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Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings

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

#131

Post by bitcurious »

mikedilger wrote: post #124
Bostonian wrote: post #9

So-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... .

Roland G Fryer's recent work shows that for every investigation over a white cop shooting a black person allegedly wrongly, 179 extra people die due to the severe reduction in policing (up to 90%!) over the next two years. Roland G Fryer is a black economics professor at Harvard. His papers are working papers for the National Bureau of Economic Research, and as such not peer reviewed. When he discovered in 2016 that…

I found that work fascinating, and I’ve linked to it here before. Your summary of the finding is misleading.

>for every investigation over a white cop shooting a black person allegedly

This is false. Fryer saw the effect when investigations were in response to social media outrage. In fact, he called out that the effect is not seen when investigation are started in response to complaints through the regular channels.

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

#132

Post by lazyjones »

BGthaOG wrote: post #129
lazyjones wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's also possible that the mathematician built an algorithm anchored on years of arrest data from racist cops doing racial profiling. That possibility is explicitly excluded since the data comes from crimes reported by victims, not investigations initiated by police officers.

Minorities are less comfortable calling the police in the first place.

Do you have any data to back up that claim, other than anecdotal "evidence"?

Here's some real data: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rpa11.pdf

Across all races and Hispanic origin, American Indians and Alaska Natives (15%) and persons of two or more races (15%) had the highest rates of reporting crime or neighborhood disturbances to the police. No statistical difference was observed between the percentage of white (9%) and black (7%) persons reporting a crime or neighborhood disturbance to police in 2011.

Also, perhaps I'm reading it wrong, but Appendix Table 4 suggests that minorities are much more satisfied with police response than the average.

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

#133

Post by asdfman123 »

ptero wrote: post #127
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…

It is tempting to blame the lack of funds for the problems in the US public infrastructure, but problematic management seems to play a much bigger role. Almost any public infrastructure project around me: paving local roads, repairing a bridge or doing the Big Dig takes much longer than planned and ends up with huge cost overruns. And is plagued by corruption, cronyism or incompetence (often, pick at least two). Yes,…

Perhaps obstructionism and attacks on government as the problem -- instead of clearheaded, reasonable governance -- has destroyed the ability for government to provide solutions.

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

#134

Post by rayiner »

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…

There is no austerity. Here is state-and-local spending as a percentage of GDP from 1970 to present: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images-archive-re...

And here is GDP in 2010 dollars: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?location...

State and local governments went from spending 10% of $23,000 per person to 15% of $55,000 per person. Per-person state and local spending went up by a factor of 3.5, even after adjusted for inflation.

With respect to public infrastructure specifically, there has been no austerity. For example, here is a graph of NYC subway ridership from 1970 to 2014: https://i0.wp.com/plot.ly/~millerstephen/4.png?w=773&crop=0%.... Subway ridership is up 75% since 1980. The capital budget during the 1980s averaged $3.4 billion annually in 2020 dollars: https://wagner.nyu.edu/files/faculty/publications/rescue.pdf (fig. 5). The 2015-2019 capital program (5 years) averaged about $6.5 billion 2020 dollars. So a 90% increase in capital spending for a 75% increase in ridership. Punchline: MTA is so massively wasteful, that wasn't enough. The system deteriorated the whole time leading to catastrophic failure in the last few years.

The London transit system, by contrast, spends about $3.2 billion in capital expenditures to run a system that is very similar in terms of age, size, etc: http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-budget-2019-20.pdf. Despite spending half as much money, London has been able to significantly grow the network while keeping maintenance current and maintaining on-time performance.

Honestly, invocations of "starve the beast" and "austerity" are nothing more than gaslighting. It's a cop-out for why our public services are so shitty, even though we spend vastly more on them than we used to spend.

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

#135

Post by perl4ever »

munk-a wrote: post #117
chrisseaton wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I urge you to read Minority Report, or watch the movie. This is fiction .

Fiction is a really powerful tool that can be used to warn us of societal dangers while sparing us actually needing to live through them. It is fiction, so it isn't a history book and there are plenty of assumptions on how things will work. However, in good fiction, those assumptions are plausible and highlight a future that may happen. Dismissing fiction is just like having a stock manager that dismisses quarterly r…

Many science fiction writers would tell you, and have publicly stated in the past, that they don't predict the future and that's not their job.

Just by chance, you can go back and find stories from the past that seem prophetic now, but not going forward.

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

#136

Post by Ar-Curunir »

lazyjones wrote: post #132
BGthaOG wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minorities are less comfortable calling the police in the first place.

Do you have any data to back up that claim, other than anecdotal "evidence"? Here's some real data: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rpa11.pdf Across all races and Hispanic origin, American Indians and Alaska Natives (15%) and persons of two or more races (15%) had the highest rates of reporting crime or neighborhood disturbances to the police. No statistical difference was observed between the percentage of white…

I think the massive protests over the last few years indicate that at least one large class of minorities (Black folks) are not “much more satisfied” with the police

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

#137

Post by perl4ever »

krohling wrote: post #95
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 don't think that's accurate at all. These algorithms are only as accurate as the data being input into them. The current system of policing is deeply flawed and as a result the "data collected from crime statistics" will be skewed by these inherent, systemic biases. Mathematical optimization against a flawed dataset of this kind is highly likely to create a feedback loop of increasing bias with terrible human conse…

This seems like a plausible criticism, but it also seems like a plausible criticism of all data and derivates about human beings (and probably other things).

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

#138

Post by perl4ever »

lazyjones wrote: post #103
wdevanny wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That doesn't mean reports are completely independent. Isn't it obvious that the perception of whether the police will do anything is going to affect the reporting?

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

#139

Post by plussed_reader »

austincheney wrote: post #128
munk-a wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Defunding the police is generally unpopular where I live. My big city is growing at about 22% decade over decade and will likely surpass San Jose in population over the next 10 years. It is also the lowest density big city in the US. In order to support the growing population the police force must continue to grow as well. The fastest growing area of the city is also the least policed. This not result of negligence f…

What are the current home zoning vs planned updates/build for this area?

San Jose has issue with single family units over dominating the area; the need for denser housing options hasn't abated, nor for the surrounding county and the greater bay area. That has to be planned with local Transpo options, and now you enter the quagmire of 4 transportation agencies systems in the South Bay at least across several modes.

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

#140

Post by BGthaOG »

lazyjones wrote: post #132
BGthaOG wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minorities are less comfortable calling the police in the first place.

Do you have any data to back up that claim, other than anecdotal "evidence"? Here's some real data: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rpa11.pdf Across all races and Hispanic origin, American Indians and Alaska Natives (15%) and persons of two or more races (15%) had the highest rates of reporting crime or neighborhood disturbances to the police. No statistical difference was observed between the percentage of white…

Quick search,

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/police-...

And then there is the fact that illegal immigrants do not call the police for their fears.

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