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Fighting crime by checking buildings, not suspects

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Re: Fighting crime by checking buildings, not suspects

#121

Post by lotsofpulp »

loldk wrote: post #81
rayiner wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not squeamish about urban areas—I lived in downtown Baltimore, Wilmington Delaware, and Atlanta. But you’re missing some perspective. The captain is talking about gangs. The presence of gang members means that law abiding citizens are driven out of these public places. So the folks who are “loitering” typically aren’t up to anything good. I just met an Uber driver from Germany the other day. He lives in Georgia (…

Here's a radical idea: invest in mental health, food security & education, and community programs to directly combat the source of the gangs and bad behavior, rather than try to control people's behavior. That is the distinction you've seemed to miss here. Controlling others' behavior is ineffective at best. It's treating symptoms with pain killers while ignoring the source of the problem. It's weak leadership, and,…

It is not a radical idea. That type of massive wealth transfer is only possible on the federal level, where it simply has no political chance.

All the non federal governments can do is like removing bus stops (or letting drug addicted communities flourish when the pendulum swings the other way).

Re: Fighting crime by checking buildings, not suspects

#122

Post by r3muxd »

pshirshov wrote: post #118
sumy23 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends on the specific situation. Public space is for everyone’s enjoyment. Unfortunately, some people take advantage of their right to the space in a way that detracts from everyone. Take a park for example. Typically, a great place to take your kids. However, if someone strung out on heroin loiters in the park, it suddenly becomes a much worse place for everyone else. Technically, being high on heroin in…

> It really depends on the specific situation. Public space is for everyone’s enjoyment. Unfortunately, some people take advantage of their right to the space in a way that detracts from everyone. Take a park for example. Typically, a great place to take your kids. However, if someone $PROPERTY loiters in the park, it suddenly becomes a much worse place for everyone else. Technically, being $PROPERTY in a public plac…

Can you really compare being strung out on heroin with being ugly, though?

Re: Fighting crime by checking buildings, not suspects

#123

Post by rayiner »

vanviegen wrote: post #110
rayiner wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not squeamish about urban areas—I lived in downtown Baltimore, Wilmington Delaware, and Atlanta. But you’re missing some perspective. The captain is talking about gangs. The presence of gang members means that law abiding citizens are driven out of these public places. So the folks who are “loitering” typically aren’t up to anything good. I just met an Uber driver from Germany the other day. He lives in Georgia (…

> I remember thinking it odd because I had never heard a European talk like that. What did you find odd about that? That a European doesn't want to live in a dangerous city?

Not that. But in my experience, Europeans I meet don’t usually talk about it, because European cities are generally very safe. So it’s not something that is top of mind for them.

Re: Fighting crime by checking buildings, not suspects

#124

Post by rayiner »

loldk wrote: post #81
rayiner wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not squeamish about urban areas—I lived in downtown Baltimore, Wilmington Delaware, and Atlanta. But you’re missing some perspective. The captain is talking about gangs. The presence of gang members means that law abiding citizens are driven out of these public places. So the folks who are “loitering” typically aren’t up to anything good. I just met an Uber driver from Germany the other day. He lives in Georgia (…

Here's a radical idea: invest in mental health, food security & education, and community programs to directly combat the source of the gangs and bad behavior, rather than try to control people's behavior. That is the distinction you've seemed to miss here. Controlling others' behavior is ineffective at best. It's treating symptoms with pain killers while ignoring the source of the problem. It's weak leadership, and,…

We have been doing those things since the Great Society programs of the 1960s. After government transfers, real consumption of households at the bottom have gone up dramatically since the 1960s. Conversely, many much poorer countries that don’t have that sort of social spending don’t have gang problems like we do. Gangs aren’t an economic problem, they’re a social problem. Specifically, they’re a social problem caused by a vacuum in authority and hierarchy for young men. That’s why Wilmington has a gang problem and my dad’s vastly poorer village in Bangladesh doesn’t.

Re: Fighting crime by checking buildings, not suspects

#125

Post by sumy23 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #107
uoaei wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that's the language of the very statutes cited above.

Well, sure, if you can't read more than 14 words in one sitting. But for everyone capable of reading entire sentences at once.. no, that's not the language of the statute, you would have to be intentionally misreading it to make that statement.

