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Comment by alfalfasprout | Hacker News Reader

I agree that, in general, you're going to have biased training data (with a bias that's difficult to measure) and so inherently policing recommendations will be biased. This is particularly problematic when it comes to arrests for crimes that are inherently 'selective' in their enforcement. Eg; drug-related crimes, public intoxication, loitering, trespassing.

But the fact is... violent (fatal and nonfatal) crimes do happen at a much higher rate in poor neighborhoods. And black americans are calling the police at higher rates knowing full-well what that might imply [1](https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hpnvv0812.pdf). Anecdotally, when I lived in south side Chicago, when speaking to residents (that did not live in a predominantly affluent area like Hyde Park) one of the key complaints was that there simply wasn't enough police to respond to violent incidents.

There's a worrying trend in the conversation these days that has shifted from "there's a serious problem with racism in how police go about their job" to "we need less police". Folks in neighborhoods living with the constant threat of gang violence don't have the luxury to sit in their aeron chairs and argue about defunding the police. They face the very real threat of themselves or their loved ones being shot on the streets and statistically not by police.

View on HN

If we want to stop neighborhood gang violence in the long term, we need to work on why people join gangs, and what they are fighting over. We can't do that with police, who generally don't come into the situation until after it's too late and things have gone wrong.

But if most of our money is going to the police, then what resources are available to do the longer-term work on gangs and neighborhoods?

In software development terms (since this is HN), it would be like spending more and more money on QA and support because your products have so many problems. At some point a wise manager is going to say "wait, we should invest in better product development instead."

If you have infinite funding, you can do both. If you don't have infinite funding, you need to look at changing your allocation.

Talking with police is interesting. I talked policing with a police officer who had worked in New Zealand, the UK and Australia. These are countries that are relatively close in culture and the differences in policing described by the officer were striking. A lot of this was in relation to what the police role was and how other services cooperated (or didn’t). It would be great to have a description of system differences from an officer who had worked in more systems.

Could you expand on that? I'm really curious about what the differences were.

One starting observation I'd venture is those countries (and Canada) base their policing on Peelian principles, which establish a basis of policing and the relationship with the public. The US police culture had different roots.

Edit: for reference, the list of principles that were issued to each new police officer in London from 1829 onward.

1. The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder

2. The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police actions

3. Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observance of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public

4. The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force

5. Police seek and preserve public favour not by pandering to public opinion but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law

6. Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient

7. Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence

8. Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary

9. The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it

I find much wisdom there, and as I go down that list I find it hard not to think for each item of counter-anecdotes from the news about US policing in recent years.

The problem is that these principles work great in a homogeneous society where everyone has some kind of stake in the societal outcome. If you take people with a particular skin color and enslave them and otherwise systematically discriminate against them to varying degrees over the course of 400 years then these principles break down. It is going to take a long, long time -- probably multiple generations -- for American society to recover from 400 years of institutionalized racism.

Dude you have it backwards because the police in the US historically functioned to support slavery.

I bet you didn’t intend it to be but your argument basically blames the victim, when it’s the oppressor who is guilty of a crime - not the oppressed.

It’s the fault of the oppressor for oppressing, that is the blocker to progress, not the response of the oppressed.

The police are what need to change because they were and are a core part of the problem.

Your other points may also have relevance, but are irrelevant until the root cause - which I describe above - is addressed.

If your point was that because of America’s history of racial violence and terror, we need to defund (as opposed to reform with Peelian principles) the police since they were a key component of that system, or something along those lines, then please forgive my mis-understanding :).

I have no idea how you could construe what I wrote as disagreeing with you.

It sounds like I misread it - my apologies.

The reality is that US police kill all races at shockingly high rates. Black people are killed at a higher rate, but they are a minority of those killed. The problem of the US police system is excessive use of force against all races, compounded by racism.

Take the UK for example. The UK also has a history of importing slaves, it also has minorities living in poor neighborhoods, it has a similar degree of income inequality as the US, but the rate at which UK police kill civilians is orders of magnitude lower. The UK has as many police killings in a quarter century as the US has in a month, despite having a fifth of the population.

The US police system’s approach seems to be to fight fire with fire, not prevent the fires in the first place. Hence the call to defund the police and invest in prevention. But I think defunding is only part, the police need to be retrained to prevent and deescalate, not to respond to all resistance with deadly force.

I think the problem starts long before the deadly force. It's not just the rate at which black people are killed, it's the rate at which they are harassed for minor offenses like jaywalking.

The below reddit link includes a video of a black man being cited for driving 65 in a 70 area, and it hits home.

He has been pulled over many times in the area so is cautious, but it turns out that is a problem too. https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/h0xxva/comment/ftq6...

The UK isn’t a homogenous society like that and it also has hundreds of years of institutionalised racism to deal with. So I’m not sure that can be a reason why these principles wouldn’t work in the US.

Just to clarify: Canada could hardly be less homogenous and it works here. We call it a “cultural mosaic.” We even have a whole French province that demands special rules. We make it work... mostly alright. Our indigenous people’s are coming out of a few centuries of rough treatment though and there is a large and public reconciliation effort being made by the government and by many institutions. Hopefully the future will be better in that area

The guy was quite down on his time in Australia, and the aggressive policing he was expected to do. He contrasted that with his time in the UK and (particularly) in NZ the role seemed to allow more tolerance and leeway and was described by him as 'progressive'. The NZ police aim seemed to be to get compliance without police charges or fines by engaging in a less combative manner. He described quite harsh measures taken for minor disruptive behaviour and property damage (eg graffiti) in Australia. He had a low opinion of the way children were managed in all three countries. Police had little option but to lock young kids in cells when found out and about late at night in NZ. He had previously had the ability to get social services in the UK could house a child for a night. This was theoretically available in NZ, but never was in practice. So when they found a kid out in the small hours, if they couldn't find their caregivers, the kid had to go to a cell. He was very down about this. I left with the distinct impression that in order of severity of policing (for want of a better term) it went from a relatively relaxed and easy going NZ to UK then a quite severe and punitive Australia. It would be interesting to know if this is borne out by others impressions/data.

