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I accidentally started a movement – Policing the Police by scraping court data

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Re: I accidentally started a movement – Policing the Police by scraping court data

#131

Post by sbierwagen »

notacop31337 wrote: post #92
debacle wrote: post #79

This is important. Locally, we had a sheriff who was being heavily, heavily criticized due to several deaths at the county facility. This was at the height of the protests a few years ago. It was a lot of work to find data on policing nationwide, because the question really was "Is the sheriff doing a bad job, or do bad things happen sometimes?" After some hard work trying to identify other cities with similar socioe…

> That's also when I learned that many people don't want to listen to statistics unless they agree with their own preconceptions. This has been my experience with bodycam footage, I've found that there's been quite a few heavily protested police involved shootings that when looking over the footage and the facts of the situation, were by the book and completely justified, yet no matter how many times you say to someo…

The PoliceActivity youtube channel is interesting for this.

https://www.youtube.com/c/PoliceActivity/videos (For most of the videos, which show people dying, you must be logged into a youtube account to pass the "violent content" prompt)

Maybe 9 out of 10 videos are "good kills". Officer says something like "hey, stop committing a crime", the suspect says something along the lines of "fuck you pig!", pulls a gun, and is swiftly shot to death by the 50 SWAT guys surrounding him. These videos get around 100K views, and the comments are full of hooting MAGA types.

1 out of 10 show an officer doing something completely inexcusable, (Shouting "I love being racist!" and then hitting an infant with a baseball bat) and the video has 100M views.

The tens of thousands of comments then act out the exact same conversation every single time: the red team says something like "but it happens very rarely" and the blue team is outraged that it happens at all. They don't want the rate to be low, they want it to be zero. This is how you end up with blue-aligned media earnestly and in good faith calling for the police and all prisons to be abolished: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/abolishing-police-pris... https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-emerging-m...

I say "conversation" up there, which is of course incorrect. They're talking right past each other, since they come from two separate and completely divorced epistemological universes.

Re: I accidentally started a movement – Policing the Police by scraping court data

#132

Post by pstuart »

sbierwagen wrote: post #131
notacop31337 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's also when I learned that many people don't want to listen to statistics unless they agree with their own preconceptions. This has been my experience with bodycam footage, I've found that there's been quite a few heavily protested police involved shootings that when looking over the footage and the facts of the situation, were by the book and completely justified, yet no matter how many times you say to someo…

The PoliceActivity youtube channel is interesting for this. https://www.youtube.com/c/PoliceActivity/videos (For most of the videos, which show people dying, you must be logged into a youtube account to pass the "violent content" prompt) Maybe 9 out of 10 videos are "good kills". Officer says something like "hey, stop committing a crime", the suspect says something along the lines of "fuck you pig!", pulls a gun, and…

> They don't want the rate to be low, they want it to be zero

I'm not sure what the problem is with that. Of course mistakes happen but it should be the goal.

The red team also seems to have less of those "oopsie I just killed you" moments, so perhaps that might color things there.

And then you go on to the far end that calls for abolishing police/prisons and make that the general team blue zeitgeist. There's low hanging fruit of reform that needs more focus, e.g., not using police for mental health emergencies.

Anyway, your framing of the situation as a non-conversation is kind of meta -- it feels like you talked right past the problems.

Re: I accidentally started a movement – Policing the Police by scraping court data

#133

Post by foomatic »

pstuart wrote: post #132
sbierwagen wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PoliceActivity youtube channel is interesting for this. https://www.youtube.com/c/PoliceActivity/videos (For most of the videos, which show people dying, you must be logged into a youtube account to pass the "violent content" prompt) Maybe 9 out of 10 videos are "good kills". Officer says something like "hey, stop committing a crime", the suspect says something along the lines of "fuck you pig!", pulls a gun, and…

> They don't want the rate to be low, they want it to be zero I'm not sure what the problem is with that. Of course mistakes happen but it should be the goal. The red team also seems to have less of those "oopsie I just killed you" moments, so perhaps that might color things there. And then you go on to the far end that calls for abolishing police/prisons and make that the general team blue zeitgeist. There's low han…

Guy shouting fuck you pig while surrounded by 50 SWAT guys sounds like a mental health emergency. Can't do much about that. Ain't called first respondersfor nothing.

