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Law Enforcement and its abuse of power


Ser Scot A Ellison
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9 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

It was in Keller, Texas.

Earlier this year Biden encouraged cities to use unspent COVID funds on "crime prevention".  This is what "crime prevention" looks like.    

Come on, this issue is not as simple as you're making it out to be. Crime is up around the country and not addressing it would be idiotic on a number of levels.

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17 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Come on, this issue is not as simple as you're making it out to be. Crime is up around the country and not addressing it would be idiotic on a number of levels.

Is crime actually up?  Or are a few police generated statistics up?  What's it up from/to?  If you end up creating more crime (like the one in the video Scot linked) from police then what's the point?

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/08/why-crime-isnt-the-question-and-police-arent-the-answer

If you keep throwing more money at police this is what they do with it.  

"My house is on fire, I'm going to throw gasoline on it.  Not addressing it would be idiotic on a number of levels".  Brilliant.  

Edited by Larry of the Lake
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45 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

It was in Keller, Texas.

Earlier this year Biden encouraged cities to use unspent COVID funds on "crime prevention".  This is what "crime prevention" looks like.    

Larry, 

Thank you.  It appears Sgt. Shimanek has been indicted for abusing his authority.  Good.

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/dfw/news/former-keller-officer-blake-shimanek-indicted-arrest-father-filming-traffic-stop/

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54 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

Is crime actually up?  Or are a few police generated statistics up?  What's it up from/to?  If you end up creating more crime (like the one in the video Scot linked) from police then what's the point?

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/08/why-crime-isnt-the-question-and-police-arent-the-answer

If you keep throwing more money at police this is what they do with it.  

"My house is on fire, I'm going to throw gasoline on it.  Not addressing it would be idiotic on a number of levels".  Brilliant.  

Numerous crime statistics are up and I'm not sure many people are arguing against this. It's fair to point out the percentages overstate how much crime is up, but to deny it seems odd. And more importantly, I believe the strategy you'd pursue would inevitably end in having more people in power who want more lawless cops. 

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1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

Numerous crime statistics are up and I'm not sure many people are arguing against this. It's fair to point out the percentages overstate how much crime is up, but to deny it seems odd. And more importantly, I believe the strategy you'd pursue would inevitably end in having more people in power who want more lawless cops. 

Since when do more police solve more crime? Or, more specifically, larger police budgets?

Evidence that curtailing proactive policing can reduce major crime:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0211-5

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4 minutes ago, Week said:

Since when do more police solve more crime? Or, more specifically, larger police budgets?

Evidence that curtailing proactive policing can reduce major crime:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0211-5

More police don't. Better police, which yes, will cost more money, probably will. But that's not even the point here. Railing against the police while fear of crime is rising by a good deal is a great way to get a more brutal police force with a side of more fascists holding political power at every level of government.

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2 hours ago, Larry of the Lake said:

Is crime actually up?  Or are a few police generated statistics up?  What's it up from/to?  If you end up creating more crime (like the one in the video Scot linked) from police then what's the point?

It's very clear crime, particularly violent crime, sharply increased in 2020.  See here:

Quote

Crime rates changed dramatically across the United States in 2020. Most significantly, the murder rate — that is, the number of murders per 100,000 people — rose sharply, by nearly 30 percent. Assaults increased as well, with the rate of offenses rising by more than 10 percent. Both increases are part of a broader surge in gun violence. More than 75 percent of murders in 2020 were committed with a firearm, reaching a new high point, and cities that report data on shooting incidents, like New York, saw significant increases in this form of violence as well.

Murders rose in cities nationwide and jurisdictions of all types. Relative to 2019, the number of murders jumped by more than 30 percent in the largest cities and by 20 percent in places designated by the FBI as “suburban” — cities with fewer than 50,000 inhabitants that are within a Metropolitan Statistical Area. Murders rose by comparable levels in rural areas too — an important fact that is only now beginning to receive press attention.

Obviously what should be done about it (if anything) is completely arguable, but it's quite hypocritical of the left to question these metrics after emphasizing the decrease in crime over the previous 25 years - which is based on the same exact metrics.

Edited by DMC
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1 hour ago, Week said:

Since when do more police solve more crime? Or, more specifically, larger police budgets?

Evidence that curtailing proactive policing can reduce major crime:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0211-5

I would submit Uvalde. You shove as many mens as possible into uniforms, point them at a problem, and crime magically goes away in record time.

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41 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Sarcasm… right?

It was obviously not a shining moment for law enforcement, so yes. I'm skeptical of more law enforcement as a solution to a rise from record lows in crime. It seems more of a political strategy than something that will make lives better.

