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

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

#351

Post by AnthonyMouse »

SkyBelow wrote: post #330
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is reality racist or just the data used to describe it? If the latter, I see no issue with your argument. If the former, I think we need be careful about legislating reality ( mostly because it doesn't work ).

What if it is such only because we made it so? For example, policing policies that increase fatherlessness in specific communities will result in increased levels of crime. But to then take a 'fair' approach at distribution of policing policies based on the actual crime data, and then use that to continue to keep the policies that caused the problem to begin with seems a bug that needs to be fixed (though some would…

The problem with the contrary approach is that there are increased levels of crime there. Children end up equally fatherless -- possibly moreso -- if their fathers are killed by gang violence as if their fathers are in prison.

You don't solve the problem by sending police away from the places with the most crime. You solve it by fixing the root causes.

End the war on drugs, because prohibition is the primary funding source for gangs. Make it easier to start a small business, so that more people without much capital can start small businesses. Change the zoning to make it easier for people to start a small business out of their home instead of needing enough capital to secure prohibitively expensive business properties. Stop tying schools to real estate and let people choose to send their kids to any school they want.

Most of these are local issues that exist predominantly in cities and states with Democrat-majority legislatures. They could have been solved decades ago. They could be solved right now with the stroke of a pen.

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

#352

Post by Misdicorl »

banads wrote: post #336
Misdicorl wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Horseshit. Police response to violent incidents in 'problematic' neighborhoods is already extremely slow. The threat of gang violence is not mitigated by police response. The threat of gang violence is mitigated by providing much better options for people who would otherwise join gangs. Police presence is immaterial to the lack of gangs in affluent neighborhoods.

What is horseshit? Nothing in your response is contrary to anything the person said that you're responding to

>There's a worrying trend in the conversation these days that has shifted from "there's a serious problem with racism in how police go about their job" to "we need less police". Folks in neighborhoods living with the constant threat of gang violence don't have the luxury to sit in their aeron chairs and argue about defunding the police. They face the very real threat of themselves or their loved ones being shot on the streets and statistically not by police.

This is horseshit. The premise is false. The conclusion is misleading. It is FUD

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

#353

Post by cblades »

metrokoi wrote: post #292
jjeaff wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For myriad of reasons, we know clearly that controlling for no other factors, crime is higher among black populations. So to extrapolate that any one person is more likely to commit a crime because they are black is the definition of racism. It is not ok to assume that someone might be more likely guilty or more likely to commit a crime based on the color of their skin. Even if you had perfect historical data. It's j…

>So to extrapolate that any one person is more likely to commit a crime because they are black is the definition of racism. But it's true, a black individual is on average more likely to commit a crime. How can recognizing an obvious fact be racism? Aren't you also racist for recognizing that crime is higher among black populations? It's racist to treat a black individual as if they have committed a crime or treat th…

>But it's true, a black individual is on average more likely to commit a crime.

More likely to be convicted of a crime. That's a subtle but very important distinction.

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

#354

Post by thebradbain »

starkd wrote: post #285
r00fus wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From studies I’ve read it is noted that most of those calls could be handled by a social worker or other non-violent responder. The problem is the police budget has dwarfed and subsumed all non-violent requests as well.

Not sure You can always separate out violent from non-violent events. The police are expected to deal with a whole community in a holistic way.

Why does a victim of sexual assault need to report to someone who has a gun? Why does a wellness check need to be performed with a gun? Why does a standard highway patrolman or cop doing routine speed traps need a gun? Why does every cop in a school need a gun? Why is the gun the constant?

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

#355

Post by vmception »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #232
bhntr3 wrote: post #184

The problem with predictive policing is in the name. Inference (ML) predicts the future from the past. If the past is racist, then inference will create a racist future. Since racism is systemic[1], especially when it comes to policing, predictive policing is actively working against an anti-racist future. There may be statistical ways to factor out systemic racism. There are two reasons I don't think that works: 1.…

I agree that, in general, you're going to have biased training data (with a bias that's difficult to measure) and so inherently policing recommendations will be biased. This is particularly problematic when it comes to arrests for crimes that are inherently 'selective' in their enforcement. Eg; drug-related crimes, public intoxication, loitering, trespassing. But the fact is... violent (fatal and nonfatal) crimes do…

Swing and a miss, overpolicing has nothing to do with violent crime. It has to do with nonviolent infractions that marginalize people to begin with. Being actually caught with illicit substances , or caught for the unpaid ticket.

These things are evenly distributed across society, but when overly targeting minorities it further marginalizes them.

Exhibit A) YOU might not be able to relate to people that routinely have a bag of coke on them, but a proportionate demographics of the population do.

Exhibit B) Silicon Valley openly brags about microdosing acid to perform at work at their half million $ jobs. Overpolicing would ensnare them if overpolicing existed in that demographic and then they would be ineligible for jobs the rest of their life. If you cant be subsidized by your family then you have actual crime to consider. Guess where you will live too.

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

#356

Post by ryankemper »

bhntr3 wrote: post #184

The problem with predictive policing is in the name. Inference (ML) predicts the future from the past. If the past is racist, then inference will create a racist future. Since racism is systemic[1], especially when it comes to policing, predictive policing is actively working against an anti-racist future. There may be statistical ways to factor out systemic racism. There are two reasons I don't think that works: 1.…

> Since racism is systemic[1]

> [1] If you don't believe this, you're in the minority now: https://www.vox.com/2020/6/11/21286642/george-floyd-protests....

This part was a little odd. It sounds like you're saying "because this belief is widely held by people, we should treat it as true"?

