O/T:- Lewis Hamilton

[drillerpie]

So when you claimed ‘the police in Chicago (and several other major US cities) have pretty much stopped pro-actively policing black communities since the BLM demonstrations’, what you should have said is ‘there’s a working hypothesis that suggests police ‘pull back’ following egregious incidents, but there’s lots of competing evidence which so far has led to no obvious conclusion’. You could have added ‘Obviously which conclusion you come to will be strongly influenced by what prejudices you went in with’. In other words what you claimed was in effect bullsh!t, as I suspected.

Even if the ‘Ferguson effect’ does have merit, does that mean that people shouldn’t protest or complain when police officers fatally put their knees on the necks of their suspects, for fear of this leading to increased murders in the following months? I really think you should give this more thought.

A book can be both ‘worth a look’ and ‘enlightening’. You’ve made your mind up on this subject anyway, so I suspect other opinions/perspectives would fall on deaf ears.

There isn't lots of competing evidence. The page I linked to shows several studies have found there is a Ferguson Effect, while the criticisms section is basically composed of a series of quotes saying "nothing to see here" from people who have an interest in there being nothing to see here.

The exact same thing has now happened after the George Floyd killing and subsequent protests, but you prefer to blame it on my prejudices (whatever they might be - perhaps you'll be able to diagnose me better when you've finished your book), call it bullsh1t and end the conversation.

As regards whether people should protest it depends what the aims of the protests are. I definitely think they could and should protest more intelligently.

If the aim is to say that every black life is precious and must be preserved then I think it is stupid to create a worldwide media frenzy which results in police being reluctant to enforce the law, thus putting black lives at risk.

If the aim was to mount a constructive anti police brutality campaign to change policing methods, improve police training and outlaw certain practices like those ridiculous no-knock warrants, taking into account the difficulty of the task facing policemen, I'm sure they could have done things very differently and obtained almost universal support, but I think we all know that isn't their aim.

As regards the last paragraph I can only hope to one day be as open minded as you BFP.

Ok well it looks like you've finished your cross examination of me for now. If you change your mind I'd be happy to carry on the conversation, but maybe let's concentrate on the match now and carry on next week.

[laddo]

7th world title for arguably the greatest F1 driver of all time.

A bad day for Navy and great day for Hamilton.

Well done Lewis.

[i961pie]

7th world title for arguably the greatest F1 driver of all time.

A bad day for Navy and great day for Hamilton.

Well done Lewis.

[The_Don_ORiordan]

Being at the very top level for that long in any sport is a huge achievement.

Well done Lewis.