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> Racism isn't the fundamental problem - it is the lack of justice in each individual case. If police officers were actually held accountable for their improper

> Racism isn't the fundamental problem - it is the lack of justice in each individual case. If police officers were actually held accountable for their improper actions (civil and criminal liability for false imprisonment, battery, lost time, etc), the racism of individual cops would hardly matter as much. This is not realistic; we can't monitor and hold accountable all police actions. We can't even do it when there is widespread evidence of abuse. Racism is the fundemetal cause of many of these problems; until that's dealt with, they will just keep coming back.

mindslight 11y ago
Your argument is similar to saying "We can't monitor and hold accountable all people's actions." Enforcement of all crime is based on post-facto complaints. We just need to stop giving cops a free pass to break the law, and stop the justice system exporting its externalities onto innocent people in a weird reverse-lottery.
- hackuser 11y ago
  > Your argument is similar to saying "We can't monitor and hold accountable all people's actions." Do you disagree with that? Think of it like quality in engineering: We can't do it effectively by detecting problems post-facto and fixing them (and in engineering our ability to detect them is far greater than in human behavior); quality must be built in. We couldn't arrest our way out of the drug problem, we couldn't kill/capture our way out of terrorism - these aren't solutions, but partial remediation of failed policies. We need to address the root of problems.
  - mindslight 11y ago
    So, instead of arresting people for murder we should attempt to audit their thoughts preemptively? That's the general problem they're pretending to tackle. I mean at some level, how can a cop be disqualified by having private racist thoughts? They're even likely to pick up such thoughts from the job itself. But then how do you determine whether those thoughts influenced a specific action or not? This is the ultimate problem with all attempts to police thoughtcrime - you're effectively past the demarc point, with ambiguous enforcement that just ends up eroding respect for the rule of law ("haha Joe the idiot got written up by the racism inquisitor again"). You're essentially saying "we can't arrest our way out of the murder problem". The Scandinavian approach of rehabilitation does make a lot of sense - the sheer majority of murders are prevented via societal values. But the ultimate check is still that criminals are arrested and punished. This feedback loop has been broken for police themselves, which has allowed their culture to degrade into absolute shit.
    - hackuser 11y ago
      Nobody is advocating ESP, thought crimes, or not arresting murderers where possible. Let's stop wasting everyone's time with this silliness.
      - mindslight 11y ago
        Silliness? I'm talking about something quite fundamental - to get desired behavior, should we punish actions or control ideology? I assert that the latter is the path to madness. It should not really matter whether individual cops are racist or not, iff they're actually subject to the law they purport to uphold. I cannot kidnap someone for four hours, say I'm "dropping charges", and then consider the matter closed. The police/justice system insist that while they've created a culture that did something very bad (racism), they'll promise to reform internally. But if this were possible, then how did it get to this point? And is the reform we want really just getting the "correct" number of white people unjustly hassled and arrested? You can't fix policing without aligning incentives - as I said, stop externalizing the collateral damage from policing by a low-probability reverse lottery. In a just society, we would expect to see underemployed people insulting cops while smoking oregano, hoping to get incorrectly arrested and earn money for their wasted time.
    - AjithAntony 11y ago
      I like hackuser's analogy of "Building quality into the process" vs. playing whack-a-bug. I don't have any idea how to fix the process but here's some stories that we can throw in the backlog: - As a homeless individual, I'd like stable shelter - As a low income individual, I'd like higher quality housing opportunities - As a mentally ill individual, I'd like support and treatment to manage my illness - As an unemployed individual, I'd like a job where I can earn enough income to support myself and family - As a member of a victimized population, I'd like my peers to refrain from perpetuating a cycle of violence among ourselves - As a parent with limited means, I'd like my child to attend a high quality school - As a working parent with limited means, I'd like quality child care - As an hourly wage-earner, I'd like consistent full time hours so I can better plan my schedule, finances, and future - As a working individual, I'd like affordable, reliable, and timely transportation options to travel between my home, work, and school
michaelbuddy 11y ago
Another problem is people will simply lie about it in an encounter. How can justice be served when lies were told? And every lie told means the people telling the truth have a harder time. It's the "dindu nuffin" phenomenon. Holds true for false rape claims and really everything like that. It hurts the real victims more than anything. And if you're wondering if people will lie about encounters with the police, plenty of examples. A MASSIVE one that destroyed a town was Dorian Johnson, the friend of Michael Brown. He lied and that a huge catalyst of the ferguson firestorm. Later on he recanted because well forensics and other, more credible witness testimony. If you want to believe Dorian Johnson, Michael Brown and he were just skipping along from market talking about Jesus when the cop grabbed Michael Brown from the inside of the car, then got out, and shot Michael in the head when his hands were up (or running away) People LIE, and it's rampant.
- hackuser 11y ago
  > People LIE, and it's rampant. At what point did anyone expect people to be honest? That's not how our system of justice works. Police and prosecutors lie too; the question is how to build a justice systems for people, not one for saints. If everyone was honest, we wouldn't need judges and juries (heck, we wouldn't have crime).
  - michaelbuddy 11y ago
    Do you know any cops? Because you'll find they are a hell of a lot more honest per capita than the people on the street, especially in the case of moving violations, stops, criminal investigations. Most of them are MUCH more saintly. Which is why they get the benefit. it goes both ways. Lying criminals make the innocent bystander more vulnerable, and the reputation of the majority of great cops add layers of protection for the bad ones that don't deserve it. It's gonna go down like that as long as there are humans living and humans policing.
    - mindslight 11y ago
      Our criminal justice system is based on "beyond a reasonable doubt", not "preponderance of the evidence". So the relative amount of lying by cops versus suspects should hardly matter. It's this kind of erosion of the rule of law that has directly caused our current situation. Cops have ostracized themselves from their communities by enforcing top-down social engineering (eg drug criminalization), and then further compounded that resentment by doubling down into a combative us-vs-them mentality. I've no doubt that most cops are good people, but they need to start policing the criminals in their ranks rather than defending them.

