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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

#101

Post by alexilliamson »

psychometry wrote: post #87
SamReidHughes wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Less than 50%???? Ha! Try closer to 10% in Chicago. Yes I want murders solved and think there should be someone doing that job. However, the police aren't doing that so why help them with whatever it is that they are doing.

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

#102

Post by munk-a »

jariel wrote: post #67
throwaway_pdp09 wrote: post #3

I 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.

That responsibility includes helping the police (and others) do their jobs well. It's just as much about participation as it is non-participation.

Well, as a mathematician (or I think, more accurately in the context this article is talking about, a statistician). You do have a responsibility to make sure you work is used honestly and correctly. If someone is taking findings and tools you've developed and misapplying them to make the world less just then you need to take a stand and make sure they're used properly.

Also I think the US has a real problem with valuing personal well being over societal well being somehow being warped into being a virtue. If you cheat on your taxes and manage to save 5$ while depriving the US Government of 20$ then you're a hero - this slippery slope has led acting in a morally grey manner for your own benefit being seen as a strength which makes it much more societally acceptable for people who contribute to systems of oppression (facial recognition and people tracking, supporting the spread of disinformation, helping to erase painful truths from public consciousness) to be viewed as "winners" so long as they walk away with a fat check.

It's hard for me to tell if this has always been a valued virtue, but having grown up in the US it certainly was an apparent virtue that I was imbued with - somehow we need to work at changing that.

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

#103

Post by lazyjones »

wdevanny wrote: post #90
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…

> They are more reflective of where police officers are and where crimes are most easily spotted.

The article says: MacDonald argues that PredPol uses only crimes reported by victims, such as burglaries and robberies, to inform its software. “We never do predictions for crime types that have the possibility of officer-initiated bias, such as drug crimes or prostitution,” he says.

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

#105

Post by austincheney »

pessimizer wrote: post #63
austincheney wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I assure you mathematicians aren't optimizing the "visbile presence in the community". How, is this your line of work?

My guess is that it is hard to measure "moving and visual presence in the community" and input it into a machine. Not that it wouldn't be nightmarish to communities that have already been overpoliced if that's what was being maximized. I don't want armed guards exclusively patrolling the streets of poor and minority neighborhoods.

Not at all. You can measure average density of patrols in various areas at various times, the mean and average distance between patrols, the average response times for different patrols to converge onto a response. You can also poll the community on perceptions of local police, visibility, community satisfaction, and so on. To say this sort of thing is too hard to measure really only means you don’t want the data.

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

#106

Post by lazyjones »

josefresco wrote: post #83
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.

No, it seems certain mathematicians simply assume this to be the case without any scientific argument behind it.

Perhaps it's just too easy to call something "racism" just because we don't like it?

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

#107

Post by munk-a »

mc32 wrote: post #88
coffeemaniac wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 resulti…

It was frankly amazing to see how utterly silent US media was on the yellow-vests movement. Do you have any good retrospective sources that I can read up on about those, I think my media experience with it was hearing about it once on NPR and then never hearing it mentioned again except in the form of a neo-facist related movement.

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

#108

Post by google234123 »

psychometry wrote: post #87
SamReidHughes wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't find that hilarious. Anyway, if you have a “no snitch culture” you can't expect the police to have an easy time at finding the perpetrator.

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

#109

Post by google234123 »

alexilliamson wrote: post #101
psychometry wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Less than 50%???? Ha! Try closer to 10% in Chicago. Yes I want murders solved and think there should be someone doing that job. However, the police aren't doing that so why help them with whatever it is that they are doing.

A large issue is that people refuse to help them. How do you solve a crime if no there are witnesses willing to talk...

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

#110

Post by huntertwo »

young_unixer wrote: post #98

The deeper question: should heuristic methods be used at all by police? I mean not only artificial heuristics like machine learning, but the ones people have always used, e.g.: "acting really weird means the person is probably on drugs/commiting a crime". All prejudices we use are heuristic techniques. Some are badly calibrated and give bad results (e.g. racism) but some may give accurate results (e.g. "poor neighbor…

Cops shouldn’t be put in a spot to make decisions. Otherwise societal biases seep into those decisions. Our policing systems should be resilient against biases in the individuals policing.
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