massey

I love this show so much.
 
I don't know about anybody else, but I think 1960s television is perhaps the most enjoyable thing you could possibly watch.  Amazing for something that's nearly 60 years old.

VPPs must have a tightly defined SFX.  No vaguely defined "cosmic power VPP (does anything)" or "magic VPP (does anything)". 
You, the player, cannot have the Extra Time Limitation.  When your Phase comes up, you either have the thing you want to VPP fully built or you're not VPPing that thing right now. 
 
These were in response to the guy who took a Cosmic  "magic" VPP as his character's only mode of combat and would take three minutes just to figure out that Fireball is RKA 2d6 AoE.  It was horrible. 

Oh, the DNC regularly gets donations from police unions.  Which is why there's been no effort to change any of this.

Some good points, but I usually look at Elves not as "Hippies" and instead as super bothersome vegans, who always look down on all others. "Go back to your stinky cities monkey boy!' "I've got "High magic" to cast!" (And the reason the world is in danger, turns out to be "High magic!" after all)

Hal Jordan without the ring.
Str 20 Dex 25 Con 15 Body 11 Int 25 Ego 33 Pre 20 PD 10 ED 10 SPD 6 Rec 7 End 30 Stun 29

Or you aim impossibly high and fail utterly, accomplishing nothing, instead of trying something that's actually achievable.

I'm not saying that it's just the occasional a-hole.  I know there are larger problems than that.
 
That particular point was about some numbers that another poster had thrown around a page or two back in the thread (I forget who exactly).  They said that of the unarmed people who got shot in one year, only like 3 of them weren't either running away or attacking the cop or whatever.  And someone else responded with a "that's 3 too many" or something like that.  I'm merely saying that if we get "bad" shootings down to single digit numbers across the entire nation, then it's Miller Time.
 
A friend of mine is an ex-cop.  He told me that he used to carry a "throw down gun" that he could place at the scene if he ever needed to shoot somebody.  Apparently it was a quite common practice, a lot of officers did it.  This was back in the 80s, and I'm sure it still happens today.  He also told me that this one time he arrested a guy (white dude), and as he's driving him to jail the dude starts threatening his family.  "When I get out of here I'm gonna rape your wife..."  He pulled over his patrol car, got out, opened the back door, and stuck his gun to the guy's head and told him how easy it would be to make him go away forever.  After he had made his feelings clear to the man, he dragged him out of the back seat and beat the ever-living shit out of him with his night stick.  Apparently it went on for a while.  Then he pushed the guy back into the car and drove him the rest of the way to jail.  He wrote down the guy resisted arrest and none of the other cops said a word.
 
Was that a good thing to do?  No.  But I understand why he did it.  And I understand why the other cops looked the other way.  The Thin Blue Line is a real problem, but it didn't spring into existence for no reason.  Pretending that we can just make it go away doesn't do us any good.

I'm not really talking about optics here though.  You can phrase something in a more presentable way.  I'm not trying to do that here.  I'm not a politician, so I don't have to worry about that here.
 
If we could reduce abuses by police officers by half, then that's a fantastic improvement and we should do it.  The standard should never be "is this perfect?" because we'll never reach it.  

I'm sure it'll be done badly.
 
Ravenloft was never meant to be an accurate portrayal of Romania.  It was basically the world of Universal monsters and Hammer films.  And those movies have stereotypical "gypsies" in them.  So you're left with this awkward situation.  You say "real Roma aren't like the gypsies in the movies", but what you actually want are the movie characters.  So you call them Vistani, and you're free to include movie stereotypes if you wish.  But then someone comes in and insists that your gypsy stereotype group, who you renamed to something else, has to look like the real life people who are supposedly nothing like the movies...
 
It would be like if you had a tribe of cannibals in a jungle adventure game.  And to get away from the troublesome African tribe stereotypes, you change them and make them nonhumans who practice necromancy.  So they're now a tribe of human-eating hobgoblins, who use bone magic and wear colorful tribal masks.  Like you can still kinda tell what they're going for, but they changed it to avoid implications of racism.  And then somebody comes in and says "that's not what real African tribes are like!"  Yeah no shit.  The more you make them like a real world culture, the more trouble you can get in.  The purpose is to hit the tropes of the genre while avoiding any racist connotations.
 
I'm not really sure how much of a market exists for traditional Ravenloft anymore though.  The movies it is based on are really old, and I kinda doubt that modern day teenagers are that familiar with them.

I'm sure it'll be done badly.
 
Ravenloft was never meant to be an accurate portrayal of Romania.  It was basically the world of Universal monsters and Hammer films.  And those movies have stereotypical "gypsies" in them.  So you're left with this awkward situation.  You say "real Roma aren't like the gypsies in the movies", but what you actually want are the movie characters.  So you call them Vistani, and you're free to include movie stereotypes if you wish.  But then someone comes in and insists that your gypsy stereotype group, who you renamed to something else, has to look like the real life people who are supposedly nothing like the movies...
 
It would be like if you had a tribe of cannibals in a jungle adventure game.  And to get away from the troublesome African tribe stereotypes, you change them and make them nonhumans who practice necromancy.  So they're now a tribe of human-eating hobgoblins, who use bone magic and wear colorful tribal masks.  Like you can still kinda tell what they're going for, but they changed it to avoid implications of racism.  And then somebody comes in and says "that's not what real African tribes are like!"  Yeah no shit.  The more you make them like a real world culture, the more trouble you can get in.  The purpose is to hit the tropes of the genre while avoiding any racist connotations.
 
