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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

#531

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…

If we want to stop neighborhood gang violence in the long term, we need to work on why people join gangs, and what they are fighting over. We can't do that with police, who generally don't come into the situation until after it's too late and things have gone wrong. But if most of our money is going to the police, then what resources are available to do the longer-term work on gangs and neighborhoods? In software dev…

> If we want to stop neighborhood gang violence in the long term, we need to work on why people join gangs, and what they are fighting over.

This may be utopian and fails the "perfect is the enemy of good" maxim. Meanwhile entire neighbourhoods if not cities (and sometimes entire countries) are anti-social, where the average resident has to suffer through a constant threat of violence.

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

#532
post #469
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.…

A few facts to note: Blacks kill more blacks than any other race or ethinicity.[1] Blacks also kill more whites, than whites kill blacks in pure numbers.[1] When you factor in the size of the respective populations on a per capita ratio, then the numbers just get worse.[2] On a more positive note, though, crimes are reported to generally have gone down over the last few years. In fact there's nothing in the data to s…

You're making a lot of (intentional or not) dogwhistles. So let's dive in to a few of them:

> Blacks kill more blacks than any other race or ethinicity.[1] Blacks also kill more whites, than whites kill blacks in pure numbers.

Indeed, let's rephrase this: races in the US continue to be relatively segregated[0]. And crimes, even violent ones, are usually committed within-community. So the meme around "black on black violence" is a bit of a distraction unless you also are concerned about "white on white" violence. And if you are, organizations like stop the violence[1] do exist to address specifically violence within the black community.

So you start by stating true, but ultimately misleading claims that are often used to justify racial prejudice.

Then, you justify this opinion with two videos from black people. Neither Larry Elder nor Denzel Washington is an expert on incarceration or the US justice system. Larry Elder, in fact, is a right wing political pundit, so his income relies on his viewership. This calls into question his reliability. I'd suggest you watch the documentary 13th[2] or read up on these issues from actual experts.

But I'll spend some time breaking down his video:

He starts by noting that white men and black men are killed by police at around the same rate. This is, again true. But this means that Black people are killed at around 5 times the rate of White people. Then he restates the whole issue of black on black crime, which we've already discussed.

He then cites a paper from Roland G. Fryer[3], which I happen to be familiar with. It concludes

> On non-lethal uses of force, there are racial differences – sometimes quite large – in police use of force, even after accounting for a large set of controls designed to account for important contextual and behavioral factors at the time of the police-civilian interaction.

These racial differences show more police violence towards minorities.

Elder then notes that police forces can be diverse, which is true but ultimately a distraction. He mentions the NYPD as an example of a highly diverse police force, but neglects to mention that the NYPD's Stop and Frisk policy was so problematic that it was deemed unconstitutional due to its discriminatory nature[4].

He then mentions that the Police-Public contact survey shows no evidence of police abuse against black people, but the Fryer paper Elder cites manages to reach the opposite conclusion: that based on the Police-Public contact survey, there is statistically significant evidence of greater police use of force against minority populations, even when controlling for a number of factors.

He then mentions his movie, Uncle Tom, which contains a number of "conservative thinkers", who are mostly pundits. It contains no academic experts. Compare to 13th, which includes interviewees from both political parties, as well as non-political subject matter experts. Uncle Tom peddles ultimately irrelevant facts, such as that the democratic party was historically in favor of slavery. This is true, but ignores the Southern Strategy[5], an explicit Republican strategy to gain support in the south by appealing to white fears about race in the wake of the civil rights movement. 13th goes into detail on this.

But you can see some of it in things like this[6] Lee Atwater quote (Atwater was a republican political strategist), where he essentially admits the racism at the core of the southern strategy, and the need to, over time, move from explicit and overt racism to more systematic changes that, while not explicitly racist, help white people at the expense of black people.

Edit: I actually forgot one thing Elder mentions, that no one cares when unarmed white people are shot by police. This isn't actually true: The Black Lives matter movement has a reasonably well documented history of raising some awareness about cases of police killing unarmed white people. For example, during BLM protests in the wake of Michael Brown's murder in 2014, Christian Roupe[11], a white kid from Georgia, was among the names of people killed by police violence mentioned at the protest. More recently, in the wake of Daniel Shaver's murder, BLM voices raised awareness[12].

Which leaves one more thing that Elder discusses: "black fathers", which is also what Denzel Washington discusses. So once again, go watch 13th, I'm basically repeating the things it says here.

In the Nixon/Reagan era, "Law and Order" politics[7] became a central issue. Most notably, the "War on Drugs". Through this, laws were passed that disproportionately keep black people in prison, notably around crack vs. powder cocaine. But even with other drugs like marijuana, where white and black people use and historically used cannabis at the same rate, but black people are 3x more likely to be arrested for cannabis use[8] even today, and as a result literally tens of thousands of young black men are in prison for things that aren't a crime.

Those disproportionate arrest rates, combined with some of those other crime laws from the "Law and Order" era mean that someone who never commits a violent crime can end up a felon or even behind bars for life. Those people are disproportionately likely to be black men, especially young black men. Young black men who should be forming families but who can't because they're being put behind bars for crimes that white people commit at equivalent rates.

That, combined with historical issues like redlining[9] and housing policies that prevented black communities from building generational wealth[10] mean that it's difficult, if not impossible, for black fathers to create stable homes. They don't have the generational wealth that white households do, not as a result of their actions, but instead due to years of explicit government policy that directly prevented their parents generation from accumulating wealth. Then, of course, they're overpoliced and sent to prison which can prevent them from doing important and economically stabilizing things like attending college, or even in some cases completing high school, and acquiring decent jobs.