Aside from a notable exception in the Australian Capital, it's worth noting that in Australia you have the Federal Police (AFP) which is responsible for policing federal offences, but the states are responsible for enactment and policing of most things that Americans would consider "everyday policing".

The main issue this represents in your story is that it's not correct for the most part to present an "Australian experience" of policing, as the laws and enforcement are state level matters (of which there are ~8). A level i think we're missing might be city-based law enforcement? Each state has its own laws, population, and police force. while it's true we're not going to have as much variation as say France vs Sierra Leone, policing in QLD/ACT/NSW/NT/VIC is liable to be fundamentally different. furthermore, we've got federal gun control, and in a federal welfare system that would almost look like a universal income to many American contexts (indeed, I recall one discussion I had recently with an online friend about where the UBI rates being discussed as impossible were effectively the ones our welfare system currently provides), notwithstanding the difference in practice between remote indigenous/rural/urban/ migrant law enforcement.

All this can make it somewhat frustrating drawing analogies between the American experience and the local one (and I'm not just talking about Americans drawing lessons from ours, I also mean Australians being influenced by portrayals of American law enforcement and issues in popular media/culture). I imagine that's just as frustrating as pretending that law enforcement is the same across a nation as diverse as America.

The officer had worked in Queensland, but I don’t know what branch or department. I hadn’t considered the various branches that they have. I also wouldn’t be considering his views (via me) as anything other than a possibly interesting anecdote.

So for those wanting to know a bit more context (I'm genuinely bemused that someone can get downvoted on HN for provided factual context that's relevant for comparing the various police systems, but whatever...), Queensland is a primarily tropical/humid-subtropical/semi-arid state marginally bigger than Alaska and ~three times the size of Texas. Its held to be "relatively conservative" (the most conservative by some, holding some 7 of the 10 most right-wing electorates in the country at last election) by Australian standards, and is weird from a demographics point of view because its a state (possibly the only one?) in Australia where the majority of the population lives outside of the metro capital city area, and from a politics point of view its remarkable because its the only unicameral state parliamentary system in the Australian federation.

The state had 32 years of unbroken rule by the national party of Australia, which ended, not coincidentally to the end of the rule or this topic, after an inquiry into police corruption at the end of the 80's. It is also no coincidence that the state was the founding site of Australia's one nation party. As you move further north you begin to have more isolation and contact with indigenous communities, but its also a diverse and complex state, hosting both the brisbane/gold-coast and cairns areas, hubs of tourism that ferment more "liberal-eco" attitudes in contrast to some of the rural/farming/conservative bents. There is a significant military/mining presence in the north, as well as a significant retiree community/attraction because of the climate/weather.

I'm trying to describe it as objectively as I can. Its also stunningly beautiful and I grew up there :P I'd joke and say to my american readers, it would be like using florida/texas/alabama/bahamas/california as representative of the practices of US policing, but that is an honestly terrible analogy.

Thanks for both of these comments.

I"ve lived in all 3 of those countries (although have never worked for the police). My experience is just as your friend describes.

The cops in Oz are truly awful! There was a recent scandal where cops were strip-searching teenage girls just for fun. Cops there will also spend more time fining people on bicycles that don't have a bell, than they would in any important crimes.

It differs a bit by state. Apparently NSW and Vic have it worst, although QLD is right up there. Of course in the nation's capital, Canberra, they have the soft ones.

NZ police hiring process is pretty selective. They encourage you to have a higher learning degree to fallback on if you get taken out physically. On top of that they select for personality traits and culture fit so they end up with quite a homogeneous group of people. (And no, that does not mean all white..)

My run ins with them are generally pretty decent, mj isnt legal in nz but if they catch you they're generally more annoyed youre not doing it at home. Because then they have to write you up.

Australian police are much more americanized, theyre far more interested in catching people out with sniffer dogs at train stations and the like. NZ you dont see this sort of thing because criminalizing drugs is well proven to be ineffective.

I would say the major difference is that nz cops arent armed by default. Their guns are locked in the boot of their car and takes some serious circumstances to get them drawn.

America it seems like all you need is a traffic stop at night.

Why is the money given to the police the only allocation you are wanting to drain for this cause?

I don't think you can safely infer that absolute ("only") from the parent comment. Nevertheless...

1. Police are often a large percentage of a city budget, so if all city expenditures were decreased equally, it would inevitably look like the police were giving up more in absolute terms.

2. If the current solution to the problem is only more policing, then the only thing in the "solution to this problem" sub-budget that could be reduced is the police. In other words if X is the amount allocated to the problem and X is currently 100% police, it may be worth rebalancing X to a more diversified portfolio.

We can safely infer it because:

1. That's the only thing they suggested, and they framed it as either/or "If you have infinite funding, you can do both." (Implies we cant do both, because we obviously dont have infinite funding)

2. The overarching context of this conversation is about "defunding the police"

>If the current solution to the problem is only more policing

Is anyone seriously suggesting that? If so, its safe to discount these types of facile absolutist views ("we need more police to solve the problem" & "We need to eliminate the police to solve the problem")

Edit: I'd like to add thay I jusy reviewed my cities budget, and was surprised to see how large the law enforcement budget was compared to everything else. Thank you for bringing that to my attention.

