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How three teenagers invented an app to police the cops

economist.com

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Re: How three teenagers invented an app to police the cops

#31

Post by Lawtonfogle »

drglitch wrote: post #7

I'm glad to see that a lens flare photoshop filter is still a rite-of-passage in design just like it was back in late 90s :) Joking aside, this will have same terrible bias as BBB - bad reviews will be the only ones making it in. I am right up there with thinking cops significantly (and often) overstep their bounds but this is treating a symptom not the root cause.

The bias is justified. When you commit a crime, it is this single worst action that you are judged for, ignoring any positive contributions you have made. So judging cops based only on their worst behavior is quite valid, especially given the power they wield (which seems to include the power to be judge, jury, and executioner).

Re: How three teenagers invented an app to police the cops

#32

Post by JustSomeNobody »

nkoren wrote: post #24
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am right up there with thinking cops significantly (and often) overstep their bounds... Really? Are you sure this isn't just because the bad ones are reported often and hardly any good ones? I mean, there are a LOT of officers in the U.S. Surely they aren't all overstepping. One thing to remember about officers; they see the worst of US day in and day out, every single day. I'm sure it colors one's view of the wo…

I'm an American expat living in the UK, so I am interested in judging things on comparative rather than absolute terms. In the UK, the police are on track to have killed 3 people in 2015[1]. In the US, the police are on track to have killed 1,200 people[2]. Adjusted for population, the US has a police homicide rate that is 79 times higher than in the UK. In some places, police violence is now the no. 1 form of homici…

Nice statistics.

Just because an officer kills, doesn't mean it was a crime and it doesn't mean the officer overstepped his bounds.

Re: How three teenagers invented an app to police the cops

#33

Post by JustSomeNobody »

coldtea wrote: post #27
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the poster I was replying to didn't set any constraints, its clear they meant generally. I disagree that generally officers significantly overstep their bounds.

Even if just 10% of US officers "overstep their bounds", whereas in the UK or Germany only 1% do, it's still a huge problem. That it's not the "general case" it's hardly any consolation.

Nice. Where'd you get the numbers?

Re: How three teenagers invented an app to police the cops

#34

Post by JustSomeNobody »

coldtea wrote: post #22
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am right up there with thinking cops significantly (and often) overstep their bounds... Really? Are you sure this isn't just because the bad ones are reported often and hardly any good ones? I mean, there are a LOT of officers in the U.S. Surely they aren't all overstepping. One thing to remember about officers; they see the worst of US day in and day out, every single day. I'm sure it colors one's view of the wo…

> Really? Are you sure this isn't just because the bad ones are reported often and hardly any good ones? There shouldn't be that many "bad ones" to report, period. It's supposed to be a professional police force, not amateur hour of bigots, wannabe Rambos and trigger-happy Harry Callahans. And since the casualty statistics across the board are awful, and a true shame compared to any other western country, it's not a…

> There shouldn't be that many "bad ones" to report, period.

You're absolutely right! But that's NOT what I was arguing against.

>They also represent some of what is worst about the US, day in and day out, every single day.

NO THEY DON'T! Only a few!!! That's my POINT.

Re: How three teenagers invented an app to police the cops

#35

Post by TeMPOraL »

rrmm wrote: post #11
drglitch wrote: post #7

I'm glad to see that a lens flare photoshop filter is still a rite-of-passage in design just like it was back in late 90s :) Joking aside, this will have same terrible bias as BBB - bad reviews will be the only ones making it in. I am right up there with thinking cops significantly (and often) overstep their bounds but this is treating a symptom not the root cause.

There still needs to be visibility. Only the recent ubiquity of cell phone cameras has allowed the public at large to see interactions between citizens and police. Before this it was easy to dismiss or just be ignorant of how often police abuse occurred to certain groups of people. It was the officer's word against these "thugs". Getting everyone to admit a problem exists and getting our heads around how frequently i…

I used to believe this but now I'm more careful - there are several biases that rear their ugly heads in problems like these. On the one hand, what GP alluded to is that bad interactions will be overrepresented in any kind of police reporting app that doesn't force you to rate every interaction you were in. On the other hand, you have the usual publication/media bias and availability heuristic working against us.

Say 1 in 500 police interaction is bad (terrorizing innocents at gunpoint) and 1 in 10 000 is, well, criminal (police maiming or killing someone innocent). That's 0.5% and 0.01% of all interactions, respectively. Even assuming that all police interactions, good and bad, are recorded in detail by third parties, in a country as big as the United States that still gives a steady stream of police brutality cases to run on nation-wide news, day after day.

So even though in my example the problem is minor and mostly random in nature, even when most people can go through their lives and never experience police behaving badly, the overall perception will be that police brutality is a big problem that absolutely needs to be dealt with right now. In fact, in this case, the only real problem is media reporting and people believing it instead of doing the math.

Now I don't know the real numbers for the police problem in the US, but it wouldn't surprise me if cases of brutality were even rarer than in my example. And even if this is a totally 100% legit problem, there are many, many others - from terrorism to immigrants to vaccines causing autism - that are simply manufactured by news reporting. This all makes me believe that the biggest danger to our civilization are we ourselves - and our massive overreactions to media-manufactured non-problems.