And this cycle is self-reinforcing. Without the ability for the current generation to create stable households, the next generation won't have wealth to build off of and will continue to be unstable. And so the cycle will continue. That's why we call it "systemic".

Hope that helps inform you about these issues. I'm also happy to break down why some of the things you've done generally won't engender you much sympathy and will result in you being accused of "dogwhistle" racism. But I'll only dive into that rhetorical analysis if you specifically request it.

[0]: http://racialdotmap.demographics.coopercenter.org/

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_the_Violence_Movement

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krfcq5pF8u8

[3]: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/empirical_anal...

[4]: https://ccrjustice.org/home/press-center/press-releases/land...

[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Atwater#%22Southern_strate..., https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwa...

[7]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_and_order_(politics)

[8]: https://www.aclu.org/report/tale-two-countries-racially-targ..., see page 28 of the report

[9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining

[10]: https://youtu.be/AGUwcs9qJXY?t=240, covers redlining and generational wealth issues, but the whole video is great and, it should be noted, is made by a Christian who I believe identifies as conservative. It overlaps a lot with 13th, but 13th covers a few more recent things about the US prison industrial complex and contains more firsthand accounts and interviews.

[11]: https://newsandletters.org/thousands-chicago-ny-ferguson-sto...

[12]: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/12/09/black-lives-mat...

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

#533
post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's just the "strictest, most technical" sense. It's a significant example of how "if you took the people out of the system, you'd still get biased outcomes based on race." (or, if you prefer, an example of where "an entirely non-racist staff would still produce racially-based biased outcomes")

This seems to fit with the charge that you are arguing momentum is racist. They were born in a poor household. That household is poorer than it would otherwise be because of racism in prior generations (but which no longer exists today) leading to a lack of inheritance among other things. This is your evidence of systemic racism. Along those same lines I suppose we also suffer from systemic genocide, systemic famine,…

That is one piece of evidence of systemic racism.

The problem with your counterexample ("systemic famine"/"systemic war"/etc.) is that those are one-off events in the past, and thus they don't cumulatively add up and compound to create very unequal outcomes today. A more appropriate hypothetical would be that the last 400 years of one's ancestors all experienced genocide, war, or other similarly "crappy" things.

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

#534
post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we want to stop neighborhood gang violence in the long term, we need to work on why people join gangs, and what they are fighting over. We can't do that with police, who generally don't come into the situation until after it's too late and things have gone wrong. But if most of our money is going to the police, then what resources are available to do the longer-term work on gangs and neighborhoods? In software dev…

One of the reasons is: They can't trust the police to come out and take the people who cause trouble out. Neighbourhood gangs, esp in chicago are territorial and they try to "protect the neighbourhoods." (I think they do cause more problems) This came up during the riots earlier this month. The police were stretched way too thin. Gangs did stop the looters and rioters from extending into their neighbourhoods. (Deeper…

why don’t they protect their neighborhoods from murder/drugs/fraud on a daily basis?

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

#535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could be one of the reasons why https://www.npr.org/2018/12/12/675359781/americas-growing-co... https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/national-politics/the-... It will only get worse. I wonder if AI and robotics will need to be used in the future assuming that the police shortage trend continues or gets even worse?

Or we could address the root problem behind the vast majority of crime; systemic poverty.

how many children raised in poor neighborhoods by young single poor mothers should have been aborted?

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

#536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced that systemic poverty is the cause. Plenty of poorer counties and non urban, but just a poor, areas in the USA don't have these high violent crime rates.

Poverty includes more than just household income. In particular, many of the comparative areas you mention provide: safe schools, libraries, extended family resources. Population density is also a huge driver of violent crime rates. Of course poverty isn't the only factor. But it's a hugely important one.

higher household income would mean the households are worth more

aka more property taxes

aka more money for education and police to keep everybody safe

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

#537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This struck me as well. Systemic racism means (to me) that if you took the people out of the system, you'd still get biased outcomes based on race. In my view, it's a different matter to say that a system produces biased results because it is designed to do so, rather than it is systemic because the people operating it make biased choices where their discretion is called on. Are there actual, current examples of syst…

> Are there actual, current examples of systemic racism where an entirely non-racist staff would still produce racially-based biased outcomes? If you removed all racists from the economy, black people as a demographic would still be at a huge disadvantage for a very long time (or forever?). The playing field might not level on it's own. If a system starts out with biased functions and runs long enough so that the dis…

the term “systemic racism”, to me, sounds like parts of the system are actively racist. your argument is true (black people are economically disadvantaged given history), but aren’t poor white people/latino people too?

how is a poor black person any worse off than a poor white person?

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

#538
post #490

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?

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 impo…

you have to adjust those FBI stats for the fact that black people are 13% of the US population

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

#539
post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 impo…

No I'm asking for you to tell me when systemic racism ended in this country because the crux of your argument is that it has ended and the effects of it historically don't linger today. Can you explain the fact the net worth of a typical white family is $171,000 and the typical net worth of a Black family is $17,150? Are Black people in this country inherently predisposed to making less money or are there systemic re…

> Can you explain the fact the net worth of a typical white family is $171,000 and the typical net worth of a Black family is $17,150?

how many young poor black mothers have children too early (16) with gang members who end up dying from gang violence? isn’t that a modern day common black narrative?

how is a poor white person any worse off than a poor black person? they have same access to all resources. it’s systemic poverty for poor people. it has nothing to do with blacks.

some blacks bootstrap themselves out and make it, most don’t. how broken is the system for those that make it out? not very.

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

#540
post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 impo…

you have to adjust those FBI stats for the fact that black people are 13% of the US population

I agree that per capita numbers always tell a more accurate story. Anyway here's a great resource to make those adjustments: https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?d=ACS%205-Year%20Estima...
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