I'll add that it depends on where the money goes, too. Something like mental health outreach might be a good thing. So, around 2014 I was renting a room in a trailer park here in the suburbs of Seattle. I'm out walking one day, I forget why as I didn't do that very often. But suddenly there are these guys in full fucking body armor going by. It was frankly terrifying. Have not had an experience like that before or since. (I'll add, this happened in full daylight)

Like 95% plus of the population of the trailer park was non-white. I have no idea why the raid happened. I certainly did not feel protected. It was bullshit tough on crime politics that led to people dressed up as soldiers in my neighborhood. It was racist bullshit. And like a lot of racist policies they often boomerang and cause harm to some whites, too.

Edited by Martell Spy
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5 hours ago, DMC said:

It's very clear crime, particularly violent crime, sharply increased in 2020.  See here:

Obviously what should be done about it (if anything) is completely arguable, but it's quite hypocritical of the left to question these metrics after emphasizing the decrease in crime over the previous 25 years - which is based on the same exact metrics.

 Fair enough, I guess, although from a link on the page you provided, in 2021 the FBI changed how it collects crime data, so it might be difficult to make comparisons to 2020 and points beyond.  And obviously 2020 could be an anomaly.

Quote

Nearly 40% of law enforcement agencies around the country did not submit any data in 2021 to a newly revised FBI crime statistics collection program, leaving a massive gap in information sure to be exploited by politicians in midterm election campaigns already dominated by public fear over a rise in violent crime.

This article was published in partnership with Axios Local.

The gap includes the nation’s two largest cities by population, New York City and Los Angeles, as well as most agencies in five of the six most populous states: California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Florida.

Download the agency participation data used in this piece.

In 2021, the FBI retired its nearly century-old national crime data collection program, the Summary Reporting System used by the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program. The agency switched to a new system, the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), which gathers more specific information on each incident. Even though the FBI announced the transition years ago and the federal government spent hundreds of millions of dollars to help local police make the switch, about 7,000 of the  nation’s 18,000 law enforcement agencies did not successfully send crime data to the voluntary program last year.

 

Additionally, I think the point you're making about "the left has been citing this data for 30 years so now they're stuck with it" is some kind of fallacy- is Alec Karakatsanis not allowed to question the veracity of police reported data just because "the left" has been citing a decrease in violent crime the last 30 years?  That seems very bizarre, particularly given the change in data collection, beyond the people reporting it having all sorts of reasons to manipulate the data, which are detailed in the A.K. piece.  

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1 hour ago, Larry of the Lake said:

Additionally, I think the point you're making about "the left has been citing this data for 30 years so now they're stuck with it" is some kind of fallacy- is Alec Karakatsanis not allowed to question the veracity of police reported data just because "the left" has been citing a decrease in violent crime the last 30 years?  That seems very bizarre, particularly given the change in data collection, beyond the people reporting it having all sorts of reasons to manipulate the data, which are detailed in the A.K. piece.  

I didn't read your link (which is why I didn't quote it), and I don't give a shit about Alec Karakatsanis.  I was referring generally to "the left" because I've heard this newfound questioning frequently the past year or so, and your post was emblematic of it.  As for the difficulties with 2021, well yeah, that's why I didn't mention 2021 and nobody should - there's simply too much missing data.  Neither did the Brennan Center link, but still, as they demonstrated you can still glean some consistent comparisons using alternative data and it appears at the murder rate remained at 2020 levels (albeit there was a decline in others).

As for the data collection change, there's no reason to think this will be a problem longterm, it just means the 2021 data is fucked.  Hopefully reporting will return to standard levels for 2022 and beyond.  

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16 hours ago, DMC said:

I didn't read your link (which is why I didn't quote it), and I don't give a shit about Alec Karakatsanis.  I was referring generally to "the left" because I've heard this newfound questioning frequently the past year or so, and your post was emblematic of it.  As for the difficulties with 2021, well yeah, that's why I didn't mention 2021 and nobody should - there's simply too much missing data.  Neither did the Brennan Center link, but still, as they demonstrated you can still glean some consistent comparisons using alternative data and it appears at the murder rate remained at 2020 levels (albeit there was a decline in others).

As for the data collection change, there's no reason to think this will be a problem longterm, it just means the 2021 data is fucked.  Hopefully reporting will return to standard levels for 2022 and beyond.  

I mean you can just say you don't give a shit about why data easily manipulated by police departments might not be representative of actual crime / harm levels.  Like, there are actual reasons that people are questioning the collection and interpretation of crime data.  It's not some fucking "left" conspiracy.

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11 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

Like, there are actual reasons that people are questioning the collection and interpretation of crime data.