Re: How three teenagers invented an app to police the cops

#36

Post by pc86 »

coldtea wrote: post #22
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am right up there with thinking cops significantly (and often) overstep their bounds... Really? Are you sure this isn't just because the bad ones are reported often and hardly any good ones? I mean, there are a LOT of officers in the U.S. Surely they aren't all overstepping. One thing to remember about officers; they see the worst of US day in and day out, every single day. I'm sure it colors one's view of the wo…

> Really? Are you sure this isn't just because the bad ones are reported often and hardly any good ones? There shouldn't be that many "bad ones" to report, period. It's supposed to be a professional police force, not amateur hour of bigots, wannabe Rambos and trigger-happy Harry Callahans. And since the casualty statistics across the board are awful, and a true shame compared to any other western country, it's not a…

> It's supposed to be a professional police force, not amateur hour of bigots, wannabe Rambos and trigger-happy Harry Callahans.

What interactions have you had with police officers in the last few years? Because it sounds like the majority of your "experience" is coming from Mother Jones and MSNBC.

I sit on the Civil Service Commission for my township, which exists only because we have a small local police force. I deal with both police officers (e.g. the folks patrolling the street or doing traffic enforcement), management (lieutenant/chief, elected township officials), and police applicants in a professional context on at least a monthly if not weekly basis throughout the year.

Your comment has not even a passing affiliation with reality.

Re: How three teenagers invented an app to police the cops

#37

Post by coldtea »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #33
coldtea wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if just 10% of US officers "overstep their bounds", whereas in the UK or Germany only 1% do, it's still a huge problem. That it's not the "general case" it's hardly any consolation.

Nice. Where'd you get the numbers?

They are made-up example numbers to show that even if something is not the "general case" (e.g. majority), it can still be a huge problem if it's big enough, especially if it's bigger than the norm in other "civilized" countries. Note that you didn't provide any numbers for "most cops don't overstep their bounds" either.

If we consider "killing citizens" as "overstepping their bounds" (and I'd say is the most overstepping a policeman can do), then US police does it by about 1-2 orders of magnitude (70 - 100 times) more than other western countries...

Here are some actual hard numbers:

For instance, an April 2007 study of the Chicago Police Department found that out of more than 10,000 police abuse complaints filed between 2002 and 2003, only 19 (0.19%) resulted in meaningful disciplinary action. The study charges that the police department's oversight body allows officers with "criminal tendencies to operate with impunity," and argues that the Chicago Police Department should not be allowed to police itself.[29] Only 19% of large municipal police forces have a civilian complaint review board (CCRB). Law enforcement jurisdictions that have a CCRB have an excessive force complaint rate against their officers of 11.9% verses 6.6% complaint rate for those without a CCRB. Of those forces without a CCRB only 8% of the complaints were sustained.[30] Thus, for the year 2002, the rate at which police brutality complaints were sustained was 0.53% for the larger police municipalities nationwide.

Here are some more:

According to the 2014 Legatum Prosperity Index released in November, in the measure of personal freedom, the United States has fallen from 9th place in 2010 to 21st worldwide—behind such countries as Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Uruguay and Costa Rica. Other such rankings systems show the US as low as 46.

Let’s look at our immediate neighbors to the north, Canada. The total number of citizens killed by law enforcement officers in the year 2014, was 14; that is 78 times less people than the US. If we look at the United Kingdom, 1 person was killed by police in 2014 and 0 in 2013. English police reportedly fired guns a total of three times in all of 2013, with zero reported fatalities. From 2010 through 2014, there were four fatal police shootings in England, which has a population of about 52 million. By contrast, Albuquerque, N.M., with a population 1 percent the size of England’s, had 26 fatal police shootings in that same time period.

China, whose population is 4 and 1/2 times the size of the United States, recorded 12 killings by law enforcement officers in 2014. Let that sink in. Law enforcement in the US killed 92 times more people than a country with nearly 1.4 billion people. It doesn’t stop there. From 2013-2014, German police killed absolutely no one.

And more:

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/jun/0...

And let's not even get into BS like sending SWAT teams for any BS offense, like getting some stoned teenager...

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21599349-america...

Re: How three teenagers invented an app to police the cops

#38

Post by enraged_camel »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #19
rrmm wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Significant and often are clearly a matter of perspective: what's significant and how often is too often? Realistically, there will always be some incidents. Ideally, they should be as few as possible such that law enforcement is still effective (for whatever value of effective that society chooses). The severity also factors in: No one will probably care all that much if a cop screws up the exact wording of a mirand…

As the poster I was replying to didn't set any constraints, its clear they meant generally. I disagree that generally officers significantly overstep their bounds.

Even if most officers don't overstep their bounds themselves, they cover for and protect their buddies who do. This makes the majority of cops bad cops.

Re: How three teenagers invented an app to police the cops

#39

Post by anu_gupta »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #32
nkoren wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an American expat living in the UK, so I am interested in judging things on comparative rather than absolute terms. In the UK, the police are on track to have killed 3 people in 2015[1]. In the US, the police are on track to have killed 1,200 people[2]. Adjusted for population, the US has a police homicide rate that is 79 times higher than in the UK. In some places, police violence is now the no. 1 form of homici…

Nice statistics. Just because an officer kills, doesn't mean it was a crime and it doesn't mean the officer overstepped his bounds.

> Nice statistics

Yeah, it sucks when someone comes armed with facts, doesn't it?

Re: How three teenagers invented an app to police the cops

#40

Post by intopieces »

drglitch wrote: post #7

I'm glad to see that a lens flare photoshop filter is still a rite-of-passage in design just like it was back in late 90s :) Joking aside, this will have same terrible bias as BBB - bad reviews will be the only ones making it in. I am right up there with thinking cops significantly (and often) overstep their bounds but this is treating a symptom not the root cause.

Well, there's a simple remedy for that. The police can just not do bad things. They are, after all, employed by citizens and paid by citizens using their tax dollars. They are not independent contractors competing for business in a police free-market.
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