added OR. Abecedare (talk) 02:35, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes, including primary sources from California, today. μηδείς (talk) 03:42, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

(Below is an ec with Abecedare's excellent post above.)

Thanks, DF & Jayron. I think that the article Jayron32 has pointed out has one important statistic, that about 385 homicides a year are found "justified". If 10 percent of those deaths were actually unjustified (remember that the dead victim has no rights, and instead of the state having to prove the police were justified in killing a presumed-innocent suspect beyond a reasonable doubt, the police, not the civilian they shot, are given all the benefit of the doubt) then that means about 40 criminal killings a year.

Of course that would require a study to demonstrate. But anecdotal evidence indicates that the justifiability of many of these homicides is dubious. Consider the Amadou Diallo case of 1999, where an African immigrant entering his own apartment with a key was shot 41 times, with the explanation being that when he pulled out his wallet upon being told to stop and identify himself, "his wallet looked like a gun." If that weren't considered justified, it would be second degree manslaughter by New York law. Note the odd fact that when the victim of manslaughter is a police officer, the penalties are higher. Some people are more equal than others.

The Anthony Baez case is more egregious, where a police officer with years of excessive violence complaints against him caused Baez's death. In the Diallo case, the shooters were primed to act during a stake-out for a suspected rapist. In the Baez case, officers became enraged when their parked car was accidentally hit by the ball during a pick-up game of street football. They arrested Anthony's brother for disorderly conduct, then forcibly arrested Anthony himself for verbally objecting. The officer was charged with homicide, but found innocent in a trial by judge. He was found guilty on Federal civil rights charges. The Sean Bell case is also of interest.

This is of course speculation, if not entirely groundless speculation. What I am really interested in is first and second degree murders, as well as suicides and murders by ex-cops. I suppose this may be fruitless. Some 40% of murders go unsolved. It just seems odd there are no well-known direct studies on violence by the police compared to that by the public in general. μηδείς (talk) 02:03, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Would you consider some issues with comparing police to the general public? My job, one of the most tedious and boring ones possible, is to compare statistics across large populations. In comparing police to the general public, there are important issues. For example, 24% of the U.S. is under 18. There are no police under 18. Therefore, if violent crime is more rampant in those under 18, you should not expect police to be similar because that population is missing. Similarly, 14% of the U.S. is over 65. If violent crime is far less for that population, you wouldn't expect that lack of violence to occur in the police force. Then, there are economic factors. Depending on your definition, 6-10% of the population is unemployed. None of the police are unemployed. If being unemployed is correlated to violent crime, the police wouldn't have that factor. Poverty (having income, but below the poverty level) is another factor that may be correlated to violent crime for which police wouldn't have. I am not attempting to sway your opinion. I am trying to help you improve your argument. If you want to compare a small population to a large population, the two must be comparable. As for the size of the police, CSLLEA works off of number of police per 100,000 people. It grows very slowly, currently at 251, but nearly 252. That puts the police population less than 0.003%. Then, there is yet another problem. There was a police murder in South Carolina very recently, Charleston County to be exact. That county tallied it up in the "murder" statistics. So, if you look at the number of murders among the "population", it will include that one. You will want to separate murders by police from murders by the population. I personally would also go in a different direction of separating out females all together. I would only look at males. What I would expect you to find (because I see the raw data before it gets mangled by others) is that among 20-30 year old males, there is an extremely high correlation between areas of poverty and people killed both by civilians and police (I avoided using the word "murders" because some have been ruled "justifiable" both for the civilians and the police). Under 20, the correlation remains for civilians, but the police population does not exist for comparison. From 30-40, the rates of being killed is still heavily correlated to poverty areas, but the rates of those arrested for murder decreases for both police and civilians. Therefore, based on my original research, I really believe that if you want to shine a light on this problem, you can do so easily by focusing on a comparison of 20-30 year old males (police and civilians) in poverty areas. Your populations will be smaller, the crime rates are higher, and the two populations are far more comparable. Then, I would also do a comparison to military and professional athletes. I know it is my own predisposition, but I believe that guys who are all muscle and no brains are more apt to using violence to solve problems. 209.149.113.89 (talk) 14:12, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

