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

washingtonpost.com

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

#141

Post by sbarbarian »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #128

I feel that there are a lot of concerns in these comments that come mostly out of misconceptions about the broader complexity of police oversight and professional standards and the way this kind of system integrates into it. I serve as part of the police oversight system in a major city and would love to consider a program like this, which I think would tend to actually mitigate many of the problems people are raisin…

very helpful, thank you. hopefully there are resources available to analyze and action upon this feedback in the productive way described.

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

#142

Post by ameister14 »

robonerd wrote: post #50
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? 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…

I think people with numerous DUIs are just as likely to have a serious disease as have some moral failing resulting in them being a 'scumbag.' To me, choice is a major differentiator rather than 'obviously this person has a history of x actions' in the abstract.

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

#143

Post by TheCoelacanth »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #114
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…

There's also a lot of bias here, since most people don't have a lot of contact with police, unless they did some bad stuff.

That itself is a problem that should be fixed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_policing

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

#144

Post by stirbot »

not2b wrote: post #28
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…

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.

clearly we need a social credit system where citizens are scored based on their financial history, trustworthiness, charitable efforts, and praising the government on social media.

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

#145

Post by i_like_apis »

skinnymuch wrote: post #139
i_like_apis wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you're casting some sort of sarcastic doubt. I've mixed with a population of about 500. Spoken to many, intentionally and otherwise. Very familiar with their culture. Trust me, 99% of the arrest population is scum.

Quoted post unavailable.

> Interesting you said “their culture” when you are in that same in-group.

No I am proudly not of the same culture (which is ignorant, violent, shoplifting heroine addicted, thieving, murdering, raping, etc ...). That should not be difficult to understand.

... did you just call me an "anti-other common folk boot licker"?

5/10 barely intelligible comment.

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

#146

Post by runako »

AlexandrB wrote: post #54

These rating systems are a generally poor representation of reality and don't solve the problem they're trying to address. With Uber/Lyft/DoorDash ratings, people one might consider "woke" will almost always give a 5 star rating unless something goes horribly wrong (i.e. an actual crime is committed) because they understand that the worker's livelihood depends on their rating. Other people will use the rating as leve…

And yet, the fact that there are ratings appears to result in higher-quality ride services than taxis.

Anecdata, but in my experience rideshares (which have ratings) are cleaner, more punctual, have fewer no-shows, and let's zero incidences of refusal to carry than taxis. Obviously there are likely a number of confounders involved, but I would be surprised if ratings were not an important factor.

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

#147

Post by Melatonic »

What I do not understand is why police do not have a certification like Lawyers or Doctors do. If they really mess up they should lose that certification (just like a lawyer or doctor can) and then they can no longer work as a police officer. No moving a town or state over and continuing onward - license revoked.

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

#148

Post by vkou »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #8
theonlybutlet wrote: post #6

Hmmm should I let an unroadworthy car endanger someone's life or turn a blind eye. What about my impeccable 5 star rating?

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…

As one of the townsfolk, I'd like to note that fireworks on the 4th of July are never done tastefully.

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

#149

Post by wollsmoth »

sc68cal wrote: post #137

It doesn't matter how you "rate" cops if the police union goes to bat for bad cops and gets their jobs reinstated, or they just leave one department and move to another. https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/02/us/police-unions-contracts-sh... We know who the bad cops are. There's a list of them in Philadelphia who the District Attorney (the current, and previous) will never call to the witness stand because they give unreliab…

Yeah. This is what we all want I think. I want to be in a world where when some story of a cop doing something ridiculous surfaces, we're all confident that justice will be done. Unfortunately for me it's usually a sad feeling that nothing will be done about it.

We gotta be more willing to fire, ban, or prosecute cops.

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

#150

Post by daenz »

ameister14 wrote: post #142
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…

I think people with numerous DUIs are just as likely to have a serious disease as have some moral failing resulting in them being a 'scumbag.' To me, choice is a major differentiator rather than 'obviously this person has a history of x actions' in the abstract.

Are you making the case that a person with numerous DUIs doesn't have a choice in the decision to drive drunk, and therefore isn't a scumbag?
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