I definitely am in the minority, but I find a much more logically consistent view than the modern definition of systemic racism to actually be "there are systems of authority/control/oppression, which by their nature can be exploited by racists (or other groups) to advance their ends".

In other words - and I hope this isn't too off topic of a tangent - one of the primary goals of the BLM protest seems to be "racism is leading to excess death/imprisonment for black americans, so let's try to purge any traces of racism to eliminate these excess deaths". Which to me is missing the point: practices/systems like no-knock raids, the war on drugs, civil asset forfeiture, etc give police officers an excuse to be able to violently invade someone's home (no-knock), violate 4th amendment rights (war on drugs wrt "I smelled weed in your car"), criminalize behavior that happens to be broken along racial and class lines (non-violent drug usage/possession/distribution). In other words, the problem is not that there are racist people in the system, but that we have these systems that give racist individuals the perfect excuse to achieve their nefarious ends. That's because we've built a system that justifies and encourages oppression, and we can see that without having to introduce racee.

Anyway, I'm not hear to debunk "systemic racism" since like so many of the new-speak definitions/words, as soon as you try to debunk it people claim that you're using the wrong definition. But I do think it should be noted that when it comes to looking at actual research literature on, say, likelihood of being shot by police in a given encounter broken down by race, the "systemic racism" doesn't seem to be borne out in the data. Whereas we can make incredibly important societal change without needing to introduce the idea of systemic racism, simply by addressing the actual systems of oppression we have set up that give police officers the ability to randomly pull a citizen over and harass them since at any given moment each of us is violating a nonzero number of laws.

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

#357

Post by ryankemper »

vmception wrote: post #355
alfalfasprout wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that, in general, you're going to have biased training data (with a bias that's difficult to measure) and so inherently policing recommendations will be biased. This is particularly problematic when it comes to arrests for crimes that are inherently 'selective' in their enforcement. Eg; drug-related crimes, public intoxication, loitering, trespassing. But the fact is... violent (fatal and nonfatal) crimes do…

Swing and a miss, overpolicing has nothing to do with violent crime. It has to do with nonviolent infractions that marginalize people to begin with. Being actually caught with illicit substances , or caught for the unpaid ticket. These things are evenly distributed across society, but when overly targeting minorities it further marginalizes them. Exhibit A) YOU might not be able to relate to people that routinely hav…

> These things are evenly distributed across society

This is an unproven assertion. You should provide evidence of it, because on its face it is a completely ludicrous claim. Rates of illicit drug activity, violent crime, etc are _not_ evenly distributed in society. Not even close.

> Exhibit B) Silicon Valley openly brags about microdosing acid to perform at work at their half million $ jobs. Overpolicing would ensnare them if overpolicing existed in that demographic and then they would be ineligible for jobs the rest of their life. If you cant be subsidized by your family then you have actual crime to consider. Guess where you will live too.

Quite simply, the reason people that microdose are not getting thrown in jail is because they're not doing the other things that would lead to them getting discovered, i.e. engaging in crime or driving a car with significant (meaning, more than a person can safely swallow to avoid arrest) quantities of lsd.

---

Just incase you try to pin a belief-set on me, I oppose the war on drugs, no-knock raids, and even speeding tickets completely and would entirely abolish them if I were the BFDL.

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

#358

Post by [deleted] »

bhntr3 wrote: post #335
nwienert wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, both of these points are so bad as to be almost parody. Not only should you never, ever base your beliefs based on avoiding the discomfort of being an outsider, but you also should never, ever, use majority opinion as some sort of proof of... anything. If you did, you’d have advocated for slavery if only you’d been born south of the Mason Dixon years ago.

Here's the wikipedia article for the fallacious argument I used and which you're critiquing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum Here is some statistical evidence for systemic racism: https://www.businessinsider.com/us-systemic-racism-in-charts... (Shockingly this is actually pretty good despite being from Business Insider) Honestly, I'd just edit the link at this point if I could since it seems to ha…

[deleted]

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

#359

Post by ryankemper »

Misdicorl wrote: post #352
banads wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is horseshit? Nothing in your response is contrary to anything the person said that you're responding to

>There's a worrying trend in the conversation these days that has shifted from "there's a serious problem with racism in how police go about their job" to "we need less police". Folks in neighborhoods living with the constant threat of gang violence don't have the luxury to sit in their aeron chairs and argue about defunding the police. They face the very real threat of themselves or their loved ones being shot on th…

So, you haven't provided _any_ citations or even vague references to Wikipedia articles, rather you just called their opinion FUD and left it at that. How am I, a 3rd-party observer of this thread, supposed to extract any value from such statements?

The person you were quoting did not provide rock-solid proof that having police helps reduce violence, but they did provide a citation showing that:

> Violence against persons in poor (51%) and low-income (50%) households was more likely to be reported to police than violence against persons in mid- (43%) and high-income (45%) households

from https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hpnvv0812.pdf

So you could certainly argue that they are actually irrational to call the police and thus the higher rate is explained by them incorrectly thinking police would help them. But it's tricky to argue that with no data :)

Cheers

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

#360

Post by treis »

cgriswald wrote: post #348
treis wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The options here are having the judge make the decision based on their gut feeling or they can make it based on data. It's really hard for me to believe that gut feeling is better than data.

In both cases it doesn’t actually work. In the case of the data-backed nonsense it’s been used to justify holding people past their prison sentence. In this case it’s demonstrably worse . In the general case anything that’s “sciency” but doesn’t actually work leads to bad outcomes because people are far more likely to buy into it or at least less likely to call out obvious BS.

>In the case of the data-backed nonsense it’s been used to justify holding people past their prison sentence.

I'm not sure why you assume that it's keeping people in prison and not being used to let them out.

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