Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In a small Virginia town, citizens review police like Uber drivers

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 217 posts

Re: In a small Virginia town, citizens review police like Uber drivers

#81

Post by robonerd »

cortesoft wrote: post #49
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the townsfolk (who pressure the politicians who pressure the chief who pressure the officers) would prefer that to you hassling them over those kinds of transgressions then yes. Weed, fireworks on the 4th of July, teenagers fishing without licenses, there's all manner of things that are illegal at the state level yet locally accepted when done tastefully that the cops should not be ticketing people for because the…

Unless you are the person pulled over, you aren’t going to know that a particular cop pulled over a dangerous driver. How would a citizen who wants bad drivers to be pulled over be able to rate the cop highly? Which cop would they rate? How would they know how many dangerous drivers there would be on the road without the cops? Imagine the town has absolute perfect police, who only every pull over dangerous people, on…

Good observation. This sort of rating system would incentivize cops to go out of their way to have benign but unnecessary interactions with people. Maybe this wouldn't be all bad; optimistically such interactions might help bridge the divide between the public and police. But mostly, I think it would waste people's time and inflict a lot of unnecessary discomfort and stress.

Re: In a small Virginia town, citizens review police like Uber drivers

#82

Post by at_a_remove »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #66
robonerd wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who is a scumbag? There are marginal cases for sure, but let's not pretend that true scumbags don't exist just because the demarcation line is subjective; that's like pretending there's no such thing as a ripe banana because the green fades gradually into yellow with no clear line between them. Look beyond the marginal cases and it becomes clear that the difference really does exist. There are people in this countr…

Speaking of domestic violence, want to post some statistics on the amount of cops that are domestic abusers? Or the ones caught drunk behind the wheel and get let off.

What a derail! And one that in no way remedies the stated problem.

Re: In a small Virginia town, citizens review police like Uber drivers

#83

Post by 0des »

karmelapple wrote: post #77

I've always found it interesting that when I'm pulled over for a traffic violation, a police officer can use their discretion on whether to punish me. I've been pulled over a few times for speeding, and a couple times I simply got a warning, and other times I got a ticket and had to pay a fine. If I committed a crime, why should an officer have that leeway? They caught me, I should have to pay the consequences... rig…

The purpose of a traffic stop is seldom due to traffic infractions. Traffic stops are an access vector, or as police call it, a point of contact.

Re: In a small Virginia town, citizens review police like Uber drivers

#84

Post by ticviking »

karmelapple wrote: post #77

I've always found it interesting that when I'm pulled over for a traffic violation, a police officer can use their discretion on whether to punish me. I've been pulled over a few times for speeding, and a couple times I simply got a warning, and other times I got a ticket and had to pay a fine. If I committed a crime, why should an officer have that leeway? They caught me, I should have to pay the consequences... rig…

Mandating that cops enforce unpopular laws was critical to Teddy Roosevelt's reform of the NYPD to help reduce corruption. That leeway was used to solicit bribes, particularly to let bars open on Sundays.

I think that if we removed a lot of the leeway about enforcement we would find ourselves forces to ask, "What laws do we really care about enforcing in the first place?"

Re: In a small Virginia town, citizens review police like Uber drivers

#85

Post by emaginniss »

lukev wrote: post #41
daenz wrote: post #12

I think their heart is in the right place (officers should have direct and transparent reputations to people). But in order to implement this "correctly", you need to go one step further into a dangerous territory: the ratings that an officer receives should be weighted by the rating of the person who rated them. Absolute scumbags shouldn't be able to hurt reputations in quite the same way as upstanding people. If yo…

This is the premise of Nosedive , Black Mirror S3E1. Spoiler: it does... not end well.

And the "meowmeowbeenz" episode of Community. Also does not end well, but is very funny.

Re: In a small Virginia town, citizens review police like Uber drivers

#86

Post by glitcher »

djyaz1200 wrote: post #59

This is clever and I agree with the comments regarding their heart being in the right place but this is a flawed approach. The customer service experience of criminals isn't the right thing to optimize and probably has nothing to do with outcomes if not inversely correlated with crime reduction. The very idea that we can view and treat police officers like we do customer service people at say the mall I would argue i…

I mean, yeah this approach probably is flawed for various reasons, but oh boy:

> The customer service experience of criminals isn't the right thing to optimize

Not sure where to even begin with that statement. Police interact with tons of citizens, and many of them may end up with civil penalties or misdemeanors, but would you consider someone getting issued a speeding ticket for going 15mph over the posted limit to be a criminal? Also, are you worried that someone being arrested for armed robbery is going to use their phone in the back seat of a police vehicle to give a fake bad review?

I think if this program helps encourage officers to interact with citizens more cordially it is a win. And of course this data could be gamed or misused, it's more about what we decide to do with the data. Imperfect data can still be useful though.

Re: In a small Virginia town, citizens review police like Uber drivers

#87

Post by ticviking »

garyfirestorm wrote: post #64
djyaz1200 wrote: post #59

This is clever and I agree with the comments regarding their heart being in the right place but this is a flawed approach. The customer service experience of criminals isn't the right thing to optimize and probably has nothing to do with outcomes if not inversely correlated with crime reduction. The very idea that we can view and treat police officers like we do customer service people at say the mall I would argue i…

the customer service experience of citizens - ummm the folks who actually pay for police salaries - to whom the police serve!

He's talking about the perverse incentive LEOs will have to get good ratings, which will be hard when you spend much of your day bringing in guys for beating their spouse, who by the time you arrive has decided she just wanted you to make him stop hitting her, not take him away to spend the night in jail.

Small town cops generally know all the regulars by name, I could see a QR code program working better in a larger city where there's more anonymity to the reports.

Re: In a small Virginia town, citizens review police like Uber drivers

#88

Post by soperj »

vorpalhex wrote: post #75
encryptluks2 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of domestic violence, want to post some statistics on the amount of cops that are domestic abusers? Or the ones caught drunk behind the wheel and get let off.

Why not post the amount of cats that are orange or scarecrows in overalls? What does the rate of cops being DV cases have to do with this comment?

No post body was provided.

Re: In a small Virginia town, citizens review police like Uber drivers

#89

Post by rascul »

i_like_apis wrote: post #58
not2b wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is a scumbag? Some police officers decide that some people are reputable citizens and others are scumbags based on prejudice, and arguments like yours are a great way to dismiss any criticism of them.

> Who is a scumbag? Easy question. 99% of those arrested are scumbags. This is speaking as someone who has been to jail and met the population that gets arrested. They are the worst, and their opinion in regard to rating cops should be largely ignored.

Speaking as someone who has met the population that gets arrested, they are no more or less scumbags than the population that doesn't.

Re: In a small Virginia town, citizens review police like Uber drivers

#90

Post by 0des »

netizen-936824 wrote: post #51
yCombLinks wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm heavily critical of the police, and they deserve a lot of criticism. But there are lot's of people (half my family) that are just scum. Algorithmically it may be hard to fairly weight, but on a personal level it's not hard to put people on a pretty consistent scum spectrum. If the people lower on the spectrum are critical of a certain cop, I can't weight it highly for reputation evaluation of that cop. The same f…

I could argue that police come from the same population as anyone else, therefore a significant portion of police will also be scum

I agree that most people are inherently good. But I add a few points of skepticism toward anybody who chooses a role that comes with inherent authority by default: clergy, legislature, law, etc.

Not saying they're bad, most aren't, however, you wanted to be the guy with the power- There is possibly a reason for that.

Post reply on HN