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[In 2013] about 10% of the population over 12 years of age had used illegal drugs in the previous year, and that this use was more or less evenly distributed across the largest racial groups: 8.8% for Hispanics, 9.5% for whites and 10.5% percent for African Americans.
Convictions for drug crimes are another matter entirely. Thirty-three percent of those serving prison terms for drug offenses are African Americans, two-and-a-half times their proportion in the population. [...] Overall African Americans are about five times as likely to go to prison for drug possession as whites, and judging from exonerations, innocent black people are about 12 times more likely to be convicted of drug crimes than innocent white people.
[...] Sixty percent of the drug exonerations we know about occurred in Harris County, Texas, home to Houston (133/221). The defendants in these cases pled guilty to drug possession before the supposed drugs they possessed were tested in a crime lab, and were exonerated weeks, months or years later after testing was done and no illegal drugs were found. Why did these defendants plead guilty even though they possessed no controlled substances? Some may have had powders or pills that they thought contained illegal drugs but did not. As far as we can tell, however, most pled guilty to get out of jail.
[...] Most, if not all of these innocent black defendants in Harris County pled guilty rather than go to trial because it was their best option, given that they had been arrested and charged, and were held in jail. But why were so many innocent black defendants arrested for drug possession when there is no reason to believe that African Americans are more likely than whites to use illegal drugs?
Two-thirds of the arrests in the Harris County guilty-plea exoneration cases (89/133) were based on cheap and notoriously inaccurate "presumptive" field tests for drugs, usually on substances found in searches following traffic stops. Anybody who is subjected to that process is at risk of false arrest and conviction. Across the country, African Americans drivers are about as likely to be stopped as white drivers, but after that, they are three times as likely to be searched. As a result, they bear much of the brunt of drug-law enforcement—including false drug possession convictions, which may number in the thousands if not tens of thousands a year.
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/Race_and_Wrongful_Convictions.pdf
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 12 2017, @05:57PM
All this talk is bullshit devised to distract us from the fact that most of these stops should be happening to anyone in the first place. The people have been derelict in their duty and now the police are nothing but thieves for the thieves in government. When you turn cops into armed robbers why do you act surprised when the "community" doesn't respect their authoriti? Then the cops catch shit and are turned into predators which most didn't sign up for and they grow to resent people altogether. We allow our reps to corrupt them and we act appalled that they are corrupt. Even what is corrupt, is corrupt itself. It used to mean a dishonest cop. well that's all of them now because we have got them committing fraud and theft on a daily basis. What do i mean? It's the little things that make up a police state. Take speeding as an example. Many states are "presumed speed limit" states. The law may say you can drive like you want as long as you're not being unsafe. What do the cops do? hide behind corners and say you were breaking the law because you were exceeding the posted presumed speed limit that was set way too low. Even if your car's top speed is 130 and your were doing 75 and no one was even around except the hiding, spying, thieving cop. Many of them know somewhere deep inside that they are committing fraud and theft but they do their "job" anyways, some actuially believing that they are saving people from you the dangerous dependant speeder.. Many of these police agencies shouldn't even exist. They are just state fronts for the national socialist agencies like the national highway safety administration. The feds can't directly tell the state's citizens what to do so they set up these fronts. The people just kiss ass and act like they are legitimate instead of doing their duty as Americans. Pulling you over because your sticker is out? stickers shouldn't even exist. If people want to fund socialist roads then they can get the money from some tax. no need to make people take off work to go stand in line every fucking year to get a stupid sticker like a school child while we pay for fat asses who couldn't get honest work to sit there and act like authority figures. They are nothing but habitual thieves! Putting people in cages because the government doesn't approve of their medicine? What kind of fucking slave pays for someone else to tell them how to treat their own illnesses? Why are we letting these scum ruin our country and pit the cops against the people so the rich can get richer and completely enslave the country and the world? The reps need to be educated or replaced immediately. Police agencies need to be scrapped or retrained depending on the situation. Stealing from people and locking them up for unconstitutional bullshit needs to stop. If they refuse, they can rightfully be eliminated.