Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

Then in looking for dealers, police go to lower income neighborhoods. If you look for something you will end up finding it, if you don't look you won't find it. This leads to things like pretext traffic stops, where someone is stopped for a minor violation that wouldn't normally get someone stopped. The police can then detect something else, like the smell of drugs or drug paraphernalia in the car, which they use as cause to search the car. In searching the car they find something that can lead to criminal charges.

This leads to lower income people receiving fines for minor traffic violations, and minor drug violations, at a higher rate the higher income people. The same lower income people struggle to pay those fines more, which puts them in a worse place, possibly leading to more desperate crimes.

Policing is punitive, and doesn't help solve underlying problems. Imprisoning and fining poor people doesn't help them or society.

I don't think this is as much of a racial issue as people make it out to be, it just happens that in the US the low income urban housing projects are predominantly non-white. Low income people in rural areas are less likely to be over policed because there are physically less police per squeal mile in rural areas. And with less people in rural areas, things are more likely to go unnoticed.

If you look at somewhere like the UK, where low income urban council estates (housing projects) are often predominantly white, you see the same over policing, profiling, and pretext stops. But instead of profiling young black males in hoodies driving around a lower income neighborhood, they profile young white males in hoodies driving around a lower income neighborhood.

Many of the "innocent pranks" and "fun times" that my grandparents and parents would tell me about from their youth, also have components that have been made illegal now.

Almost every Senior Prank has some component of B&E / vandalism.

I've just found it odd how the media we consume seems to exist in this completely different world, where baristas live in massive apartments they could never afford and most of the fun and excitement of the story comes from situations that in real life would most likely end in your arrest.

It seems like decades of being "tough on crime" and having a "war on drugs" has created a society where everyone is always breaking some law. That means that we are all at the mercy of Law Enforcement officers as they use their "professional discretion" to decide who is breaking it enough.

This is an older article but still relevant as ever https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/08/03/how-the-suprem...

Do you have an air freshener in your car, the police can pull you over for it. Then claim they smell alcohol or marijuana and search your person and vehicle. As long as they stopped you "in good faith" because they thought, even incorrectly, that they could stop you for obstructed view, then it's cool with the courts.

It seems like we are overdue for a correction. While every crime statistic has pointed to the fact that we live in the safest time in history, we continue with zero-tolerance tough-on-crime policy making that does nothing to make us safer.

Tons?

Rape seems an unnecessarily emotional grab here, since most rapes are perpetrated by someone the victim knows and aren't restricted by income.

Vandalism happens everywhere as well.

> It’s always the people in the white upper-class neighborhoods who think the police are the problem.

My mom grew up poor and told me to not trust the police and certainly not let them in the house without a warrant.

> ...because they celebrate...

Who is "they", in this context?

"Tons." "Always." "They." Your language suggests an agenda that you're presenting in absolutes.