I'm not really sure how much of a market exists for traditional Ravenloft anymore though.  The movies it is based on are really old, and I kinda doubt that modern day teenagers are that familiar with them.

I'm sure it'll be done badly.
 
Ravenloft was never meant to be an accurate portrayal of Romania.  It was basically the world of Universal monsters and Hammer films.  And those movies have stereotypical "gypsies" in them.  So you're left with this awkward situation.  You say "real Roma aren't like the gypsies in the movies", but what you actually want are the movie characters.  So you call them Vistani, and you're free to include movie stereotypes if you wish.  But then someone comes in and insists that your gypsy stereotype group, who you renamed to something else, has to look like the real life people who are supposedly nothing like the movies...
 
It would be like if you had a tribe of cannibals in a jungle adventure game.  And to get away from the troublesome African tribe stereotypes, you change them and make them nonhumans who practice necromancy.  So they're now a tribe of human-eating hobgoblins, who use bone magic and wear colorful tribal masks.  Like you can still kinda tell what they're going for, but they changed it to avoid implications of racism.  And then somebody comes in and says "that's not what real African tribes are like!"  Yeah no shit.  The more you make them like a real world culture, the more trouble you can get in.  The purpose is to hit the tropes of the genre while avoiding any racist connotations.
 
I'm not really sure how much of a market exists for traditional Ravenloft anymore though.  The movies it is based on are really old, and I kinda doubt that modern day teenagers are that familiar with them.

I'm sure it'll be done badly.
 
Ravenloft was never meant to be an accurate portrayal of Romania.  It was basically the world of Universal monsters and Hammer films.  And those movies have stereotypical "gypsies" in them.  So you're left with this awkward situation.  You say "real Roma aren't like the gypsies in the movies", but what you actually want are the movie characters.  So you call them Vistani, and you're free to include movie stereotypes if you wish.  But then someone comes in and insists that your gypsy stereotype group, who you renamed to something else, has to look like the real life people who are supposedly nothing like the movies...
 
It would be like if you had a tribe of cannibals in a jungle adventure game.  And to get away from the troublesome African tribe stereotypes, you change them and make them nonhumans who practice necromancy.  So they're now a tribe of human-eating hobgoblins, who use bone magic and wear colorful tribal masks.  Like you can still kinda tell what they're going for, but they changed it to avoid implications of racism.  And then somebody comes in and says "that's not what real African tribes are like!"  Yeah no shit.  The more you make them like a real world culture, the more trouble you can get in.  The purpose is to hit the tropes of the genre while avoiding any racist connotations.
 
I'm not really sure how much of a market exists for traditional Ravenloft anymore though.  The movies it is based on are really old, and I kinda doubt that modern day teenagers are that familiar with them.

Because of the actions of every elf player, ever?

I don't understand.  Doesn't this eliminate basic exploration and dungeon-delving altogether?  Now the party is either scouting for colonization or simply home invaders.  Oh well.

Meh. I have plenty of material from 2.5, 3.0, and Pathfinder 1.0 to last the rest of my life. They can do whatever makes them happy. 

I don't have that book, but think of it like this. 
 
Summon lets you bring forth a creature that has 5 character points for every 1 point you invest in the Summon power.  So a 9 point Summon (with no limitations on it) would allow you to use the power and create a 45 character point creature.  At its base level, the creature just appears, it doesn't have to obey you automatically (you can make an opposed Ego roll to force them to obey, but at its base level they only obey for a few phases).  A 20 point Summon would allow you to bring forth a creature with 100 character points, which is significantly more powerful.
 
If you add the Limitations gestures (-1/4) and incantations (another -1/4), then your 9 point summon would actually give you 14 active points of power (reduced to 9 points real cost).  Thus you are Summoning a 70 point creature.  Of course, your 20 point Summon would then create a 150 point creature, which is again far more powerful.
 
You can use Summon every phase.  If you are a 4 Speed character and have "Summon Skeleton" as a power (requiring gestures and incantations, and creating a 70 point skeleton), then you can use the power on Segment 3, again on Segment 6, then again on Segment 9, and finally on Segment 12.  You can keep doing it every phase, getting 4 Skeletons each Turn, as long as you have the necessary Endurance (and presumably some way to get them to do what you want).  There is a 5 point Adder that you can slap on the Summon power that doubles the number of creatures created, and you can buy it multiple times.  So for +5 points, you get 2 Skeletons.  For +10 points, you get 4 Skeletons.  For +15 points, you get 8 Skeletons, and so on.  But you're spending more points that could have instead been spent on more powerful creatures.
 
Wizard A and Wizard B both buy the Summon power.  Wizard A starts with Summon Skeleton, 14 active points with gestures and incantations, which reduces the cost to 9 points.  This lets him call forth a single 70 point Skeleton every phase.  He then upgrades it to Summon Skeleton Army, with three 5 point doublings.  Now he Summons 8 skeletons every phase.  This power has 29 active points, reduced to 19 points real cost with the limitations.  Every time Wizard A uses his power, he brings forth 8 skeleton warriors who each cost 70 points.  That can quickly become a sizable horde.  His advantage over someone without the 5 point doublings is that he can summon his army faster.  There was no upper limit to the number of skeletons he could have created, even before the doublings.  It just would have taken 8 times as long.
 
