Glen Contrarian
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Why am I not surprised that you're buying into the racist ravings of LePage? Here's a great clue: if law enforcement concentrates mostly on blacks, then more blacks WILL be arrested and charged...even when whites are more likely to deal drugs than blacks are:
Whites were about 45 percent more likely than blacks to sell drugs in 1980, according to an analysis of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth by economist Robert Fairlie. This was consistent with a 1989 survey of youth in Boston. My own analysis of data from the 2012 National Survey on Drug Use and Health shows that 6.6 percent of white adolescents and young adults (aged 12 to 25) sold drugs, compared to just 5.0 percent of blacks (a 32 percent difference).
According to Time Magazine:
Black youth are arrested for drug crimes at a rate ten times higher than that of whites. But new research shows that young African Americans are actually less likely to use drugs and less likely to develop substance use disorders, compared to whites, Native Americans, Hispanics and people of mixed race.
And from a compendium of studies:
In New York City, whites comprise 44% of the population; blacks and Latinos, 53%.[4]
Between 2005 and 2008, 80% of NYPD stops were of blacks and Latinos. Only 10% of stops were of whites.
85% of those frisked were black; only 8% were white. (Blacks and Latinos were frisked 50% of the time; whites, only 34%.)
Under the NYPD’s controversial “stop-and-frisk” program, in every year since 2009, 87% of those stopped-and-frisked were black or Latino. 10% were white.[5]
24% of blacks and Latinos had force used against them by the NYPD, compared to only 17% of whites.
Only 2.6% of all stops (1.6 million stops over 3.5 years) resulted in the discovery of contraband or a weapon. Whites were more likely to be found with contraband or a weapon.
Similar trends are seen in Department of Justice data from Los Angeles between July 2003 and June 2004.
The stop rate for blacks was 3,400 stops per 10,000 residents higher than the white stop rate. The Latino stop rate was 360 stops higher.
Blacks were 127% more likely to get frisked and 76% more likely to get searched than whites; Latinos, 43% more likely to get frisked and 16% more likely to get searched.
And yet, frisked blacks were 42% less likely to be found with a weapon than frisked whites; Latinos, 32% less likely.
Consensual searches of blacks were “37 percent less likely to uncover weapons, 23.7 percent less likely to uncover drugs, and 25.4 percent less likely to uncover any other type of contraband, than consensual searches of Whites.”
Consensual searches of Latinos were “32.8 percent less likely to uncover weapons, 34.3 percent less likely to uncover drugs, and 12.3 percent less likely to uncover any other type of contraband than consensual searches of Whites.”
Similar statistics can be seen across the U.S.
A study in Arizona found state highway patrol 3.5 times more likely to search a stopped Native American, and 2.5 times more likely to search a stopped African American or Latino, than a white person. And yet, whites who were searched were more likely than all other groups to be transporting drugs, guns, or other contraband.
A study in West Virginia showed black drivers 1.64 times more likely, and Latinos 1.48 times more likely, to be stopped than white drivers. After being stopped, non-whites were more likely to get arrested, even though police “obtained a significantly higher contraband hit rate for white drivers than minorities.”
In Illinois, data showed the number of consent searches after traffic stops, for blacks and Latinos, to be “more than double that of whites”—even though “white motorists were twice as likely to have contraband”!
Studies in Minnesota and Texas have yielded the same results, with blacks and Latinos being stopped more often, even though whites were more likely to have contraband.
In another study, it was found that blacks are three times more likely to be stopped in California than whites.[6]
A 2007 U.S. Department of Justice report on racial profiling found that blacks and Latinos were 3 times as likely to be stopped as whites, and that blacks were twice as likely to be arrested and 4 times as likely “to experience the threat or use of force during interactions with the police.”[7][8]
Maine governor to lawmaker: ‘I am after you’
