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

news.ycombinator.com

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

#171

Post by pstuart »

banannaise wrote: post #158
pstuart wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Putting someone already in crisis into a dangerous situation (surrounding them with SWAT) is going to make the crisis much worse. The film we see of people having a mental health crisis always comes from after the cops have shown up; they may have been much less agitated beforehand.

Yep. There are "simple" things we can do that will make things better but that can't happen until we agree to do it.

And for that to happen we need to understand it.

And for that to happen we need to talk about it.

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

#172

Post by pstuart »

sbierwagen wrote: post #138
foomatic wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 villa…

Follow up response -- the meth epidemic seems to be manufacturing craziness at a rapid clip. Our current "solution" is failing us and we'd be well-served to reexamine how to deal with it.

The correct answer is to legalize, tax, and regulate all drugs and to create "mental health courts" that can administer the involuntary institutionalization of those that need it.

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

#173

Post by joshenders »

pennaMan wrote: post #148
joshenders wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow, that profile I created 10 years ago and have never once revisited has a BTC wallet address. You sure got me.

Do you really lack the self-awareness to comprehend how massively hypocritical your series of comments is? And you're double downing on it? It's truly remarkable (in the most negative way possible) what political tribalism does to people...

10 years ago, I kicked the tires of a (beta, at the time) identity proving service built by a colleague and added all the fields including a crypto wallet. The assumption that it is for personal “donations” is conjecture. I don’t need your money or acceptance. Thanks

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

#174

Post by joshenders »

pennaMan wrote: post #148
joshenders wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow, that profile I created 10 years ago and have never once revisited has a BTC wallet address. You sure got me.

Do you really lack the self-awareness to comprehend how massively hypocritical your series of comments is? And you're double downing on it? It's truly remarkable (in the most negative way possible) what political tribalism does to people...

Also, maybe you should read this https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html before trying to dox “hypocritical” witches.

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

#175

Post by oftenwrong »

xenadu02 wrote: post #120

You might try defining what the "ideal" department's data would look like: what categories of data, what columns each record has, what the values are for each, etc. Ideally you'd stamp it with a year and give it a spiffy name so it could be the National Police Data Reporting Standard 2022 (NPDRS.2022) or something. Departments that are trying to be transparent (or who just don't want to deal with figuring it all out…

Working forwards like this is definitely the right solution if it's achievable. I have worked with some government and police datasets, and they reflect that the records-keeping approach is very much designed with the old-world use case of manually reviewing individual records. For example, a record of a traffic collision would be perfectly fine if you wanted to go back see what happened in a specific collision. However, if you wanted to run an analysis over a set of collision records, you would run into problems like vehicle types being specified as 'free text' (anything can be entered), with no standard set of vehicle classifications (like an enumeration).

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

#176

Post by josh-pdap »

tommica wrote: post #137
giantg2 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yep, almost all the data is useful for one reason or another. The point is to paint a picture of police activity in general.

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

#177

Post by josh-pdap »

xenadu02 wrote: post #120

You might try defining what the "ideal" department's data would look like: what categories of data, what columns each record has, what the values are for each, etc. Ideally you'd stamp it with a year and give it a spiffy name so it could be the National Police Data Reporting Standard 2022 (NPDRS.2022) or something. Departments that are trying to be transparent (or who just don't want to deal with figuring it all out…

Yes, I've linked to it other places on the page but Measures for Justice is doing that. https://measuresforjustice.org/infrastructure

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

#178

Post by giantg2 »

croo wrote: post #168
giantg2 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would that look like?

Uhh like how many murder cases got solved, how many drunk drivers had their driving licenses revoked, how many speeding tickets went through, how many stolen cars and goods found its original owner, how many pickpocket thieves, shoplifters, bulglar cases got investigated, you know ... Stuff police exist for?

Those stats are typically at the department level. They don't necessarily match the court records either (eg the police may mark a murder case as solved even if the prosecutor thinks the case is too weak and never goes to court).

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

#179

Post by pennaMan »

joshenders wrote: post #174
pennaMan wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really lack the self-awareness to comprehend how massively hypocritical your series of comments is? And you're double downing on it? It's truly remarkable (in the most negative way possible) what political tribalism does to people...

Also, maybe you should read this https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html before trying to dox “hypocritical” witches.

Maybe you should read this, I was not talking about your keybase account :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32903946

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

#180

Post by liamtuohyff »

I was an early helper when I saw that on reddit and joined your slack before you had a discord. I was also one of the ones you mentioned that fizzled out after the initial excitement died down. But I didn't stop helping because the excitement died down. I stopped helping because I felt like we weren't "doing" anything. Other than raising money and getting paperwork in order. Have you guys actually "done" anything in the three years since? Other than, you know, collecting data and sitting around talking about "stuff"
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