Wizard B doesn't bother with Summon Skeleton Army.  Instead he spends the same 19 points on Summon Vampire.  With gestures and incantations, he can Summon a single 145 point creature.  So which is better to have, a group of 8 kinda dangerous skeletons, or one badass vampire?  Because that's the choice you're making.  Increasing the size of your summoned horde doesn't really cost all that much, but there's still a trade-off.  You're giving up the ability to take more powerful creatures.

In the long term order isn't maintained by laws, or by force, or by fear. Order is maintained when the majority of citizens believe in the rightness of the system they live under. If that belief is lost, chaos is just a matter of time.

Can we at least agree that one-asshole-per-person is not a problem?

You are not the only one! Very insightful, unbiased and looking at it from every perceivable angle - not this "black-white-this side is 100% right and you are all nogoodniks" that most of the media, "activist", pundits  and politicians are spreading.
Let's hate - in the name of whatever ...
 
I long for times when problems are addressed in a civilized, fact-based manner again, when arguments are exchanged and listened to from both sides. Hell, even the 80s with the Cold War getting hotter were better than today in this regard - and then the USA and the USSR had literally a gun at each others' temple and whispering "Hey, bub! Want some?"
 
I am so tired and fed up with screaming people on either side of the fence unwilling (and I fear - becoming unable) to even considering that the other side might have half a point here and there.
 
Democracy is the rule of the majority while looking out that the minority still holds rights that defend them  and make them NOT wonder if they are alive or in a cage tomorrow. Democracy is - for better or worse - working on compromise within a society.

First , thanks for the entire post. It was pretty insightful  over all, but this part is the ONE area I was like "I did not know ANY of this part" . Given how some folks get ..kind of aggressive when on steroids (at least types) I can see why this complicates things.
 
So you may think no one is reading your wall of text, but, well, I learned something today.

To be fair to Hugh, I had the exact same question as I read through this thread.
 
I didn't pipe up on it, though, because 1) I have stated before that I am taking less of an interest to the board and am becoming less active and 2) I eventually realized that neither the title nor the question in the first post specified a request for more than "the differences;" it didn't ask mechanical or SFX.  Like Hugh, I had _assumed_ mechanical, since values were mentioned, but without specification, I realized I could be wrong about intent, so..
 
 
 
However, I noticed something that can be derived from these three comments:
 
 
 
 
 
 
There's liable to be some confusion, as I'm going to try to keep this short.  My apologies in advance:
 
All of those can be applied to the exact same special effect defined as "complex gestures."   Every one of them.
 
You have to do the Hokey Pokey; that's the SFX.   It's a dance, and you can be restrained from doing it.  That is restrainable.
 
interestingly, "Looks like a Dork while doing it"-- that's valid.  I mean, you _are_ doing the Hokey Pokey.
 
"Looks like a Dork," however, is not by default Restrainable.
 
Thus, it's quite possible that your spell requires the caster to dance the Hokey Pokey.  Two casters have this spell.  One of them has "Complex Gestures: Restrainable"   and the other has "Looks like a Dork while casting."
 
Special-effects-wise, Caster A can be tackled and prevented from casting this spell.
 
Caster B, as he has not chosen Restrainable, cannot be stopped.  
 
 
Yeah, it's a bit of a "goes nowhere" observation, but it's such a strong demonstration of the core principles of this game: separation of mechanics and effects.  It's an illustration of why I get so irritated when I see conversations including things like "well if that's your power, then you _must_ take this limitation or this advantage because your SFX.... etc, etc."  Even if you can't stop believing that, make an effort to stop spreading it.  New players might stumble across it, and it's not going to help.    Certainly suggested considerations like "well, you could model it this way, which allows a cost-reduction for the weakness or lack of ability that you have already decided you want---"  Let's say Fire Blast is reduced 50% when underwater is something that the player has already stated he thought would be interesting.   These sorts of suggestions are not only creative, they are useful and helpful both as teaching tools to help someone get their head around an idea and to demonstrate that the system is flexible.  You know: give them some examples and practice thinking about how their conception could be beneficial or tweaked a bit.
 
Telling them it _must_ be something:  Oh, you have have to do a little dance.  You have to call that Gestures or you have to call it restrainable or whatever--  that's not only confusing (and thus unhelpful), it's in complete defiance of the single most core principle of the game.  Ultimately, it's between the GM of one group and the players in that group to decide what does and doesn't fly, and while they may go outside that group for help or ideas, they certainly don't need us screwing up their games for them or telling them they are wrong, particularly when they likely aren't.
 

Limitation: Looks like a dork while using it (-1/4 to -1/2, depending on how mean your fellow PCs are).

I'm not going to try to get into an argument on this.  I'm just going to state things as I see them.  It will be kinda long.  I am a defense attorney and was a public defender for nearly a decade.  Some of this will probably offend some people here.  So be it.  I believe everyone here has the same general good goals and none of us are trying to be irrational or hateful.
 
