Tech-driven approach to neighbourhood watch is cementing community divisions
thewalrus.ca
thewalrus.ca
- Ray Badbury, Farenheight 451
In some ways, but not all ways, it harkens back to a time when the smallness of towns and the percentage of people in towns meant that over 90% of people lived under “democratic” surveillance. One major difference is that today you cannot skip town to start a new life with a clean, if unknown slate. Your history will follow you and we’re not allowing for people to turn a leaf as easily as before. At the same time it means serious offenders will have a harder time getting away with violent crime.
If the population at large didn’t commit crime (in a perfect world) we wouldn’t need policing. Given that’s just fantasy, policing is for now necessary. Distributed citizen policing devolved this back into the citizenry. Is that good, or is it bad? It has both. On the one hand everyone will have biases for and against things. On the other hand, those under threat have better recourse (against stalkers, casing a home, burglaries, etc.)
What sort of policing is significantly different from it and how many countries does that exist in?
* Devolvement to the lowest levels of municipal and/or county government, making standardization of training and practices across the entire country (much less individual states) virtually impossible. This is in contrast to countries like France, where the national police forces are an order of magnitude larger than municipal forces and command correspondingly greater authority.
* Use of force & weapons-carrying. It's my understanding that the vast majority of normal LEOs in Western Europe do not carry guns on them during their normal patrols, and that use-of-force incidents (including civilian deaths) are correspondingly lower in most of Europe[1].
* Prevalence of policing fraternities and unions. Again, it's my understanding that these are a somewhat unique feature of American police forces: other countries might have labor protections for LEOs, but do not have pseudo-official organizations that provide cover for officer abuses. The closest thing I'm aware of is the ECP[2], which seems to be more of a legislative group.
[1]: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/how-police-compare-differen...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Confederation_of_Poli...
Also deferment of consequence. When a cop does something wrong, neither he, nor his union, nor the department, nor his pension fund, nor his budget face any financial consequences; that's a burden of the city, ultimately the tax payor, who ironically is the group being infringed upon.
That being said, my understanding is that those armed forces are usually gendarmerie in Europe -- half police, half civilian military. The US doesn't have anything resembling that because of Posse Comitatus[1], so they're difficult to compare directly.
I’m familiar with the Virginia Defense Force off the top of my head: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Defense_Force
Since the unorganized, universal militia can be called up by the federal government, in any groupings or manner Congress chooses to adopt, that's not true.
Some states have organized militia or military reserve forces that aren't part of the federal military reserve system the way the National Guard is, though.
> A defense force established under this section may be used within the jurisdiction concerned, as its chief executive (or commanding general in the case of the District of Columbia) considers necessary, but it may not be called, ordered, or drafted into the armed forces.
Military members aren’t allowed to join them for that reason.
...by act of Congress, which is reversible by act of Congress, which is exactly what it would take to actually activate a draft anyway.
Constitutionally they are just as subject to Congress power to call forth the militia as anyone else.
Don't take the above and think that i'm implying police in europe are more heavily armed on average.
The rise of distributed private security à la e.g. Citizen’s subscription service is a counrerfactual, albeit weak one, to this claim.
Private security forces have always existed! I don't think these provide a counterpoint, given that they lack any meaningful legal authority. At best, they're another example of police authorities devolving the grinding, boring enforcement work that they're ostensibly paid by citizens to do.
Not even close in my opinion. All the authority, discretion, power, and immunity is retained by the police. They're simply using citizen's hardware/info, possibly to the detriment of that same citizen (depends on how far they expand the use).
Isn’t the murder solve rate in Oakland, San Francisco, Chicago, etc well all below 50%. Either the murders are allowed or the methods are failing.
Imo the only real reason we even see murder rates falling are due to cell phones. People can call for help and survive more. That’s why we see so many people shot, but fewer murders than the 90s. Violence is up.
source: Kaiser medical system Registered Nurse
It is similar to blaming the climate crisis on lack of individual effort.
The left is also never going to get people to be that enlightened about the security of their personal property. Focusing the average person's reasonable amount of personal property over private property / capital is always going to be a losing proposition for the left.
Focusing on reducing inequality, providing more universal services (health care, child care, college) and reforming the cops to not be racist are the kinds of things that the left can actually sell the majority of the population.
