Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department • Hacker News Board

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#141

Post by Recursing » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 10:52 PM UTC

Natsu wrote: post #30

TrevorAustin wrote: post #4

"Dissolve the organization and start over from scratch" is an under-used solution in American life, even in the private sector. Apparently Camden, NJ did a version of this in 2013 with a fair amount of success: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-04/how-camde...

When it comes to code, I thought the consensus was strongly against that because it tends to introduce more problems than it solves.

I think a lot of it comes from opinion pieces such as this one https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-... which makes incredibly confident and general statements from a very small sample size, while there are many success stories of successful complete rewrites

Also, "Most software at Google gets rewritten every few years." https://arxiv.org/pdf/1702.01715.pdf

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#142

Post by woofie11 » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 10:52 PM UTC

pyuser583 wrote: post #65

TrevorAustin wrote: post #4

"Dissolve the organization and start over from scratch" is an under-used solution in American life, even in the private sector. Apparently Camden, NJ did a version of this in 2013 with a fair amount of success: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-04/how-camde...

We dissolve things a lot. Building them is another matter entirely. It’s possible the PD will be rebuilt in a nicer form, but that’s not guaranteed. It’s just as likely the PD will be absorbed into the County Sheriff. Is the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office better?

I live in an area with a bad police department. I've never seen our police care about crime. To be frank, I'm not sure how I'd be any worse off without them. I suspect we need some of the higher-end investigative units (e.g. detectives who solve murders and similar), but the run-of-the-mill police units seems like a waste of my taxpayers dollars. I'd support disbanding our police in an instant.

They're very highly compensated too.

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#143

Post by sremani » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 10:53 PM UTC

morgante wrote: post #60

jsdevwork1 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will play out quite predictably: more crime, organized and otherwise.

Nope. Camden disbanded their police department and has seen crime drop: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/01/what-happened-to-crim... Disbanding the police doesn't mean no public safety measures. It means disbanding the department and rebuilding a new approach to public safety.

From the article @citylab:

"Other cities are still struggling. Kansas City, Columbus, Phoenix, and Birmingham saw homicide rates reach new highs in 2017. In Baltimore, homicides hit a new per-capita peak."

If I have to place bet, the fate of Minneapolis will be similar to that of Baltimore.

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#144

Post by xendo » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 10:53 PM UTC

drunkpotato wrote: post #2

Interesting and surprising if this happens. Note that they're just announcing their intent to disband, it's not an actual vote, but there's some pretty strong language here. The article also notes the mayor is opposed to disbanding. I would rather see police reforms and a rethinking of priorities than disbanding police altogether. But if it happens (a big if) perhaps Minneapolis will provide a rare natural experiment…

This experiment is indeed rare and very interesting. I hope they will gather data during and after the transformation so that other cities can make more informed decisions in the future.

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#145

Post by scarface74 » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 10:53 PM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #76

scarface74 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that any different than the lawless gangs that have the force of government behind them?

At least in the case of George Floyd, one of officers was charged with murder, the other three with aiding and abetting, so they're clearly not lawless gangs. We'll see what happens at trial, but this is a fair level of scrutiny for what happened; if police faced charges like this every time one of these deaths happened, they'd be a lot more careful.

Only because it was filmed. The entire system tried to cover it up at first from the police force, to the coroner, to the DA.

When two police were fired and charged with assault for shoving a 77 year old man. 49 other officers resigned in protest.

There are plenty of cases where police acted inappropriately. Like raiding the wrong house and shooting a lady while she was sleeping.

https://www.npr.org/2020/05/13/855705278/sleeping-while-blac...

And nothing happens. The entire system is corrupt.

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#146

Post by runawaybottle » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 10:53 PM UTC

jsdevwork1 wrote: post #72

jeffbee wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, Americans need to realize that almost everything about our society is a bad first draft, in need of prompt replacement. People reflexively defend existing institutions, but the more I've thought about it over the years, the more I've realized there's almost no aspect of American life worth preserving. Police departments might be a good place to start, but most American cities also need to address structural d…

>the more I've realized there's almost no aspect of American life worth preserving I would suggest living in a third or second world country without outside support. I had your same mindset, and did that for a few years. I could not wait to come back.

Even so, the third world is not our standard. We’re ready for the version two improvements by virtue of the iterative process, and our own expectations for ourselves.

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#147

Post by woofie11 » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 10:53 PM UTC

Natsu wrote: post #30

TrevorAustin wrote: post #4

"Dissolve the organization and start over from scratch" is an under-used solution in American life, even in the private sector. Apparently Camden, NJ did a version of this in 2013 with a fair amount of success: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-04/how-camde...

When it comes to code, I thought the consensus was strongly against that because it tends to introduce more problems than it solves.

I think consensus is that it depends on the code.

There's a consensus against pointless rewrites, but that's different.

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#148

Post by usrusr » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 10:54 PM UTC

PaulWaldman wrote: post #61

Is this equivalent to a software rewrite? Let's just throw the whole thing out and start over. Throwing out a system and starting afresh would likey introduce new bugs/systemic failures that aren't currently present. Is addressing and correcting each specific feature/SOP not an option?

Usually incrementally fixed code doesn't actively fight back.

(there must be some programmer war-stories out there about code that has somehow rewritten itself to restore a previously fixed bug)

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#149

Post by slickrick216 » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 10:54 PM UTC

A model for this is the PSNI in Northern Ireland. Irish catholic’s faced arguably worse racist violence from the Royal Ulster constabulary. Faith and trust was lost on both sides within the community. Seems to be working given that there’s been 19 years of peace over there.

Re: Minneapolis City Council members announce intent to disband police department

#150

Post by JshWright » Sun, Jun 07, 2020, 10:54 PM UTC

dcposch wrote: post #88

mikekhusid wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Camden thing is going around a lot but to me it seems like they did a reorg and actually ended up hiring more police. https://www.tapinto.net/towns/camden/sections/law-and-justic...

They did a more than just a reorg. Disbanding and replacing a PD eliminates the old police union contracts. Those lopsided contracts are at the root of the impunity and violence we've seen over the past week. Many cities have made extraordinary contractual concessions, including: - Secrecy clauses. Officer Bob might have 31 excessive force complaints against him, but the city is contractually forbidden from making th…

I don't understand why there isn't a professional license required for LEOs.

I'm a paramedic. If I harmed a patient once (let along 31 times), my card would get revoked and that would be that. A cop, meanwhile, is likely to face no consequences at all, and in the absolute "worst" case scenario, they would just get a job in the next town over.