 
 
This is, at the same time, both a massive problem within our justice system and also a fairly minor one.  In a country of 1/3 of a billion people, about 1000 people a year are shot and killed by the police.  Of those, about 10% are reported to be unarmed.  Some percentage of the unarmed people are either fleeing or attempting to commit suicide by cop (however I was unable to find those numbers).. A large number of them are also mentally ill (so they do unexpected things).  Approximately 40% of the unarmed people who are killed by police are black (mostly young males).  About 13% of the US population is black, but they make up a disproportionate share of all inmates in US prisons (accurate numbers are difficult to find quickly on this topic -- I've seen statistics anywhere from 1/3 to more than half, these numbers also appear to be going down).  For raw population numbers, unarmed black people are killed at a rate 3 times what we would expect.  But compared to how likely they are to be arrested by police, the numbers are much closer (this of course, makes us ask whether black people are unfairly targeted by police in the first place).  However this does mean that police do not appear to be more likely to shoot black people in any given encounter (i.e., per contact).
 
Any stance of "even one person being wrongfully killed is unacceptable" doesn't work for me.  Mistakes happen.  Accidents happen.  Outright murders happen.  We want to minimize these of course, but as TrickstaPriest said above with the person who set a cop on fire in Mexico, "that one person is an asshole and an instigator".  Police departments in the United States are local.  They vary from massive organizations like the NYPD and LAPD, down to small towns with two part time cops.  You cannot have such a dispersed system and also guarantee against one person being "an asshole and an instigator".  You cannot say that the entire justice system failed just because Officer Hardass decided to put a bullet in somebody.  Single digit incidents across a country of 330 million people are not a sign of a manifestly unjust system.
 
It's also possible for rational people to disagree on individual police shootings.  I have not seen the video of the guy who got shot in the back after he stole the cop's taser, but I've talked to several people who have.  Everybody seemed to have their own opinion on it.  I've seen police shooting videos where I thought the officer should be prosecuted immediately, and other people say "nah, it's fine".  And I've seen others where I thought it was perfectly justified (or at least understandable) and the cop gets arrested.  People are going to see things differently.
 
However, all that said, there are serious problems within our justice system.  We need to change these things.  Some of these are going to be extremely difficult to fix, and right now nobody is talking about many of them.  Some of them would be easy to fix, but nobody is lifting a finger to do what is necessary.
 
--Police unions have far too much power and influence.  In my state, when an officer shoots a suspect he is not questioned about it until days later when he's had a chance to consult with his union rep and an attorney.  That's part of their contract (source: a buddy of mine who is an ex-cop).  Bad cops get rehired or are never fired in the first place because of union contracts.  Even when something is "makes national news" bad, the unions are reluctant to go against their officers.
 
--There is a political problem within the Democratic Party right now.  African Americans vote Democrat about 90% of the time, but police unions are also major contributors to Democratic politicians.  Taking on the unions is a career killer for local Democrat politicians.  Republican politicians have no real incentive to take action (though they try to combat public sector unions on general principle, it's not Republicans who are getting shot), and Democratic politicians are paralyzed.  Two of their largest voting blocks are in opposition to each other here.
 
--Cops aren't tested for steroids.  This is a major problem, it's obvious, and no one has ever mentioned it.  I've seen these guys in the courtroom.  Everybody knows who they are.  They're clearly juicing and everyone knows it.  Yet cops aren't drug tested, and they certainly aren't tested for steroids.  I'd say at least 10% of cops are juicing.  Now don't get me wrong -- I was once in a room with a client who was one big mean son of a bitch, he got mad at me and jumped out of his chair at me.  I was very happy to see Officer Zangief (clearly taking some "Vitamin S") come in and smash that sucker into the wall.  Cops deal with dangerous people, that's why so many of them take steroids.  But we need to start doing something about it.
 
--No one is keeping track of bad cops.  Social media companies, instead of doing something useless like saying "we support BLM", could actually do something helpful.  It would be trivially easy for Facebook or Google or another company that already mines our data to create an algorithm that scans news reports for instances of police violence and assembles a database.  When somebody tweets out "my cousin Ricky got shot by the police", people should be collecting that.  When a cop gets fired for illegal use of force, that should follow him.  As it is, it's too easy for him to go to a different department and get hired there.  But if a report was widely available, and you could see this guy had already shot 3 people and had 15 complaints against him?  A lot less bad cops would get rehired.
 
--Police are not trained enough in de-escalation.  They're not trained enough, period.  But they're especially not trained in de-escalation.  Every cop who goes through the academy should know how to approach a suspect who is not actively resisting and talk to him in such a way that they don't start actively resisting.  Too many cops go to violent confrontation too quickly.  This is a problem that can be fixed, but it doesn't get fixed by spending less money.
 
--Local prosecutors have very close relationships with the police.  Prosecutors are friends with cops.  They marry cops.  They work with cops every day.  It's hard to file charges against a guy who came to your cookout a month ago.  Last week you were asking him how his wife and new baby are doing, this week you're trying to decide if it was okay for him to shoot a guy who had been to prison three times.  In most circumstances, the cop gets the benefit of the doubt.  Federal prosecutors need to take a much more active role in reviewing state police shootings.  This is something the President can order at any time (yes, Trump could have already done it, but so could have Obama).  Again, it's politically costly.  In some states, apparently DAs have to present charges against officers to a grand jury.  This is a total cop-out, when they say "the grand jury cleared the officer", because grand juries only see the evidence the DA presents.  It's easy to softball it and intentionally fail to present enough evidence.  Federal prosecutors and state AGs should review every single shooting that is even remotely questionable.
 