Re: I accidentally started a movement – Policing the Police by scraping court data

#134

Post by pstuart »

foomatic wrote: post #133
pstuart wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don't want the rate to be low, they want it to be zero I'm not sure what the problem is with that. Of course mistakes happen but it should be the goal. The red team also seems to have less of those "oopsie I just killed you" moments, so perhaps that might color things there. And then you go on to the far end that calls for abolishing police/prisons and make that the general team blue zeitgeist. There's low han…

Guy shouting fuck you pig while surrounded by 50 SWAT guys sounds like a mental health emergency. Can't do much about that. Ain't called first respondersfor nothing.

Yeah, suicide by cop is a thing.

My point was that the comment about divisiveness between teams red and blue in this regard was divisive as well in how it was framed.

Police are granted incredible powers and have historically not had the best oversight, let alone relations with "minorities".

There are real problems and they can be addressed but that will never happen as long as we can't even agree that the "what" exists, let alone if the "how" is correct.

Re: I accidentally started a movement – Policing the Police by scraping court data

#135

Post by pstuart »

foomatic wrote: post #133
pstuart wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don't want the rate to be low, they want it to be zero I'm not sure what the problem is with that. Of course mistakes happen but it should be the goal. The red team also seems to have less of those "oopsie I just killed you" moments, so perhaps that might color things there. And then you go on to the far end that calls for abolishing police/prisons and make that the general team blue zeitgeist. There's low han…

Guy shouting fuck you pig while surrounded by 50 SWAT guys sounds like a mental health emergency. Can't do much about that. Ain't called first respondersfor nothing.

Second comment because I was responding without addressing your point properly: somebody in a crisis like that could possibly be helped if there weren't 50 SWAT guys eager to take target practice.

There's obviously violent scenarios that can only be addressed with violence, but bringing that on should be a last resort.

Re: I accidentally started a movement – Policing the Police by scraping court data

#136

Post by s1artibartfast »

josh-pdap wrote: post #117
s1artibartfast wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious and want to know more. "Police data" is incredibly vague. What types of data are most interest and available from most of every agency? If the only answer to what kind of data is "police data" then I'm not sure if I should care, support, or contribute. Is this data on how many toilet paper roles departments purchase or police involved shootings? neither? Certainly you can see where the question is coming…

Your question makes sense. I’ve addressed this elsewhere but I’m currently just answering on my phone so I’ll summarize by saying that our focus is on complete, solid local data one municipality at a time (full context is really helpful when actually using the data) as opposed to any particular type of data. That said, we still have work to do pointing people in this direction and helping them understand why. This wh…

Thanks for responding! What is complete data? Arrests by time and geolocation? Quarterly stats by call or response?

I have gone through some of the public info for my department so I am curious.

Re: I accidentally started a movement – Policing the Police by scraping court data

#137

Post by tommica »

giantg2 wrote: post #106
curiousllama wrote: post #86

Really love the idea, and the passion behind it. Def could have legs. Here’s the pitfalls I see you falling into: (1) seriously, what data are you collecting? “Everything” isn’t a great answer (who’s supposed to use ‘everything’, anyway? “Anyone”?). “Apples-to-apples police misconduct statistics” is a good one. (2) it’s important to clarify 1 because you need to know who you’re serving, and why. Different activists n…

For number 1, I would look for scenarios where rhe officer was found to have committed misconduct or found to be unreliable. Then watch if they're involved in subsequent cases/departments when should probably never work as an officer again. Just my thoughts on one thing that could be done.

I'm not in the U.S so I might be ignorant, but wouldn't it be fair to collect positive data too, and not just misconducts?

