6/19/20 Jacob Sullum on the Inescapable Reality of Racially Skewed Policing - a podcast by Scott Horton

Scott talks to Jacob Sullum about the many ways policing in America disproportionately targets black and hispanic communities, both by means of explicitly racist policies, and also those that have racially skewed impacts without necessarily having been conceived that way in the first place. Sullum cites many examples of the disparate treatment of black and brown people that are difficult to dismiss with explanations based on differential crime rates or heavier police presences in certain neighborhoods. He also reviews some of the history of the war on drugs, a policy that has, perhaps above all others, been responsible for the cruel victimization of American minority communities for decades.



Discussed on the show:



“Racially skewed policing is not a statistical mirage” (Chicago Sun-Times)

“The Wire (TV Series 2002–2008)” (IMDb)



Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason and a nationally syndicated columnist. Follow him on Twitter @jacobsullum.



This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Listen and Think Audio; TheBumperSticker.com; and LibertyStickers.com.



Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1KGye7S3pk7XXJT6TzrbFephGDbdhYznTa.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by1lek8hCy4









The following is an automatically generated transcript.



Show TranscriptScott Horton 0:10

All right, y'all welcome it's Scott Horton Show. I am the director of the Libertarian Institute editorial director of antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan. And I've recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at ScottHorton.org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed. The full archive is also available at youtube.com/ScottHortonShow. Alright you guys introducing Jacob solem, senior editor at Reason magazine and writer of great stuff all the time, too much for us to fit. In today's show. Unfortunately, I have a hard stop in quarter of an hour here. But I want to start at least with this really important racially skewed policing is not a statistical mirage. And this goes to a very important debate about systemic racism in America in American policing. And what that even means exactly and who may or may not actually be collectively guilty of it, and all kinds of stuff. So welcome the show. Thank you for joining us, Jacob. How are you?



Jacob Sullum 1:26

All right, how are you?



Scott Horton 1:27

I'm really good. appreciate you joining us here. So well, do like you do in the piece here. Take us through some of the statistics. Help us understand the landscape and then tell us what it all means you think.



Jacob Sullum 1:41

Okay. Well, I mean, there are very clear racial disparities in law enforcement. I think a lot of conservatives and republicans want to say that you have to look at crime rates. Perhaps you have to look at I don't know how to say this without sounding racist. You have to look at how black people react when they have encounters with police versus how white and black. I've heard that as well. But I think that if you look at the data, these are not adequate explanations very clearly. And I'll just give you a few examples. When people do have encounters with police, according to a national survey that's sponsored by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Black people are much more likely about two and a half times as likely to report that the police officers use or threatened to use force. That's hard to explain by reference to differential crime rates. When you look at drivers who are stopped by the police for routine traffic violations. One study after another all across the country h...

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