--There are, in fact, some racist policies in use when it comes to law enforcement.  I once had a case where a dozen police officers pulled up to a run down apartment building and jumped out, guns drawn.  They rushed forward like they were conducting a raid.  They didn't have any specific information about a crime being committed, they were simply flushing out anybody who ran.  Of course my client and several others saw the cops coming and bolted.  Fleeing from the police gives them probable cause to stop you, so 10 seconds later my client gets tackled and of course he's got a bunch of drugs on him and a gun.  The problem is that my client was a total scumbag who had been to prison multiple times, so the judge was not interested in my argument that the police department's actions were unfair.  Of course they don't do this in neighborhoods where dentists and accountants live.  They only do it in high crime (i.e., black) neighborhoods.  To put a stop to this, you're going to need groups like the ACLU or other well funded organizations to actually look at every arrest in a given city, look for disparate policing policies, and then sue them in federal court.  But that's a lot of work, and nobody wants to do it.
 
 
 
All that said, there are problems in the black community as well.
 
--Young black men have a skewed perception of how likely they are to get shot.  The actual chances of getting shot are incredibly low, but I've seen tons of videos of black men talking about how afraid they are when they are pulled over.  I understand why they are (the same reason I don't want to swim in the ocean -- JAWS will get me).  But this perception is not accurate.  It also makes them more likely to panic and resist arrest.  And that makes cops more nervous and more likely to use force.  I've read several articles and facebook posts written by black people talking about how they had done nothing wrong, but they were so worried that they almost ran anyway.  We've got to publicize that it's actually exceedingly rare for an unarmed person of any race to get shot.
 
--While there are issues with a disparity in justice (black men prosecuted more harshly than white men), there's also a real problem in that a small number of young black men commit a very large percentage of the crime.  I once represented a client who said you weren't considered "a man" in his family until you did a 20 year prison sentence.  That's heartbreaking but it's true.  It isn't racially discriminatory policing that is locking many of these guys up (that guy did a home invasion robbery on Christmas and pointed a gun with a laser sight at a baby).  Many times an innocent person is stopped because he "matched a description of a suspect".  But I don't think the cops are always lying when they say that.  Frequently they are investigating a real crime, and the only description they have is "black male, average height, wearing a dark jacket".
 
--There's also a fairly high tolerance for "victimless crimes" in poor African American communities.  Driving without insurance?  Driving while a tail light is burned out?  Not using your turn signal?  Not wearing your seat belt?  "That's not even really a crime, man."  I actually had a client say that.  Combine that with a tendency to not pay tickets and you get suspended driver's licenses and arrest warrants.  A huge percentage of my public defender clients got pulled over for some dumb traffic violation, the officer finds out they have a warrant because they didn't show up for court on the previous dumb traffic ticket, he goes to arrest them and then they would do something stupid (like run).  And of course then there's something illegal in the car.  I would suspect the cop of being a lying racist jerk, and I'd ask my client about it and he'd say "aww, hell no man I never use my turn signal..."  Well, shit.
 
 
 
Nobody is going to listen to any of my suggestions on how to fix any of this, and my post has gone on too long anyway.  In real life I've remained quiet on this, it's too radioactive to touch, especially since I know a lot of cops and judges and prosecutors (many of whom are black).  But I figured I'd try to offer my perspective on these problems.

I'm not going to try to get into an argument on this.  I'm just going to state things as I see them.  It will be kinda long.  I am a defense attorney and was a public defender for nearly a decade.  Some of this will probably offend some people here.  So be it.  I believe everyone here has the same general good goals and none of us are trying to be irrational or hateful.
 
 
 
This is, at the same time, both a massive problem within our justice system and also a fairly minor one.  In a country of 1/3 of a billion people, about 1000 people a year are shot and killed by the police.  Of those, about 10% are reported to be unarmed.  Some percentage of the unarmed people are either fleeing or attempting to commit suicide by cop (however I was unable to find those numbers).. A large number of them are also mentally ill (so they do unexpected things).  Approximately 40% of the unarmed people who are killed by police are black (mostly young males).  About 13% of the US population is black, but they make up a disproportionate share of all inmates in US prisons (accurate numbers are difficult to find quickly on this topic -- I've seen statistics anywhere from 1/3 to more than half, these numbers also appear to be going down).  For raw population numbers, unarmed black people are killed at a rate 3 times what we would expect.  But compared to how likely they are to be arrested by police, the numbers are much closer (this of course, makes us ask whether black people are unfairly targeted by police in the first place).  However this does mean that police do not appear to be more likely to shoot black people in any given encounter (i.e., per contact).
 
Any stance of "even one person being wrongfully killed is unacceptable" doesn't work for me.  Mistakes happen.  Accidents happen.  Outright murders happen.  We want to minimize these of course, but as TrickstaPriest said above with the person who set a cop on fire in Mexico, "that one person is an asshole and an instigator".  Police departments in the United States are local.  They vary from massive organizations like the NYPD and LAPD, down to small towns with two part time cops.  You cannot have such a dispersed system and also guarantee against one person being "an asshole and an instigator".  You cannot say that the entire justice system failed just because Officer Hardass decided to put a bullet in somebody.  Single digit incidents across a country of 330 million people are not a sign of a manifestly unjust system.
 
It's also possible for rational people to disagree on individual police shootings.  I have not seen the video of the guy who got shot in the back after he stole the cop's taser, but I've talked to several people who have.  Everybody seemed to have their own opinion on it.  I've seen police shooting videos where I thought the officer should be prosecuted immediately, and other people say "nah, it's fine".  And I've seen others where I thought it was perfectly justified (or at least understandable) and the cop gets arrested.  People are going to see things differently.
 