That's some good advice. But since I mean to include former cops, I would not exclude older non-police. μηδείς (talk) 16:13, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

• Thousands dead, few prosecuted: Washington Post's new investigative piece on the topic. Abecedare (talk) 05:10, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Male virgins

Does the statistical likelihood of a male virgin ever having sex decrease for every subsequent year that he remains a virgin over the age of 16? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.97.191.234 (talk) 18:11, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

I doubt such precise statistics exist, plus due to differences in culture and life expectancy across the globe, such statistics would vary greatly internationally. Where I am from, Canada, I would guess the key age would be over 30years old. 70.50.122.38 (talk) 19:00, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

The OP is in Indonesia, statistics there may be different. μηδείς (talk) 19:14, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I should have stated where I was from so the OP would know I wasn't from their nation...Anyways, actually my answer was wrong, I was thinking along the lines of difference in chances of a particular virgin and non-virgin who both are not opposed to sex, having sex (first time or again) before they die. When you pool people as virgins vs non-virgins the critical point is the age at which the first male has sex though that answer has no real world use. 70.50.122.38 (talk) 20:50, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

It seems to me this must be true by definition (even if you start counting at younger than 16). Statistically speaking, there are a certain number of lifelong virgins, and as you remove more and more non-lifelong-virgins for each year of age as they lose their virginities, these lifelong virgins will make up a larger and larger proportion of the pool of remaining virgins. It's no different from saying that each year that you don't go to Disney World makes it statistically less likely that you'll ever go. The only question is the magnitude. -Elmer Clark (talk) 19:42, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Mathematically, this need not always be true by definition. As a counterexample, consider a hypothetical society with strictly enforced mores which prevent sex before marriage, and where all males on their 16th birthday become warriors and server for four years during which time they have a 50% chance of being killed in battle. Should they survive to their 20th birthday, they then return to their village where they spend one year cultivating a garden, building a home, and courting a future spouse who they marry on their 21st birthday. In this contrived example, a young virgin male on his sixteenth birthday has only a 50% likelihood of ever having sex, but should he survive (necessarily as a virgin) to age 20, his chance of eventually having sex has gone up to 100%. -- ToE 00:14, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Yes, but the statement as asked is essentially empty. The probability of ever having sex between age 16 and death must include the probability of ever having sex between age 17 and death plus an added amount due to the probability of having sex between age 16 and 17. Hence, the statistical probability of ever having sex must be a non-increasing function of age. A more interesting question is how the probability of having sex per year changes. A bit more than half of all US teenagers self-report having had sex by the time they graduate high school [5], but by the late 20s more than 95% of people have had sex, and by the late 30s it is greater than 98% [6]. Even if many people have sex in high school, many others don't and still go on to have a normal sex life later. There is no specific age by which one must start having sex. However, whenever a person starts having sex, it is important to do so responsibly (safe sex) and with due consideration of the needs and desires of one's partner. Dragons flight (talk) 19:54, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

No. The question is not about "the probability of ever having sex between age 17 and death", but about the conditional probability of of ever having sex between age 17 and death for those who have not had sex before age 17. And this is to be compared with the same number for age 18, and so on up. See ToE's response above for a hypothetical society where the answer to the original question would be no. --65.95.176.148 (talk) 04:00, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

You and ToE read it as conditioned on the probability of living to be 17. I don't read the question asker's intent that way. I read it as, given I am X now am I more or less likely to die a virgin as time goes on. Future looking scenarios where the person dies young, obviously have a 100% chance of being dead, but if you care about ever having sex, you don't necessarily want to ignore that. Put another way, supposes a 16-year-old in a hypothetical war-like society has only 10% chance of living to be 17 but a 100% chance of having sex if they do. We could say either that the 16-year-old has either a 100% chance of having sex after age 17 (predicated on them living) or that they have a 10% chance of having sex after age 17 (including the chance they are dead). If you were a 16-year-old worrying about dying a virgin, then I think it makes sense to think about the future in terms of the latter probability rather than the former. Dragons flight (talk) 16:34, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