Because budget is a tool for enforcing accountability when other tools have failed.

Police spending is inadequately large because the threat of a police walk-out scares city governments than the threat of any other department striking.

Seems flimsy to me. I can't see how this would produce the type of funding for social programs and schools.

Do we know in any definitive manner why people join gangs?

Relative safety and a lack of better options (perceived or real).

And what are the victims of violent crimes in those neighborhood do in the interim between the take resources from the already strained police departments and use them other for long-term measures? And I'm even assuming they even would have worthwhile results of course despite the premise that such programs would work is given in a matter of factly manner.

Put yourself in the shoes of an innocent PoC who's house just got robbed. Will not having cops available to your neighborhood to respond to the call make you feel more or less prejudiced against? Will they derive that much comfort in knowing that maybe, in one or two generations thing MIGHT be slightly less bad. And will the criminal elements, seeing the lowering in police response, not grow more bold and escalate?

Police should solve crime. Instead they are put in charge of everything that is not their job since there is no funding for mental health services, homeless, etc. etc.

People saying “defund the police” are not advocating the complete elimination of police forces; they’re advocating for the elimination of the 75-90% of things that police spend their time on that has zero or negative ROI for society. “Responding to legitimate crimes” is not one of those things.

Imagine arguing for a better world, instead of arguing about what your slogan means. You might be able to secure majority support for your policy proposal, instead of... checks YouGov poll again... 16% support, for the phrase "defund the police".

It’s also a nascent movement so it’s not surprising that many people don’t understand it. There are many successful policies that began with very low public support.

Yeah but the policy proposals spelled out earn actual majority support in polls, instead of tiny-minority support. It's a terrible self-defeating name/slogan.

I'm sorry but I find this kind of nitpicking in bad form. People are going out and taking action to bring attention to a problem in what is obviously the best way they can do so. If you have an idea about improving marketing, why not spend that energy helping/proposing something and volunteering?

Aside from that, I think there is more to consider than just what will appeal to public opinion; dry attempts to shift one’s words to match opinion polls is how many politicians lose elections by coming off as pandering. There is a sense of urgency and emotion in the original phrase that might be important in the broader picture and in the long term.

Except the areas that are dismantling their police forces. The expression means different things to different people

Could you be more specific, preferably with a link?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZevgdbMIB0&feature=youtu.be...

This is from Obama's town hall on June 3rd. The speaker is on the city council in Minneapolis, which seems to be leading the charge on this issue.

*This isn't an example of an area that is actively dismantling their police force. But this person's view is that the target should be no police at all, not reduced police responsibilities.

Minneapolis, for example. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/07/us/minneapolis-police-abo...

This solution urgently needs to be considered by San Francisco; the housing shortage will be immediately reversed and ASP will plummet, allowing POCs to populate the area, creating racial justice. https://www.zillow.com/minneapolis-mn/

But as the post above said:

> People saying “defund the police” are not advocating the complete elimination of police forces

And Minneapolis is absolutely not completely eliminating their police force.

Minneapolis council member Phillipe Cunningham said [1]:

> ”This isn't like, tomorrow we're not going to have a police department and we're going to have this huge gap," he said. "There will be intentional transition and investments and policies. I just want to make sure folks understand that there's not going to be suddenly no one to call when they need help.“

Councilman Jeremiah Ellison said [2]:

> “I don’t want there to be this confusion of just, that there’s going to be nobody doing anything, that there’s gonna be nobody solving murders. No,” Ellison said. “We’re going to absolutely make sure there are systems in place to address an active shooter situation, for example.”

In the link you just provided:

> Councilman Jeremiah Ellison, who represents North Minneapolis, said he would not frame what the Council was doing as defunding the police, but rather as “funding a different safety strategy.”

What concerns me is there are many people who are implying (if not outright saying) that people don’t want safety. And frankly that’s just silly. Every proposal I’ve seen has had community safety at its forefront. And a gradual shifting of funds towards alternatives to our (USians) current version of police does not mean that communities suddenly don’t value safety and stability.

Either way, Minneapolis is absolutely not going to eliminate their police departments, no matter how panicky certain news orgs try to make people. They’re going to actually, over time, dismantle their current clusterfuck which makes communities’ quality of life terrible, and actually implement real changes. What does this look like? We don’t know yet, but at least they’re doing more than empty platitudes. They readily say “We’re going to make mistakes along the way.” but at least they’re finally actually addressing the situation and willing to do the work.

[1] https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/06/07/vetoproof-majority-...

[2] https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/george-floyd/minne...

What I think society needs is an rspec of government spending (I'm using rspec as it is clear, or should be, what that implies). Test driven government, in essence.

Society is varied across county, city, state and country lines, and we are in our infancy in understanding what policies work, when, where and why. Combine that with no overt expected outcome, i.e. do we expect this policy to have an absolute outcome (assert(absolute_wealth > X)) or if we want a comparative outcome (assert(relative_income > 0.77)), and we end up with arguments about spending that are judged by rhetoric rather than success or failure on what should be a knowable scale.

Being more overt in how society judges government spending, especially when the goal is a social good, gives us the best shot at spending more on effective interventions, and less on ineffective ones. I think it also helps mitigate the circus nature of politics, where politicians gain kudos simply for with their spending decisions, and are rarely held accountable to actual outcomes. Like TDD, it would by no means be a panacea, but it would be a step in the right direction.