However, all that said, there are serious problems within our justice system.  We need to change these things.  Some of these are going to be extremely difficult to fix, and right now nobody is talking about many of them.  Some of them would be easy to fix, but nobody is lifting a finger to do what is necessary.
 
--Police unions have far too much power and influence.  In my state, when an officer shoots a suspect he is not questioned about it until days later when he's had a chance to consult with his union rep and an attorney.  That's part of their contract (source: a buddy of mine who is an ex-cop).  Bad cops get rehired or are never fired in the first place because of union contracts.  Even when something is "makes national news" bad, the unions are reluctant to go against their officers.
 
--There is a political problem within the Democratic Party right now.  African Americans vote Democrat about 90% of the time, but police unions are also major contributors to Democratic politicians.  Taking on the unions is a career killer for local Democrat politicians.  Republican politicians have no real incentive to take action (though they try to combat public sector unions on general principle, it's not Republicans who are getting shot), and Democratic politicians are paralyzed.  Two of their largest voting blocks are in opposition to each other here.
 
--Cops aren't tested for steroids.  This is a major problem, it's obvious, and no one has ever mentioned it.  I've seen these guys in the courtroom.  Everybody knows who they are.  They're clearly juicing and everyone knows it.  Yet cops aren't drug tested, and they certainly aren't tested for steroids.  I'd say at least 10% of cops are juicing.  Now don't get me wrong -- I was once in a room with a client who was one big mean son of a bitch, he got mad at me and jumped out of his chair at me.  I was very happy to see Officer Zangief (clearly taking some "Vitamin S") come in and smash that sucker into the wall.  Cops deal with dangerous people, that's why so many of them take steroids.  But we need to start doing something about it.
 
--No one is keeping track of bad cops.  Social media companies, instead of doing something useless like saying "we support BLM", could actually do something helpful.  It would be trivially easy for Facebook or Google or another company that already mines our data to create an algorithm that scans news reports for instances of police violence and assembles a database.  When somebody tweets out "my cousin Ricky got shot by the police", people should be collecting that.  When a cop gets fired for illegal use of force, that should follow him.  As it is, it's too easy for him to go to a different department and get hired there.  But if a report was widely available, and you could see this guy had already shot 3 people and had 15 complaints against him?  A lot less bad cops would get rehired.
 
--Police are not trained enough in de-escalation.  They're not trained enough, period.  But they're especially not trained in de-escalation.  Every cop who goes through the academy should know how to approach a suspect who is not actively resisting and talk to him in such a way that they don't start actively resisting.  Too many cops go to violent confrontation too quickly.  This is a problem that can be fixed, but it doesn't get fixed by spending less money.
 
--Local prosecutors have very close relationships with the police.  Prosecutors are friends with cops.  They marry cops.  They work with cops every day.  It's hard to file charges against a guy who came to your cookout a month ago.  Last week you were asking him how his wife and new baby are doing, this week you're trying to decide if it was okay for him to shoot a guy who had been to prison three times.  In most circumstances, the cop gets the benefit of the doubt.  Federal prosecutors need to take a much more active role in reviewing state police shootings.  This is something the President can order at any time (yes, Trump could have already done it, but so could have Obama).  Again, it's politically costly.  In some states, apparently DAs have to present charges against officers to a grand jury.  This is a total cop-out, when they say "the grand jury cleared the officer", because grand juries only see the evidence the DA presents.  It's easy to softball it and intentionally fail to present enough evidence.  Federal prosecutors and state AGs should review every single shooting that is even remotely questionable.
 
--There are, in fact, some racist policies in use when it comes to law enforcement.  I once had a case where a dozen police officers pulled up to a run down apartment building and jumped out, guns drawn.  They rushed forward like they were conducting a raid.  They didn't have any specific information about a crime being committed, they were simply flushing out anybody who ran.  Of course my client and several others saw the cops coming and bolted.  Fleeing from the police gives them probable cause to stop you, so 10 seconds later my client gets tackled and of course he's got a bunch of drugs on him and a gun.  The problem is that my client was a total scumbag who had been to prison multiple times, so the judge was not interested in my argument that the police department's actions were unfair.  Of course they don't do this in neighborhoods where dentists and accountants live.  They only do it in high crime (i.e., black) neighborhoods.  To put a stop to this, you're going to need groups like the ACLU or other well funded organizations to actually look at every arrest in a given city, look for disparate policing policies, and then sue them in federal court.  But that's a lot of work, and nobody wants to do it.
 
 
 
All that said, there are problems in the black community as well.
 
--Young black men have a skewed perception of how likely they are to get shot.  The actual chances of getting shot are incredibly low, but I've seen tons of videos of black men talking about how afraid they are when they are pulled over.  I understand why they are (the same reason I don't want to swim in the ocean -- JAWS will get me).  But this perception is not accurate.  It also makes them more likely to panic and resist arrest.  And that makes cops more nervous and more likely to use force.  I've read several articles and facebook posts written by black people talking about how they had done nothing wrong, but they were so worried that they almost ran anyway.  We've got to publicize that it's actually exceedingly rare for an unarmed person of any race to get shot.
 
