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Comment by defrost | Hacker News Reader

There's an interesting control system feedback complaint with a lot to it;

* historically there's been a lot of "black crime" in the US due to the US police watching black neighbourhoods excessively and being absent elsewhere .. take this all the way back in time to Tulsa and before.

* Subsequently there's been a lot of "black crime" as neighbourhoods have been destroyed by occasional mobs (Tulsa), frequent division by freeways and toxic waste dumps, and the removal of many adult males to the prison system as a result of all the "observed crime" leading to an excess of young males with few prospects.

* Based on that data the modern survellience goes to where all the crime has been created^H observed.

Meanwhile entire areas of US cities get on by considerably less police present and oversight and a great deal less observed crime.

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"The police disproportionately focus on poor areas for drug possession / traffic offences / white collar crime" is an important criticism, and the kind of thing awareness of which leads to reform and fairness in policing.

"There's just as much gun crime in rich areas as poor ones, but the police focus on the poor areas because of historical racism" is an extraordinary claim that should require extraordinary evidence, and the kind of thing that holds back improvements in police work.

I guess you could believe that when rich people are murdered it is not reported and quietly hushed up, but when poor people are the full force of the state swings into action.

Hasn't that historically been the opposite? If a rich/white person is murdered, it's a headline-grabbing tragedy. Even serial killers are more likely to evade detection if their targets are minorities, though the reasons for that are more complicated than just systemic prejudice.

That's the point. Believing the things that would have to be true for GGGP's viewpoint to be even plausible, let alone true, requires a complete divorce from reality.

Gotcha! The comment parent of mine makes a lot more sense now.

Exactly. If it had been drug crime, I’d be totally prepared to believe everyone in a rich area is coked beyond reason and gets away with it.

But gun crimes are different (unless they’re saying something like “possession” but in most states that’s some variation of legal unless a felon).

> historically there's been a lot of "black crime" in the US due to the US police watching black neighbourhoods

You can control for this by just looking at homicides. Dead bodies are pretty objective. And the homicides also follow the same trend as the general crime rate.

Please don't engage in ideological warfare, it's boring and against site guidelines.

No reasonable person could look at any meaningful measure of violent crime rates and come to your conclusions.

Ah yes so it's police presence that makes crime the number one cause of death for young black males.

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