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How we built the largest database of police use of force in N.J. history

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Re: How we built the largest database of police use of force in N.J. history

#21

Post by danso »

onetimemanytime wrote: post #3

True journalism. ACLU should do a nationwide one, they'd raise the money in a hearbeat.

The various local branches of the ACLU have been doing some impressive data projects.

- NYCLU won a lawsuit that forced the NYPD to release a database of their stop-and-frisk activity. The analysis of the data -- which showed a huge racial disparity in who was targeted -- was instrumental in winning a court order to reform the practice. In 2011, the NYPD committed 685K stop-and-frisks. In 2017, they did 10K. [0]

The ACLU of Northern California [1] filed records requests with 63 California police departments to uncover their financial deals with Geofeedia, a tech company that claimed to offer crime/protest detection using real-time feeds from Facebook/Instagram/Twitter's APIs. Geofeedia, which had recently raised $24M, had to vastly cut its operations after the tech companies shut off API access.

[0] https://www.nyclu.org/en/nyclu-campaign-0

[1] https://www.aclunc.org/blog/facebook-instagram-and-twitter-p...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13010337

Re: How we built the largest database of police use of force in N.J. history

#22

Post by stareatgoats »

0xcde4c3db wrote: post #16
stareatgoats wrote: post #4

A database that lists the officers responsible for force by name, frequency and race. Resulting in neat graphs that strongly suggests that police violence is caused by two factors: individuals and/or race. Police brutality is a serious problem and data like this should be available, but several things here are (maybe intentionally) provocative: 1. Listing the officers by name is a kind of online vigilantism that ulti…

This use of "race is a social construct" seems strange. When people say that, the key point is typically that it has no biological meaning. It's still often a highly relevant variable when studying social trends and public policy. The institution of a formal police force with its own sociopolitical identity and career prospects is also a social construct, after all.

>"race is a social construct" seems strange.

It merely means that race is something that doesn't exist outside of the social conventions of a society, an identity pasted onto oneself or someone else based on superficial and meaningless biological attributes.

Racism can be physically dangerous if 'race' is associated with ethics (be it high or low), such as in this database. But mainly, racism is just stupid (i.e. it obfuscates the real issues).

To think of 'race' as a meaningful category in research underpinning policy mostly proves to an outsider how ingrained racism is in the US.

Re: How we built the largest database of police use of force in N.J. history

#23

Post by danso »

stareatgoats wrote: post #17
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Race should really be stripped from this kind statistic. Race is a social construct based on superficial attributes that does not carry any explanatory meaning. It mostly serves to underpin racist prejudice, which in turn serves to blur out the real reasons for a problem. In a lot of cases, racial prejudice is the problem, or a significant aspect of it. Racism is deeply embedded in the fabric of American society.

> Racism is deeply embedded in the fabric of American society. Yes, I'm sure, and racism is for sure "a significant aspect" of police brutality, I don't contest it. But racism is nonetheless merely a stupid pattern of thought, and I oppose the notion that combating it is to apply more racism . You'll note that the database doesn't analyze racism, it analyses race .

> You'll note that the database doesn't analyze racism, it analyses race.

It's impossible to do any analysis of racial disparity unless the race element is specifically recorded. And, as data collection is as much a political endeavor as it is technical, not every agency or state tracks race.

You can see a not-quite complete collection and comparison of nationwide police data in the Stanford Open Policing Project (disclosure: started by one of my former colleagues) [0], and which states do/don't track driver race. Not all states have agreed to release their data.

I wonder how you propose that a database "analyze racism"? A database contains data. If it's hard as it is to define and get data on race, you think there exists an arbiter and resulting data source for racism?

[0] https://openpolicing.stanford.edu/data/

Re: How we built the largest database of police use of force in N.J. history

#24

Post by adjkant »

stareatgoats wrote: post #22
0xcde4c3db wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This use of "race is a social construct" seems strange. When people say that, the key point is typically that it has no biological meaning. It's still often a highly relevant variable when studying social trends and public policy. The institution of a formal police force with its own sociopolitical identity and career prospects is also a social construct, after all.

>"race is a social construct" seems strange. It merely means that race is something that doesn't exist outside of the social conventions of a society, an identity pasted onto oneself or someone else based on superficial and meaningless biological attributes. Racism can be physically dangerous if 'race' is associated with ethics (be it high or low), such as in this database. But mainly, racism is just stupid (i.e. it…

Just because race doesn't exist outside of social conventions doesn't mean it isn't a relevant factor. In fact, it's explicitly not irrelevant for things within our society, such as the conduct of our police force. For better (or in this case worse), race is a very relevant factor in our society currently.

Re: How we built the largest database of police use of force in N.J. history

#25

Post by lbotos »

stareatgoats wrote: post #22
0xcde4c3db wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This use of "race is a social construct" seems strange. When people say that, the key point is typically that it has no biological meaning. It's still often a highly relevant variable when studying social trends and public policy. The institution of a formal police force with its own sociopolitical identity and career prospects is also a social construct, after all.

>"race is a social construct" seems strange. It merely means that race is something that doesn't exist outside of the social conventions of a society, an identity pasted onto oneself or someone else based on superficial and meaningless biological attributes. Racism can be physically dangerous if 'race' is associated with ethics (be it high or low), such as in this database. But mainly, racism is just stupid (i.e. it…

> It merely means that race is something that doesn't exist outside of the social conventions of a society, an identity pasted onto oneself or someone else based on superficial and meaningless biological attributes.

