How three teenagers invented an app to police the cops • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by newman314 » Tue, Dec 29, 2015, 7:00 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #66

at-fates-hands wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Actual homicide is just the tip of the iceberg, of course, but if this doesn't qualify as "significantly and often" then I'm not sure what does. Mainly because police departments do not keep these kinds of statistics, so the data is horribly incomplete. And as anybody knows, you can massage the data to show anything you want when you don't have the complete picture: Officials with the Justice Department keep no co…

As I understand it (I don't know much about guns) a weapon is a measure of last resort. The officer should only discharge the weapon if someone is about to die and all other efforts have failed. And when they discharge their weapon they must shot for "centre mass" - shoot to wound is a myth. So if that's true why isn't information gathered about every single round of ammunition that's fired? Because every time that t…

Does this look like last resort? [1]

And obviously this is not an isolated incident hence much of the anger directed at police. Guns should be last resort but sadly is not the case today.

[1] http://heavy.com/news/2015/12/san-francisco-sfpd-police-shoo...

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

#92

Post by newman314 » Tue, Dec 29, 2015, 7:04 PM UTC

golergka wrote: post #84

tremon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The prevalence of crime should not in itself be an excuse for the police to use lethal force. Or maybe you meant to argue that crime rate is an indicator for general lawlessness of the population, in which case crime rate and police violence are two sides of the same coin?

No. Crime rate is correlated with amount of situations where use of lethal force is necessary. How is it not obvious?

Because as other countries have shown, it's possible to resolve a situation WITHOUT having to resort to lethal force.

But then again, you get stuff like this https://photographyisnotacrime.com/2015/12/los-angeles-deput...

Crime is correlated to localized socioeconomic situations. FTFY.

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

#93

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 29, 2015, 7:05 PM UTC

newman314 wrote: post #91

DanBC wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it (I don't know much about guns) a weapon is a measure of last resort. The officer should only discharge the weapon if someone is about to die and all other efforts have failed. And when they discharge their weapon they must shot for "centre mass" - shoot to wound is a myth. So if that's true why isn't information gathered about every single round of ammunition that's fired? Because every time that t…

Does this look like last resort? [1] And obviously this is not an isolated incident hence much of the anger directed at police. Guns should be last resort but sadly is not the case today. [1] http://heavy.com/news/2015/12/san-francisco-sfpd-police-shoo...

[deleted]

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

#94

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 29, 2015, 7:05 PM UTC

newman314 wrote: post #91

DanBC wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it (I don't know much about guns) a weapon is a measure of last resort. The officer should only discharge the weapon if someone is about to die and all other efforts have failed. And when they discharge their weapon they must shot for "centre mass" - shoot to wound is a myth. So if that's true why isn't information gathered about every single round of ammunition that's fired? Because every time that t…

Does this look like last resort? [1] And obviously this is not an isolated incident hence much of the anger directed at police. Guns should be last resort but sadly is not the case today. [1] http://heavy.com/news/2015/12/san-francisco-sfpd-police-shoo...

[deleted]

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

#95

Post by ryana » Tue, Dec 29, 2015, 7:10 PM UTC

golergka wrote: post #84

tremon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The prevalence of crime should not in itself be an excuse for the police to use lethal force. Or maybe you meant to argue that crime rate is an indicator for general lawlessness of the population, in which case crime rate and police violence are two sides of the same coin?

No. Crime rate is correlated with amount of situations where use of lethal force is necessary. How is it not obvious?

The data would say otherwise.

See the graphic at the bottom of this page and feel free to peruse the linked dataset as well.

http://mappingpoliceviolence.org/2015

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

#96

Post by jpindar » Tue, Dec 29, 2015, 7:49 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #66

at-fates-hands wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Actual homicide is just the tip of the iceberg, of course, but if this doesn't qualify as "significantly and often" then I'm not sure what does. Mainly because police departments do not keep these kinds of statistics, so the data is horribly incomplete. And as anybody knows, you can massage the data to show anything you want when you don't have the complete picture: Officials with the Justice Department keep no co…

As I understand it (I don't know much about guns) a weapon is a measure of last resort. The officer should only discharge the weapon if someone is about to die and all other efforts have failed. And when they discharge their weapon they must shot for "centre mass" - shoot to wound is a myth. So if that's true why isn't information gathered about every single round of ammunition that's fired? Because every time that t…

As I understand it, police do have to report every round fired - to their immediate supervisor, who has no particular reason to compile statistics on such reports or to show them to anyone else.

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

#97

Post by sleepychu » Tue, Dec 29, 2015, 8:03 PM UTC

pasbesoin wrote: post #89

Wingman4l7 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fundamental failure of journalism posted on the Internet to not actually link to the subject of your reporting.

Often, I experience it as deliberate. There is so much rehashing; if you link to the source, people may simply go there -- especially if it proves to be better than your hash.

If the hash is reversible then it's not a hash!

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

#98

Post by mindslight » Tue, Dec 29, 2015, 8:03 PM UTC

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…

> This all makes me believe that the biggest danger to our civilization are we ourselves - and our massive overreactions to media-manufactured non-problems.

Completely agree with this point, but it's irrelevant to the subject of unaccountable police (although it's quite relevant to the media's derailing the issue into racist tripe)

Any single case where police and prosecutors harm someone who is neither subsequently found guilty nor compensated for the harm suffered is an injustice. It doesn't matter if its 10% of cases, 0.01%, or a single innocent person who was detained for a mere 2 hours of their life. The relative frequency isn't important - these cases simply shouldn't exist, the same way a hypothetical mayor's brother not being investigated for murder shouldn't exist.

Better top-down policies and training won't fix the police or justice system - they need better incentives to change behavior at the lowest levels. The kind of incentives where they can no longer push the damage from their moral hazard onto unlucky victims, and are instead bound by the laws they purport to uphold.

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

#99

Post by sleepychu » Tue, Dec 29, 2015, 8:06 PM UTC

RankingMember wrote: post #26

zomg wrote: post #9

the best way to police the police is to be aware of your local wire tapping laws and roll video.

This is my thought, too. Video, unless thoroughly chopped up (which tends to be obvious), doesn't lie. I've had an idea for a "RateMyCop" app for a bit, but it looks like these kids have basically created it already. The only problem with such an app is the natural human bias to be motivated to report negative interactions over positive, as someone else mentioned in these comments. Straight-up video recordings don't…

So let's have all government employed agents with body worn video cameras.

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

#100

Post by tremon » Tue, Dec 29, 2015, 8:20 PM UTC

nkoren wrote: post #82

at-fates-hands wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Actual homicide is just the tip of the iceberg, of course, but if this doesn't qualify as "significantly and often" then I'm not sure what does. Mainly because police departments do not keep these kinds of statistics, so the data is horribly incomplete. And as anybody knows, you can massage the data to show anything you want when you don't have the complete picture: Officials with the Justice Department keep no co…

> Mainly because police departments do not keep these kinds of statistics, so the data is horribly incomplete. And as anybody knows, you can massage the data to show anything you want when you don't have the complete picture: That is true, but not to the US' credit. In the UK, the records are compiled nationally and are beyond question. There have been three fatal police shootings here in 2015; all of them were front…

> Undoubtedly many of them are justified

I may be a bit pedantic here, but I think that's an unfortunate choice of words. If I understand the legal situation in the US correctly, Culling of individuals by power of government can only be justified through a judge, and executed with consent from a state governor.

Some of the cullings may be defensible, given the nature of the police's job. But in my view, none are justified.