While it true that a policy can be fantastic for society, but exacerbate inequalities (i.e. get better at extracted value from smart people), or be terrible for society but reduce inequality (just make sure everyone has nothing and job done), if we at least tested the policy along some overt lines, and threw out the very worst policies, I can't imagine social spending would have worse outcomes, if only until the loopholes are worked out.

One of the reasons is: They can't trust the police to come out and take the people who cause trouble out.

Neighbourhood gangs, esp in chicago are territorial and they try to "protect the neighbourhoods." (I think they do cause more problems) This came up during the riots earlier this month. The police were stretched way too thin. Gangs did stop the looters and rioters from extending into their neighbourhoods. (Deeper within Logan Square and Little Village were an example)

why don’t they protect their neighborhoods from murder/drugs/fraud on a daily basis?

My thought is that they're like Uber they do the bare minimum enough to justify and recruit and then just do what they want.

The biggest reason why people join gangs is because they're there. It's a cultural problem above all else.

People like blaming it on poverty and lack of education funding and all kinds of other things. Yet compare former Soviet countries to the US. All of them spend less on education than the US does. Their populations are likely poorer than even the poor in the US. Their quality of life is lower, however, gangs aren't as big of an issue because they're not allowed to fester. The culture doesn't view gangs as something to aspire to. Being part of a gang isn't seen as "cool" by large groups of people nor is failing in education.

I do agree that a lack of education and subsequent opportunities is a large part of the problem, but it's probably not a lack of education funding that's causing it. Learning simply isn't considered "cool" by a lot of people. This puts them on a path with few opportunities, which leads to their kids having fewer opportunities.

What makes all of this even worse is that prisons in the US are breeding grounds for gangs. As long as things like that remain a part of society you won't be getting rid of gangs no matter how much money you throw at education.

Ex soviet block street gangs dont have easy access to firearms. Yes real organized crime have all the cool toys but general street hustling punks not as much. Not so in the us

> The biggest reason why people join gangs is because they're there. It's a cultural problem above all else.

I'm going to challenge you to find a citation to back up this belief before you continue going through life believing it, because it's a dangerous one, rooted in ignorance, that causes racism.

> that causes racism. Elaborate?

to say that the reason people join gangs is cultural implies that it's a "bad culture" problem. the reality of why people join gangs is more complicated and includes overpolicing, economic deprivation, legacies of slavery and racism, and other factors. but if we say "it's just their culture" then we commit a fallacy that leads us to say "black people are doing this to themselves because of their bad qualities X,Y,Z", and we may also end up saying "black people are poor and disenfranchised for the same bad culture problems as lead them to form gangs". this is a classic fallacy, throughout human history, in which oppressed groups of people have their character impugned based on ignorant readings of the ways that they cope with and adapt to their situation, and thus are blamed for their own oppression

While I acknowledge this (especially your last observation regarding the shameful state of U.S. prisons), and laugh at the ignorance of the claim that E.E. street gangs not having had easy access to firearms (they very much had, especially post-Yugoslav Wars), I still think that less policing has the potential to improve things.

Harsh policing would not change culture, even if it was done fairly, in the interest of community welfare. But U.S. policing is far from fair: U.S. police instill fear, rather than respect in the public, even in many moderately well-off areas that are free of street gangs. Legal and regulated prostitution, a definitive end to the drug war, would allow us to significantly defund the police, and pour those into efforts that could actually help. Moreover, this would decimate the revenue streams of many street gangs, which immediately reduces their "coolness factor".

There is some concern that most of the money freed up by this could end up poured into efforts that have a track record of not working. Alas, I think this is fairly likely, but it's no big loss: currently, all of that same money is being poured into different efforts that still definitely do not work. And if we get lucky, a fraction of the money may actually go to efforts that actually have a positive impact on cultural problems.

At least in Russia law enforcement and organized crime are fully integrated. People join police instead of gangs if the want to get into extortion and racket. When clans clash, you can see rooms full of money in a colonel’s house that would put a drug lord to shame. And prison culture might be getting less popular, but it still has a strong presence.

Street gangs are a problem in former Soviet states.

Here's some reading on them in Russia: https://www.londonmet.ac.uk/news/articles/svetlana-stephenso...

Most of our money doesn’t go to police. A search online reveals that in 2019 the US spent $300 billion on protection and security, which is police, fire department, and other related services. We spent $1.2 trillion on education.

> If we want to stop neighborhood gang violence in the long term, we need to work on why people join gangs, and what they are fighting over.

This may be utopian and fails the "perfect is the enemy of good" maxim. Meanwhile entire neighbourhoods if not cities (and sometimes entire countries) are anti-social, where the average resident has to suffer through a constant threat of violence.

There is short term and long term crime prevention. Long term, you are absolutely, 100% right about how to decrease crime. In the short term though, it would be nice if my friends bikes would stop getting stolen and if aggressive drunk people on the local train couldn’t steal someone’s hat and then ask everyone on board “you gonna do something about it?” (neither are gang issues, I wanted to choose non-extreme but real examples).

Ideally we could spend 100% on the long term but that is impractical.

> There's a worrying trend in the conversation these days that has shifted from "there's a serious problem with racism in how police go about their job" to "we need less police".

The conversations aren't about less police, they're about defunding the police and putting that money to better use. If the police choose to reduce their numbers in order to afford riot gear, tear gas guns, armored personnel carriers, warrior training, and all the other BS well then there won't be armies of them assaulting the public.

> Folks in neighborhoods living with the constant threat of gang violence don't have the luxury to sit in their aeron chairs and argue about defunding the police. They face the very real threat of themselves or their loved ones being shot on the streets and statistically not by police.

