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Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings
51–60 of 241 posts
Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is false. Socio-economically disadvantaged areas genuinely have more crime than elsewhere. They require more policing as a result. Without more policing, the crime problems get worse not better. Your sort of thinking has been tried out with disastrous results in cities throughout the US. It is actively harming law abiding citizens living in poor communities. Policing is not causing crime. People committing crime…
Wage theft in the US is the majority of theft. Tell me, are people in socio-economically disadvantaged areas committing more wage-theft? You have to ask yourself why there is more crime in poor areas. The answer is that we don't go looking for or don't care about the crime that happens in other areas as much, and that the socio-economic conditions lead to more crime. You can't fix these issues by sending police there…
I'm sorry but I don't take your anecdotes seriously. I've seen too many legitimate uses of police force described as "police brutality" recently to take accusations of police brutality at face value. It seems that people have convinced themselves of police brutality through popular narrative and twisted anecdotes.
Removing criminal elements from communities creates safer communities, which is a prerequisite for people thriving.
Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings
#53I don't know enough to agree or disagree, but to me having academics even ask questions on the ethics of their work is the most important thing; if one's work affects the real world then you can't duck responsibility for it.
Academics often ask ethical questions about their work. There are a huge number of physicists who devote time to non-proliferation work, cleaning up the ethical detritus from generations past.
Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except this is not how it works. We are not accurately predicting where crimes will occur, but maximizing the amounts of arrests. Indeed, sending a police patrol will only catch the kind of crime that happens in socio-economically disadvantaged communities, which in turn contributes to skewing the data to suggest that more crimes there, which leads to more policing, which leads to more crime, and so on. Meanwhile, wa…
This is false. Socio-economically disadvantaged areas genuinely have more crime than elsewhere. They require more policing as a result. Without more policing, the crime problems get worse not better. Your sort of thinking has been tried out with disastrous results in cities throughout the US. It is actively harming law abiding citizens living in poor communities. Policing is not causing crime. People committing crime…
I think it's disingenuous to say this in absolute terms. Simply by pointing out that poor people many times can't bail themselves out before a hearing, and suffer all the consequences (like lost job, lost home) that come with that, is proof that the system is at least to a degree stacked against poor people.
Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not just driving or walking around a neighbourhood, it's doing your best to find the maximum amount of crime. Otherwise, you wouldn't need mathematical models in order to optimize the "efficacity" of the operation. The vast majority of crime where police should be involved are crimes where the victim can call the police later. For those that don't fit this criteria, either police patrols are already ineffective…
In the town where I grew up the most common non-traffic emergency calls were calls of injury of which the most serious were cardiac distress. The police used mathematical models to position two SUV patrols at opposite sides of town where each contained some manner electric cardio medical device for rapid response to heart attacks.
Sure, this is also done in my city. Except that isn't the responsibility of police, but that of the EMS service/paramedics/firefighters. If the police are doing that in your town I also think that's problematic, because many people won't call if they know the police are going to come for injuries.
Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings
#56So-called Black Lives Matter costs black lives by making policing less effective. The "Ferguson Effect" has been documented. Recent headline: "104 shot, 14 fatally, over Father’s Day weekend in Chicago" https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2020/6/20/21297470/chicag... .
What do you mean by "making policing less effective"?
He means policing that results in increased homicide rates and reduced homicide clearance rates.
Don't you want to solve crimes and put murderers in jail? And scare others away from delinquency?
Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings
#57This doesn't seem to make sense. By more accurately predicting where crimes will occur, the police departments can reduce the amount of patrols needed.
If your response to a set of data showing areas where arrests have occurred in the past is to police those areas more, there is no doubt that in the future there will be more arrests in those same areas.
Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings
#58This doesn't seem to make sense. By more accurately predicting where crimes will occur, the police departments can reduce the amount of patrols needed.
Except this is not how it works. We are not accurately predicting where crimes will occur, but maximizing the amounts of arrests. Indeed, sending a police patrol will only catch the kind of crime that happens in socio-economically disadvantaged communities, which in turn contributes to skewing the data to suggest that more crimes there, which leads to more policing, which leads to more crime, and so on. Meanwhile, wa…
When you say "..which leads to more crime" I'm going to presume you mean that it leads to catching a higher percentage of the existing crime, which leads to more police, which leads to catching a higher percentage yet again.... rather than the direct interpretation that police presence causes crime.
Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings
#59A lot of comments here are missing the point of boycotting, it's an expression of power with the concrete goal, it's not individual decisions of whether the mathematicians feel the work is "ethical". Yes, having more liberals working in policing is probably more inline with the goals of those liberals than not, but that's not the point of a boycott. If the police can't get the help they need from mathematicians becau…
If they can't get help from mathematicians, they'll try to do their own analysis with Excel spreadsheets or just use their gut instincts.
Good, and their word can be treated exactly like we treat the word of any other agency full of non-experts that roll their own analyses with excel. No need to lend them the legitimacy of established mathematicians and other academics.
Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except this is not how it works. We are not accurately predicting where crimes will occur, but maximizing the amounts of arrests. Indeed, sending a police patrol will only catch the kind of crime that happens in socio-economically disadvantaged communities, which in turn contributes to skewing the data to suggest that more crimes there, which leads to more policing, which leads to more crime, and so on. Meanwhile, wa…
It’s intuitive and true that poor homes and neighborhoods are going to house more crime. Now, is the solution to arrest them and send them to jail for long periods of time? I don’t know. Arguing that the poor aren’t more susceptible to crime is a losing battle though.
> It’s intuitive and true that poor homes and neighborhoods are going to house more crime.
I'm not sure it's a good idea to assume certain truths based upon intuition.