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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

#51

Post by rrmm »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #35
rrmm wrote: post #11

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 think it's within the realm of possibility to tally or at least estimate the number of interactions (or perhaps just arrests) per jurisdiction. That gives you an easy way to see how widespread the problem is. It'll probably become clear that there are certain problem officers and patterns will emerge.

In the end it will be about trust. Previously the cops were given the benefit of the doubt; now that perception is changing. Police will have to do a better job of customer service to change that.

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

#52

Post by TeMPOraL »

bko wrote: post #47
TeMPOraL wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> So even though in my example the problem is minor and mostly random in nature 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.

I assure you that in my example the problem is totally random - it is my example after all :). In the US it's probably less so. Institutional issues one can deal with, but what to do about "personal biases of the individuals involved (conscious or subconscious)"? We can try to minimize it, but one has to accept that it'll hit diminishing returns after some time.

But my point was about 'rrmm wrote - that "Getting everyone to admit a problem exists and getting our heads around how frequently it occurs is the first step towards resolving it.". It's true, but you have to be 100% totally damn sure that there is a problem in a first place and that you're not inventing it - because in both cases there will be a problem after media get involved.

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

#53

Post by golergka »

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…

Don't you think you should also include crime rate in this analysis?

And split it by areas. I don't think anyone would find if suspicious that cops kill more people in crime-infested poor neighborhood with constant gang violence than in a high-middle class London suburb.

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

#54

Post by TeMPOraL »

rrmm wrote: post #51
TeMPOraL wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 think it's within the realm of possibility to tally or at least estimate the number of interactions (or perhaps just arrests) per jurisdiction. That gives you an easy way to see how widespread the problem is. It'll probably become clear that there are certain problem officers and patterns will emerge. In the end it will be about trust. Previously the cops were given the benefit of the doubt; now that perception is…

It is within realm of possibility, but my worry is that it simply won't happen. It doesn't happen with all the other widely discussed issues. People tend not to verify facts for themselves, and level-headed headlines generally don't sell.

> In the end it will be about trust. Previously the cops were given the benefit of the doubt; now that perception is changing. Police will have to do a better job of customer service to change that.

I agree with that.

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

#55

Post by Retric »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #35
rrmm wrote: post #11

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…

the problem is minor and mostly random in nature

1 defect in 10,000 is not arbitrarily 'good'. Picture a bridge that randomly drops 1 in every 50,000 cars.

Further, cops are not a single entity if state and local cops have different issues and different training then that might be a way to improve the system. But, we don't collect statistics nationally. So, how do we improve?

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

#56

Post by Retra »

geggam wrote: post #20
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…

Changing the mission back to peace keeping instead of law enforcement would go a long way to fixing the issue. Enforcing the law causes more problems than it solves. See : drug war

There's no point in having laws you don't enforce.

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

#57

Post by waqf »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #35
rrmm wrote: post #11

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…

> 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).

I'm pretty sure that terrorizing innocents at gunpoint is, in fact, a crime in the US. It's not a thing you get for free with your carry license.

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

#58

Post by DanBC »

Retra wrote: post #56
geggam wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Changing the mission back to peace keeping instead of law enforcement would go a long way to fixing the issue. Enforcing the law causes more problems than it solves. See : drug war

There's no point in having laws you don't enforce.

Not enforcing a law is much easier than repealing a law.

I'm not sure about the US, but in UK plenty of law is enforced less rigorously before it's scrapped.

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

#59

Post by pavel_lishin »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #52
bko wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So even though in my example the problem is minor and mostly random in nature 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.

I assure you that in my example the problem is totally random - it is my example after all :). In the US it's probably less so. Institutional issues one can deal with, but what to do about "personal biases of the individuals involved (conscious or subconscious)"? We can try to minimize it, but one has to accept that it'll hit diminishing returns after some time. But my point was about 'rrmm wrote - that "Getting ever…

> We can try to minimize it, but one has to accept that it'll hit diminishing returns after some time.

That's true for everything, but let's not assume that we're at the point of diminished returns already.

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

#60

Post by DanBC »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #35
rrmm wrote: post #11

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…

> that still gives a steady stream of police brutality cases to run on nation-wide news, day after day.

US police brutality is so routine that it mostly goes un-reported, or gets minor attention on very local news media. That's changing now. Part of the problem is that US police don't even count how many people they shoot and kill.

I'd argue that the myth of "Vaccines causing autism" was not just manufactured by media, it was manufactured by a crook doctor who i) had developed his own single dose measles vaccine and needed people to stop using MMR and ii) was paid by lawyers to find a link to autism.

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