• The main purpose of college in the US seems to be getting laid. See Tom Wolfe's Hooking Up, and I am Charlotte Simmons. A small but significant fraction of the people I knew during that period had lost their virginity before college. I know that all but one had lost it by the end of their freshman year. There's one friend who's never spoken of a boy or girlfriend, whom I have never interrogated. In any case, I would suspect those who do not lose their virginity before college graduation (age 22) will be a small minority, of whom the perpetual virgins will be a remainder. μηδείς (talk) 04:23, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

  Correlation is not causation. You'd need to compare numbers of college attendees who lost their virginity at college to non-college attendees who lost their virginity in the same age bracket, but without going to college, to make your first statement valid. If it was found that non-college people get laid at similar (or possibly even higher) rates, then that throws that theory out... --Jayron32 14:11, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

My first sentence was, "The OP is in Indonesia." I was only speaking about the purpose of college from the viewpoint of horny teens released from the tyranny of their hometown reputation and their highschool peers. For many, going away to college is liberation. I wasn't suggesting going to college caused one to lose one's virginity, just suggesting that one might suspect that someone who's not lost their virginity by graduation will be much more likely than a 16 year old virgin to remain a virgin.μηδείς (talk) 21:58, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

While I am sure many US college students have sex, it is not even one of the top five reasons to go to college. Also, the difference between a man that is a virgin and one that had sex for the first time at a college frat party is small. --Frmorrison (talk) 20:27, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

The terminology "losing one's virginity" is interesting. I'm sure many young males who finally get with a girl in that special way don't feel they've lost anything, rather, they've gained a certain status they're prone to bragging about to their buddies. The longer it takes a guy to get to that bragging stage (assuming he hasn't made up a story), the more likely he'll be assumed to be gay. (I generalise, of course.) This might not bother either him or his friends, but then again, it might. -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 00:39, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

mail addr for Gov Rick Perry

I want to write a letter to Gov Rick Perry but going through Google for several hrs am unable to find a mailing addr.. I'm not a stalker I have a subject he may be interested in for his Presidential run. You were recommended as someone who may be able to help. If you're unable to help me please at least let me know. I'm not really computer literate so if I'm doing something wrong I apologise. I don't know what or where the "tildes" key is on my keyboard, so cannot let you know I'm finished that way, sorry......found it!2001:5B0:235F:F1F0:B0F3:768B:1490:2761 (talk) 20:35, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Has campaign website, http://www.rickperry.org/, has a mailing address at the bottom:

815-A Brazos Street, PMB 217

Austin, TX 78701

Assuming it is campaign related that is probably a good one to try. Dragons flight (talk) 20:40, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

You could also try contacting him through his Facebook page [7] or on Twitter [8]. He seems to really like his flags... and his new hipster glasses [9] [10]. SemanticMantis (talk) 21:31, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

And world domination through (clean) coal-powered death rays! Or something. InedibleHulk (talk) 03:29, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

In many cases, the USPS makes all effort to deliver the mail. Simply addressing a ailed letter to Governor Rick Perry, Capitol, Texas, will probably work, just not very quickly. See below. μηδείς (talk) 05:53, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

You could send it c/o Capitol Building, Congress Street, Austin, TX. But that should be used for correspondence pertaining to his governorship of Texas, rather than his campaign for the Republican nomination for the US Presidential election. LongHairedFop (talk) 09:57, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Perry is no longer governor, however. --Xuxl (talk) 10:02, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Ah. The wording of the queriant's question throw me. As he's no longer governor (he left on 20th Jan), you shouldn't write to him about governoral matters. Best bet, as others have mentioned, is c/o his campaign team. LongHairedFop (talk) 13:23, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

The adjectival form is "gubernatorial". Sneaky of Perry to leave office without notifying the rest of the country. μηδείς (talk) 16:05, 10 April 2015 (UTC)