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

reuters.com

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

#481

Post by hellomyguys »

mov_ wrote: post #468
hellomyguys wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you agree at some point this country was systemically racist? Surely you would agree during slavery it was? I'm going to assume you agree, so then can you explain when systemic racism ended? And what caused it to end? Can you also help me understand how you are so sure that the negative impact to Black people while this country was systematically racist does not still hurt people today?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the person you're responding to is in opposition to you.

Maybe I'm wrong but wouldn't their interpretation of chattel slavery in America be that it wasn't the beginning of systemic racism in this country, but purely oppressive system that was exploited by racists? It seems like an odd distinction to make even if I agree that there exists systematic oppression against many groups in addition to systemic racism.

>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.

Even this just doesn't fully explain away systemic oppression that impacts people on a day-to-day basic like Black people not getting job interviews due to their name sounding Black or job offers because the interviewers have unconscious bias.

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

#482

Post by kebman »

r00fus wrote: post #274
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…

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.

Domestic issues are often met with social workers where I'm from. They gain early detection and access, by registering and treating social issues such as poverty, health or mental related issues. A lot of people then have their lives changed for the better, so they never fall into crime. On a whole, this is good for society, since it gets the benefit of less crime and violence, and so society becomes safer. On top of that, our police is trained in peacefully settling most disputes, though they of course retain the monopoly on violence if need be.

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

#483

Post by dragonwriter »

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.

> No, you never can with absolutely certainty, the question is how you distribute the costs of uncertainty. Leading with paramilitary enforcers in nearly all situations has consequences that people are not happy with, hence the defund/dismantle/abolish movement.

> The police are expected to deal with a whole community in a holistic way.

Which they manifestly fail to do effectively, for structural reasons. A paramilitary force with minimal entry education requirements whose training disproportionately focuses on the proper use of force to secure compliance is not a good general purpose community response tool.

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

#484

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

riazrizvi wrote: post #200
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.…

Indeed. And worse they can then become an excuse to hide racist policy inside. Racist governor, buys racist software, to drive racist policing, loved by favored racist constituents, "It's not my administration, it's the software, algorithms are objective, black people are the problem...". Maybe systemic racism is a feature of these systems, not a bug?

Maybe it's not the software that's at fault, but society?

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

#485

Post by manfredo »

hckr_news wrote: post #332
metrokoi wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. What? Wasn't even sure whether to dignify this comment with a response yet here I am.

I think you missed it the central point of the parent commenter. Take for instance, the fact that men commit the overwhelming majority of violent crime:

* Is it sexist to conclude that someone is a violent criminal just because they're a man? Yes.

* Is it sexist to say that a model predicting that men will commit 90% of violent crime isn't biased, with the reasoning that men on average commit way more violence than women? No.

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

#486

Post by zaroth »

dragonwriter wrote: post #476
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…

> This is particularly problematic when it comes to arrests for crimes that are inherently 'selective' in their enforcement All crimes are selective in enforcement; reporting, police response, and prosecution all, for all crimes, have both unintentional biases and deliberate prioritization and acts of discretion involved. > There's a worrying trend in the conversation these days that has shifted from "there's a serio…

It seems like you’re just making sweeping generalizations in an effort to do ideological battle.

I think people in crime-ridden areas are generally very interested in seeing greater police presence, not less. [1] Studies have shown a larger police presence results in lower arrest rates and lower use of force.

And in the vast majority of cases where police are called to a scene they do in fact care deeply, and help effectively.

I think it’s easy to get caught up in tempest and start blaming a large group for the actions of a small minority. I’m no expert, but my understanding is we’ve done decades of studies and had decades of progress toward reducing violent crime, and increased funding for police has been a main pillar of that effort. Obama’s efforts to provide billions of dollars of police funding, for example, saw decreases in crime rates for cities that received the funding versus increases in cities that missed out.

[1] - https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/13/18193661/h...

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

#487

Post by jjeaff »

tux1968 wrote: post #312
jjeaff wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Vice or maybe Vox did a short with an ex-cop who mentioned this concept. He said they made a lot of arrests of black men carrying illegal switch blades. But said that white people carried those illegal blades just as often. Including many police officers that he worked with. But since they mostly patrolled in black neighborhoods, they of course made many more arrests and citations for carrying an illegal bla…

There is an argument to be made that carrying a knife should not be a crime for anyone, and that we all have a right to carry a knife to protect ourselves or even use a tool. But lets accept for a moment that reducing the number of knives on the street reduces violence and protects innocent people. If you accept that premise, then you have to say it's beneficial to society that the police remove as many knives as pos…

Are we assuming that police arrests and citations for carrying an illegal knife actually reduce or deter knife crime? Because I don't believe that it does.

--Same as you, just using knives as an example because I agree that they should not be illegal. (And a lot more could be said about certain types of knives being illegal and others not and the idea that certain racial groups or gangs might be more likely to carry that certain type, crack vs cocaine anyone?) But you could replace knives with any type of crime.--

But the reality is that we have a system that will over-prosecute and over-charge people for small crimes which causes a disruption to a lower income person's already precarious situation. Putting through a system full of violence, inhumanity, and other people that are in for much worse and then releasing them back to that same community with a do-not-hire sign permanently around their neck (a felony). After which they are likely to turn to crime to survive.

So while I agree that looking at knife crime data would make more sense than looking at arrests in the scope of the data conversation, the idea that heavy handed policing and a messed up "justice" system will likely create negative pressure on the long term for crime in that community, then the data is sort of moot.

Additionally, the conversation in this mini-documentary pointed to the fact that police were/are incentivized (at least in his Detroit precinct) to "get their statistics". So they would gravitate to these poorer, black neighborhoods because they could stop and hassle low income minorities without repercussion a lot easier than a white middle class neighborhood where people were less likely to even be walking outside and more likely to file complaints for police harassment.

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

#488

Post by manfredo »

Back before computers were a thing in most people's homes, let alone pockets, police would plot on a map the crime reports of the past year and assign more patrols to areas with a high density of crime.

Is this practice now banned? Because this is predictive policing, albeit in a crude form. Presumably it just means computerized predictive policing, but it still seems odd that people see to think that analyzing past patterns of crime to better allocate police is something novel.

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

#489

Post by jjeaff »

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…

Recognizing the fact isn't racist (although one should qualify those facts with all the many factors not taken into account, like how much more likely a white person is to get away with the same crime). But acting on that data is definitely racist. It is punishing innocent people because other people that have a similar skin color have committed crimes.

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

#490

Post by kebman »

hellomyguys wrote: post #461
ryankemper wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Would you agree at some point this country was systemically racist? Surely you would agree during slavery it was? I'm going to assume you agree, so then can you explain when systemic racism ended? And what caused it to end? Can you also help me understand how you are so sure that the negative impact to Black people while this country was systematically racist does not still hurt people today?

The logic of your argument seems to be: "There was slavery, so there was systemic racism." Am I right? Then you extruded that argument into: "Because there was slavery, there is also systemic racism today." This is quite a leap, especially considering that slavery was ended on a particular date due to a civil war. Since then, several settlements has been made with racism (systemic or otherwise), some of the most important ones being during the 60's. These settlements have come both in the form of physical changes to the law, but also in the form of a change to the general zeitgeist and in the attitude of most people towards racism. What is happening today, however, is purely the widspread misunderstanding and politization of facts and statistics. On the whole, crime is going down, but if you look at this table from the FBI, the bias does in fact seem to be biased towards whites and not blacks.[1] What do you think about that?

[1]: FBI murder statistics by race from 2018, https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-... 2018 was the latest year I could find such data on.

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