"Well-trained police following proper procedure are still going to be arresting people for mostly low-level offenses, and the burden will continue to fall primarily on communities of color because that is how the system is designed to operate—not because of the biases or misunderstandings of officers."
-Alex S. Vitale, The End of Policing
Is he saying members of “communities of color” commit more crime?
What he is saying is that the way the policing and criminal justice system is designed makes criminals out of PoC intentionally.
I think that is his point but he sense to be making it by saying the population in question commit more crime.
The fact is, they do but “color” is incidental. Poverty is a better predictor of criminal activity. There may be an intentional dimension to the oppression of the poor but I see other factors with greater explanatory power in accounting for disproportionate law enforcement contact.
Yes, economic status has a greater correlation with petty crime and contact with police (even when innocent of any crime), a point which is stressed much more heavily in the rest of the book. This is not incidental. It is intentional, and has been since the origin of American police forces.
What evidence and motivation is there for this intent?
I don't have the exact facts and figures off the top of my head. I highly suggest you give the book a read. The chapter on policing and homelessness elaborates this quite well. Many American police forces were created in the early days to control and banish the homeless and very poor, often newly arrived immigrants from eastern and southern Europe, by criminalizing everyday, normal activities.
