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

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#161

Post by linuxftw » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 10:05 PM UTC

nickff wrote: post #8

save_ferris wrote: post #6

It's crazy to me that in 2020, there isn't comprehensive, mandatory Federal tracking of police-involved shootings. There's no reason that this data shouldn't be mandated to be aggregated and researched, other than to continue propagating a culture of secrecy. From the FBI's Use-of-Force data collection site[0]: > Is it mandatory for law enforcement agencies to contribute to this data collection? > The FBI has no lega…

Why should everything be federalized? There is no article in the constitution which mandates (or permits) federal supervision of state powers (such as the police power). The fact that voters fail to hold their lower-level governments to account does not mean that all power (and failure) should be centralized.

Right. There needs to be less centralization, not more. Perhaps Chicago should be it's own state, or at least an autonomous district.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#162

Post by heavyset_go » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 10:11 PM UTC

_bxg1 wrote: post #97

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.

It's a question of tradeoffs between professional accountability and improved working conditions in a given field, based on factors like how bad things can get in that field without accountability, how well (or poorly) employees are currently treated and paid, how likely employees are to take advantage of unaccountability, etc. People very much care about accountability when it comes to law enforcement, because compa…

> And police aren't exactly underpaid either.

To drive this point home, the median salary before overtime and bonuses is $105,106/year for cops[1], and with overtime, cops can earn over $250,000/year[2].

The median salary for software engineers in the same state is 10% lower than the $105k police salary before overtime and bonuses.

[1] https://www.nj.com/news/2017/05/how_much_is_the_median_cop_s...

[2] https://www.nj.com/somerset/2019/11/4-cops-in-this-nj-town-e...

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#163

Post by dlp211 » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 10:16 PM UTC

darawk wrote: post #158

dlp211 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best k-12 schools in the US are in states that have teachers unions, so maybe go rethink your hypothesis.

That's a strange way of framing things. Anyways, here's some actual evidence: https://credo.stanford.edu/studies/charter-school-studies Be sure to read it carefully, and disaggregate the online charter schools from the brick and mortar.

You can't take the stats of a charter school vs its district peers and extrapolate that to the state level. It's also notable that Massachusetts doesn't have a recent report.

I also took a look at the 2019 Washington (my state) press release with the following bullet point:

o School level findings identified several charter schools with significantly positive impacts, as much as 165 and 189 more days of learning in reading and math, respectively, compared to the learning they would have realized in traditional public schools. Conversely, some charters significantly underperformed their local school options by as much as 106 and 83 fewer days of learning in reading and math, respectively

I'm not saying that charter schools aren't useful, what I am willing to say is that charter schools provide a good solution to a particular problem that has more to do school quality being tied to local tax revenue than unions.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#164

Post by heavyset_go » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 10:17 PM UTC

vxNsr wrote: post #34

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…

So are you against all government unions? What about quasi-gov orgs like SEC? Or teachers? Just trying to understand where you fall on the “unions for me but not thee” scale

Just for the record, I draw the line at police unions as long as there isn't significant oversight in both policing and the union itself.

If their track record wasn't abysmal when it comes to abuse of power, I would be less likely to see a problem with police unions. However, that isn't the case, hence my opinion on the matter.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#165

Post by tick_tock_tick » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 10:19 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #130

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Perhaps, but how often do you hear tortured, nonsensical phrasing like "the suspect's gun shot the victim" when discussing non-police incidents? Sometimes the voice switches mid-tweet when the subject does: https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1266935666274906113 > Minneapolis: A photographer was shot in the eye. > Washington, D.C.: Protesters struck a journalist with his own microphone. > Louisville: A reporter was hi…

I won't disagree that journalists are crap at consistency, sticking to provable facts, and avoiding injecting biased language into reporting.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#166

Post by dlp211 » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 10:22 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #156

dlp211 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in theory, teachers are covered by QI, however, in practice 2 things are different: 1 is that there are extremely few cases of QI for teachers, QI is used primarily by police officers 2 is that the unions don't back teachers that come up on QI charges. They don't run clinics on how to use QI to jutify harming someone or other clinics like Killology.

> 1 is that there are extremely few cases of QI for teachers, QI is used primarily by police officers To the extent that's true, it's because people don't sue teachers personally as a way of getting some largely symbolic measure of justice for things that are actually crimes but where public prosecutors won't prosecute, because teachers don't benefit from the same working relationship with prosecutors that police hav…

1. there is no reason to be pedantic about the language around QI. We are not in court, so you're not impressing anyone with your "actually" non-sense. Any reasonable person can infer that I was talking about cases in which QI would be used as a justification to absolve the officer of responsability.

2. Your first rebuttal point reinforces my point, in practice there are very few cases that result in QI being used w.r.t. teachers.

3. I think most of us can agree that QI shouldn't apply to teachers or officers or any other State actor and is legal non-sense created by junk judicial interpretation.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#167

Post by darawk » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 10:22 PM UTC

dlp211 wrote: post #163

darawk wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a strange way of framing things. Anyways, here's some actual evidence: https://credo.stanford.edu/studies/charter-school-studies Be sure to read it carefully, and disaggregate the online charter schools from the brick and mortar.

You can't take the stats of a charter school vs its district peers and extrapolate that to the state level. It's also notable that Massachusetts doesn't have a recent report. I also took a look at the 2019 Washington (my state) press release with the following bullet point: o School level findings identified several charter schools with significantly positive impacts, as much as 165 and 189 more days of learning in r…

I think it's more about options. Charter schools have the freedom to experiment with new ideas, which means their outcomes are likely to be more variable. Some will be better than traditional schools, some will be worse. But over time, that freedom to experiment should converge to an overall higher standard of education. At least, that's the theory, but the data seem consistent with that so far.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#168

Post by tick_tock_tick » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 10:24 PM UTC

zorpner wrote: post #146

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I disagree many times it's often the only 100% factually correct statement. Person A was run over by a car. Person B was arrested at the scene sitting behind the wheel. The reporter often only has that information to go on. They can not know 100% for sure that Person B ran over Person A.

2 weeks later camera footage comes out showing Person C driving over Person A, getting out of the car and running, and Person B moving over to sit in the drives seat.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#169

Post by falcrist » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 10:27 PM UTC

fredophile wrote: post #147

falcrist wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tie…

> Collective bargaining evens out the power imbalances between workers and their employers.

The reason it's strange is because if the government is a democracy (representative or direct), there should already be a mechanism for collective bargaining.

The fact that this is often insufficient strikes me as a pretty strong indictment of our systems of government.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#170

Post by biohax2015 » Thu, Jul 09, 2020, 10:30 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.

Unions can be both very good and very bad. That’s how power works.