Throwing police at the problem of gang violence hasn't solved it. It hasn't made the neighborhoods safer. If overwhelming violence quelled violence, why has the Taliban outlasted two first world armies back by trillions of dollars?

> Throwing police at the problem of gang violence hasn't solved it. It hasn't made the neighborhoods safer.

That is not true. We have solid data from New York during the Giuliani era and more recently Camden, NJ. Whether or not we agree with how they accomplished that is another matter.

For example in New York a massive increase in arrests for nonviolent crime and much more proactively policing in order to check for warrants etc.

The truth is that nothing works in isolation. In New York we also saw a migration of younger professionals back into the city which reduced crime by forcing out poorer residents via gentrification.

The reality is that in any nation with a high prevalence of gun ownership combined with a large portion of the population without enough to provide for themselves and often, due to criminal records, no other choice but to commit crimes to provide for themselves.

Some of the reduction on crime may have come at the cost of racially biased stop and frisk.

This data shows 9 out of 10 people stopped were innocent. It also heavily showed that black and latino people were stopped much more frequently. https://www.nyclu.org/en/Stop-and-Frisk-data

I am glad that stop and frisk was ruled unconstitutional. https://civilrights.org/edfund/resource/nypds-infamous-stop-...

How stop and frisk was used in the Guiliani era was a lot different than the Bloomberg era. The practice went to court early on and was found constitutional. During Bloomberg’s stint it was expanded dramatically and that’s when it went back to court and was declared unlawful.

People keep referring to the NY Giuliani era, but I think it's time to read Freakonomics and discover the true reason of the crime decreasing and it was definitely NOT Guiiliani's master-skills in public administration. Whatever grace he ever had, he lost it when he showed the world his true colours recently.

> The conversations aren't about less police, they're about defunding the police

cutting police budget = less police

If they're unwilling to stop buying expensive toys then yes the reduction will hit labor.

And that's not necessarily a bad thing if those dollars are invested in other types of emergency responders.

I think you make a good point about the need for law enforcement in high-crime areas, though I disagree strongly that the only solution to that problem is a police force as currently constituted in the US. I think it's worth pointing out that police often has abysmal clearance rates and response times and often do not provide effective relief from the real problems you outline.

However, what I wanted to raise was this:

> the fact is... violent (fatal and nonfatal) crimes do happen at a much higher rate in poor neighborhoods

I think this statement is worth examining.

We certainly know that poor neighborhoods contact the police more often and that the police arrest more people (and record more crimes) in poor neighborhoods. As I said above, I have ever reason to believe residents of poor neighborhoods suffer crimes more often and that each crime does proportionally greater damage to their lives.

I also think that, as people get access to more resources, they are reasons to believe they are less likely to contact the police in all circumstances. That, of course, is the other way to read the stats you linked about poor neighborhoods contacting police. Police clearance rates are often low and contacting the police rarely directly addresses the harm caused by a crime. Also, because we are most likely to be harmed by people in our social circles, wealthier people are more likely to be harmed by more powerful people. These are all reasons that wealthier victims of crimes might choose not to contact the police and generate statistics about them. It's difficult to point to data about what isn't recorded (of course), but I think the feminist movement has done some great work trying to document how under-reported rapes (and other sexual crimes) are.

I just want to encourage skepticism about the systems through which data is collected. Structural elements strongly bias the data that's collected and, if we're serious about changing the system, I think it's advantageous to be skeptical of every element of the system.

> > the fact is... violent (fatal and nonfatal) crimes do happen at a much higher rate in poor neighborhoods

> I think this statement is worth examining.

Are you trying to suggest that there are a large number of unreported, undiscovered murders in more affluent areas? Because that's one of the the kinds of violent crime that we're pretty sure happen disproportionately in poor or black communities. (you're more likely to be murdered if you're poor, and more likely to be murdered if you're black, with IIRC the richest 20% of blacks still being murdered more often than the poorest 20% of non-hispanic whites)

> Are you trying to suggest that there are a large number of unreported, undiscovered murders in more affluent areas?

No. I didn't mention murders - is there a reason you're focused on them?

I'm saying that the same forces the put poor communities of color at risk for crime also likely disrupt the collection of statistics in more wealthy & powerful communities. This is important because both sides of the ratio matter. I believe there's more crime in vulnerable communities and I believe that we likely over-estimate how much more. This generates statistics that support the over-policing of poor communities.

> No. I didn't mention murders - is there a reason you're focused on them?

I focused on murders because the grandparent DID mention them, and because murder rate is much less exposed to reporting bias than other crimes.

That makes sense, but that's also why I pulled out the absolutest statement about all violent crime.

I agree that murder is one of the crimes least likely to go unreported, but they are still subject to the same pressures (even if those pressures are less efficacious). I'd be interested to see, for instance, if the ratio of murders to missing people changes as you move up the socioeconomic ladder.

That's a ratio I'd also like to see.

But there's another ratio - violent crimes per murder. If there's 100 assaults for every murder in wealthy white communities, and 100 assaults for every murder in poor black communities, that ALSO tells us something.

Murders are harder to skew. That means that you should focus MORE on those statistics, not less.

I agree, but I don't think the answer is pull the police out of predominantly black neighborhoods, which seems to be the motivation for shutting this program down.

Better training, more black officers, more rules around the use of force seem like better options. Of course, I don't really know what the people in these neighborhoods want so I am open to some alternatives, but ranting about predictive policing doesn't seem to solve much unless the answer really is defund the police.

