Live data from Hacker News

Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

chicagoreporter.com

231–240 of 273 posts

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#231

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…

You think the Chicago PD is lawless? It's the criminals, crime and general lawlessness in Chicago that is causing over 40 people to routinely be shot each weekend in Chicago.

The rampant lies and misrepresentations about police will only cause more crime, deaths and lawlessness as police choose to retire and decent people who may have been considering becoming police will decide to not subject themselves to the constant and unjustified abuse meted out by the public and politicians which police have to endure.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#233

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…

I am certain that the non-profit sector can organize and create a reporter-based system that logs this data if the individual states and cities won't.

There's never been more desire for this data.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#234
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the case of politicians, you can simply vote them out next election.

Board positions can be lifetime appointments.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I would not be satisfied if my tax dollars paid the salary of police officers that killed and beat people, rubber room or otherwise.

I would be more satisfied with a rubber room than the scenario where they are paid to actively beat and kill people.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#236
This strikes me as remarkably similar to the "crown jewels" problem of API availability.

Simply stated, it's that it's the hardest sell in the world to expect a company to expend money and resources to act against its own interests, and applied to governmental organizations like the police, no appointed official is going to stomach spending money making themselves look bad.

More broadly stated, you can't solve accountability problems by asking people to step up and be more accountable. The only way is to impose rules from above.

And even that won't work if there's actual bad faith involved. Police depts issuing rules on body camera usage will find that the cameras just don't work when they'd make individual officers look bad.

I'm sure CPD had the best of intentions when it created its API. But as soon as a journo ran an article using it to make them look bad, regardless of how right it was, means their access was going to get revoked. Nobody forced them to put out an API, and it just became a political liability. Of course it's going to go away.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#237
post #214

Am I reading that wrong or are the quotes from police and gov saying saying "offenders" when they mean "people accused of a crime and presumed innocent" ?

Unfortunately, "innocent until proven guilty" is rarely what cops in the US believe. In most cases, they just care about making arrests, not about finding the actual culprit.

Yeah, but most politicians at least pretend.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If that was the problem then you'd expect loaded phrasing to be about equally distributed, but I don't think that's the case.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#239

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…

The should track all deaths occuring during police encounters, including chokings, drug overdose, etc... Not only shootings.

Re: Chicago Police Department shuts down its arrest API

#240

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…

The elected leaders represent distinctly different interests than public employees. For instance, in March, in NY state government, public employee union contracts didn't permit working from home in general. That was tightly restricted based on past negotiation. In order to respond to the pandemic crisis, they really dragged out giving permission to work remotely where possible.

I don't understand why anyone would think that the rank and file public employees are the same entity/interests as the elected officials or upper level management. You might as well say the employees who own a little company stock or get options at any random company don't need a union because they can vote their shares. Working conditions, due process, etc. always matter, in the face of management having an incentive to find shortcuts and such.

Public sector unions are really not the government negotiating with itself any more than a private company. Any time you have management answering to different interests than the workers, a conflict of interest exists so a union has an obvious purpose. If actual unions are bad or corrupt, that's not the same as an issue in the abstract.

Post reply on HN