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Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

chicagoreporter.com

221–230 of 273 posts

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#221
post #108

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.

Imagine if the army was unionized, and started lobbying the government for whether we should participate in wars or not. Or more worryingly, lobbied for change to rules of engagement. Add to that, the fact that everyone in the military was in the union, from the lowest level recruits to the generals. This is as opposed to other unions where management are typically excluded.

The army already has top-down centralized control, right? Much more so than most big organizations. Clearly the army can already choose whether to participate in wars or not, that's what they do. They don't even need to lobby to change rules of engagement, if they chose to change things it would happen. Of course we hope and expect them to follow the rules, but it's not like "letting" them technically unionize would somehow fundamentally change anything.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#222
post #208
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, it's certainly not the case that charters are uniformly better in every case. There's quite a bit of variation. The basic idea behind charter schools is that they eliminate the union (that's almost literally their entire purpose). But what that does is it allows them the freedom to experiment with new styles of education, without filtering it through the bureaucracy of the union. In effect, that means there's goi…

> There's quite a bit of variation. The basic idea behind charter schools is that they eliminate the union (that's almost literally their entire purpose). That's not the public position of charter schools. Charter schools are based on the idea that more flexibility will give better results, that has nothing to do with unions. The flexibility comes largely from not being pushed around by the school board and subject t…

> That's not the public position of charter schools. Charter schools are based on the idea that more flexibility will give better results, that has nothing to do with unions. The flexibility comes largely from not being pushed around by the school board and subject to testing and limits. Unions are willing to be flexible with education structure

I agree that it's not the message they transmit. And i'm basically relying on my own personal experience and relationships for guidance here, so I don't necessarily expect you to be convinced. I'm just telling you what i've heard, and what my understanding is.

> I don't see the evidence for this. Studies show Charter schools perform no better then regular public schools. Some places that have really crappy public schools may try to turn to more charter schools on the chance that on average they might be better but I'd say reforming the regular school system would work better (even though it might be harder)

Read the studies I linked earlier in the thread. They do not perform the same.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#223
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HRDAG estimates that 1 in 3 Americans murdered by a stranger are killed by a police officer. https://granta.com/violence-in-blue/ In Chicago, the police union has attempted to destroy complaint records and uses an arbitration clause to minimize impact of discipline and to keep information about sustained misconduct complaints under wraps, including other police departments considering hiring an officer ( https://proj…

Well that's certainly playing with statistics. Most people are murdered by someone they know, so we're looking at a pretty small slice of all murders. And that stat is for homicides, not murder. So it includes people lawfully killed.

> So it includes people lawfully killed

I would imagine that's part of the point.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#224
The chicago PD and it's notorious lawlessness is the single biggest thing preventing me from moving to the area despite a good professional fit and available jobs. I must not be the only one. If I ran a company I wouldn't be willing to subject my employees to those hazards either. Maybe it's worth complaining to the chamber of commerce... public officials seem to have done little to fix anything, maybe involving the people pulling the strings could move the needle.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#225
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a private company, there is also a mechanism for collective bargaining, without a union. The workers could just buy up all the outstanding stock, and replace the board. And yet, nobody considers that to be sufficient to deny workers their right to organize.

That's generally only possible in a public company ("public" meaning "publicly traded"). Even then, I don't think the stockholders are under any obligation to sell to you, so you still may not be able to purchase a controlling interest in the company. So if the board holds a controlling interest, you're out of luck.

The politicians you elect, likewise, have no obligation to actually follow through on their campaign promises.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#226
post #134
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less opportunity to apply force but plenty to inflict lifelong damage. Or at least massive opportunity cost and stunting or misdirection. Teachers and police should be both way better paid and we should demand a lot more from both. These shouldn't be jobs you just get because they are easy(ish) to qualify for and have retirement and you can't ever get fired. We really need some of our best people in both.

If you think it is easy to become a teacher, boy do I have news for you.

It can't be too difficult based on many of those I had.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#227
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> This makes sense since you don't want the military going on strike. What’s unique here? Isn’t the whole point of all strikes that the employer doesn’t want the employees to go on strike?

Some services are more important than others. If teachers go on strike kids miss some school; if nurses go on strike people die. The military fits into the "people die" category in terms of likely consequences from a strike.

Edit: just to be clear, I don't mean to imply that teachers aren't important, just that the immediate consequences of them all missing work is less severe than some other occupations.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#229

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…

> 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…

The labor movement has long opposed police having unions, as they’ve always served Capital owners whenever workers need intimidated or a strike needs broken. They’re de facto opposed to the collective action of all other workers.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#230

Incredibly telling that the police still pull this type of thing despite how laser-focused everyone is on their behavior right now. It's almost as if they've been institutionalized to think they're better than everyone else. Defund the police and use the money for mental health and human services. Local police service data should be randomly audited by the feds and independent third parties.

>"Defund the police and use the money for mental health and human services."

That doesn't address the cancer of gang violence and other violence that police need to deal with constantly.

"Mental health and human services" will not address these problems. Most people committing crime had an opportunity to go to school and participate in legal society. They choose not to.

The future of America is that of a lawless gangland like Mexico if the police are "defunded".

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