Re: I accidentally started a movement – Policing the Police by scraping court data

#138

Post by sbierwagen »

foomatic wrote: post #133
pstuart wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don't want the rate to be low, they want it to be zero I'm not sure what the problem is with that. Of course mistakes happen but it should be the goal. The red team also seems to have less of those "oopsie I just killed you" moments, so perhaps that might color things there. And then you go on to the far end that calls for abolishing police/prisons and make that the general team blue zeitgeist. There's low han…

Guy shouting fuck you pig while surrounded by 50 SWAT guys sounds like a mental health emergency. Can't do much about that. Ain't called first respondersfor nothing.

>sounds like a mental health emergency

Sure, you can dose him up with Haldol and solve that particular emergency. What happens when he does it again next week? And the week after that?

Persistent severe mental illness is interesting in that it's a new problem. For all of human history, severe mental illness was a death sentence. Either you'd get beaten to death by your largest neighbor for acting weird, or your village would exile you and you'd starve to death in the forest.

The current compromise we've arrived at is that being crazy is not actually a crime, so you cannot be permanently imprisoned for it. So low-functioning schizophrenics cycle through mental hospitals-- they climb a lamp post and urinate on passers-by, get committed and then are put on antipsychotics, sober up, survey their surroundings and rationally conclude that inpatient mental health facilities are really awful places to be, (basically no rights or privacy, surrounded by crazy people, can't wear or handle any object that's on a very short list of approved suicide-incompatible things) and then check themselves out, which they are legally allowed to do. Then they go off their meds, (also legally allowed) and it's back to the lamp post...

This continues until they accidentally walk into traffic, or are shot by a cop. It's a miserable compromise that persists because all the alternatives are even less palatable.

Re: I accidentally started a movement – Policing the Police by scraping court data

#139

Post by snapplebobapple »

pstuart wrote: post #132
sbierwagen wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The PoliceActivity youtube channel is interesting for this. https://www.youtube.com/c/PoliceActivity/videos (For most of the videos, which show people dying, you must be logged into a youtube account to pass the "violent content" prompt) Maybe 9 out of 10 videos are "good kills". Officer says something like "hey, stop committing a crime", the suspect says something along the lines of "fuck you pig!", pulls a gun, and…

> They don't want the rate to be low, they want it to be zero I'm not sure what the problem is with that. Of course mistakes happen but it should be the goal. The red team also seems to have less of those "oopsie I just killed you" moments, so perhaps that might color things there. And then you go on to the far end that calls for abolishing police/prisons and make that the general team blue zeitgeist. There's low han…

Because when you have your target as zero then when you don't hit zero you push for ever more costly and suboptimal policy to achieve your goal. This is a problem both in that the incremental policy changes are highly unlikely to provide a larger benefit than their incremental costs and because it draws resources away from tackling problems that probably have a larger societal impact and smaller costs to achieve those goals.

Re: I accidentally started a movement – Policing the Police by scraping court data

#140

Post by int_19h »

sbierwagen wrote: post #131
notacop31337 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's also when I learned that many people don't want to listen to statistics unless they agree with their own preconceptions. This has been my experience with bodycam footage, I've found that there's been quite a few heavily protested police involved shootings that when looking over the footage and the facts of the situation, were by the book and completely justified, yet no matter how many times you say to someo…

The PoliceActivity youtube channel is interesting for this. https://www.youtube.com/c/PoliceActivity/videos (For most of the videos, which show people dying, you must be logged into a youtube account to pass the "violent content" prompt) Maybe 9 out of 10 videos are "good kills". Officer says something like "hey, stop committing a crime", the suspect says something along the lines of "fuck you pig!", pulls a gun, and…

The problem with those ostensibly rare "bad cops" is that the supposed "good cops" tend to look the other way at best, and tacitly support them at worst. Cops who actually try to call their colleagues out tend to be heckled or worse. Here's a documented case of an entire police department ganging up against one whistleblower to the point of involuntarily committing him to a mental institution, with full knowledge, approval, and cooperation of higher-ups all the way to police commissioner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft

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