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Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings

nature.com

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Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings

#81

Post by pizza »

The last 40 years of austerity politics in the US have starved the beast [0] so greatly that the only remaining public infrastructure that functions as it's intended to is policing. For example, in the city of LA, 53% of the city's unrestricted general fund budget went to the LAPD.

For everything else, there are parallel infrastructures for the haves - private education, private healthcare, privatized transit, etc. It's something I've thought about a lot in the last few weeks.

On top of that, there is some research that suggests communities rate smaller police forces better than larger ones [1].

> To test this, Ostrom worked with the Indianapolis government and her students to measure the quality of policing. Surprisingly, against common assumptions, they found that the smaller the police force, the more positively residents evaluated the police services they got.

> "Increasing the size of [the police force] consistently had a negative impact on the level of output generated as well as on efficiency of service provision… smaller police departments … consistently outperformed their better trained and better financed larger neighbors.”

> But why did this happen? To explain this, Elinor Ostrom argued that in small communities with small police forces, citizens are more active in community safety. Officers in smaller police forces also have more knowledge of the local area & more trust from people.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

[1] https://twitter.com/a_vansi/status/1270406823158468614

Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings

#82

Post by timy2shoes »

pessimizer wrote: post #57
koheripbal wrote: post #2

This 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.

Exactly. Biases in previous data will be amplified with predictive policing algorithms. See, for example, https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1740-...

Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings

#83

Post by josefresco »

lazyjones wrote: post #71

They are complaining about "racial bias" in predictive policing products. This "racial bias" is composed of data collected from crime statistics. If reality doesn't support the ideology, reality must be ignored. This is the sorry state of academia nowadays.

"It is simply too easy to create a ‘scientific’ veneer for racism."

It seems, law enforcement was using data to create their own reality.

Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings

#84

Post by psychometry »

lazyjones wrote: post #71

They are complaining about "racial bias" in predictive policing products. This "racial bias" is composed of data collected from crime statistics. If reality doesn't support the ideology, reality must be ignored. This is the sorry state of academia nowadays.

Your asinine point was addressed in the article you're commenting. Evidently, you didn't read it.

Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings

#85

Post by rickhanlonii »

waffle_ss wrote: post #78

> widely documented disparities in how US law-enforcement agencies treat people of different races and ethnicities Citation needed, particularly for Nature. As far as I can tell the supposed disparities are explained by the amount of violent crime the race and ethnicity commits (leading to more police interactions), but it's impolite to bring that up.

"Widely documented" means that it's trivial for you to look up the data yourself.

Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings

#86

Post by psychometry »

waffle_ss wrote: post #78

> widely documented disparities in how US law-enforcement agencies treat people of different races and ethnicities Citation needed, particularly for Nature. As far as I can tell the supposed disparities are explained by the amount of violent crime the race and ethnicity commits (leading to more police interactions), but it's impolite to bring that up.

Would you also like a citation for the statement "racism exists"? There are some truths that are so plainly obvious and supported by mountains of data that it's absurd to demand a citation for them.

Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings

#87

Post by psychometry »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #56
alexilliamson wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Ha! Police in the U.S. are hilariously bad at solving crimes. Even murders are solved at less than a 50% rate in many cities.

Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings

#88

Post by mc32 »

coffeemaniac wrote: post #70
mc32 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So maybe address the biases? People who live in areas that experience high incidence of criminal activity also want to have crime reduced. They want someone to establish order—when you have a vacuum, someone will fill it, usually someone with even less oversight, though occasionally you can luck out with a benevolent dictator of sorts. So yes people in those areas want policing —though they may also want some reform…

Well, when you're witnessing multiple instances of officers willingly and enthusiastically assaulting defenseless and innocent citizens/journalists on the street every day, you're past the point of "bias" correction. These instances are not the result of some nebulous ingrained tendency to view others as less than themselves, they're the result of a coordinated and deliberate attempt to assert power. Your assertion t…

In France there were similar issues with the police vs the yellow vests.

(Anti-Riot)Police see themselves as the entity that establishes order at the cusp of disorder.

When you have these kinds of confrontations (it could be internecine for all I care) you’re going to see that kind of human interaction. Neither person is a robot and thus the results are less than ideal.

What is worse is a power vacuum and the resulting gangs and warlordism (unless the community stands up its own local police force) but we’re back to policing.

Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings

#89

Post by munk-a »

pizza wrote: post #81

The last 40 years of austerity politics in the US have starved the beast [0] so greatly that the only remaining public infrastructure that functions as it's intended to is policing. For example, in the city of LA, 53% of the city's unrestricted general fund budget went to the LAPD. For everything else, there are parallel infrastructures for the haves - private education, private healthcare, privatized transit, etc. I…

And this is exactly where the "Defund the Police" movement comes from and seems like an extremely good movement to pursue - shift that budget balance back in favor of specialized agencies that can better support social needs rather than forcing it all onto the police force. I really just wish it had gotten a better name since that title for the idea really divides people before they even open their minds.

Re: Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings

#90

Post by wdevanny »

lazyjones wrote: post #71

They are complaining about "racial bias" in predictive policing products. This "racial bias" is composed of data collected from crime statistics. If reality doesn't support the ideology, reality must be ignored. This is the sorry state of academia nowadays.

I think many of the mathematicians would agree with:

>This "racial bias" is composed of data collected from crime statistics.

They disagree that crime statistics are reflective of where crime occurs. They are more reflective of where police officers are and where crimes are most easily spotted. For example, the racial disparities in policing crack cocaine versus powder cocaine.

Predictive systems that read in biased data will produce biased data.

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