The bulk of the population though does want cops to show up with guns when people have broken into their house or their neighbors house. They don't want to be potentially raped/murdered and they don't want their shit stolen. The vast majority of people fall under this category, which is why even in my very progressive-leaning zip code in Seattle most of the houses are growing ring cameras these days. It might be a nice leftist ideal to not care about your own belongings because you're better off than everyone else, but put to a vote in the population that is always going to get voted down. Theft as a solution to homelessness is a policy that the average citizen is going to reject.
Its like the left in this country only cares about being individually virtuous and doesn't care about getting anything done politically. Sometimes I wonder if they only swapped out religion in their life with leftist social politics but they still need to get that fix of being better than everyone else.
> “It’s my pretty firm belief,” says Gilliard, “that the police should not be called unless someone’s life is in danger.”
Sure it'd be extreme to call the police for someone egging your car, but what if they stole his car.
Unless it's a prank by local teenagers of course.
Vandalism implies actual damages...
There's an alternative to the Ring camera, thanks to the second amendment and the castle doctrine.
That can seem, to some, like a noble if naive thought. Yet Gilliard offers a retort. “The likelihood that it was a Brown or Black person who egged my car, based on where I live, is pretty high,” he says. “When you call the police on a Black or Brown person, there’s a good chance you are putting their life in danger. I don’t think that is a thing one should do lightly.”
The mental gymnastics of well-intentioned paternalism is humorous to see in practice. If it’s rational not to call the cops in this situation because the risk of negative externalities is far too great, then two conclusions are possible: (1) black/brown people are rational actors and they know the chance of getting caught/punished is very low, thus are incentivized to continue breaking the law, thus creating a vicious cycle where more law breaking begets more leniency, which begets more law breaking or (2) black/brown people are not rational, and need the benevolence of others to make sure they do not end up in jail.
Either way you slice it, it becomes clear that even well intentioned individuals are mostly acting out of self interest. It’s in the interests of Gilliard to not call the cops because losing a $50 package that will be reimbursed anyway is less important than projecting the image that he deeply cares about black and brown people.
Let's say (not so hypothetically) that I'm tired of the drug dealer across the street, between the trash in the street, the bags of used needles, the random scrapes of my car by beaters flying through, and on and on. I could, have, and do report this all to the police, but they will always deescalate things to minimize workload, or in some other way that is clearly not focused on maintaining law and order. I thought it was compelling the time that one of their clients showed up on my porch, beating on the door yelling with a hole in his face from a gunshot wound, but the police didn't do anything with that, either (other than, for once, actually showing up.)
So I'm very sure that my most effective means of improving the situation is to put cameras on their affairs from my house and get all the other adjacent neighbors to do likewise. The dealers have felt the heat, and now their clients are normally more respectful and quiet, presumably at the prompting of the dealers.
If they want anonymity when being disruptive or acting illegally, they should go find somewhere where they can blend in.
The majority of consumers will never be tech-savvy. So a bunch of security cameras really means a bunch of security cameras whose software is 100% controlled by some central authority. I'd feel safer if it was controlled by the actual home-owner.
Just look at fines, and it should become clear who the law was written for: https://danuker.go.ro/gdpranoia.html#fines
I'm going to leave the naming up to someone else; "NOO" doesn't seem a great acronym for a popular organization.
BlueIris is actually pretty nice. I got a bunch of cameras from ebay and such- some wireless, some wired and POE powered- and just use BlueIris to manage them locally. Ended up with more cameras that I really needed, so I also have one permanently pointed at a bird feeder for fun...
A solution that someone can pickup at Costco and setup via scanning some QR code in 10 minutes is always going to win versus spending an hour or many hours delving into networking and figuring out what equipment you need and troubleshooting.
Nobody wants to deal with DDNS or port forwarding or other issues when trying to remotely access the video either.
It's dramatically easier to disappear in terms of privacy if you're poor than if you're in the middle class.