I think the answer is to filter police who may have tendency to violence and racism out of the police force. There have been police who violate rights and the police departments keep them on even after the department or city pays huge settlements.

From my understanding police are able to leave departments and not necessarily have their complaint history follow them to new departments. So if they have racked up complaints then they could move to a new department and essentially have a clean record.

In the US, I believe the majority of states license law enforcement personnel so they couldn't easily move to another department.

> I think the answer is to filter police who may have tendency to violence and racism out of the police force.

If this solution ended up filtering out most black police, would racism be more or less of a problem than it is now?

I believe in positive reinforcement. As far as I know there are already more black people in the police squads in black neighbourhoods, but it can't hurt to get more in, especially in exposed areas. I don't believe in responding to higher crime rates with less police, however. The only alternative to that, is vigilantism. That will only lead to people buying weapons for personal protection, which will again only lead to more violence... On top of that, the violence due to "self protection" often takes the form of pure vengeance, and thus it is far more often illegitimate. People claim that more guns make people more polite, but why are there also more violence in gang neighbourhoods then? From my own culture, blood vengeance was for a time a necessary part of life due to the complete lack of law enforcement. It doesn't mean that life was "better" in any shape or form in the viking age, however. Far from it! Nay, it was with the advent of well organized local militias and police forces that my society became safe.

From studies I’ve read it is noted that most of those calls could be handled by a social worker or other non-violent responder.

The problem is the police budget has dwarfed and subsumed all non-violent requests as well.

Not sure You can always separate out violent from non-violent events. The police are expected to deal with a whole community in a holistic way.

It's easy - when someone wants a well-check or reports mental health or substance abuse or maybe even rape, that should go to someone other than police.

Showing up with a gun to some events is guaranteed to make things worse.

A rape investigation should be done by a social worker? Are they trained criminal investigators? Is a social worker familiar with the rules of criminal evidence? The job of the police is to investigate crimes and present evidence to the DA.

For welfare checks or mental illness incidents, then of course a social worker or analogue could be a better choice. For investigating criminal acts, that’s specifically what police do.

If someone calls in a rape, what happens when the suspect is still there? Rape is a violent crime and showing up with a gun is absolutely appropriate. It’s ridiculous to suggest violent crimes should be investigated by people who aren’t trained in criminal investigation nor trained to deal with violent and dangerous suspects. Is the social worker going to carry handcuffs? Are they going to be trained in apprehending suspects? If so, then that means the social worker is now a cop.

Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water here.

It would be perfectly possible to have people who are trained to preserve evidence who are not also traditional police. E.g. a medical examiner of some kind. You want someone to work with traumatized victims delicately, and a uniformed cop with a sidearm is not the ideal presence in that case. I don't want to get into suspect present/absent/whatever; but this type of crime isn't necessarily done by a random stranger in every case.

This hypothetical trained medical examiner won't be wearing a uniform? Seems like a uniform might be a good idea.

As to a sidearm – if I'd just been raped, someone showing up to protect me with a sidearm sounds like just the ticket.

Not sure what you are saying about a suspect not being a random stranger, that doesn't seem particularly relevant to whether or not the suspect is still there.

The baby’s already been tossed my friend.

The police actually have a terrible record when it comes to handling the crime of rape.

They downplay it, deprioritize it, etc. Read about the massive backlog of rape kits.

Literally - rape crimes that are reported to the police, and that they deprioritize or ignore.

https://www.rainn.org/articles/addressing-rape-kit-backlog

I'd love to hear from the folks who downvoted this, so I could improve this comment. Because there's a lot of empirical evidence that police departments (and our court system, to be fair - it's a social issue) historically have not handled rape cases well.

So, I'm all for reasonable discussion and receiving feedback about what was unclear or counterproductive in what I said.

But, I encourage future readers to take silence as a sign that people really didn't have any facts or logic to back up their side of the argument ; ).

Even though that might be a bit unfair, since it's not as if everyone is on here all the time.

But I think it's important for technologists - scientists, engineers, etc - to embrace their role in society at large and the power we have.

And part of that involves discussing social issues, as frustrating as some of us might find discussing these non-quantifiable fields.

Hey, it can't be worse than having to talk about the latest hot new addition to the JS ecosystem ;)

I agree for the mental health checks that there should be someone trained in mental health present, but you also need police present just in case the mentally ill person because combative, funding shouldn't be reduced, perhaps it should be increased to train police in handling the mentally ill or the police force should have professionals on the clock.

Why does a victim of sexual assault need to report to someone who has a gun? Why does a wellness check need to be performed with a gun? Why does a standard highway patrolman or cop doing routine speed traps need a gun? Why does every cop in a school need a gun? Why is the gun the constant?

> Why does a standard highway patrolman or cop doing routine speed traps need a gun?

Because civilians have shot and killed police during traffic stops? And not just with guns. I seem to remember a road rage case in Colorado where the raging driver shot and killed another driver with a crossbow.

It's not clear how "there is a non-zero chance a motorist has a gun" leads to the conclusion that "all traffic enforcement must have a gun".

As someone from the Netherlands I can say there's a non-zero chance that a motorist has a gun. It's smaller than the US, but it's not zero. Still our cops carry guns. In the US the chances are way, way higher. I can understand that cops are armed there.

Because the cop showing up doesn't know before hand whether or not the motorist have a gun. There's a lot of other things they don't know. The person could be a drug/human trafficker, or have a warrant out for him. In which case, they are armed.

> Why does a standard highway patrolman or cop doing routine speed traps need a gun?

Because this is statistically the form of policing most likely to get cops shot.

> Why does every cop in a school need a gun?

