41–50 of 133 posts
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.
It'll only have the same terrible bias as BBB once police forces can pay to massage their coverage...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 d…
Maybe study the numbers or talk to people from big cities, and especially large urban centers?
Besides the homicides by police in the streets statistics, which are indisputable, confirmed by the police, and the worse by over 70x any western country, here are some other factoids:
Peter Kraska, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University’s School of Justice Studies, estimates that SWAT teams were deployed about 3,000 times in 1980 but are now used around 50,000 times a year. Some cities use them for routine patrols in high-crime areas. Baltimore and Dallas have used them to break up poker games. In 2010 New Haven, Connecticut sent a SWAT team to a bar suspected of serving under-age drinkers. That same year heavily-armed police raided barber shops around Orlando, Florida; they said they were hunting for guns and drugs but ended up arresting 34 people for “barbering without a licence”. Maricopa County, Arizona sent a SWAT team into the living room of Jesus Llovera, who was suspected of organising cockfights. Police rolled a tank into Mr Llovera’s yard and killed more than 100 of his birds, as well as his dog. According to Mr Kraska, most SWAT deployments are not in response to violent, life-threatening crimes, but to serve drug-related warrants in private homes.
He estimates that 89% of police departments serving American cities with more than 50,000 people had SWAT teams in the late 1990s—almost double the level in the mid-1980s. By 2007 more than 80% of police departments in cities with between 25,000 and 50,000 people had them, up from 20% in the mid-1980s (there are around 18,000 state and local police agencies in America, compared with fewer than 100 in Britain).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
The article discusses "why" they created the app, but other than the fact that they're mostly self-taught, there's nothing on the "how". Information on their tech stack or how they're aggregating information would have been interesting to read about.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 d…
Amusing. It's your job as part of the commission to evaluate the performance of your township's civil servants, a circumstance in which those you interact with are highly motivated to act professionally around you.
And yet you claim it's the ordinary citizen who is out of touch with reality.
Here is my own anecdote: Out of four lifetime interactions with functionaries of the law, four have ranged from negative to very negative.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 d…
Well, in a "township" police is there to mostly bring cats down from trees and help with the traffic. Maybe study the numbers or talk to people from big cities, and especially large urban centers? Besides the homicides by police in the streets statistics, which are indisputable, confirmed by the police, and the worse by over 70x any western country, here are some other factoids: Peter Kraska, a professor at Eastern K…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I would be more likely to agree with you if the problem was actually random in nature. But instead I feel that bad policing in the US is based on personal biases of the individuals involved (conscious or subconscious) and institutional issues that affects certain demographics more than others.
The implication here is that cops would care what you think of them. They don't now, and they won't in the future either. The Chicago PD don't run that torture warehouse for the Yelp ratings, yo.
This will be further enhanced by the fact that nobody likes being arrested/jailed and thus the ratings will be pretty much 100% negative. Why would a cop care about how much the perp is complaining, or a meaningless aggregation thereof? On an individual basis (and ignoring the systemic problems), being tough-skinned is basically a requirement for everyone in the justice system.
Periscope is a good app that will help. This is dumb cargo-cult behavior that does nothing. This app doesn't address the problem seriously and will be forgotten in two weeks' time. Yes, they're kids and it's nice that they're coding, but don't give a bad idea a handie just for the heck of it.
Tying recordings to specific officers to compile a history of bad behavior would actually be fantastic. But the Yelp aspect of it doesn't accomplish anything.
I hope the think-tank is aware that the Dutch police currently employs Stasi methods that are worse than anything that happens in the U.S.:
http://vorige.nrc.nl/opinie/article1838531.ece
And this isn't happening to "suspected terrorists" only ...