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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

#31

Post by onetimemanytime »

alehul wrote: post #9
pytester wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Listing the officers by name is a kind of online vigilantism that ultimately might threaten their personal safety. As soon as: * The blue code of silence collapses. * Judges and politicians stop covering for cop brutality and protecting cop killers. * Police are more than half as likely to die on the job as a trash collectors. I'll maybe start to buy this line of reasoning. It's an insult to the memory of every unar…

> * 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…

>>How is this at all relevant to whether a police officer deserves privacy?

They get paid to serve and protect and no one is asking for their cancer status. Everything they do is public, so it's well within our rights to know how many times they used force. Now if Officer Tim used force four times more than others in the same area and years, we can wonder...

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

#32

Post by danso »

cgriswald wrote: post #30
danso wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

McCarthy and Stirling.

You expect the reporters, who are likely continuing to pursue the project and related stories, to operate as a data warehouse for legal and other requests? Nevermind the work it takes to build such a service, journalists are usually extremely reticent to be an active participant for either side for a lawsuit. We usually hear about it in the case of the government demanding a reporter reveal their anonymous sources and unpublished notes. But it goes the other way too. https://www.rcfp.org/browse-media-law-resources/news/judge-r...

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

#33

Post by cgriswald »

danso wrote: post #32
cgriswald wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

McCarthy and Stirling.

You expect the reporters, who are likely continuing to pursue the project and related stories, to operate as a data warehouse for legal and other requests? Nevermind the work it takes to build such a service, journalists are usually extremely reticent to be an active participant for either side for a lawsuit. We usually hear about it in the case of the government demanding a reporter reveal their anonymous sources an…

I expect that, given the reporters have already made the information available to the public, that they personally would not have been unamenable to giving it out when the situations you mentioned arose; and that even in the case they were, the existence of the information would make it easier to collect from the department itself and that in any case, the reporters could be subpoenaed for the information. That some evidence can be excluded as immaterial in a different context is largely irrelevant.

I also expect that, even in the worst case you are trying to imply, I would feel the same way about publishing the names for the same reasons. I think you are either trying to get me to admit that–which I do freely–, or you are simply uncomfortable that you and I have a different position on the tradeoffs.

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

#34

Post by toofy »

alehul wrote: post #9
pytester wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Listing the officers by name is a kind of online vigilantism that ultimately might threaten their personal safety. As soon as: * The blue code of silence collapses. * Judges and politicians stop covering for cop brutality and protecting cop killers. * Police are more than half as likely to die on the job as a trash collectors. I'll maybe start to buy this line of reasoning. It's an insult to the memory of every unar…

> * 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…

> Since when was HN anti-privacy?

The Citizenry should have privacy while the government should be transparent.

Tangent: Somewhere along the lines this has flipped and we've somehow stumbled into a situation where the government believes it deserves privacy and owes the citizenry none. I'm not sure how we ended up flipped, but it is not a good sign. This can probably go without saying considering the user-base here, but if we don't know what our government is doing, we can't hold them accountable and we have no idea for who or what to vote.

Tangent to the tangent: If we're not careful, we might end up with new classes divisions, those who have both privacy and access to our data, and those who have neither privacy nor access to data, even their own. Strange times.

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

#35

Post by Falling3 »

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…

You cannot simultaneously claim that racism is a social construct and it has no relevance in analyzing social behaviors. I doubt anyone here disagrees with you on the biological reality of race and how it has far more to do with social convention than anything else. But that _does not_ mean it can be discounted in this kind of analysis.

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

#36

Post by danso »

cgriswald wrote: post #33
danso wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You expect the reporters, who are likely continuing to pursue the project and related stories, to operate as a data warehouse for legal and other requests? Nevermind the work it takes to build such a service, journalists are usually extremely reticent to be an active participant for either side for a lawsuit. We usually hear about it in the case of the government demanding a reporter reveal their anonymous sources an…

I expect that, given the reporters have already made the information available to the public, that they personally would not have been unamenable to giving it out when the situations you mentioned arose; and that even in the case they were, the existence of the information would make it easier to collect from the department itself and that in any case, the reporters could be subpoenaed for the information. That some…

But they haven’t made the names-part of the data available to the public, in your scenario. They’ve made an editorial decision that it’s not in the public interest to know the names of the officers — just like most news orgs don’t publish the name of rape victims even though it’s part of the court record. Virtually no news org will want to set a precedent of selectively releasing info that it previously decided it wanted to withhold.

Yes, we obviously have a different position about the trade offs, that’s why I replied to your comment in the first place. However, what I’m arguing is that your current position is untenable. It is not logistically or morally feasible for a news org to provide upon request info that it has used its editorial judgment to redact.

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

#37

Post by stareatgoats »

danso wrote: post #23
stareatgoats wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 (di…

The Stanford data set suffers from the same problems as the one in discussion: It opens up for correlating 'race' with foul behavior. Of course there may be such a correlation per se, just as there may be a correlation between heavy drinkers/medication abusers and excessive use of force. The problem with isolating the 'race' factor is that it promotes race hate, which is just stupid, when there are factors that are amendable ('race ' is not amendable). There is obviously a correlation between racism and inappropriate police work, but these kinds of data sets don't show that.

> I wonder how you propose that a database "analyze racism"?

I note that we are in agreement: you can't surmise racism from this kind of data, still that's what the presentation implies. To be able to establish the extent of racism one would have to conduct attitude research (psychological profiling) on the officers.

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

#38

Post by hanniabu »

danso wrote: post #21
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…

> In 2011, the NYPD committed 685K stop-and-frisks. In 2017, they did 10K.

Am I wrong to read this as "if we can't be racist about it we're just not going to do it as much"

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

#39

Post by stareatgoats »

perfmode wrote: post #12
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…

Your pseudoscientific dismissal of racist policing makes me ashamed to be a part of this community. The fact remains: the patterns of violence perpetrated by police indicate a distinct lack of regard for the value of the lives of people who are black. It’s incredible how easily a police officer will beat, shoot, or kill a person of color. And as a person of color myself, I find it alarming and gross when I read comme…

> Your pseudoscientific dismissal of racist policing

Honest question: where did I dismiss racist policing, not to mention pseudoscientifically? I really can't find it. For the record, I agree with all your statements from "The fact remains" and forward up until the last sentence.

To clarify FWIW: the problem is not race, it is racism. I find it problematic that the way this database is presented points rather to the former than the latter.

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

#40

Post by tchaffee »

alehul wrote: post #9
pytester wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Listing the officers by name is a kind of online vigilantism that ultimately might threaten their personal safety. As soon as: * The blue code of silence collapses. * Judges and politicians stop covering for cop brutality and protecting cop killers. * Police are more than half as likely to die on the job as a trash collectors. I'll maybe start to buy this line of reasoning. It's an insult to the memory of every unar…

> * 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…

> Since when was HN anti-privacy?

Why should there be any expectation of privacy about what someone does during the course of their job paid for by tax payers that also involves direct interaction with the public?

This sounds like expecting us to anonymize what politicians do in some sort of weird effort to protect the "privacy" of their public actions.

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