Sorry, I’m not understanding what you’re seeing. The law says “purpose to cause” and then lists two things joined by an OR clause. But you’re arguing that the “purpose to cause” language is irrelevant. I don’t see that in my reading. Can you break it down for me?

Re: Fighting crime by checking buildings, not suspects

#126

Post by asveikau »

sumy23 wrote: post #125
thaumasiotes wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, sure, if you can't read more than 14 words in one sitting. But for everyone capable of reading entire sentences at once.. no, that's not the language of the statute, you would have to be intentionally misreading it to make that statement.

Sorry, I’m not understanding what you’re seeing. The law says “purpose to cause” and then lists two things joined by an OR clause. But you’re arguing that the “purpose to cause” language is irrelevant. I don’t see that in my reading. Can you break it down for me?

If people here, in a place where many people write logic for a living, cannot parse simple logic out of a statue, imagine how a judge or a jury would do it.

I feel like often people in criminal justice do not understand meaning or intent of a statue and wing it, often slanting towards the side of punishing defendants. The law doesn't matter when your goal is to lock people up.

Re: Fighting crime by checking buildings, not suspects

#127

Post by asveikau »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #119
asveikau wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a guy on heroin in a park could easily not be noticed. This exact scenario happens harmlessly in major cities. You're overestimating the danger of happening to be in the same park as that person.

The needles they leave lying around are noticed and harmful.

Not every heroin user in a park leaves their needles behind, just as not every person who eats lunch in a park leaves litter behind.

Re: Fighting crime by checking buildings, not suspects

#128

Post by hbarka »

jahewson wrote: post #97
hbarka wrote: post #90

I don’t know what the statistics are for stolen license plates but it seems to me, here in the San Francisco Bay Area anyway, that whenever there’s a recorded incident of a robbery or assault where the perpetrators used a getaway car, in all likelihood they put stolen plates on the car. One way to fight crime in San Francisco and Oakland is to analyze cars crossing the toll plaza and use image recognition methods to…

It’s cute you think they haven’t been doing that for years. I live in the Bay Area and my city track every single vehicle that enters or exists the city limits. But why steal plates when you can steal the entire car?

Don’t give the public sector too much credit when it comes to using data. They don’t do analytics. It’s still eyeballs on a live monitor. That’s not data science. While they have tons of data, they have to pay for a company like Palantir. If they’re willing.

Your anecdote about tracking for years, it’s street webcams from Fry’s Electronics using 640 x 480 video resolution. They’re starting to change it to 1080p. Meanwhile we Zoom using 2K and 4K cams. So tell me more about your city?

Why steal at all?

Re: Fighting crime by checking buildings, not suspects

#129

Post by sumy23 »

asveikau wrote: post #126
sumy23 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I’m not understanding what you’re seeing. The law says “purpose to cause” and then lists two things joined by an OR clause. But you’re arguing that the “purpose to cause” language is irrelevant. I don’t see that in my reading. Can you break it down for me?

If people here, in a place where many people write logic for a living, cannot parse simple logic out of a statue, imagine how a judge or a jury would do it. I feel like often people in criminal justice do not understand meaning or intent of a statue and wing it, often slanting towards the side of punishing defendants. The law doesn't matter when your goal is to lock people up.

Maybe… however in the debate of this law, one side is saying “the law says you need purpose to cause” and the other side is saying “no it doesn’t. If you could read more than 14 words you would know that.”

I’m not a lawyer, but I imagine an objective observer would find the former argument more compelling than the latter.

Re: Fighting crime by checking buildings, not suspects

#130

Post by dragonwriter »

sumy23 wrote: post #125
thaumasiotes wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, sure, if you can't read more than 14 words in one sitting. But for everyone capable of reading entire sentences at once.. no, that's not the language of the statute, you would have to be intentionally misreading it to make that statement.

Sorry, I’m not understanding what you’re seeing. The law says “purpose to cause” and then lists two things joined by an OR clause. But you’re arguing that the “purpose to cause” language is irrelevant. I don’t see that in my reading. Can you break it down for me?

> The law says “purpose to cause” and then lists two things joined by an OR clause.

No, you missed the other “or”

it says “with purpose to cause ... or recklessly creating the risk thereof” and then has the two things connected by the other “or” clause.

The argument is that voluntary use of heroin is recklessly creating the risk of public inconvenience, not that it is done with purpose to cause it.

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