Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by rickyplouis » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

kadabra9 wrote: post #3

Honest question here. Are these neighborhoods “over policed” because their residents commit more crimes, or do the residents commit more crimes because their neighborhood is “over policed”?

For some some petty crimes (running red lights, not socially distancing, etc..), all neighborhoods actually commit them at a fairly consistent rate, but it is not enforced consistently.

For instance, here in Chicago it is common to find people not following the social distancing rules, but predominately white neighborhoods largely get a pass while black and brown neighborhoods get enforced.

So to answer your question, the crimes are occurring everywhere but statistically speaking black and brown people are more likely to face penalties for crime while white people are not.

https://blockclubchicago.org/2020/05/26/chicago-police-only-...

This also applies to parking tickets

https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/eric-zorn/ct-mayoral-...

and jaywalking

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/08/in-ch...

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

#82

Post by erichocean » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

jtolmar wrote: post #34

alacombe wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food for thought, more than 50% of the federal budget is already spent on social services.

Police are funded by the municipal or county government, not the fed

> Police are funded by the municipal or county government, not the fed

It's not that black and white, because...

Police slush funds are funded (indirectly) by the federal government—drug search and seizures are passed off to the feds to prosecute (because many states have laws banning the practice), and the feds shares a portion of the value seized back with the local police department. Win-win.

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

#83

Post by jirdperson » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

mtgp1000 wrote: post #23

basch wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or crime is a function of income inequality, and ways to fight it are police (reactive) or preventative social spending (proactive.) it's like arguing over fire departments vs electrical code. neglecting the latter leads to more of the former. Even things like urban planning, where you put your low income housing. If you build low income housing in high income areas, it prevents ghettos from forming.

Crime is a function of far more than just income inequality. If you perform your regressions on this single variable and then attempt to extrapolate those results to make policy, you're going to end up spending a lot of money without solving anything. Worse is that you'll potentially put millions of lives at risk. If we want to solve problems in society we must be prepared to acknowledge all of their potential causes…

I don’t think many people are arguing that income inequality is the only variable in the crime equation. What factors do you think are generally underemphasized today?

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

#84

Post by jimbob45 » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

drhayes9 wrote: post #70

jimbob45 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit: This was not a well-thought out post lol and I'm deleting it.

> We’re talking rape, burglary, murder, vandalism, and assault... Conversely, low-income neighborhoods have tons of hardcore crime like I’ve described. 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 pol…

I was more upset that the parent was implying that his neighborhood would have equal arrest numbers if the police had been more present on account of his pot smoking. I hope everyone can see what a stupid argument that is and that’s the hill I’m willing to die on here.

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

#85

Post by Havoc » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

>to send officers to target chronic offenders, or identifying places where crime may occur.

Those are two very different things in my mind.

Targeting individuals is very Minority Report and definitely not cool.

Focusing on problematic areas seems like good policing common sense though? A bit like the local nightclub near me has a police car chilling in front of it every Friday night because there are always drunks slugging it out.

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

#86

Post by throwawaygh » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

riazrizvi wrote: post #63

> Used by police across the United States for almost a decade, predictive policing relies on algorithms to interpret police records, analyzing arrest or parole data to send officers to target chronic offenders, or identifying places where crime may occur. The promise of the software made in a sales pitch or on the website, is a far cry from the reality of what such software delivers. That's fine when it's business, t…

Furthermore, the stated ideals of the PD/vendor might be far different from the actual metrics used to evaluated the PD (and, therefore, the software used by the PD).

You can pump up the clearance rate by practicing outright discriminatory policing. You can substantially increase revenue by targeting the poorest areas. Etc.

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

#87

Post by shadowgovt » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

kadabra9 wrote: post #3

Honest question here. Are these neighborhoods “over policed” because their residents commit more crimes, or do the residents commit more crimes because their neighborhood is “over policed”?

The answer, in general (and this is a bad place to generalize because it really varies from place-to-place), is "yes."

The correlation between poverty and higher crime is real, and the police find more crime in places they're looking than in places they don't.

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

#88

Post by adjkant » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

jimbob45 wrote: post #49

wonderwonder wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to sit on my friends porch when I was in college before pot was legalized, smoking. We are white people in a white area. If we had been black I have no doubt the increased police presence would have resulted in us getting arrested. There are tons of other stupid things I did when younger where if there had been more cops around I would have gone to jail. More police means more people are arrested for the same…

Edit: This was not a well-thought out post lol and I'm deleting it.

> We’re not taking about specious arguments like pot arrests and improper turn signals. We’re talking rape, burglary, murder, vandalism, and assault.

Look at arrest data, the former is exactly what we're talking about. Most of these cases of police brutality come from basically random stops that focus on such minor violations (turn signals, jaywalking, etc) or "your car/description matches a potential subject". See parent and weed usage vs who gets caught with weed.

Not to mention that you throw in rape/murder/assault into a sentence with vandalism. Police have a historically terrible track record with rapes in both processing cases as well as no record of stopping them. Police react to these incidents, not prevent them. The idea that police presence stops these is not supported either as when police reduced their presence in NYC neighborhoods, crime actually went down.[1]

[1] https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-proacti...

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

#89

Post by david422 » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

eanzenberg wrote: post #18

basch wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or crime is a function of income inequality, and ways to fight it are police (reactive) or preventative social spending (proactive.) it's like arguing over fire departments vs electrical code. neglecting the latter leads to more of the former. Even things like urban planning, where you put your low income housing. If you build low income housing in high income areas, it prevents ghettos from forming.

Is there evidence for this though? The great crime decline in cities like NYC were due to increased policing and the “broken window” policy, along with stop & frisk.

I believe Freakonomics ascribed this to abortion- an unwanted generation of people that never were, and subsequently a drop in crime.

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

#90

Post by erichocean » Fri, Jun 26, 2020, 5:54 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #58

flyinglizard wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which other cities are you referring to in particular?

Literally every city in America, regardless of their approach to policing, has experienced a massive drop in crime rates from 1990 forward. This tends to undermine arguments that broken windows or stop-and-frisk are effective policies. https://crime-data-explorer.fr.cloud.gov/

> Literally every city in America, regardless of their approach to policing, has experienced a massive drop in crime rates from 1990 forward.

I've never heard of anyone arguing that policing did not increase nationwide in the 90s. All of the data we have suggests otherwise, and pushing back on that is basically the entire point of the recent BLM protests.

One simple way we know crime was more aggressively enforced in EVERY city beginning in the early 90s is because so many more people were locked up during that time period (just review the incarceration rates).