You're not going to show up in stores as often (less surveillence footage, less facial recognition). You're not as likely to own or use a smartphone, which means no device in your pocket tracking you everywhere. You're far less likely to utilize Uber type services, Instacart, et al. You're far less likely to own a credit card, and more likely to use cash; which means a far smaller purchase history/footprint to profile you with. You're far less likely to often use the Internet, which means a smaller online footprint; that also goes for social media. You're less likely to own various smart devices that will spy on you. You're far less likely to own real-estate or businesses, which often show up on public records at some point. You're less likely to have various entertainment subscriptions (Amazon Prime, Netflix, Disney+, cable, and so on), which again reduces your footprint vs most everybody else. Your job requirements are typically far lower and far less connected, leaving a smaller footprint (no zoom meetings, no zillions of digital profiles, no linkedin, no networking, no slack, no conferences, and on and on).
If you don't have purchasing power, the privacy invading fiends in the commercial sphere mostly don't care if you exist or not. They are not motivated to go out of their way to track you. You don't count, you don't show up in their numbers. Think of the numerous services (Kroger or Walgreens cards; Peloton; eBay, Etsy, PayPal, Coinbase, brokerage accounts; Apple services; and 400 others) the middle class and above sign on to, and how they get tracked by them regularly.
Politically you also matter a lot less, because you're far less likely to vote if you're poor vs middle class and above. So you're tracked, profiled and contacted far less often by the political machine. And you have no money to give them, so they care that much less about keeping tabs on you.
This does not mean that Apple is free of contradiction, such as with their unpopular announcement to scan your pictures for child porn. But in the sum Apple has been making privacy easier for everyone, and not just for technical folks.
That is certainly an option but it is not one I think many rich people have taken, at least not for the purpose of avoiding surveillance. Most rich (i.e. top 1% or top 5%) people just don't care that much if they appear in passing on someone else's porch camera. They believe (I think correctly) that the odds of that causing them any material harm are close to nil. There are a small handful of people who value privacy from mass nonspecific surveillance for its own sake, but it's an attitude that is not that common in the US, at least as far as we can tell from revealed preferences.
(Ed: I now see by "this" you're referring to bad behavior surveilled, not surveillance. In that case, I would tend to agree with you.)
Do you really believe this is going to be effective? In your scenario where the police are unresponsive to reports, what makes you think that they're suddenly going to care if you send them a bunch of surveillance video of illicit activity?
The drug dealers know when they're operating in safe territory. In places like San Francisco, people openly deal and use drugs on the street because they know that they are likely to get away with it.
I bet if you posed as a journalist, some of these people would even let you photograph their activities, all while flashing big smiles.
That's missing the point, and possibly willfully missing the point?
The point is.... people are being watched. Both criminals and police change their behavior when they know they're being monitored, or under surveillance.
> They both involve cameras but I don't see the connection aside from that, and would dispute one thing being the inverse of the other.
Again, I can only guess willful ignorance it to blame. criminals take steps to avoid cameras, or cover their faces. Police are less likely to abuse their authority when the body cam is activated. Do you see the connection, in both scenarios the subject changes behavior.
One is how many things have not come to pass... Given that it was printed in 1998, we've had over twenty years to see predictions not come to fruition.
But another is his prediction of this precisely: that in a world where cameras, data recording, and analysis is cheap and easy, the big question is who will control their use: governments, individuals, non-government groups, or some mixture of the three. The one thing we can basically guarantee won't happen is a return to the pre-surveillance days... Like the car, these technologies cause society to re-organize around them such that those who don't have access to them (or try the Luddite approach of refraining from using them) have less power and eventually become marginalized.
So the question becomes: "What is the best way forward," not "How do we get back?"
>Judge Melissa Clarke found that audio data collected by cameras on a shed, in a driveway and on the Ring doorbell was processed unlawfully. She noted that at the time it was not possible to turn off the audio recording facility - that happened in an update in 2020.
I would have assumed all camera makers implemented a software toggle to disable audio recording. It seems like a basic function to avoid violating laws against recording audio when you are not party to the conversation. It is Amazon though, so I guess I should not be surprised.
...and...
>She said that she found the audio data that could capture conversations "even more problematic and detrimental than video data".
So it wasn't just a doorbell aimed at the street. It was the totality of the video and audio surveillance of an area that the neighbour could reasonably expect to be somewhat private.
CCTV absolutely reduces crime in areas where petty crimes are actually enforced. The evidence provided by the camera is critical.
Really it should be the brick and mortar stores who capitalize on this. Start advertising in certain areas that have high package theft and cut into ecommerce market share.
Once was for the social crime of walking with my teenage son and once for the more serious crime of walking with long hair.
