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

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

#131

Post by golergka » Wed, Dec 30, 2015, 8:51 AM UTC

newman314 wrote: post #123

golergka wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This isn't that hard to find. Here's a quick one. http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/06/29/many-countries-po... ryana posted a link re crime rates not really making a difference. "While some have blamed violent crime for being responsible for police violence in some communities, data shows that high levels of violent crime in cities did not appear to make it any more or less likely for police departments to kill pe…

Yeah, I'm still waiting to get free 30 minutes to check the actual data and compare it to data outside of US.

My initial assumption was based on the soviet research from the late 80s on this subject, but I couldn't easily find a link right now. (Yes, I know what you think of soviet police system, and you're right in general, but I know the people who did this research and the political climate itself was pretty vegetarian too at the time).

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

#132

Post by TrevorJ » Wed, Dec 30, 2015, 11:30 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #128

TrevorJ wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you have to be 100% totally damn sure that there is a problem in a first place and that you're not inventing it Sounds a lot like a 'no true Scotsman' fallacy. Everything from apartments to restaurants to taxi and semi drivers have ratings or a feedback system and it hasn't brought any of those systems to a grinding halt.

It's not about finding a true Scotsman - it's about allocating resources to fighting real problems instead of imaginary ones. Ratings systems are not a silver bullet either - they're often easy to game (products) or measure wrong things (restaurants); users can be pressured into giving a good rating (employee interaction rating machines at border control, which you have to press while still in front of the officer) o…

If you don't feel that the training and culture of LEO has some real problems then I'm not sure we have enough common ground to discuss a solution, to be honest.

I do agree that ratings can be gamed and are not a silver bullet though, that is true. It's difficult to get right.

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

#133

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Dec 31, 2015, 1:02 AM UTC

TrevorJ wrote: post #132

TeMPOraL wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about finding a true Scotsman - it's about allocating resources to fighting real problems instead of imaginary ones. Ratings systems are not a silver bullet either - they're often easy to game (products) or measure wrong things (restaurants); users can be pressured into giving a good rating (employee interaction rating machines at border control, which you have to press while still in front of the officer) o…

If you don't feel that the training and culture of LEO has some real problems then I'm not sure we have enough common ground to discuss a solution, to be honest. I do agree that ratings can be gamed and are not a silver bullet though, that is true. It's difficult to get right.

Based on what I read, heard and saw I do totally feel that "the training and culture of LEO has some real problems". Especially in the US, but Europe also starts to go this way. I don't deny the need for addressing it. My original point was about something else - that we should be sure we don't overblow the problem.

The current situation is that citizens and police are stuck in a feedback loop of growing fear and resent towards each other. A key step to solving our problem is to contain this loop before it grows too strong. 'rrmm wrote about giving more visibility to the transgressions of policemen, but I argue that going for maximum publicity isn't always a best approach. Taking into the account how blindly people consume the media, I fear it may only exacerbate the vicious circle of fear and resent.