--While there are issues with a disparity in justice (black men prosecuted more harshly than white men), there's also a real problem in that a small number of young black men commit a very large percentage of the crime.  I once represented a client who said you weren't considered "a man" in his family until you did a 20 year prison sentence.  That's heartbreaking but it's true.  It isn't racially discriminatory policing that is locking many of these guys up (that guy did a home invasion robbery on Christmas and pointed a gun with a laser sight at a baby).  Many times an innocent person is stopped because he "matched a description of a suspect".  But I don't think the cops are always lying when they say that.  Frequently they are investigating a real crime, and the only description they have is "black male, average height, wearing a dark jacket".
 
--There's also a fairly high tolerance for "victimless crimes" in poor African American communities.  Driving without insurance?  Driving while a tail light is burned out?  Not using your turn signal?  Not wearing your seat belt?  "That's not even really a crime, man."  I actually had a client say that.  Combine that with a tendency to not pay tickets and you get suspended driver's licenses and arrest warrants.  A huge percentage of my public defender clients got pulled over for some dumb traffic violation, the officer finds out they have a warrant because they didn't show up for court on the previous dumb traffic ticket, he goes to arrest them and then they would do something stupid (like run).  And of course then there's something illegal in the car.  I would suspect the cop of being a lying racist jerk, and I'd ask my client about it and he'd say "aww, hell no man I never use my turn signal..."  Well, shit.
 
 
 
Nobody is going to listen to any of my suggestions on how to fix any of this, and my post has gone on too long anyway.  In real life I've remained quiet on this, it's too radioactive to touch, especially since I know a lot of cops and judges and prosecutors (many of whom are black).  But I figured I'd try to offer my perspective on these problems.

I'm not going to try to get into an argument on this.  I'm just going to state things as I see them.  It will be kinda long.  I am a defense attorney and was a public defender for nearly a decade.  Some of this will probably offend some people here.  So be it.  I believe everyone here has the same general good goals and none of us are trying to be irrational or hateful.
 
 
 
This is, at the same time, both a massive problem within our justice system and also a fairly minor one.  In a country of 1/3 of a billion people, about 1000 people a year are shot and killed by the police.  Of those, about 10% are reported to be unarmed.  Some percentage of the unarmed people are either fleeing or attempting to commit suicide by cop (however I was unable to find those numbers).. A large number of them are also mentally ill (so they do unexpected things).  Approximately 40% of the unarmed people who are killed by police are black (mostly young males).  About 13% of the US population is black, but they make up a disproportionate share of all inmates in US prisons (accurate numbers are difficult to find quickly on this topic -- I've seen statistics anywhere from 1/3 to more than half, these numbers also appear to be going down).  For raw population numbers, unarmed black people are killed at a rate 3 times what we would expect.  But compared to how likely they are to be arrested by police, the numbers are much closer (this of course, makes us ask whether black people are unfairly targeted by police in the first place).  However this does mean that police do not appear to be more likely to shoot black people in any given encounter (i.e., per contact).
 
Any stance of "even one person being wrongfully killed is unacceptable" doesn't work for me.  Mistakes happen.  Accidents happen.  Outright murders happen.  We want to minimize these of course, but as TrickstaPriest said above with the person who set a cop on fire in Mexico, "that one person is an asshole and an instigator".  Police departments in the United States are local.  They vary from massive organizations like the NYPD and LAPD, down to small towns with two part time cops.  You cannot have such a dispersed system and also guarantee against one person being "an asshole and an instigator".  You cannot say that the entire justice system failed just because Officer Hardass decided to put a bullet in somebody.  Single digit incidents across a country of 330 million people are not a sign of a manifestly unjust system.
 
It's also possible for rational people to disagree on individual police shootings.  I have not seen the video of the guy who got shot in the back after he stole the cop's taser, but I've talked to several people who have.  Everybody seemed to have their own opinion on it.  I've seen police shooting videos where I thought the officer should be prosecuted immediately, and other people say "nah, it's fine".  And I've seen others where I thought it was perfectly justified (or at least understandable) and the cop gets arrested.  People are going to see things differently.
 
However, all that said, there are serious problems within our justice system.  We need to change these things.  Some of these are going to be extremely difficult to fix, and right now nobody is talking about many of them.  Some of them would be easy to fix, but nobody is lifting a finger to do what is necessary.
 
--Police unions have far too much power and influence.  In my state, when an officer shoots a suspect he is not questioned about it until days later when he's had a chance to consult with his union rep and an attorney.  That's part of their contract (source: a buddy of mine who is an ex-cop).  Bad cops get rehired or are never fired in the first place because of union contracts.  Even when something is "makes national news" bad, the unions are reluctant to go against their officers.
 
--There is a political problem within the Democratic Party right now.  African Americans vote Democrat about 90% of the time, but police unions are also major contributors to Democratic politicians.  Taking on the unions is a career killer for local Democrat politicians.  Republican politicians have no real incentive to take action (though they try to combat public sector unions on general principle, it's not Republicans who are getting shot), and Democratic politicians are paralyzed.  Two of their largest voting blocks are in opposition to each other here.
 
--Cops aren't tested for steroids.  This is a major problem, it's obvious, and no one has ever mentioned it.  I've seen these guys in the courtroom.  Everybody knows who they are.  They're clearly juicing and everyone knows it.  Yet cops aren't drug tested, and they certainly aren't tested for steroids.  I'd say at least 10% of cops are juicing.  Now don't get me wrong -- I was once in a room with a client who was one big mean son of a bitch, he got mad at me and jumped out of his chair at me.  I was very happy to see Officer Zangief (clearly taking some "Vitamin S") come in and smash that sucker into the wall.  Cops deal with dangerous people, that's why so many of them take steroids.  But we need to start doing something about it.
 
