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How three teenagers invented an app to police the cops

economist.com

111–120 of 133 posts

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

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Those cases will always exist , IMO. Suppose a bank was robbed by one person described as 5'10", medium build, wearing a dark blue hoodie, running north on Main St. and two people were seen minutes later running north on Main from the bank matching that description. It's perfectly reasonable and there's a societal interest for both to be stopped and contacted, even though it's CERTAIN that at least one of them is uni…

Crime prevention at what cost? Keep the bank safe but imperil, maim, or jail the innocent medium build hoodie wearer of your argument? I think you're operating on an fundamental assumption rather than really thinking through the problem.

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

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those cases will always exist , IMO. Suppose a bank was robbed by one person described as 5'10", medium build, wearing a dark blue hoodie, running north on Main St. and two people were seen minutes later running north on Main from the bank matching that description. It's perfectly reasonable and there's a societal interest for both to be stopped and contacted, even though it's CERTAIN that at least one of them is uni…

Crime prevention at what cost? Keep the bank safe but imperil, maim, or jail the innocent medium build hoodie wearer of your argument? I think you're operating on an fundamental assumption rather than really thinking through the problem.

Stop and contact is entirely warranted, IMO.

You added maim or jail.

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

#113

I'm with Temporal that this will be negatively biased against the police. There will be some good ratings of good cops at least while this is a fad. There might be a percentage that do it consistently. Yet, most people are going to make this the goto app for ranting against the police. These rants will vary in accuracy. Overall, I mainly see it being an app for collecting negative claims about police rather than trul…

Derp, maybe if the police stop behaving badly, we will have more positive things to say about them.

Your argument would still apply if it was an app for citizens to tell the police who to investigate. "Forget the abuse potential: if they don't like a bad solution, they shouldn't have allowed criminals to exist in the first place."

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

#114
post #87

I'm with Temporal that this will be negatively biased against the police. There will be some good ratings of good cops at least while this is a fad. There might be a percentage that do it consistently. Yet, most people are going to make this the goto app for ranting against the police. These rants will vary in accuracy. Overall, I mainly see it being an app for collecting negative claims about police rather than trul…

Bias is easily removed, just select your zero and scale. Human reaction to police actions is a precious feedback that can make them better, not throw them all to jails. What's good in police that is officially correct, but unaccepted by the entire society?

You make something sound easy that I rarely see done well. The real problem is willingness to convict cops. Not enough exists. Once that exists, clear guidelines are necessary so cops can get stuff done while knowing when they'd be crossing the line.

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

#115
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1 defect in 10,000 is not arbitrarily 'good' No, I'd argue it's pretty awful. The average person probably interacts with the police ~10 times during their life. If 1 in 10 000 cop interactions ended up with you getting killed, police brutality would be in the top 10 causes of death in the US (on par with suicide).

Temporal said 'criminal', not 'fatal', and gave the example of 'maimed or fatal'. There are also non-fatal, non-injurious ways to be criminal in policing.

Technically yes, but they also gave an example of a serious, non-fatal, non-injurious way of being criminal in policing ("terrorizing innocents at gunpoint") and classified that outside of the 1 in 10 000 frequency.

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

#116
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like an excellent idea for a honeypot. Are you building it?

I'd be a bit late to that party. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/8632c929c3ba4773a2e130689f4b8... http://consumerist.com/2014/05/19/private-companies-building... http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/st... https://desertsnow.com/ https://bales.org/

ugh, oh god

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

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crime prevention at what cost? Keep the bank safe but imperil, maim, or jail the innocent medium build hoodie wearer of your argument? I think you're operating on an fundamental assumption rather than really thinking through the problem.

Stop and contact is entirely warranted, IMO. You added maim or jail.

I'll leave it at imperil. You can argue skewed coverage, but from where I sit, being approached by police in the situation described seems extremely dangerous.

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

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Please, show how other countries addressed similar crime rates without lethal force.

Single occurences are irrelevant if we're talking about trends. I can conjure an emotional story to prove any possible outlook on this problem.

Yes, crime is correlated to socioeconomic situations, that doesn't contradict anything in my comment.

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

#119
post #66

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…

> And when they discharge their weapon they must shot for "centre mass" - shoot to wound is a myth.

This is true, for the US. It is also one of the symptoms of what is wrong with "enforcement" in that country.

Police officers in many other countries (such as Germany for instance) are explicitly instructed to shoot to wound if at all possible - and with good results both in terms of getting their suspects arrested but not killed, and in terms of not getting killed themselves. Indeed, this is not just the case for police worldwide, but even for the US armed forces when working under "nation building" rules of engagements rather than "total war" rules of engagements.

A shoot-to-kill doctrine is an obvious sign that rather than having an attitude of serving and protecting their community, the enforcers are serving/protecting themselves first.

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

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't?

Aren't is a contraction and means are not. You could have googled that in less time than it took to post your comment.

Do you seriously think my question was about english?
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