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> Am I missing something obvious here? The obvious thing you are missing is that "There is a <insert ethnicity> man walking around the neighborhood." without a
by parennoob 10y ago
> Am I missing something obvious here?
The obvious thing you are missing is that "There is a <insert ethnicity> man walking around the neighborhood." without any further identifying characteristics is completely useless information as to "crime and safety" and can lead to both false positives and race-based alarmism.
If you actually see a suspicious person round the neighborhood, helpful information will be to describe how they look in more complete detail, and what is it about their appearance or behavior that causes you to think they are a crime and safety concern.
- lagadu 10y agoI understand and it makes sense that saying "I saw a black person walking around" is effectively useless and likely racist. The problem I see here is that it's only applied to race. If the same person made the same report and simply not added race (I'm only going by what I see in the screenshots, no clue whether it's more complex than that) then we'd have a similarly useless post because it offers no quality information either way. I don't understand why they wouldn't ask for the extra 2 out of 4 details for all "vague" reports, only for race. It's good, valuable information. edit: as I think further on it, I probably find more questionable the whole existence of a feature to report "suspicious activity" than Nextdoor singling race out. I mean, were I to go out in a skirt (I'm a hairy dude) would I be reported for whatever suspicious activity means? If a hippie-ish friend of mine with dreadlocks came over, would that be "suspicious"? The more I think on it the more it seems like a means of fueling people's paranoia/racism. I read that they tried to address that with the crime report feature but I still get the feeling that the whole thing is misplaced.