The Death Penalty or Life Meaning Life

[DuncanONeil]

While you're at it you could try and find data on random stops. Police tend to be more suspicious of black people, so there are a far higher rate of random stops, and a far higher rate of searches at the border etc.

You move from the general to the specific quite quickly here. You have referred to "assumptions", yet you are doing just that in the above statement. Said assumption being that police are intrinsically suspicious of black people. No one can provide empirical evidence that such is the case. Why does the border matter or is that meant to be a lead in to the following paragraph?

I have several acquaintances who smoke marijuana, 4 of whom took their personal amounts across the border, the three white guys weren't searched, the one minority was. Admittedly this is only an anecdotal case, but if stuff like this plays out in the larger data, then its quite likely blacks are not necessarily committing more crimes but rather are being treated with suspicion and hence are caught more frequently.

Yes it is anecdotal. And as previously stated there is no empirical data. If one of four, all guilty, were searched it seems reasonable to suggest there was some trigger, yes you would like to say color, it could be as simple as being nervous, or the manner in which questions are answered, or even a general manner of presentation.

So looking it how arrests compare to convictions wouldn't show you the larger picture of what level of crimes are being committed. It would only show you what level of crimes are being caught. Assuming a random sampling is certainly problematic as there is strong evidence of bias.

Not sure about the "level of crimes". That could mean nature or quantity. However with police located throughout the city there is no real reason to presume that criminals caught does not represent the set of criminals in general. Your issue of bias here is either poorly thought out or poorly stated. As written it presupposes a strong bias in any random sampling. In terms of the stats on crime we have at least three sets of data. Crimes committed, criminals arrested, and criminals convicted. Neither of these sets represents a random sample. They are the complete set!

Take for instance racial profiling:

The idea behind it was that blacks committed a higher percentage of crimes, so if a police officer has two suspicious people (one white, one black) fleeing the scene of a crime and can only chase one of them they go after the black guy. There are several possibilities for what actually happened here:

Case (i): The black guy did it. They likely catch him and prosecute.

Case (ii): The white guy did it. He escapes the initial scene, and chances are somewhat poor that they track him down to catch him and prosecute.

Case (iii): They were accomplices. The black guy likely gets caught and is prosecuted. He may or may not turn over his accomplices.

While the following are in fact my words they are a compiled sets of understanding of what you wrote. Happens that my daughter dropped by and read what you had to say in this scenario. Her opinion is that your entire scenario is biased.
She feels it is important to know what type of crime occurred. And further notes that in each case that you "assume" the black is the person chased.
In the description you have the officer presented with a crime scene with two people fleeing. That act by its nature makes both parties suspicious. In every point after that you "assume" the officer chases only the black. Can you not see that as a bias on your part. I know what I would do but, the officer on the scene is most likely to focus on the closer suspect than a specific factor of that suspect. Also in such situations decisions are made in a manner and speed that determination of why, can not be made, even well after the event. I have seen video of a person fleeing from the police make a high jump onto a wall that appears to be at least five feet high, sorry I am not going to try and chase him, no matter what he looks like.
It is so easy to dissect an officers actions after the fact. But such usually totally ignores the fact that every decision, in chases, must be made in fractions of seconds.

So if you have a police force that responds to a chase scene in this way, you would have bias in your data. The white guy is far more likely to not be caught for this crime than the black guy.

A police force responding to a chase does not respond with a single unit. Multiple units will automatically negate your "assumption" that only the black will be chased. Also every case you posit has the non black getting away. Not only from the scene but with the crime. You really think that an accomplice caught by the police is going to take all the blame on themselves and let someone else walk free?