Hacker News Reader

Comment by the_doctah | Hacker News Reader

Read this report please.

https://www.seattle.gov/documents/Departments/Police/Reports...

I have. I've lived here for nearly 40 years. I've been active in politics here and I've experience with both the data and the anecdotes.

Seattle has less crime then it did 40, 30, and 20 years ago. The past three years were exceptional and the report does indicate increased rates of violent crime.

But we had a global pandemic, a contentious election, a spotlight on police brutality, etc.

I guess you can make the call, whether you think that's a trend or an anomaly, but when I look at the data I see us having a crime rate half of what it used to be, with an uptick in the most unusual years in a generation.

What do you think that Seattle is doing right to combat crime?

They still have cops, courts, and jails in Seattle.

Read this report by a group strongly incentivized to and rewarded by a creation of the perception that crime is high, about how high you should perceive crime to be.

Where I'm from we call it a "primary source".

When you learned how to use primary sources did they teach you to take them at face value without any consideration of the purpose, goals, constraints, and motivations of the people who created them?

I'm curious what other source you would even reference in this situation? Also do you really think the police intentionally misreport numbers that make themselves look bad?

I doubt there's a single trustworthy authoritative source that presents a complete picture. I'm not saying completely ignore or dismiss what the police say, but consider it in its context as one piece of information, published by an organization with its own needs and biases, rather than the single defining instance.

Police definitely lie a lot, and invest significant resources in outreach and PR, which we would straightforwardly call propaganda if someone else was doing it. The motivations are probably more complex than just what makes them look bad. And the mechanisms are probably more sophisticated than simply publishing completely false data in a report.

> Also do you really think the police intentionally misreport numbers that make themselves look bad?

But basically yes I do.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com