Timely, as a boy was shot at last week in Chicago while setting off fireworks that triggered a ShotSpotter alert:
https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2024/02/27/chicago-police...
https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2024/02/27/chicago-police...
We're a nation of laws, not of your awareness. It's just the words on the page. Was there a law being broken or not. In this case the answer was no. The police then proceeded to write up multiple claims of illegal activity that were all demonstrable falsehoods, and your defense of the illegal activity on the part of the police is that you aren't aware of a holiday?
This is just the sort of thing we need to stamp out before these thugs kill either some other innocent kid, or cause a real police officer to be hurt or killed while trying to control the inevitable community reaction to their bird brained behavior.
These cops need to be off the force yesterday. Yes they are liabilities waiting to happen. Yes they are dishonest. But the real reason we need to get rid of them is because they are unpredictable. We have no idea what anyone who will shoot at innocent kids and lie about it today will do tomorrow.
Honest cops are predictable. Dishonest cops are just loose cannons and we need to cut them out at every opportunity.
If you set off fireworks inside the White House, right now, would you be surprised to suddenly meet the acquaintance of many armed men? Fireworks don't often go off in the Oval Office. Loud banging noises are therefore assumed to be gunfire, not fireworks.
If you set off fireworks on the South Pole on July 4th, would you meet police? No, and for two reasons: July 4th is a well known day for setting off fireworks, and the South Pole is far away from basically everything.
If you set off fireworks shortly before midnight, on a random Thursday in January, in a city that's famous for having large numbers of murders, should policemen assume it's fireworks, or gunshots?
It's reasonable for cops to investigate loud noises, but killing unarmed children is wrong every day of the year.
We are free here.
These cops acted without justification, then committed a crime to cover up their unjustified actions by attesting to multiple demonstrable falsehoods.
The HN User you are responding to is stretching to make the situation seem reasonable in the US. It is not reasonable in the US and we will continue to demonstrate its unreasonableness to officers who can't seem to understand. We will do so through everything from disciplinary actions to docked pay to dismissals to prison terms if we must.
I'm tired of people seeing these things and saying we aren't free here. It's more accurate to say we have a few nugget headed police officers who can't seem to understand that we are free. And then you get the impression that their nugget headed behavior is normalized because they have a few nugget headed supporters who go out to defend the indefensible. I can assure you, inside police forces nowadays these sorts of loose cannons are very much looked on as liabilities.
Every nation will have some level of corruption, and we obviously have ours as this incident clearly demonstrates. But there is a reason these worms are burrowing under rocks to try to hide. It's because they know they are engaged in explicitly criminal activity. They are the crisis of confidence in the US. Now real police officers will have an even more difficult time operating in the community.
It's just the words on the page. Was a law broken or not.
Let me explain it to you in a fashion you might better understand. Let's suppose a man is late on his child support because the child he was ordered to pay child support for is not his. If you are a Bayesian Reasoner and conclude there is no reason to arrest this man, then you have no place on the police force. Full stop. You see judgement is the job of the courts. It's not my place to decide whether or not someone is being done an injustice or justice by being arrested. The only concern of an LEO has to be the words on the page. He didn't pay child support that I personally believe was unjustly ordered, but I'm still taking him down.
That's the job. You don't believe that kid should be setting off fireworks, that's your business. But you better have a legal reason if you are going to take action against a person in our system. Because it's based on rule of law. It's more critical now than at almost any time in the past that LEOs understand that fact. Those who don't are gonna do nothing but make life hard for a whole lot of decent LEOs out there.
Then they could go to court and say “this system showed the gunshots came from the suspect’s location”. But “the system” didn't show that, until ShotSpotter employees manually changed the data.
They spent a lot of effort hiding that as well.
The underlying algorithm wasnt subject to examination by defense teams until a rules change like, last week.
The underlying algorithms have been made available to defense teams in countless Daubert and Frye hearings. I have no idea what you're referring to by "a rules change like, last week."
I see nothing wrong done by ShotSpotter.
It accurately reported the location of a noise that sounded like gunfire.
What is timely about this?
Do you want the police to not investigate gunshots? I don't care about how they approached the scene, their training has nothing to do with ShotSpotter which is the discussion at hand.
Also fireworks are illegal to set off in Chicago so no legitimate activity was interrupted.
Combine that with the racially-charged patterns of policing in this country[1][2], where certain populations are disproportionately profiled and experience use-of-force incidents.
It's extremely timely in the sense that at present, we have systemic problems with where police force is being directed, and ShotSpotter is likely helping tip those scales — but not in the right direction.
[1] https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/racial-profiling-texas-r...
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/opinions/system...