A symptom of America's school shooting problem. When your child is being gunned down you'll probably wish the police there were armed.

School shootings where children are being gunned down are vanishingly rare.

In 2019, eight people were killed and 43 were injured in 25 school shooting incidents.

2018 was much worse with 37 kids killed in school shootings.

This is roughly the same as the number of unarmed black people shot and killed by police in the line of duty (at least this number has been trending downward for several years).

Do you have a source for the this?

Reporting of school shootings is notoriously unreliable:

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/08/27/640323347/the-sch...

I agree, there's no standard definition. I grabbed the 8 / 43 number for 2019 here [1]. I see they have similar numebers as what I found for 2018 as well [2].

The 2018 numbers I was referencing was from this 10 year overview [3].

[1] - https://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/school-shooting...

[2] - https://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/school-shooting...

[3] - https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2019/07/us/ten-years-of-scho...

Perhaps, but school resource officers have a poor track record of addressing school shootings.

> No, you never can with absolutely certainty, the question is how you distribute the costs of uncertainty. Leading with paramilitary enforcers in nearly all situations has consequences that people are not happy with, hence the defund/dismantle/abolish movement.

> The police are expected to deal with a whole community in a holistic way.

Which they manifestly fail to do effectively, for structural reasons. A paramilitary force with minimal entry education requirements whose training disproportionately focuses on the proper use of force to secure compliance is not a good general purpose community response tool.

since when do they use paramilitary forces "in nearly all situations" ? I think you're jumping the gun a bit on that statement.

The problem is that supposedly non-violent situations can turn violent or threatening very quickly. So, all officers need to be trained in use of force.

> since when do they use paramilitary forces "in nearly all situations" ? I think you're jumping the gun a bit on that statement.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/police-aca...

"The majority of law-enforcement academies in the United States are loosely modeled on military boot camps."

https://www.charleskochinstitute.org/issue-areas/criminal-ju...

"Over 8,000 law enforcement agencies have utilized the 1033 program to access more than $6 billion worth of military equipment such as night-vision goggles, machine guns, armored vehicles, bayonets, grenade launchers, and military aircraft ...

... One study found that use of paramilitary-style teams by law enforcement increased by more than 1,400 percent since 1980."

https://cjmasters.eku.edu/sites/cjmasters.eku.edu/files/21st...

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Or, just apply your eyes and look at the photos of St. Louis police with sniper rifles trained on crowds of people during the Ferguson protests. One is here:

https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/08/14/ferguson-and...

Domestic issues are often met with social workers where I'm from. They gain early detection and access, by registering and treating social issues such as poverty, health or mental related issues. A lot of people then have their lives changed for the better, so they never fall into crime. On a whole, this is good for society, since it gets the benefit of less crime and violence, and so society becomes safer. On top of that, our police is trained in peacefully settling most disputes, though they of course retain the monopoly on violence if need be.

Where is this wonderful place, and when can I move there?

It's Norway, though many European countries have similar policies. It's not cool to be met with social workers, though. It means you've basically failed at life.

> This is particularly problematic when it comes to arrests for crimes that are inherently 'selective' in their enforcement

All crimes are selective in enforcement; reporting, police response, and prosecution all, for all crimes, have both unintentional biases and deliberate prioritization and acts of discretion involved.

> There's a worrying trend in the conversation these days that has shifted from "there's a serious problem with racism in how police go about their job" to "we need less police".

Well, worrying to people who are invested in the biases of the present law enforcement structure, and who perceive it as working well for their interests.

> Folks in neighborhoods living with the constant threat of gang violence don't have the luxury to sit in their aeron chairs and argue about defunding the police.

And yet they are where the movement is strongest.

> They face the very real threat of themselves or their loved ones being shot on the streets and statistically not by police.

And, even then, the police don't care, don't help, further traumatize the victims when thet get involved in crime in those neighborhoods at all, and still drain resources that could be used to deal with the problems producing crime out of the community via their voracious appetite for funding.

It seems like you’re just making sweeping generalizations in an effort to do ideological battle.

I think people in crime-ridden areas are generally very interested in seeing greater police presence, not less. [1] Studies have shown a larger police presence results in lower arrest rates and lower use of force.

And in the vast majority of cases where police are called to a scene they do in fact care deeply, and help effectively.

I think it’s easy to get caught up in tempest and start blaming a large group for the actions of a small minority. I’m no expert, but my understanding is we’ve done decades of studies and had decades of progress toward reducing violent crime, and increased funding for police has been a main pillar of that effort. Obama’s efforts to provide billions of dollars of police funding, for example, saw decreases in crime rates for cities that received the funding versus increases in cities that missed out.

[1] - https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/13/18193661/h...

I question your assertion that police are necessary to reduce violent crime. I’m sharing one reason below. Another is that the police have an atrocious record when it comes to dealing with one of the most violent crimes short of murder, which is rape.

“The Crisis Management System: this network deploys teams of credible messengers who mediate conflicts on the street and connect high-risk individuals to services that can reduce the long-term risk of violence. In the last three years, the Crisis Management System has contributed to a 15 percent decline in shootings in the 17 highest violence precincts in New York City.”

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/peacenyc/interventions/crisis-mana...

I found the above cited in:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-the-police-coul...

Isn’t Chicago also where they discovered a police black site that had been operating for years? What’s the story here?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-poli...

It got shut down. It sounds bad but you have to remember how violent some of the areas get on the West and South side (Garflied Park W+E, and Engelwood are all within the top 5)

So the black site is somehow justified by the fact that there is crime in the area? This makes no sense. The black site is itself illegal and an example of lawlessness. How is an Abu Gharib clone helping solve the gamg problem? Did Abu Gharib really help out the efforts in Iraq?