It would seem the last thing emotionally fragile homeowners need is better surveillance ability.
Are you claiming a successful government would limit the ability of people to access public information?
It's one thing to offer defense services that follow you, but it's concerning to think that your neighbor or ex or stalker could soon call Nextdoor to send goons to your house.
Now for those Facebook/Nextdoor groups. I rally dislike them. Too many crazy people that report weird stuff (and racist too).
Cameras today can even be used as self defense. People are less likely to hit someone in public if they are being filmed. Look how phone cameras changed the way police do things for example. Why? because they know they are being filmed and cannot get away like they used to. I rest my case.
Not sure if you're being sarcastic there. Filming police brutality is like a national pass time. Cameras haven't changed anything. Having more examples of police beating the crap out of people is the only "change" I've seen.
On its face, this article suggests a 'surveillance state,' brought about by people surveilling their own property. The assumption here is that porch cameras are merely a way to attempt to stick it to thieves/pranksters who are simply the collateral damage of capitalism. However, porch cameras also function as communication devices, personal safety devices and informational devices about non-suspect behavior relevant to a resident.
The underlying argument seems to be that the pursuit of 'safety' in the face of economic disparity and racial injustice is inherently discriminatory. Unfortunately, by hinging on porch cameras, it doesn't make much of a case.
Is it possible to want to work towards a kind of universal justice but also not want a homeless shelter next to a kindergarten or the home where you are raising young children? Is it selfish to want to extend that to the elderly, or to single mothers, to yourself? And yes, there are elderly people, single mothers and even children in shelters, but some shelters consist largely of people struggling with powerful addiction and/or mental illness. On the other hand, there may not be a categorically better placement of the shelter, and we might even suggest that proximity to such facilities is the cost of dense urban living.
To me, that's definitely worth writing and debating about, but this unfocused article built on controversial assumptions doesn't add much.
The main issue is that the cameras capture other people's properties too, or (less problematically) public spaces. If it truly were only the owner's property, then this wouldn't be an issue.
Thievery is a crime for good reason.
This is a hard fact to approach with justice in mind, and troubles a lot of the US discourse on crime and policing.
Yes, if non-white-collar crime is policed effectively, it disproportionately affects people from underprivileged backgrounds. However it also disproportionately benefits those in the same sociological group.
The real win would be successful rehabilitation and less lethal policing, in my opinion.
Turns out it was the Tesla parked behind me that was automatically flashing lights at me. There was nobody in that car.
I wonder if it's even legal here to install a camera in a public place like that?
Depends on where you are, if you're on private property, and how your nation defines 'reasonable expectation of privacy' if they define such a thing at all. In a lot of North America, as long as you're in public and the camera is in public, it is entirely legal.
In my opinion, if there were adequate police action, prosecution and punishment for the crimes being committed, the surveillance technology would be unnecessary and likely would be far less prevalent.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/06/ring-changed-how-polic...
I guess I'm not very moral.
These porch cameras make me think of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for some reason. A well armed society is a polite society.
I now wonder how Zoomers, the generation born into the panopticon, may have adapted. Will they be more moral, more careful, more circumspect? Or less? Or some mix?
I'm encouraged by, and take as evidence, the rise of consent culture. Which is definitive moral progress.
You have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your bathroom, at your kitchen table, in a public toilet etc. You don't have any reasonable expectation of privacy when standing on someone's porch. The home owner or a neighbour are not invading your privacy by seeing you standing at the porch.
And particularly if you are standing on that porch for the purpose of stealing a package.
The question of whether to report to the police is a separate issue, but really if you don't want to get reported to the police, don't steal packages. I don't think we are solving any problems by pointing the finger of blame at the person whose package was stolen.
Yes usage of video data should be limited, etc.
In the end this is like the dashcam cameras that helped cut on the amount of fake insurance claims and "he said/she said" accidents where one of the parts is clearly at fault.
It's as though the reason he's against the surveillance is because it strengthens neighbourhoods and the identity around them, presumably with his implied ideal being an atomized specimen of a group identity, who must amplify narrative to survive.
Surveillance turns people into helpless targets for predators when the consequences of being caught defending yourselves are greater than giving predators what they are after, which rewards them, and they come back. Eventually what surveillance mainly does is empower a tiny minority of truly terrible people who for them the cameras are never on, or they don't care, and these are the most malicious and nasty people around.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-city-budget-police-f...
