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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

#541

Post by totony »

r00fus wrote: post #340
starkd wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's easy - when someone wants a well-check or reports mental health or substance abuse or maybe even rape, that should go to someone other than police. Showing up with a gun to some events is guaranteed to make things worse.

I agree for the mental health checks that there should be someone trained in mental health present, but you also need police present just in case the mentally ill person because combative, funding shouldn't be reduced, perhaps it should be increased to train police in handling the mentally ill or the police force should have professionals on the clock.

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

#542

Post by p49k »

OptionX wrote: post #441
snowwrestler wrote: post #306

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…

And what are the victims of violent crimes in those neighborhood do in the interim between the take resources from the already strained police departments and use them other for long-term measures? And I'm even assuming they even would have worthwhile results of course despite the premise that such programs would work is given in a matter of factly manner. Put yourself in the shoes of an innocent PoC who's house just…

People saying “defund the police” are not advocating the complete elimination of police forces; they’re advocating for the elimination of the 75-90% of things that police spend their time on that has zero or negative ROI for society. “Responding to legitimate crimes” is not one of those things.

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

#543

Post by unishark »

whakim wrote: post #533
unishark wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Focusing on one piece at a time is how we do logic. You need to defend the weakest link in your case. Or are you suggesting that the various pieces of systemic racism are not themselves racism, until aggregated together?

As for one-off events, it seems like just a matter of degree, not principle. Though surely genocide continue to have negative affects on the victimized group to this day.

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

#544

Post by 2ion »

This is big mistake, because being able to reason about past facts and making assumptions about the feature is a skill that sets man apart from the rest of nature. If you fall into a purely reactive mode you won't likely create great things and stability, because firemen are always too busy.

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

#545

Post by nl »

Mirioron wrote: post #493
snowwrestler wrote: post #306

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…

The biggest reason why people join gangs is because they're there. It's a cultural problem above all else. People like blaming it on poverty and lack of education funding and all kinds of other things. Yet compare former Soviet countries to the US. All of them spend less on education than the US does. Their populations are likely poorer than even the poor in the US. Their quality of life is lower, however, gangs aren…

Street gangs are a problem in former Soviet states.

Here's some reading on them in Russia: https://www.londonmet.ac.uk/news/articles/svetlana-stephenso...

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

#546

Post by lostlogin »

ACow_Adonis wrote: post #507
lostlogin wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy was quite down on his time in Australia, and the aggressive policing he was expected to do. He contrasted that with his time in the UK and (particularly) in NZ the role seemed to allow more tolerance and leeway and was described by him as 'progressive'. The NZ police aim seemed to be to get compliance without police charges or fines by engaging in a less combative manner. He described quite harsh measures tak…

Aside from a notable exception in the Australian Capital, it's worth noting that in Australia you have the Federal Police (AFP) which is responsible for policing federal offences, but the states are responsible for enactment and policing of most things that Americans would consider "everyday policing". The main issue this represents in your story is that it's not correct for the most part to present an "Australian ex…

The officer had worked in Queensland, but I don’t know what branch or department. I hadn’t considered the various branches that they have. I also wouldn’t be considering his views (via me) as anything other than a possibly interesting anecdote.

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

#547

Post by totony »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #539
hellomyguys wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 systemi…

>it’s systemic poverty for poor people. it has nothing to do with blacks.

This is a good point imo. Are they poor because they're black or because their family was poor before them?

I agree people put too much emphasis on more visible bias (ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation) and blame a lot of things which arguably may have originated from these bias, but are furthered by other factors (e.g. slow social mobility - all bias accounted for).

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

#548

Post by totony »

jjeaff wrote: post #489
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…

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.

>But acting on that data is definitely racist.

Why is it racism? Racism is "unfounded belief based on race". A belief based in data does not sound like either racism or discrimination to me.

Of course assuming someone is guilty because he's statically more likely to commit a crime is wrong. There was a movie about this line of thinking [1] if you're interested, which is the extreme of predictive policing. I still think there are non-discriminatory ways to use predictive policing though.

[1] Minority report by Steven Spielberg in 2002

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

#549

Post by totony »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #351
SkyBelow wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>End the war on drugs

This would fix so much imo. It's starting (weed legalization), but going way too slow. People are still delusional about legal = good, illegal = bad, we just added one drug to the legal ones.

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

#550

Post by totony »

alphakappa wrote: post #466
sacks2k wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Since racism is systemic" You can't just say this without actual proof. The George Floyd killing was a tragedy, but not proof of systemic racism. On top of this, the officer involved (who actually knew George Floyd prior to killing him) is being brought up on charges, which is the exact opposite of what happens in a system that has systemic racism. "Inference (ML) predicts the future from the past. If the past is ra…

> the officer involved (who actually knew George Floyd prior to killing him) is being brought up on charges, which is the exact opposite of what happens in a system that has systemic racism. How do you infer this? It could also be the result of the mass country-wide protests which are absolutely not the norm. It's not like the system automatically corrected for this issue.

>It could also be the result of the mass country-wide protests which are absolutely not the norm.

I think the parent is wrong on this point. The charges seem to be influenced by the mass protests. But I don't think that takes away from his point.

Also the way police treats police brutality and their immunity is very troublesome in the US. I don't think that's because of racism, more so because of a poor accountability system.

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