What Two Programmers Have Revealed About Seattle Police Officers
thestranger.com
thestranger.com
In other words, the risks avoided by paying the best heuristic computer known to man -- a human -- far outweighs the cost of the resource.
> COP considered dumping the raw data online for anyone to view, but decided against it because it would involve the publication of sensitive personal details—things like mental illness, drug addiction, or cases involving minors.
My personal thoughts: I'd venture to say that all info would eventually get tossed into the "sensitive field" as a matter of a slippery slope. I also think that there's a conflict of interest in keeping notes that are "bad" over "good" (easily retrievable, shareable, and legible). It's self-serving to have physical paper notes. They can easily be "lost", "destroyed", and they only exist in a physical form: an oversight official has to come to the physical precinct house to retrieve the records.
Last time I was in a county office, the application they used was extremely dated. It looked well over 15 years old. Many governments work with really dated software with a skeleton IT crew that can barely keep even that working, much less rewrite it.
Because its easier to cover up non-digital records. Just like sometimes the boss wants to discuss things in person or over the phone rather than in storable text format.
Something no one is discussing about this supposed treasure trove of SS numbers:
1) once its out there, its out there, its like pretending your email address is secret after the spammers are already using it. And after 50 zillion examples of incompetent security, all our numbers are public to absolutely everyone except the rawest of general public (like my neighbor). Anyone I wouldn't want to have access to it, already has it.
2) as per above, they paid $22500 or whatever (hopefully prorated with the low rate or providing the docs) because someone from the city is supposed to be cleaning that data out of the file already. Otherwise that shady guy who owns the money laundering err I mean upstanding and ethical payday loan biz down the street would have already purchased a list of police reports, and done his thing with the SS numbers contained.
3) the easy and cheap part is editing out 123-45-6789 regex numbers. The hard part is in the rare situation of judicial involvement (those people rarely do their job, as per the article's claims) there might be a gag order as part of an out of court settlement or similar.
As an aside, the software used for EMR on the Android tablets is... a horrific abomination.
1. A lot of the paperwork is all over the place. It has to be gathered, which takes time.
2. Same is true for the digital info, all over multiple databases. It takes a programmer or few to focus on pulling it (and getting all the necessary permission to do so).
3. Everything, once compiled, has to be reviewed to ensure it is on target and that any necessary info has to be redacted. The problem is that no one wants to take responsibility for a massive data dump without checking ever single word/number. This is because, while column X or form Y should only have publically available information on it, the people who processed the forms or input the data may have put information that would need to be redacted (SSNs appear in all sorts of places where they shouldn't). So the programmers will not give any sort of guarantee for the data pulls and the people pulling the physical files won't give any sort of similar guarantee for the physical files. This means the FOIA office (or what ever they are called there) has to do a line by line, word by word, number by number redaction.
4. To make this worse, many times the staff is not fully trained and has outdated equipment. FOIA has to print out files, use a black marker on both sides of the paper, and then scan it back in and print out again (and this is per policy, so the worker can be disciplined if they do anything else, even if it is more efficient). The programmers often are tasked to go through largely undocumented decade old (or older) systems.
5. Even without the political nature of the work, so even for a completely benign info request, the work is often time of low priority and for most of the staff involved it is on top of their normal day duties. Often times the staff is already underpaid and overworked, and with the info request being of low priority, it gets largely pushed aside.
It would be ideal to have it all accessible to an API, but having this done would take multiple miracles that would be better spent on obtaining world peace and ending world hunger.
Downside is this might encourage more fake and petty complaints.
And that's why they should have fewer rights and more oversight than the Avon lady.
The Avon lady has never burned an infant with a flashbang. Or shot a dog. Or shot an owner. Or shot a homeless person. Or shot another Avon lady.
A suggestion: could you do what you need to do, if someone were looking over your shoulder at all times? There is a chilling effect on good cops too - if anything at all they say and do results in a personal lawsuit, they stop being effective at all.
A ride-along some Friday night has been known to change the opinion of many a critic. See what a cop has to deal with, no room for preconceived notions or idealistic predictions.
As for the public interest - we don't want to live in a world without policemen. There is a wide literature on that subject.