We had been approached by a client (a friend of mine) who wanted to make a security center for neighborhoods, that we could sell. And for a long time, I had the idea that video encrypted as close to the camera as possible could be very useful in solving crimes where otherwise you'd only have personal testimony (e.g. cases of alleged rape etc). But the keys would have to be produced only through a valid subpoena and court putting together their BLS signatures to group-sign something etc. Each minute and each camera would be encrypted with its own key.
I wanted full accountability and transparency: whoever is accessing the video would have to access limited amounts, and there would be a log of the reasons why.
We called up IBM and they had some interesting AI stuff that would work at the edges to detect potentially dangerous activity (knives, mobs etc.) and flag it for the operators of the system. Such a flag would be a valid reason to decrypt a few cameras for a few timeslots. The people with access would decrypt only what was needed, and the investigation itself would be logged -- why was this or that minute or camera decrypted. To decrypt too much would require greater authorization.
What I wanted to avoid is a panopticon where all the feeds are piped to some center. Sadly, the current social media companies have created such a panopticon with our willing participation, and we don't understand that better, far more accountable and auditable systems can exist, where we don't have to rely on centralized actors.
If you're curious, we can do a lot more than security cameras, this is just one possible application. Here we use it to earn credits for watching podcasts, live or recorded:
And we are also using it for students to be taught by teachers remotely, and know whether they are attending or not
Here is our overall ethos and approach: https://qbix.com/blog/2017/12/18/power-to-the-people/
PS: What I described here would be a potential solution to Apple's Client Side Scanning. What they're missing is accountability and transparency on the side of the people decrypting the footage: essentially a system of warrants, logs, same as doctors use to explain why they ordered this or that test. And furthermore they are missing the decentralization element: you just have to "trust Apple" because they won't give you their backend software. We do. That's why open source is superior. So you can run it yourself, and there is no concept of trusting a large centralized corporation. It's just software that runs on hardware you bought and own. No one is extracting rents, gathering your data, except your own community and by whatever agreement that is set up locally etc.
Oh, and the roles and permissions should be stored on a community blockchain, not a centralized database:
Package carrier walks up. Scans the package, taps the scanner to the box, drop the package in the box, and off we go.
Sell them at Home Depot. People would buy.
Even then I find about half of my packages still end up on the front porch despite me indicating otherwise using the carrier's service to indicate where to leave packages. I haven’t had a package stolen in very many years so I guess that’s a good thing.
https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/book-drop-picture-id979...
But neither of our ideas will work, because the boxes are too big some of the time.
It’s a low value crime of opportunity. Merely hiding packages visually would likely prevent most incidents.
You don’t even know if they contain anything of value and most would probably be empty.
These thieves are just snatching a dozen (or two or three) small boxes at a time, opening them in an alley (or whatever) and dumping anything that isn’t of value.
As for frequency, people are more likely to take something if they don't have to confront a person. There are also a lot more packages available to steal today since more people order online now.
Package theft also varies heavily by location. I live in a medium sized city but I actually don’t know anyone who has had a package stolen off their porch. I’ve easily had over a thousand packages left at my (highly visible) porch all afternoon over the years without a single theft.
OTOH, if I lived in a few certain cities I wouldn’t want to leave any packages lying out for any period of time.
Statistically this is False. It's driving a lot of current policy pushes and the people who repeat it most are the ones who pay the most lip service to fighting dis/mis-information, but it's not actually true.
> Time and time again we see someone get called on a welfare check only to be shot to death
You really need to pierce your bubble and ask what else happens that might not be shown to you. The news isn't real. Not really, anyway. Every single outlet has a bias and "lying by omission" to shape a narrative is common.
For example, did you know George Floyd is hardly the first person to have died under the knee of the police officer? At least 2 times before it, it was a minority officer killing a white man. You can watch it with your own eyes:
Here's Tony Timpa being killed this way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c-E_i8Q5G0
Here's Joseph Hutcheson being killed this way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnsE6_lVkrE&list=LL&index=50...
