Steve Foley, Sports Talk Radio and Race Relations

A few days ago, San Diego Chargers' linebacker Steve Foley was shot by an off-duty police officer. You can read more about it here. It was around 3 in the morning and Mr. Foley was absolutely plastered, driving his car all over the road. The police officer tried to get him off the road and ended up in an altercation with him and eventually shot him as Mr. Foley's girlfriend tried to run him down with their car. Yesterday, the police released the results of Steve Foley's blood alchohol tests and it turned out he had three times the legal limit of alchohol in his blood.

Steve Foley is black and the officer is white.

One of my favorite radio stations is 1090 AM. They have covered this story heavily. As I listened on and off the first day after the shooting, the conversation revolved around the racial aspect of the story. Was Steve Foley followed because he was black? Did the officer have a history of racial issues? What is the reputation of the San Diego Police Department regarding race and shootings? The whole line of inquiry suggested the thought process, "racism is out there and we're going to find it."

It turned out that Steve Foley was driving while drunk. According to the officer, his speed varied from 30 MPH to 90 MPH and his driving was erratic. Given a blood alchohol level of 0.23, that sounds about right. As a point of reference, that blood alchohol level is what a normal person gets after about 8 Margaritas.

Imagine your own condition the last time you drank that much. I would have passed out long before then.

Steve Foley also has a history of violence. He is a 6'4", 265 pound professional athlete.

Removing the racial aspect, the factual situation was this. An off-duty police officer came across a car swerving all over the road, finally managed to pull it over and was cornered in a cul-de-sac by a huge, violent drunk and his girlfriend who remained in the car and tried to run him down. The officer fired warning shots and then finally shot the drunk in non-vital areas.

Steve Foley did not care if he killed you or me or wrecked our houses, cars and did whatever damaged you could do with a car. The police officer on his way home after his shift, risked his own life to get the drunk off the road and when confronted, disabled, but did not kill him.

Here's where we get into problems with 1090XX. If you are programmed to look for racial angles, you will eventually find them. In a population as large as the US, you can always find examples of racism. If it works one way for 1090XX, then it will work the other way for others. For some, this is an example of a giant, drunk, black thug attacking a white guy.

The problem is that it doesn't work either way. The people at 1090XX do not understand the use and analysis of statistics. Steve Foley's case is an example. Examples indicate mechanisms. They do not indicate trends. Group statistics indicate trends. Finding examples of racism or even racial confrontations in a population as large as San Diego or the US in general tells you nothing about the general situation.

That night, a black man tried to attack a white man and that white man shot that black man. The population of San Diego is more than 2,800,000. That night, 2,799,998 people of various races did not shoot each other.

Inter-racial violence is far more rare than intra-racial violence. It's not even close. However, if you are looking for it and you don't know how to interpret it, it seems as if it is far more common than it is.

The callers to 1090XX that I heard that day focused heavily on the racial aspect. The talk show hosts sympathized with them. When you sympathize with utter nonsense, you give it respectability. There are more than 96,000 blacks in San Diego. One of them that night was driving while hopelessly drunk and turned belligerent towards a police officer. 95,999 did not.

That night, 2,799,998 people of various races did not shoot each other. 95,999 blacks in particular did not disregard our safety by driving while hopelessly drunk and then attack a police officer. One did.

A more reasoned response would be for all of us to ask, regardless of race, "What's wrong with you, Mr. Foley?"