mindslight 11y ago

Your argument is similar to saying "We can't monitor and hold accountable all people's actions." Enforcement of all crime is based on post-facto complaints. We just need to stop giving cops a free pass to break the law, and stop the justice system exporting its externalities onto innocent people in a weird reverse-lottery.

hackuser 11y ago
> Your argument is similar to saying "We can't monitor and hold accountable all people's actions." Do you disagree with that? Think of it like quality in engineering: We can't do it effectively by detecting problems post-facto and fixing them (and in engineering our ability to detect them is far greater than in human behavior); quality must be built in. We couldn't arrest our way out of the drug problem, we couldn't kill/capture our way out of terrorism - these aren't solutions, but partial remediation of failed policies. We need to address the root of problems.
- mindslight 11y ago
  So, instead of arresting people for murder we should attempt to audit their thoughts preemptively? That's the general problem they're pretending to tackle. I mean at some level, how can a cop be disqualified by having private racist thoughts? They're even likely to pick up such thoughts from the job itself. But then how do you determine whether those thoughts influenced a specific action or not? This is the ultimate problem with all attempts to police thoughtcrime - you're effectively past the demarc point, with ambiguous enforcement that just ends up eroding respect for the rule of law ("haha Joe the idiot got written up by the racism inquisitor again"). You're essentially saying "we can't arrest our way out of the murder problem". The Scandinavian approach of rehabilitation does make a lot of sense - the sheer majority of murders are prevented via societal values. But the ultimate check is still that criminals are arrested and punished. This feedback loop has been broken for police themselves, which has allowed their culture to degrade into absolute shit.
  - hackuser 11y ago
    Nobody is advocating ESP, thought crimes, or not arresting murderers where possible. Let's stop wasting everyone's time with this silliness.
    - mindslight 11y ago
      Silliness? I'm talking about something quite fundamental - to get desired behavior, should we punish actions or control ideology? I assert that the latter is the path to madness. It should not really matter whether individual cops are racist or not, iff they're actually subject to the law they purport to uphold. I cannot kidnap someone for four hours, say I'm "dropping charges", and then consider the matter closed. The police/justice system insist that while they've created a culture that did something very bad (racism), they'll promise to reform internally. But if this were possible, then how did it get to this point? And is the reform we want really just getting the "correct" number of white people unjustly hassled and arrested? You can't fix policing without aligning incentives - as I said, stop externalizing the collateral damage from policing by a low-probability reverse lottery. In a just society, we would expect to see underemployed people insulting cops while smoking oregano, hoping to get incorrectly arrested and earn money for their wasted time.
  - AjithAntony 11y ago
    I like hackuser's analogy of "Building quality into the process" vs. playing whack-a-bug. I don't have any idea how to fix the process but here's some stories that we can throw in the backlog: - As a homeless individual, I'd like stable shelter - As a low income individual, I'd like higher quality housing opportunities - As a mentally ill individual, I'd like support and treatment to manage my illness - As an unemployed individual, I'd like a job where I can earn enough income to support myself and family - As a member of a victimized population, I'd like my peers to refrain from perpetuating a cycle of violence among ourselves - As a parent with limited means, I'd like my child to attend a high quality school - As a working parent with limited means, I'd like quality child care - As an hourly wage-earner, I'd like consistent full time hours so I can better plan my schedule, finances, and future - As a working individual, I'd like affordable, reliable, and timely transportation options to travel between my home, work, and school

michaelbuddy 11y ago

Another problem is people will simply lie about it in an encounter. How can justice be served when lies were told? And every lie told means the people telling the truth have a harder time. It's the "dindu nuffin" phenomenon. Holds true for false rape claims and really everything like that. It hurts the real victims more than anything. And if you're wondering if people will lie about encounters with the police, plenty of examples. A MASSIVE one that destroyed a town was Dorian Johnson, the friend of Michael Brown. He lied and that a huge catalyst of the ferguson firestorm. Later on he recanted because well forensics and other, more credible witness testimony. If you want to believe Dorian Johnson, Michael Brown and he were just skipping along from market talking about Jesus when the cop grabbed Michael Brown from the inside of the car, then got out, and shot Michael in the head when his hands were up (or running away) People LIE, and it's rampant.

hackuser 11y ago
> People LIE, and it's rampant. At what point did anyone expect people to be honest? That's not how our system of justice works. Police and prosecutors lie too; the question is how to build a justice systems for people, not one for saints. If everyone was honest, we wouldn't need judges and juries (heck, we wouldn't have crime).
- michaelbuddy 11y ago
  Do you know any cops? Because you'll find they are a hell of a lot more honest per capita than the people on the street, especially in the case of moving violations, stops, criminal investigations. Most of them are MUCH more saintly. Which is why they get the benefit. it goes both ways. Lying criminals make the innocent bystander more vulnerable, and the reputation of the majority of great cops add layers of protection for the bad ones that don't deserve it. It's gonna go down like that as long as there are humans living and humans policing.
  - mindslight 11y ago
    Our criminal justice system is based on "beyond a reasonable doubt", not "preponderance of the evidence". So the relative amount of lying by cops versus suspects should hardly matter. It's this kind of erosion of the rule of law that has directly caused our current situation. Cops have ostracized themselves from their communities by enforcing top-down social engineering (eg drug criminalization), and then further compounded that resentment by doubling down into a combative us-vs-them mentality. I've no doubt that most cops are good people, but they need to start policing the criminals in their ranks rather than defending them.