Another thing that's been so sad to watch recently is peoples' disbelief in how different the reality of the Kyle Rittenhouse situation is from how it is presented to them on the news, when they simply watch the actual trial. E.g.: https://twitter.com/sarahbeth345/status/1458593872557133825
There are two issues with this:
1. Civilians are also murdered by police who are responding to non-violent offenses. A good example here would be the classic “shot during a routine traffic stop” situation. That won’t show up in the stat from your sources. Your source tries to say that by “controlling for violent crime, the racial disparity goes away” but that doesn’t make any sense.
2. Huge disparity across different LEO organizations. For example, according to this Harvard study, in Chicago the racial bias in the statistics is much stronger than in other areas: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/blacks-wh...
That same study also concludes that once you account for and amortize things, you are still 3x more likely to die in an encounter with LEO if you are non white.
And as another poster said [1], even if there were bias, that does not equate to likely, in absolute terms. The idea that you're essentially sending a black person to death, or rolling the dice on their life, by calling the cops on them for nonviolent crime, is ridiculous.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/upshot/police-killings-of...
This is basic, the study (at least on my glance) appears to not account for anything like this at all.
Also the source isn't everything but its political leanings are somewhat-important as this type of misdirection that I've just showed here is used all the time to craft narratives around statistics, so even when you're crafting leans in a certain direction and you still can't tell the story you'd like, it's a strong indicator that the data more distinctly show certain patterns.
You can’t use a stereotype to excuse LEO’s treating people like stereotypes. Especially when there’s a tremendous amount of evidence that shows that those stereotypes are externally enforced (systemic racism, for example). I don’t want to debate whether or not that is a thing, that’s a separate discussion, and it’s totally unrelated to the one we’re having here.
> If a certain demographic were 2x more likely to die in an encounter, but 4x more likely to respond to a benign pullover with violence, then they're actually 2x more likely to be treated with less force than their actions require.
This is some insanely racist bullshit that you’ve just said so I don’t think that there’s going to be a productive end to this debate and this will be my final comment in the discussion. That’s as civil as I’m willing to be about it.
When I say "If a certain demographic were ... 4x more likely to respond to a benign pullover with violence", that is a post-fact observation, with the demographic being the specific collection of people pulled over.
Why would you interpret it the way you did? Holy shit. I feel like we're going into the "math is racist" territory.
> it’s just a discussion about the fact that non-white people are more likely to be subject to LEO violence
There are answers, but you're ignoring them.
1. They are using the Fatal Encounters dataset - probably the best, most complete, least biased dataset (GOOD)
2. It turns out that police aren't actually killing very many people (VERY GOOD), so there isn't a lot of data.
3. They are doing their analysis at the MSA level as a simplification to account for the fact that people move around and don't just stay at their house or only in their city. They state that they are doing it and why they are doing it (GOOD).
4. They are using a statistical process that assumes that everything (race/ethnicity, deaths, etc) is normally distributed within the MSA. In real life, this is not remotely true, but they acknowledge this fact (GOOD?)
5. Their analysis finds that many of the higher racial disparities found within MSAs occur in MSAs with the lowest rates of police killings and/or a lot of places with high rates of geographic segregation. In other words, places with the least amount of data and places where #4 holds the least.
I don't think anyone is going to claim that this is a bad study, or wrong, or anything like that. It looks pretty solid to me. It's just that you are trying to draw some conclusions from it that it can't support.
I would also like to point out that "If you are in a police encounter (traffic stop, arrested for theft, etc), what is the likelihood of being killed by the police?" is not a question being answered by this study. "If you live in this metropolitan area, what is the likelihood of being killed by the police?" is what this study provides the answer to. That includes such things as people in nursing homes, toddlers in daycare, etc. Saying "You are 3x more likely to die in a traffic stop if you are black" is, sadly, probably very true - but it is not what this study is about nor what it proves:
> We use population denominators to align with, and allow comparisons to, previous demographic work in this area, and because using race-specific crime or arrest counts—themselves shaped by racial bias and segregation—yields estimates of a different and potentially biased contrast than the rather simple ones we answer here: in which metropolitan areas are people most likely to be killed by police, what is the difference in these rates by race, and how does this vary across MSAs?
This is a weird way to frame the issue. Are black people arrested for violent crime more often? I don't know, but if they are, that changes the conclusion. This seems like an obvious thing I'd want to find out if I were posting that Twitter thread.
> I am showing that when you control for violent crime rate, the disparity vanishes.
