{"id":1707,"date":"2020-07-23T13:27:03","date_gmt":"2020-07-23T20:27:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=1707"},"modified":"2020-07-23T13:27:03","modified_gmt":"2020-07-23T20:27:03","slug":"harvards-delusional-take-on-policing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=1707","title":{"rendered":"Harvard’s Delusional Take on Policing"},"content":{"rendered":"

A well-regarded history professor at Harvard, Jill Lepore, recently wrote this in New York Magazine (emphasis added):<\/p>\n

One study suggests that two-thirds<\/strong> of Americans between the ages of fifteen and thirty-four who were treated in emergency rooms suffered from injuries inflicted by police and security guards, about as many people as the number of pedestrians injured by motor vehicles.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Anyone spot something amiss here?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What’s amiss is that the claim is facially preposterous.\u00a0 Just the ordinary experience of life will tell you that by far the majority of emergency room visits from people of that age result from accidents, sports injuries and (probably) drugs.<\/p>\n

So what’s the story?<\/p>\n

One author, Louise Perry, looked into it.\u00a0 Here’s what she found:<\/p>\n

I sought out the study she was referring to, and found it: a 2016 paper, whose lead author, Justin Feldman, was a doctoral student at Harvard at the time. Soon after publication, the findings were described in a Harvard press release, and also reported on by The Guardian.<\/p>\n

And it turns out I was right \u2014 the \u2018two-thirds\u2019 claim is not true. Not even close.
\n***
\n[I]t\u2019s not clear where Lepore got the \u2018two-thirds\u2019 figure from. Possibly she misunderstood a line from from the paper itself, which includes the finding that 61.1% of people injured by police fell into the 15-34 age bracket. Or from the Harvard press release, which reports that:<\/p>\n

Sixty-four percent of the estimated 683,033 injuries logged between 2001-2014 among persons age 15-34 resulted from an officer hitting a civilian.<\/p>\n

Which is to say, they were injured by hitting, rather than some other use of force. \u2026
\n***
\nI did my best to work out a rough estimate of the true proportion of 15-34 year olds visiting the ER who had suffered legal intervention injuries, and arrived at a figure of 0.2% … So I believe Lepore\u2019s claim to be off by a factor of several hundred.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How did such a facially absurd claim make it past the editors and fact-checkers at New York Magazine?\u00a0 My friend John Hinderaker has the unfortunate, but spot-on, answer in his PowerLine entry<\/a>:<\/p>\n

From 67% to 0.2%. That is how far off a liberal \u201cscholar\u201d is when she tries to write about \u201cpolice violence.\u201d And, of course, the overwhelming majority of people who are seen in emergency rooms as a result of injuries inflicted by police officers or security guards are criminals who initiated altercations in which (one hopes) they got the worst of it.<\/p>\n

That Lepore was so far off is not, in itself, surprising. These days, liberals are rarely correct about any factual matter. But how can any sentient being possibly fall for the idea that two-thirds of all ER admissions between ages 15 and 34 were there by virtue of being brutalized by law enforcement? Someone, presumably, who has never been in an emergency room and who lacks anything approaching common sense.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And, I might add, someone, like so many of those in academia, who has a terminally poisoned view of the cops.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A well-regarded history professor at Harvard, Jill Lepore, recently wrote this in New York Magazine (emphasis added): One study suggests that two-thirds of Americans between the ages of fifteen and thirty-four who were treated in emergency rooms suffered from injuries inflicted by police and security guards, about as many people as the number of pedestrians injured by motor vehicles. 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