Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API • Hacker News Board

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#141

Post by loeg » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 9:40 PM UTC

some-are-better wrote: post #118

bathtub365 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public sector unions exist because you have two groups of people with opposing needs/desires. The state wants to minimize budget while still providing services, and public workers want to make an appropriate wage for the work they do. The government is organized, so (IMO) there should be an organization on the other side of the table bargaining for the workers.

"The state wants to minimize budget" This is a joke statement right? There is no state in the history of the world that attempts to do this.

Maybe you'd prefer it reframed as: elected officials want to minimize spending on line-items they don't care about in order to spend on things they do care about.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#142

Post by dlp211 » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

mythrwy wrote: post #71

strstr wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These questions underly a particular argument that I don’t buy. We institute fairly hefty national standards on schools. I can go and look up the average scores for standardized tests for students for the high school I attended, and, afaik, essentially all schools in the US. Why can’t I do the same thing for police departments? Somehow, police unions are able to avoid having similar accountability.

Teachers unions often fight standardized testing as well. They just haven't been as successful.

The reason for fighting standardized testing has nothing to do with transparency.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#143

Post by zorpner » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 9:42 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #84

heavyset_go wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's crazy to me that in 2020, there isn't comprehensive, mandatory Federal tracking of police-involved shootings. There is a billion dollar lobby that goes up to bat whenever law enforcement gets bad press, or legislation they don't like gets proposed. While I'm in favor of unionization, I do not support organizations that represent the strong arm of the state's desire to operate opaquely and without oversight fro…

It's confusing for me that so many people will complain about how the police unions prevent reform and allow for bad behavior -- but then support unions for all other public sector workers.

Particularly in America, the police exist primarily to enforce class/racial divides (this is not hyperbole -- one of the best quick introductions I know of came out quite recently and is a very worthwhile read or listen: https://www.npr.org/2020/06/05/870227945/nprs-history-podcas... ). This is fundamentally contrary to the politics of a labor union, which is to empower those who perform labor to negotiate on equal footing with those who would claim the bulk of the productive output of that labor.

Both would fall under the aegis of "collective bargaining", but the social aims of the two couldn't be more different: the maintenance of a stratified class system vs the dismantling of same.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#144

Post by thaumasiotes » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 9:45 PM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #136

nostromo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's confusing for me that so many people will complain about how the police unions prevent reform and allow for bad behavior -- but then support unions for all other public sector workers.

I recently encountered a Reddit comment that might clear your confusion, paraphrased thusly: "We never see the any teachers union consistently come out in defense of pedophiles amongst their members"

We see that all the time. You can read articles in major newspapers about the "rubber rooms" where teachers who can't be fired -- but who certainly also can't be put in front of a class -- are required to spend their workdays.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#145

Post by exclusiv » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 9:45 PM UTC

namdnay wrote: post #110

mtgp1000 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that media are pro-police right now? After nearly universally coming out in support of the current protests? What term would you prefer? One that does not presume innocence?

Just police shootings would be fine. I don’t understand the point about presuming innocence. These are cases where it has been determined that a police officer has shot someone. Not cases where somebody was shot whilst police were nearby and we don’t know who did it, which would be “police involved shootings”.

Yeah police shootings doesn't say anything about guilt. Seems ok from that angle.

Although I don't read clearly that the police were the ones that pulled the trigger. And "police involved shootings" doesn't say anything other than there was a shooting and an officer was involved. So the media does dance around the details.

Maybe it's cop-speak, maybe it's liability protection, maybe it's to get the readers to be curious on the details or a combination of all. I don't know.

"Officer was shot" or "officer-initiated shooting" is more clear.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#146

Post by zorpner » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #125

ceejayoz wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bunch of passive-voice examples here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/07/14/... > The deputy’s gun fired one shot, missing the dog and hitting the child. Or here: https://reason.com/2020/01/28/passive-voice-deployed-in-myst... > The suspect was struck several times by the officer's duty weapon.

Passive-voice is the most appropriate for the vast majority of news stories.

Passive-voice is frequently nonfactual. Cars do not run people over (unless they are rolling, and not being driven); guns do not shoot people (unless they experience a mechanical malfunction). This phrasing is _designed_ to mislead, to divert blame from the responsible parties, and has no place in the vast majority of news stories.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#147

Post by fredophile » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 9:48 PM UTC

falcrist wrote: post #90

nostromo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's confusing for me that so many people will complain about how the police unions prevent reform and allow for bad behavior -- but then support unions for all other public sector workers.

Public sector unions seem a little odd to me. The whole point of unions is to have collective bargaining power to deal with the bargaining power of corporations. That makes perfect sense... but isn't collective bargaining the point of having a democratic government? I'm not saying having, say, a teachers' union is a bad thing. I just feel like it should be redundant. Of course, the police are a special case even with…

Collective bargaining evens out the power imbalances between workers and their employers. It doesn't really matter if the employer is the government or a private company. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make about collective bargaining and democracy since the two are unrelated.

There are other ways to handle public sector unions. For example, in Canada the military is not part of a union but their pay is tied to other public sector employees who are unionized. This makes sense since you don't want the military going on strike. When the union employees go on strike to get better pay and benefits the military also gets the same increases. You could do something similar in the US by tying police salaries and benefits to another public sector group like teachers or nurses. I have the feeling that this would be extremely unpopular with the police.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#148

Post by lazyasciiart » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 9:49 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #144

sangnoir wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently encountered a Reddit comment that might clear your confusion, paraphrased thusly: "We never see the any teachers union consistently come out in defense of pedophiles amongst their members"

We see that all the time. You can read articles in major newspapers about the "rubber rooms" where teachers who can't be fired -- but who certainly also can't be put in front of a class -- are required to spend their workdays.

If police unions would do that to the officers who kill or beat prisoners, many people would be satisfied.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#149

Post by fredophile » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 9:50 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #132

wittyreference wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're confused that people have one set of standards for the providers of trash removal and another set of standards for people authorized to commit state-sanctioned murder? The two are kind of distinct.

The point though is that unions, wherever they are present in the public sector, tend to create uniformly sub-pair service. This is true for teachers, it's true for cops, and it's true basically wherever public sector unions are to be found.

Do you have any sources to back this up? My understanding is that non-unionized groups like charter schools do not outperform public schools. Many charter schools appear to outperform but once you account for the fact that they can choose their students, removing all of the low performers and putting them in the public system, they no longer show a benefit.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#150

Post by ATsch » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 9:52 PM UTC

mtgp1000 wrote: post #94

ATsch wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's interesting that you're using the widely used cop-speak of "police involved shooting", a passivized framing very popular in the media, even when criticizing the police.

Are you suggesting that media are pro-police right now? After nearly universally coming out in support of the current protests? What term would you prefer? One that does not presume innocence?

This is not something I just came up with. The observation that the media heavily uses the passive voice when reporting on the police, a practice that the police started using to deflect blame in their reports, which the media often cites uncritically, has been criticized for decades. I suggest you just give "passive voice police" a google and look at the overwhelming amount of studies, articles and reports on this topic.