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Slack Removed a Blog Post Showing How Police Use Its Tech

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Re: Slack Removed a Blog Post Showing How Police Use Its Tech

#181

Post by ceilingcorner »

stormbrew wrote: post #172
ceilingcorner wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really sure what you're arguing for. It seemed to be that "the police are more of a threat than criminals", which is factually untrue, even today , before any so-called abolition of the police (which is what people are calling for.) Also, I am not "on a side" and my original comment was calling out this attempt to make it a black-and-white issue. There are more than two options.

That the police are more of a threat to criminals to specific subsets of the population is absolutely, unquestionably, factually true. There is more than enough personal attestation to the experiences of black and queer people (including those who otherwise have privilege in some ways) in the US with police to say this with confidence. They aren't to you perhaps. And again, when people call for abolition of the polic…

Any statistic is true of a small subset of the population. To use your example of black people:

Killed in 2018: Black or African American 2,925

Police killed 1,098 people in 2019. (I can't find exact numbers by race)

Again, I'm not arguing that there isn't police bias against minorities, that they aren't disportionally affected, or anything like this. But the facts simply show that the police kill less people than other people do, so it seems like a stretch to say they're more of a threat.

In regards to the other point: that may be the case, but that isn't what "abolish" and "dismantle" mean. I still don't see how you avoid some amount of armed protective personnel (to deal with shootings or robberies) which are basically police.

Re: Slack Removed a Blog Post Showing How Police Use Its Tech

#182

Post by komali2 »

ryanSrich wrote: post #171
komali2 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is unfair on three counts. One, your statistics are the reverse of reality. Two, the people that want to defund police are not the people that want to abolish the police. Considering the LAPD budget is 1.8 billion, and the NYPD budget is 6 billion, do you think that's by definition a bad position? Three, the minority that want to abolish the police (me, various anarchist and communist groups, some genera…

Reform and abolish seem too nuanced to me in this case. You want the police to be something completely different from what it is today. Tearing down a house and building a car with the materials doesn't make a new house.

> Tearing down a house and building a car with the materials doesn't make a new house.

Quite, you are accurately highlighting some of the differences between the various abolish/reform positions. I don't sense you challenging the supposition that simply lumping the abolish/reform groups into the same category is absurd given the above, so I'm not sure the purpose of your comment.

Re: Slack Removed a Blog Post Showing How Police Use Its Tech

#183

Post by designdesign »

jeffdavis wrote: post #158
designdesign wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

B and C probably both fit - police aren't inherently a net bad, but the policing system in america produces too many bad outcomes to lend blanket support to; it's arguably unethical to profit from such a problematic body of work.

This is what I don't get: saying they are theoretically good but problematic (without necessarily saying "police are a net bad"), and then saying it's unethical to do business with them for routine products. If there is logic there, it's very subtle and I'm not getting it. Can you elaborate or compare it to a precedent?

The logic is that you don't have to do business with organizations you don't like (outside of some very specific situations).

If you think police need reform and cause harm, then ethically you get to decide for yourself if you're ok with exchanging services with them despite the issues.

Re: Slack Removed a Blog Post Showing How Police Use Its Tech

#184

Post by the_pwner224 »

sol_invictus wrote: post #174
pravus wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watched a video today of a 75-year old man being shoved by police for something that I can in no way defend. He fell backwards and blood started leaking from his head while he fell unconscious. No officer even attempted to render aid. I have watched a video of a SWAT team breaking into a man's home and murdering him point-blank because he was holding a golf club for the crime of using naturally occurring plants and…

I’m sure there’s truth to it, but there are 800k police officers in the US. Are you ready to condemn the entire profession because of a handful of bad experiences?

Imagine a handcuffed, nondangerous, nonviolent person is literally murdered by strangulation by a cop, and three cops stand right there watching and do nothing and don't even appear to be fazed by what's going on.

If I was the cop watching, I would kick that asshole in the face and try to stop him. I'm sure if you asked 99% of normal people they would agree. But three cops literally watched and did nothing.

Many cops do not partake in evil, but almost every single American cop has no issue with letting the bad cops be evil. And that makes them evil too.