No, there isn't, at least not comparing rates over time.  It's just assuming bad faith.  Do they have motivations to manipulate the stats?  Sure, but that motivation is consistent over time.  It's similar to social desirability bias.  More people say tend to say they vote than actually do vote.  So, again, in a longitudinal analysis it doesn't really matter.  Further, the "motivations" police have to cook the books are the same across all government data we rely on.  Are we gonna start to question the data we use from the BLS too now?

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On 10/14/2022 at 10:16 PM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Kid arrested for “rolling up his window suspiciously” his dad who is later filming from the sidewalk is arrested for “blocking the roadway”… I’m not sure where this happened:

I particularly like the "stop stop stop" while going back to spraying the guy that's already face down on the ground with another cop on top of him and handcuffed not doing anything after you've already sprayed him once. They really do think that's a magic word that lets them do anything.

The case I've really been taken with is the LA cops that brutally beat their colleague to death in a "training accident" when he just so happened to investigating several cops, including one of the ones present for his murder, for a gang rape. It's so blatant it seems pretty clear that the "training" was training other cops to never ever look at their own.

And excessive American fear of "rising crime" has been going on for as many decades as the left has been pointing out that it was actually falling, I don't think a single year increase justifies a significant budget increase for these organised crime gangs. If the budget was paired with mandatory reform being imposed by an independent body it would be a better argument 

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3 hours ago, DMC said:

No, there isn't, at least not comparing rates over time.  It's just assuming bad faith.  Do they have motivations to manipulate the stats?  Sure, but that motivation is consistent over time.  It's similar to social desirability bias.  More people say tend to say they vote than actually do vote.  So, again, in a longitudinal analysis it doesn't really matter.  Further, the "motivations" police have to cook the books are the same across all government data we rely on.  Are we gonna start to question the data we use from the BLS too now?

Is that motivation consistent over time?  Are there any reasons that police departments might want to emphasize higher crime in 2020?  Did anything happen culturally in US in 2020 or after that might have changed public perceptions of policing? 

Eta: but that wasn't really the point anyway- we have incomplete data from the end of 2020 on, and again, that piece I linked that you didn't read is a criticism of using this data, regardless of what it says, to make decisions about police funding.  The "crime" statistics, even assuming any bias is consistent over time, are not an accurate picture of crime in the US, regardless of whether or not that's been the standard metric.     

Criticizing IQ as a measure of intelligence doesn't become invalid because people relied on it for a long time.  

Edited by Larry of the Lake
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4 hours ago, Larry of the Lake said:

Is that motivation consistent over time?  Are there any reasons that police departments might want to emphasize higher crime in 2020?  Did anything happen culturally in US in 2020 or after that might have changed public perceptions of policing? 

Even if they have such motivations, it's ridiculous to think this would be reflected in the aggregate.  To assume such is not only assuming bad faith but also that it very widespread.  It's you who is asserting there is some very implausible conspiracy, not me.  Again, this "questioning of data" isn't some methodological criticism.  It's simply not trusting cops in the way we give the benefit of the doubt to countless other data collectors we rely upon.

4 hours ago, Larry of the Lake said:

that piece I linked that you didn't read is a criticism of using this data, regardless of what it says, to make decisions about police funding.

And I said in my first post "obviously what should be done about it (if anything) is completely arguable."  You're being over-defensive.

4 hours ago, Larry of the Lake said:

The "crime" statistics, even assuming any bias is consistent over time, are not an accurate picture of crime in the US, regardless of whether or not that's been the standard metric. 

All metrics in social science and politics are considerably imperfect.  Moreover, there are independent studies - as offered in the Brennan Center link - that do not have the motivational problem you so abhor.  If you wanna have a conceptualization argument about what "crime" really means, have at it, but I'm frankly not interested.

Edited by DMC
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On 10/14/2022 at 6:49 PM, Martell Spy said:

It was obviously not a shining moment for law enforcement, so yes. I'm skeptical of more law enforcement as a solution to a rise from record lows in crime. It seems more of a political strategy than something that will make lives better.

I'll add that it depends on where the money goes, too. Something like mental health outreach might be a good thing. So, around 2014 I was renting a room in a trailer park here in the suburbs of Seattle. I'm out walking one day, I forget why as I didn't do that very often. But suddenly there are these guys in full fucking body armor going by. It was frankly terrifying. Have not had an experience like that before or since. (I'll add, this happened in full daylight)

Like 95% plus of the population of the trailer park was non-white. I have no idea why the raid happened. I certainly did not feel protected. It was bullshit tough on crime politics that led to people dressed up as soldiers with gun near me https://gritrsports.com/ in my neighborhood. It was racist bullshit. And like a lot of racist policies they often boomerang and cause harm to some whites, too.

More manpower doesn't reduce crime, more efficient means of applying that power does. That's just my 2 cents.

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