No need for binary thinking. We already no longer have policemen, we have infantry soldiers trained in urban combat with "shoot first ask questions later" rules of engagement and military weapons, deployed with an us vs them attitude, considerable deeply embedded racism issues, and a strong organizational opposition to respecting the occupied area's resident's civil rights. Or, in summary, it sucks.
I agree with you, in part, its not as bad as having no order at all, which is hardly the only alternative to what we have now. I'd like living in an area with a police force. Military occupation force, not so good. But "real cops" would be OK.
Your point about a chilling effect on good cops due to lawsuits seems flimsy. Potentially frivolous lawsuits won't be resource intensive because they would have hard and fast evidence (video) for a prosecutor or jury to make a decision on. Good cops that know they are good cops could act confidently, reassured that their protocol-following actions are recorded. Citizens that might otherwise be mouthy, physically resistant, or whatever else might behave better knowing that the camera is watching. It really seems like a win-win for all parties involved, except for the "bad apples" and their supporters.
Also, I don't suggest that we disband police forces. I do believe that policing in the United States needs to be more "peace officer"-like rather than SWAT-like. I feel that we are trending towards the latter.
So it would change things.
A hunting, or a genocidal, relationship involves one side gunning down the other while sustaining minimal casualties.
An infantry war relationship as often proposed as the model for America's Police (which in itself is pretty screwed up, implying we as tax payers are the bad guy enemies that the good blue guys need to kill) involves about the same number of body bags on both sides. Oh sure Alexander the Great or Caesar or Rommel could have done 10:1 ratio of body bags, but there aren't many military commanders like that. Not in most police forces anyway.
Observationally the general public has FAR more to fear from cops than cops have to fear from the general public. The bodies, mostly minority boys, are stacked like cordwood on one scale of justice and other other has a very small handful of coffins, very small indeed.
Its inappropriate to describe a huntsmans relationship to his meat in terms of nobility that make it sound like a brave infantry soldier on the front lines.
After all, problem cops tend to be systematic about their abuse. The red-flag pattern you want to watch out for is lots of otherwise unconnected individuals all registering similar complaints about the same person.
Also, an effective rating system doesn't need to contain every unsubstantiated mark against a cop. It can aggregate results and compare them against an acceptable baseline and / or a rolling average.
The real point of accountability rests with their superiors, who should be dismissed from their positions if they persist in putting cops with bad records out on the street. In essence, they're placing the public in harms way, which is diametrically opposed to their official role as senior public safety officers. If that's not a firing offense, I can't imagine what would be.
Dump a lot of the info on github/etc (since it is public info)
Ask people's help with OCR & Digitization (as needed)
Get the community involved to find instances of Abuse etc
Hold the buggers accountable - A large portion of Cops are power tripping bullies who think they are above the law
This is a perfect example of needing to actually read the linked to article:
> COP considered dumping the raw data online for anyone to view, but decided against it because it would involve the publication of sensitive personal details—things like mental illness, drug addiction, or cases involving minors.
Could we stop calling qualified professionals "nerds"? One of them is an independent cyber-security expert. I find it insulting. To me, nerd comes with this definition: "an unstylish, unattractive, or socially inept person".
The journalist should be ashamed. What is this, high school?
Edit: I find very interesting that this post was upvoted to 20, downvoted to 10 and is now back to 15. It seem that not everyone is insulted by the term "nerd" !
Nerd can mean any social rank you want.
Just let it go.
And regardless of how you see it, plenty of people associate it with being mercilessly bullied.
In my opinion there should be an officially instituted oversight board with open meetings and elections in every municipality and county in the US. I'm betting we would see a dramatic reduction in the problems caused by police and might just see a drop in crime as well. The average citizen certainly doesn't want police to be unable to do their jobs. But the concerns on accountability and how the jobs are being done is growing.
Anyone getting arrested and resisting will complain that it's "excessive force" when the police use any sort of force to arrest them. If you talk to any cop working right now, they will tell you this. This is why 99% don't see the light of day.
"The two Seattle residents are now the closest thing the city has to a civilian police-oversight board"
If this is even close to the truth, it's scary. They see numbers and text on a report. Nothing is in context to the situation that happened. This is why there are professional police review boards dedicated to investigating these matters...and we don't have armchair/twitter warriors making important decisions like this.