With this in mind, are police not agents working on behalf of a society? Funded largely (if not solely) by members of that society?

You don't have to look much further than "blue lives matter" to see that police in America are almost looked at as a psuedo-race.

> racism is just stupid (i.e. it obfuscates the real issues).

A lot of people think Racism in policing is the real issue. A core one. What do you think the real issues that are being obfuscated are?

Re: How we built the largest database of police use of force in N.J. history

#26

Post by CptFribble »

stareatgoats wrote: post #4

A database that lists the officers responsible for force by name, frequency and race. Resulting in neat graphs that strongly suggests that police violence is caused by two factors: individuals and/or race. Police brutality is a serious problem and data like this should be available, but several things here are (maybe intentionally) provocative: 1. Listing the officers by name is a kind of online vigilantism that ulti…

> Race is a social construct [...] that does not carry any explanatory meaning.

It may be a social construct, but that doesn't mean it's irrelevant.

Bias is real. Race-based bias is real. People make decisions based on conscious and unconscious thoughts and beliefs about race. This has been demonstrated through numerous behavioral studies.

What if the real reasons for a police departments behavior involve internally common beliefs about a particular race? What if a majority of police in a particular department just don't like Asians, for example? In that case, race is very relevant to the "real reasons for a problem."

I would love to say racism would go away if we just stopped acknowledging race, but the fact remains that many, many people have closely held beliefs about a particular race, whether it's out-and-out racism, or whether it's the assumption that a black kid in a mostly white neighborhood walking alone must necessarily be an intruder.

In 2018, we can't discuss real reasons for police violence without race. In many cases, it is the reason.

Re: How we built the largest database of police use of force in N.J. history

#27

Post by danso »

If this topic interests you, worth pointing out some similar projects, such as the Citizens Police Data Project of Chicago, which currently has 247K police complaints (and puts the code/data on Github) [0]. Note that it's about complaints -- not about all use of force, as in the NJ database. It also covers a single agency -- the Chicago PD. Ostensibly, the Chicago PD has put in the work to create a centralized database, making it relatively straightforward to get the bulk data once the records request/lawsuit succeeds. It's a much different situation when trying to corral the records from multiple agencies, all of which have their own IT systems and practices.

VICE did a mass records request for shooting incidents (again, a subset of use of force) from the 50 largest police departments. It took them 9 months to collect the data [1]

[0] https://invisible.institute/police-data/

[1] https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/a3jjpa/nonfatal-police-s...

Re: How we built the largest database of police use of force in N.J. history

#28

Post by cgriswald »

danso wrote: post #18
alehul wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * Police are more than half as likely to die on the job as a trash collectors. How is this at all relevant to whether a police officer deserves privacy? Yes, their fatality rate is around half that of a trash collector. Since when was HN anti-privacy? You can use data like this to analyze and criticize the system , but I see no reason why the officers' identities would be helpful for any legitimate purpose, especia…

Police officers have a vast amount of authority, not just being able to decide when to use lethal force, but in how to or even whether or not to pursue a case. In addition, they are protected by laws and resources that make targeting police for harassment an extremely foolish proposition. Judges and prosecutors don’t have their identities hidden, why would the officer whose testimony is often central and unquestioned…

I'm not sure that's relevant, for two reasons. First, the McCarthy and Stirling et al. already have this data, so if it is needed for criminal or civil cases, likely they would make it available and if not it can be subpoenaed. Second, the majority of these officers aren't involved and won't be involved in a fatal shooting or other serious matters.

I think this data is valuable for two things:

1. Discovering systemic problems. Why does department A have so many cases of use of force? It might be racism. It might be bad training. It might be underfunding/understaffing. Or any number of other things.

2. A complex analysis of individual police officers within departments. Is this officer outside a standard deviation in use-of-force with officers within the same department or patrolling the same beat or answering the same type of calls? Is the demographics of his use of force against individuals inconsistent with the demographics of the area? Is he largely using force against suspects who are not charged with a crime or are charged with a non-violent crime?

Publishing these names has questionable value and is unlikely to lead to any type of complex analysis. Already most of the arguments for publishing the names are doing so on the basis of a presumption of guilt.

Re: How we built the largest database of police use of force in N.J. history

#29

Post by danso »

cgriswald wrote: post #28
danso wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police officers have a vast amount of authority, not just being able to decide when to use lethal force, but in how to or even whether or not to pursue a case. In addition, they are protected by laws and resources that make targeting police for harassment an extremely foolish proposition. Judges and prosecutors don’t have their identities hidden, why would the officer whose testimony is often central and unquestioned…

I'm not sure that's relevant, for two reasons. First, the McCarthy and Stirling et al. already have this data, so if it is needed for criminal or civil cases, likely they would make it available and if not it can be subpoenaed. Second, the majority of these officers aren't involved and won't be involved in a fatal shooting or other serious matters. I think this data is valuable for two things: 1. Discovering systemic…

> so if it is needed for criminal or civil cases, likely they would make it available

Who is "they"?

Re: How we built the largest database of police use of force in N.J. history

#30

Post by cgriswald »

danso wrote: post #29
cgriswald wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that's relevant, for two reasons. First, the McCarthy and Stirling et al. already have this data, so if it is needed for criminal or civil cases, likely they would make it available and if not it can be subpoenaed. Second, the majority of these officers aren't involved and won't be involved in a fatal shooting or other serious matters. I think this data is valuable for two things: 1. Discovering systemic…

> so if it is needed for criminal or civil cases, likely they would make it available Who is "they"?

McCarthy and Stirling.
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