No, arrest rate and crime rate are not the same. That's the whole point of the discussion about bias in policing.
If you ask a more straightforward question, like "how often are people killed when they interact with police?", the statistics look different. Here's a study that says:
> On average, there were large racial/ethnic inequities in the rates at which White and Black people were killed during police contact. Across all MSAs, Black people were 3.23 times more likely to be killed compared to White people (95% CI: 2.95, 3.54, p<0.001).
- https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
The NYTimes however did research it and found that "this data does not prove that biased police officers are more likely to shoot blacks in any given encounter": https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/upshot/police-killings-of...
> The data is unequivocal. Police killings are a race problem: African-Americans are being killed disproportionately and by a wide margin. And police bias may be responsible. But this data does not prove that biased police officers are more likely to shoot blacks in any given encounter.
Absolutely agreed: using the FBI data in that NYT article, there's no way to tell why Black people are killed more frequently. All it tells you is that deaths are disproportionate. Using other studies with further data, like the one I posted, gives us a clearer picture.
> Ok sure, but in turn your comment ignores/doesn't contain any data on the statistics of crimes committed by race or what behaviors that lead to escalation appear more among different races.
Correct, I am taking it as a given that skin color has no effect on a person's likelihood to commit crime or somehow provoke an officer to murder them during an arrest.
"I looked at it and the study doesn't account for anything. For example, if a certain demographic were 2x more likely to die in an encounter, but 4x more likely to respond to a benign pullover with violence, then they're actually 2x more likely to be treated with less force than their actions require.
This is basic, the study (at least on my glance) appears to not account for anything like this at all."
I feel pretty positive about this actually. This will be the tipping point for many to finally question all the info they get from the corporate media.
For a long time I saw garbage reporting on subjects that I had the slightest familiarity but I still blindly believed their reporting on any other subject, until something clicked in my mind and now I can't unsee it. I'm sure many are experiencing this click due to the trial.
Only if they actually get to see the reality presented to them somewhere. I fear that most people still won't. If they've been in the bubble for years, there will be nothing indicating to them that they should venture outside of it this one time.
Please omit such swipes from your comments here. They're a form of personal attack, which is against the site guidelines and is really bad for communication, especially on difficult topics.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: your comments have degenerated into outright flamewar below. We ban accounts that do that. Please review the guidelines and please don't do any more of that.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic...
If you query the data set it looks like 38 unarmed black men were shot by police in 2015.
To determine likelihood of a random “black porch pirate” being shot by police, we should look at the % of police encounters that end in unarmed shoots.
I found a random quota post [1] that says the number of police encounters in 2015 was around 53,469,300.
Back of a cocktail napkin numbers show that we’re talking about something in the neighborhood of .00006% of encounters end in an unarmed black person being shot by the police.
[1] https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-estimated-number-of-police...
If there's a virus that hit a billion people, where 100 of them are people with blue hair, and there were 110 deaths, 90 of them being blue-haired people and 20 from the rest of the billion, if you had blue hair would you be extra worried?
sure it only kills 0.0..something..09% of people, but...
Edit: thanks for the downvotes. Of course the numbers are exaggerated, but it's to make a point.
If you want to do some maths, please give a percentage of black police encounters that end up with the black person being shot, and compare that with other races. The first number is probably very low as well, but my instinct is that the comparison will be shocking.
In any case, police in the US are woefully undertrained hotheads. In contrast, I saw a video today from Europe where a suicidal woman had a knife and officers around her. One of them pepper-sprayed her, it didn't work, and suddenly another hit her with a big fencepole that he pulled out of the ground. She was a threat to mostly herself, and luckily they didn't neutralize the threat by a bullet that could've been fatal.
36x (adjusting for population) a really small number is still a really small number. While all else equal I'd like to see the number reduced, there is much lower-hanging fruit elsewhere.
As someone who grew up ~poor surrounded by ~poor people, having achieved some financial security, one of my top priorities in life is to not live surrounded by poor people anymore. If technology helps that, great. I feel like the opposite perspective can only come from lack of personal experience and therefore misplaced compassion.
Classism is fine. Classism being connected with racism-punching-down is a peculiarly American development (the classic examples of racism+classism throughout history in Europe/etc. are generally against minorities perceived as "unfairly" succeeding).