"Then, in February 2011, Rachner met Mocek at an SPD town hall meeting. Mocek had had his own run-in with police. In 2009, security agents at Albuquerque Airport threw him in a jail cell for lacking identification and causing a disturbance. Mocek challenged the misdemeanor charges against him and, like Rachner, won. Their run-ins and legal battles with security agencies galvanized them, they said, to hold police accountable for mistakes and abuses."
So how is upholding the law, "abuse"????
"the largest public union in the state"
This entire article is about railing against the police, yet the unions are never mentioned as part of the problem. Very interesting indeed.
For context, The Stranger is Seattle's free alt-weekly. They have a very strong leftist bent, consistently endorse pro-union politicians while calling them "independent" without a hint of irony, and are unlikely to press this issue very much if at all.
See http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/12/22/spog-is...
and http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/reform-in-reverse/Content... for examples.
The point of the article that you seem to be overlooking is the fact that "talking to any cop working right now" is exactly how we end up in situations where police are abusing their power. Yes, I see that you are specifically referring to "excessive force" complaints, but I am also extending it to "cops watching cops" as a method of fair and proper oversight. When only 6.4% of complaints (284/4407) are sustained and no officers are fired for misconduct over the span of 3 years, seems to me that there's a problem with the oversight in place. What employer that has over a thousand employees doesn't have to terminate an employee over the span of 3 years?
Remember, though, that they're asking for an enormous number of documents.
As far as the spirit of the law goes, I think it's more intended for someone to just request the documents that they're interested in, rather than just hoovering up every document the police have.
And to bring the point back to the unions: the union signed a contract mandating that records be destroyed after 3 years. Not archive, not digitize, but destroy? That destruction isn't to ease job performance, it's to ease long-term liability for the police to the detriment of the general population.
That's an interesting point, and I don't see that that sort of behavior is specifically prohibited anywhere in Chapter 42.56 RCW.
[0] http://nypost.com/2015/04/22/swedish-cops-on-vacation-break-... and
It remains that 99% of complaint-filers think the police used more force than was warranted. Whether or not the police have the authorization doesn't mean the have the right (or are right).
So how is upholding the law, "abuse"???
The fact that both won in court against the police for tens of thousands of dollars is strong evidence that what the police did to them really was abuse. And the police were doing something other than upholding the law.
The fact that the police denied having video evidence that they in fact did have (which did not support their case) is further evidence that the police were simply in the wrong.
And finally, the fact that the "professional police review board" did not flag this as something that needs fixing is strong evidence that the review process does not, in fact, work.
Later that year, I filed a related civil rights lawsuit. March of this year, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments on dismissal of that suit. There's no set timeline for a response from the court.
For details, see: - [FAQ: State of New Mexico v. Phillip Mocek](http://papersplease.org/wp/mocek/) - [FAQ: Phillip Mocek v. Albuquerque et al.](http://papersplease.org/wp/mocek2/)
Did the results in court prove that OJ had nothing to do with his wife's murder? There are plenty of cases in court that are also wrong..and it doesn't 'prove' that the police were definitely abusing anyone.
"And finally, the fact that the "professional police review board" did not flag this as something that needs fixing is strong evidence that the review process does not, in fact, work."
What needs to be fixed? That we shouldn't ask people boarding a plane for ID? Both of the people in this article sound like they cause more problems than they actually are claiming to solve.
If I took everything I read in text at face value, we would have lots of innocent people in prison. It's ridiculous to think that this can even be allowed. Neither of the people in the article have the professional experience or education to make any kind of important decision.
An ID is not required for flying in the US. Taking photos is not illegal. The first is a bit surprising to some, and even the second, so I can understand how you may have thought those were a problem, but surely you knew that being stupid is not a crime?
His arrest was so unjustified that he didn't even present a defense at trial. After the prosecution called its witnesses and presented its arguments, and the defense was given its chance, the defense rested without calling any witnesses or presenting any evidence. All the defense did was in closing arguments point out all the holes in the prosecution's claims, and an hour later Mocek was acquitted on all charges.
Rachner was arrested for acts that were not criminal. That in itself is not abuse, since the police can make mistakes. However, they withheld evidence that would have shown they were wrong. That is not upholding the law. That is abuse.
That has got to be the most fake-ass charge I've heard this week. More properly stated, "failing to respect mah authoritay".
On the other hand, the last couple years we've seen just how willing the justice system is to go after cops.