And these aren't a few occurrences; they have been happening frequently for decades. We only see them more often because of smartphones and people only got so mad about this occurrence because Coronavirus means everyone has too much spare time.

Re: Slack Removed a Blog Post Showing How Police Use Its Tech

#185

Post by sbmthakur »

xwowsersx wrote: post #84
sbilstein wrote: post #2

Former Slack employee here... This blog post/case study was published a few years ago by Slack's marketing team and led to a firestorm of controversy within the company. Many employees of all backgrounds spoke up about how upset they were that Slack would use a police department as marketing. Eventually the decision was made to keep it up which certainly frustrated a lot of people. I guess now the leaders have decide…

Why though? Is there not a legitimate role for policing in a civil society? And if there is, don't they need to coordinate and collaborate just like any other organization?

Not speaking for the US. In my country, police is heavily stressed, corrupt and understaffed which often makes them ineffective in many scenarios. If everyone (from the lowest ranked to the highest) in the department uses a tool like Slack then a lot of things will improve. At present, lowest ranked cops are not even tech literate and they can't reach to those high ranked officers due to a hierarchy.

Re: Slack Removed a Blog Post Showing How Police Use Its Tech

#186

Post by nahtnam »

ganstyles wrote: post #66
misiti3780 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, he probably cant legally not let police departments use it, it's publically traded.

Largely a company can choose their customers; they’re not forced to transact with anyone. There are some exceptions of course, largely based on the reasons for not transacting. Being publicly traded doesn’t really matter here directly.

I'm curious, do any kind of discrimination laws apply here?

Re: Slack Removed a Blog Post Showing How Police Use Its Tech

#187

Post by tastroder »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #146
rrmm wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people are just really, really angry at this moment in time due to the long history of injustices and numerous examples in the past few days. Nuance is real hard to do under these circumstances.

It's not so hard if the media didn't cherry pick examples for the purpose of enraging Americans. There's probably a lot to be legitimately upset about, but blacks are killed by police less frequently than victim-reported crime statistics predict. If the media gave proportional attention to white victims like Tony Timpa or Daniel Shaver, it wouldn't feel so much like police are targeting black citizens. Maybe we would…

I mean, media sensationalism aside, honest question from outside the US: they had decades to change something and just about nothing happened, is a nuanced conversation about this realistic?

Plus, if they wanted a nuanced conversation it would help if they didn't shoot at and abuse media representatives. One journo I follow tracks unprovoked attacks on clearly identifiable journalists, days ago when that was at about 5 incidents I might have understood the call for nuance but it's now at over 200.

Some of those are white, if that helps the odd call for nuance and both are shown in the media I tend to consume. I don't feel distribution of fatalities is a great argument. The absolute number of officer involved shootings in the US is just ridiculous for a first world country, supporting those currently visibly affected shouldn't be too hard then, it would help others as well.

Re: Slack Removed a Blog Post Showing How Police Use Its Tech

#188

Post by wvenable »

1123581321 wrote: post #177
wvenable wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What leads you to believe this at an empirical level, though? The huge number of officers that surrounded Derek Chauvin's house, for example. https://nypost.com/2020/05/29/officers-protect-home-of-derek... The video is actually just creepy. But that's empirical evidence that you can verify by observation of said video. > How can you, I, or anyone know any of the true statistics? We actually know that the US ranks a…

How can you tell protecting a house from a mob is bad? Wouldn’t the neighbors have appreciated it not being ransacked and burnt?

Yes, I expect a few on duty officers to protect the house. But this goes well beyond that. How much do you want to twist the logic to make this a justifiable situation?

Re: Slack Removed a Blog Post Showing How Police Use Its Tech

#190

Post by oh_sigh »

misiti3780 wrote: post #12

Possibly somewhat ironically (and hypocritically?), the CEO seems very anti-police based on twitter: https://twitter.com/stewart/status/1268749287615156230 https://twitter.com/stewart Disclaimer: I am a happy user of slack and do not have an opinion on the blog post

Wanting psychopathic abusive cops to be fired doesn't mean you are anti-police...
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