291–300 of 365 posts
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to all the downvoters - you prefer being shot?
Perhaps they'll rather stand up to bullies, criminals and injustice, rather than say, "how low", when asked to "bend" by a bully.
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30th in murder rate though: http://www.neighborhoodscout.com/top-lists/highest-murder-ra...
Murder rate is probably the only statistic that can be trusted. Police are under lots of pressure to make sure crime stats go down, and it's really easy to misclassify or ignore reports for things like armed robbery or rape. A body is harder to hide.
http://www.vox.com/2014/6/29/5850100/chicago-brought-its-mur...
But why stop at the title?
> they find evidence that while Chicago reported 414 murders in 2013 they really had at least 432 through what, if you read the article (and you should) looks like pretty deliberate malfeasance.
> For example, Patrick Walker was found injured and unresponsive in a crashed automobile, taken to a hospital where he died, then during an autopsy they found a gunshot wound in his head and a bullet casing in the back seat of the car. Owing to the fact that he was clearly shot and killed, this was filed on his death certificate as a murder. But the Chicago Police Department has classified the case as a death investigation, making it disappear from their stats.
Doing a ctrl-F for "emanuel" or "daley" in this comment section produced zero results, which is unfortunately rather telling. Chicago has been run by the same political party since 1931. If the police are this bad and you keep re-electing the people running the city anyway, you are part of the problem. Throw the bastards out, don't just grump on message boards and then keep obediently pulling the same lever in the vo…
The real kicker is that if the city removes parking spaces temporarily or permanently, it must compensate the private vendor for the lost revenue. That makes sense, but when you throw in that it's a 75-year deal it starts to get a little murkier - want a bike lane? Better budget for the next 70 years of paying the vendor for the parking revenue for any removed spaces (and how is that calculated? Does it get recalculated every year? Is it based on nearby comparable areas or on fixed utilization percentages that don't account for changes in driving patterns and neighborhoods over time?)
I strongly suspect that given changes in how people drive, etc. that by the end of the 75-year agreement Chicago will have ended up paying more in penalties to the vendor than they got in the first place, even indexed for inflation.
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> Americas biggest problem in the inner cities. This is absolutely not true. Have you ever lived in an inner city? Yes some people are fighting with each other but if you act respectfully, you'll be left alone. The police aren't cracking down because they "have to". They're cracking down (e.g. stop and frisk) because they're power hungry and ignorant. As someone who's lived in all manner of socioeconomic areas of the…
>This is absolutely not true. Have you ever lived in an inner city? Yes some people are fighting with each other but if you act respectfully, you'll be left alone. I've lived in downtown areas of Chicago and DC, but never what people mean when they say "inner city" (i.e. ghetto). They won't leave you alone. They'll rob you or break into your car. Criminals murder and steal from the people who live there at alarming r…
No "they" won't. Sorry your friend's car got broken into but that happens everywhere, not just the inner city.
> 85% people have healthcare coverage.
Pretty sure it's not the middle class that's not insured. Also rent prices absolutely are a poor problem. That's what gentrification is all about.
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Perhaps they'll rather stand up to bullies, criminals and injustice, rather than say, "how low", when asked to "bend" by a bully.
"bullies, criminals and injustice" are the police. this whole rather depressing discussion is dedicated to the consequences of standing up to police. again, your choice is simple - bend or be shot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx2iQnYMQfM
first 3 bullets in the chest, then 6 in already dead body, then taser the corpse. policemen successfully argued self-defense and was charged with attempted (???) murder. the only reason why this made to trial, was because video was released to public. otherwise he would have walked.
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I agree with you; I think there are some amazing strong communities all across the poorer areas of Chicago. But there are also people who will fuck with you there. The communities don't support them; in fact, on the west side (where I live), they put up signs on every block saying they want to chase those people away. Ask people who bike from the loop to Oak Park if they've ever been fucked with in Lawndale. I have a…
I think the truth is somewhere between your guys' position. There is a very real statistical difference between the crime rates between neighborhoods. But its also true that the actual incident rate is much exaggerated by the media and perceptions of neighborhood differences are greater than reality. One thing that is for sure, young black teens/men have a much, much more dangerous time of it, regardless of neighborh…
You don't think those two things might be related?
> But its also true that the actual incident rate is much exaggerated by the media and perceptions of neighborhood differences are greater than reality.
"Reality" is a tricky concept here. Public (out-of-neighborhood) perception of risk will depress the incident rate by keeping victims out of the area. If you magically caused people to believe that the risk was at some level that you felt reflected the current incident rate, and the incident rate rose because people started going where they shouldn't have, whose beliefs were more accurate?
People don't really care about "how often do muggings take place in this neighborhood?". They care about "if I go in there, am I going to get mugged?".
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Cops are trained to establish control of a situation by being unfriendly, authoritative, and uncompromising. It could come across as bullying if you don't know what's going on.
Maybe we should be training them to be friendly, authoritative and reasonable instead. You don't need to be an asshole to exert control; in fact it's much easier to do so if you aren't.
Why is this the top post on hacker news? What does this have to do with anything other than anecdotal, hysterical media BS?
I'm just speculating but I'd say that with the recent death of Ian Murdock and how that situation played out, tensions are high between the HN community and the police in America.
I grew up in an Asian country where I have seen police corruption first hand more than once and I always wished my country had better educated and morally strong individuals who would protect the weaker sections of the society instead of siding with rich/powerful people even if they are criminals. I always wished like in the west police would enforce the law regardless of the status of that individual and that police…
Ultimately, this comes down to the management strategies the police utilize. The British/American paradigm is the tragic, horrible police management strategy that leads to the types of stories we're discussing now. Many Asian countries follow the same such policies. Go look at Norway's police force, and you'll see that things can be very, very different.
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I'm moving to Chicago in a few months. Are there certain neighborhoods that should be avoided on the basis of corrupt police activity? I wonder because I could see neighborhoods that are relatively safe in terms of civilian crime, but cops posted in that area might have nothing better to do than mess with its inhabitants.
Some of these posts here are a joke. Chicago is like any other major US city, probably better than the mid-tier cities I've spent time living in in terms of police and crime. It's simply very much two cities and you only hear news stories about one. Just like anywhere else, don't act like an idiot or seek out trouble in rough areas and 99% of your interactions with police will be fine. You're on HackerNews so presuma…
I feel like half of these comments are made up on here, or they were going to a place everyone knows is a bad place.
Hell, Joliet (the suburb I grew up in) had a higher crime rate.