Not justifying it. I'm suggesting that it came to be over a lack of resources and people tried to adapt to what they could do to solve the problem.

I don't know enough to advocate a solution in the "defund the police" debate and I agree that I don't have enough personal experience from my aeron chair (which, as you know, I was actually born in.)

But, excluding the less police argument, how is the prevalence of violent crime in low income African American neighborhoods a justification for predictive policing? Given the risk of propagating bias and a history of racist policing messing up the data, wouldn't it just be better to keep humans in charge? They've been disappointing recently but I still think they have potential.

Maybe it would be helpful if I put better links here. I didn't expect this comment to get so many responses and my link was a bit flippant. This research probably does a better job of explaining the position than I do.

Here's a Stanford survey from 2016 in Oakland that showed that African Americans are ~4.5x as likely to be stopped as whites despite representing a smaller percentage of the population, that they are 4x as likely to be handcuffed in a stop, 4x as likely to be searched in a stop and 2.5x as likely to be arrested in a stop (which is, as mentioned, 4.5x as likely to happen.): https://news.stanford.edu/2016/06/15/stanford-big-data-study...

I got interested in racist inference due to this Harvard paper that showed that google search ads were much more likely to suggest arrest records for African American names than white names: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1301/1301.6822.pdf

I accepted that implicit bias is intrinsic and difficult to weed out when I heard about studies showing that resumes with African American names received much lower response rates than white names: https://cos.gatech.edu/facultyres/Diversity_Studies/Bertrand...

I remember reading somewhere that this effect even persisted with African American studies professors selecting grad students. I can't find that paper but this HBS article describes the phenomenon and discusses how the response rate effect is even present when the company claims to promote diversity within the application: https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/minorities-who-whiten-job-resumes...

I also advocate for learned epistemic helplessness (https://scienceforsustainability.org/wiki/Epistemic_Learned_...) even if I don't always practice it well. I'm only claiming to have knowledge in the small area of predicting bad behavior using machine learning. It's probably best to find a person of color with personal experience and a better knowledge of the literature for anything else. Of course, you already know that. I hope you're doing well!

Swing and a miss, overpolicing has nothing to do with violent crime. It has to do with nonviolent infractions that marginalize people to begin with. Being actually caught with illicit substances , or caught for the unpaid ticket.

These things are evenly distributed across society, but when overly targeting minorities it further marginalizes them.

Exhibit A) YOU might not be able to relate to people that routinely have a bag of coke on them, but a proportionate demographics of the population do.

Exhibit B) Silicon Valley openly brags about microdosing acid to perform at work at their half million $ jobs. Overpolicing would ensnare them if overpolicing existed in that demographic and then they would be ineligible for jobs the rest of their life. If you cant be subsidized by your family then you have actual crime to consider. Guess where you will live too.

> These things are evenly distributed across society

This is an unproven assertion. You should provide evidence of it, because on its face it is a completely ludicrous claim. Rates of illicit drug activity, violent crime, etc are _not_ evenly distributed in society. Not even close.

> Exhibit B) Silicon Valley openly brags about microdosing acid to perform at work at their half million $ jobs. Overpolicing would ensnare them if overpolicing existed in that demographic and then they would be ineligible for jobs the rest of their life. If you cant be subsidized by your family then you have actual crime to consider. Guess where you will live too.

Quite simply, the reason people that microdose are not getting thrown in jail is because they're not doing the other things that would lead to them getting discovered, i.e. engaging in crime or driving a car with significant (meaning, more than a person can safely swallow to avoid arrest) quantities of lsd.

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Just incase you try to pin a belief-set on me, I oppose the war on drugs, no-knock raids, and even speeding tickets completely and would entirely abolish them if I were the BFDL.

Actually, black people use drugs at slightly lower rates than whites. This is common knowledge or should be. Here's 3 of the top 6 google links for "illicit drug use by race":

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2377408/

https://www.hamiltonproject.org/charts/rates_of_drug_use_and...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004723521...

We're talking about violent crime... drug prosecutions and other nonviolent crime are notorious for selective enforcement.

A bullet fired, a body, etc. are much harder to hide.

and my immediate reply to you was that its not about violent crime

It doesn't exist in isolation

There is no “culture that commits violent crime”

There is a marginalized population from overpolicing for nonviolent crimes

It cascades

It can be fixed by acknowledging this component

No. We're definitely not.

From the parent post:

> It has to do with nonviolent infractions that marginalize people to begin with. Being actually caught with illicit substances , or caught for the unpaid ticket.

> These things are evenly distributed across society, but when overly targeting minorities it further marginalizes them.

Yes it doesnt match your worldview, consider seeing if you can corroborate it. I know strange concept for you to find a source instead of hoping to pick apart the person that posted, but you might be surprised

But regarding the rebuttal to microdosing users, if they were getting randomly frisked and randomly tested and randomly stopped for “broken” taillights, because the algorithm said so, they would be getting caught and reinforcing the algorithm and human biases

This is what is happening disproportionately to some demographics that dont have inherently different behavior from other demographics

>Quite simply, the reason people that microdose are not getting thrown in jail is because they're not doing the other things that would lead to them getting discovered, i.e. engaging in crime or driving a car with significant (meaning, more than a person can safely swallow to avoid arrest) quantities of lsd.

Counterargument, it's well documented and studied that policies like "stop and frisk" and to some degree traffic enforcement disproportionately target minorities. Most of the people in SV "microdosing on LSD" are not.

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