--No one is keeping track of bad cops.  Social media companies, instead of doing something useless like saying "we support BLM", could actually do something helpful.  It would be trivially easy for Facebook or Google or another company that already mines our data to create an algorithm that scans news reports for instances of police violence and assembles a database.  When somebody tweets out "my cousin Ricky got shot by the police", people should be collecting that.  When a cop gets fired for illegal use of force, that should follow him.  As it is, it's too easy for him to go to a different department and get hired there.  But if a report was widely available, and you could see this guy had already shot 3 people and had 15 complaints against him?  A lot less bad cops would get rehired.
 
--Police are not trained enough in de-escalation.  They're not trained enough, period.  But they're especially not trained in de-escalation.  Every cop who goes through the academy should know how to approach a suspect who is not actively resisting and talk to him in such a way that they don't start actively resisting.  Too many cops go to violent confrontation too quickly.  This is a problem that can be fixed, but it doesn't get fixed by spending less money.
 
--Local prosecutors have very close relationships with the police.  Prosecutors are friends with cops.  They marry cops.  They work with cops every day.  It's hard to file charges against a guy who came to your cookout a month ago.  Last week you were asking him how his wife and new baby are doing, this week you're trying to decide if it was okay for him to shoot a guy who had been to prison three times.  In most circumstances, the cop gets the benefit of the doubt.  Federal prosecutors need to take a much more active role in reviewing state police shootings.  This is something the President can order at any time (yes, Trump could have already done it, but so could have Obama).  Again, it's politically costly.  In some states, apparently DAs have to present charges against officers to a grand jury.  This is a total cop-out, when they say "the grand jury cleared the officer", because grand juries only see the evidence the DA presents.  It's easy to softball it and intentionally fail to present enough evidence.  Federal prosecutors and state AGs should review every single shooting that is even remotely questionable.
 
--There are, in fact, some racist policies in use when it comes to law enforcement.  I once had a case where a dozen police officers pulled up to a run down apartment building and jumped out, guns drawn.  They rushed forward like they were conducting a raid.  They didn't have any specific information about a crime being committed, they were simply flushing out anybody who ran.  Of course my client and several others saw the cops coming and bolted.  Fleeing from the police gives them probable cause to stop you, so 10 seconds later my client gets tackled and of course he's got a bunch of drugs on him and a gun.  The problem is that my client was a total scumbag who had been to prison multiple times, so the judge was not interested in my argument that the police department's actions were unfair.  Of course they don't do this in neighborhoods where dentists and accountants live.  They only do it in high crime (i.e., black) neighborhoods.  To put a stop to this, you're going to need groups like the ACLU or other well funded organizations to actually look at every arrest in a given city, look for disparate policing policies, and then sue them in federal court.  But that's a lot of work, and nobody wants to do it.
 
 
 
All that said, there are problems in the black community as well.
 
--Young black men have a skewed perception of how likely they are to get shot.  The actual chances of getting shot are incredibly low, but I've seen tons of videos of black men talking about how afraid they are when they are pulled over.  I understand why they are (the same reason I don't want to swim in the ocean -- JAWS will get me).  But this perception is not accurate.  It also makes them more likely to panic and resist arrest.  And that makes cops more nervous and more likely to use force.  I've read several articles and facebook posts written by black people talking about how they had done nothing wrong, but they were so worried that they almost ran anyway.  We've got to publicize that it's actually exceedingly rare for an unarmed person of any race to get shot.
 
--While there are issues with a disparity in justice (black men prosecuted more harshly than white men), there's also a real problem in that a small number of young black men commit a very large percentage of the crime.  I once represented a client who said you weren't considered "a man" in his family until you did a 20 year prison sentence.  That's heartbreaking but it's true.  It isn't racially discriminatory policing that is locking many of these guys up (that guy did a home invasion robbery on Christmas and pointed a gun with a laser sight at a baby).  Many times an innocent person is stopped because he "matched a description of a suspect".  But I don't think the cops are always lying when they say that.  Frequently they are investigating a real crime, and the only description they have is "black male, average height, wearing a dark jacket".
 
--There's also a fairly high tolerance for "victimless crimes" in poor African American communities.  Driving without insurance?  Driving while a tail light is burned out?  Not using your turn signal?  Not wearing your seat belt?  "That's not even really a crime, man."  I actually had a client say that.  Combine that with a tendency to not pay tickets and you get suspended driver's licenses and arrest warrants.  A huge percentage of my public defender clients got pulled over for some dumb traffic violation, the officer finds out they have a warrant because they didn't show up for court on the previous dumb traffic ticket, he goes to arrest them and then they would do something stupid (like run).  And of course then there's something illegal in the car.  I would suspect the cop of being a lying racist jerk, and I'd ask my client about it and he'd say "aww, hell no man I never use my turn signal..."  Well, shit.
 
 
 
Nobody is going to listen to any of my suggestions on how to fix any of this, and my post has gone on too long anyway.  In real life I've remained quiet on this, it's too radioactive to touch, especially since I know a lot of cops and judges and prosecutors (many of whom are black).  But I figured I'd try to offer my perspective on these problems.