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> ...there's such a presumption of guilt There's a long catalogue of evidence that the police have been insitutionally racist (and other issues). Specifically

> ...there's such a presumption of guilt There's a long catalogue of evidence that the police have been insitutionally racist (and other issues). Specifically in the UK, but I suspect the US has a similar catalogue of evidence. > Maybe the public... The conclusion drawn seems like the most realistic explanation. Your alternatives don't seem credible considering the change also occurred when police weren't wearing cameras. [Edit: "have been" rather than "are" insitutionally racist, evidence is in the past and will hopefully stay that way)

the-dude 10y ago
Do you mean not investigating rape rings because of fear of being called racist? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploitation_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit...
- colemickens 10y ago
  Oh, a "counter" incident. Institutional racism is officially over!
  - the-dude 10y ago
    It is not over, what I pointed at IS racism. This is not an incident however, this is happening all over Europe. Police are hesitant to reveal real rates of crime, Dutch police advising victims not to press charges because the Northern-African suspects are known to make your life miserable. Calling statistical profiling racial profiling instead etc.
    - lukeschlather 10y ago
      Ethnic profiling is bunk. It kind of works in areas like Israel, where there is literally a war on and the goal of profiling is not to determine criminality, but which side of the war you are on. If you're trying to determine criminality, ethnic profiling doesn't work. It's been proven time and again. It's amazing that we're still having this debate 70 years after the West shed eugenics.
      - Chris2048 10y ago
        > proven time and again ... after the West shed eugenics Given how you conflate racial profiling and eugenics, I'd be skeptical of what you consider proven. But you are right, race doesn't correlate directly with criminality - but it does correlate if it correlates with something else that does e.g. religious membership.
    - richmarr 10y ago
      > It is not over, what I pointed at IS racism. Not sure it's either accurate or useful to classify the Rotherham situation as racism.
- richmarr 10y ago
  What's your point? Are you claiming that a significant base of evidence is somehow disproven because of one incident?
  - the-dude 10y ago
    My point is that in Western Europe police is being accused of racism because they employ statistical profiling. Which is then called racist by its opponents.
    - lostlogin 10y ago
      With the track records of the police forces involved, are you surprised people have a degree of scepticism?
      - the-dude 10y ago
        What track record of the Dutch police? Do you have sources? If anything, the Dutch police force is one of most docile of the world. And my feeling is this holds true for the UK as well.
        lostlogin 10y ago
        Excuse the Daily Mail link sorry and the other link is a police murder with the mayor discussing police racism. The Dutch police are very good by nearly all accounts, but it's not hard to find accounts of racism. The UK police have a very long and much worse history of racism with the Met being front and centre (less so now than 10+ years ago though). I won't post a link for them as it is extremely easy to find many many cases unfortunately. Pick you examples with them, beatings, killings, harassment, illegal searches etc. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3163974/Boy-13-handcuffed-motorcycle-police-officer-run.html www.nltimes.nl/2015/07/09/hague-mayor-admits-police-racism-chief-breaks-down-over-fatal-arrest/
  - ptaipale 10y ago
    It wasn't exactly "one incident". The Rotherham thing was a systematic failure caused by intentionally engineered race/ethnicity-based policy.
hueving 10y ago
Provide citations when you state such loaded things (cops are racist). Otherwise things just degrade people into two sides (each group starting and staying on the side they agree with).
- richmarr 10y ago
  I don't intend to spend my day providing citations for statements that aren't reasonably disputed, just in case some random guy on the internet disagrees. Police organisations (in the UK at least) accept they have a historical problem with institutional racism. This is a well discussed problem. UK police are currently putting significant effort into fixing the problem.... for example recent work to reduce the disproportionately high drop-out rate amongst applicants from minorities in order to help make the police representative of the community at large.
  - Chris2048 10y ago
    > There's a long catalogue of evidence > I don't intend to spend my day providing citations If it takes a day, then I assume the evidence isn't at hand, in which case how do you know it exists? Do you have first-hand experience of this evidence, or are you just assured it exists by sources you consider "reasonable". you are also a "random guy on the internet" and since you made the claim, the burden is on you. Some hand-waving "reasonable dispute" doesn't cut it - if it's so obvious, accepted and supported, it should be as easy to demonstrate. I'd also add you comments about historical racism lack context - i.e timelines, impact, magnitude etc all of which would feed into the main question; Are the UK police racist today? Muddying the waters with vague or unsupported claims doesn't help answer this question, especially given that there are lots of efforts to answer it, and reasonable sources of information in existence.
    - pjc50 10y ago
      The UK's gold standard evidence is probably the MacPherson report: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/277111/4262.pdf https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...
headmelted 10y ago
"The conclusion drawn seems like the most realistic explanation." I'm not sure I agree. I imagine either of us could find evidence of police corruption, institutional racism, or myriad other issues. There are a lot of police in the world. I'm not excusing racist or crooked police, I'm suggesting that there could be multiple explanations for the drop in complaints. "Your alternatives don't seem credible considering the change also occurred when police weren't wearing cameras." And that would seem to indicate that on average, the officer's in question were behaving better, and I expect that's the case. It could also mean that the public was aware of the cameras too, and that word gets around, which is likely in smaller communities. If I had to guess, I would guess it's the former. But I'm not a police officer, an ombudsman, or a victim of police abuse, so I would be speaking from zero experience. There's also a long catalogue of evidence that white people as a group have been institutionally racist. Your own race (just as an example) is none of my business, and obviously I sincerely hope you're not racist (which I very much doubt you are), but in any case I'm in no rush to jump to conclusions about either, which is kind of my point. Presumption of innocence exists for more reasons than just protecting citizens from the state (although that's an important one). It's because our gut instincts are most unscientific judges of character. I will say that I'm glad they've found a strategy that seems to have such a strong positive impact on police-public relations, though.
- richmarr 10y ago
  > ...there could be multiple explanations for the drop in complaints Uh huh, so, this particular study covered 1,429,868 officer hours across the six different police forces in the UK and the US, and found a 93% drop in complaints. Some forces found a 100% drop in complaints. Meanwhile, here's another Cambridge study from 2012 that shows police cameras reduce the incidence of unacceptable use of force. https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/first-scientific-report-shows-police-body-worn-cameras-can-prevent-unacceptable-use-of-force https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/first-scientific-report-...
  - headmelted 10y ago
    I had thought it was clear that I was referring to this discussion, i.e. that the drop in complaints was due to the use of body cameras, but it was not proven why. Was that not obvious? If not, my bad.
weberc2 10y ago
> There's a long catalogue of evidence that the police have been insitutionally racist At best, the evidence paints an unclear picture in the U.S.: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256079484_No_evidence_of_racial_discrimination_in_criminal_justice_processing_Results_from_the_National_Longitudinal_Study_of_Adolescent_Health https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256079484_No_eviden...
- richmarr 10y ago
  I'm not convinced that a study that relies on IQ (which is itself a biased metric) and self-reported data (self-reported data is low quality) makes the picture "unclear". Fryer's "Use of Force" paper would be a stronger argument I feel, but even that relies on very patchy data and doesn't take into account the higher likelyhood of minorities being stopped without cause. Managing a small law enforcement operation is hard. On a national scale it's a monumental task, and human beings are biased and irrational at the best of times. Not sure why the US doesn't record statistics on things like police shootings. Given the lack of data, if US law enforcement doesn't suffer from insitutional racism then it may well be through pure dumb luck; as there's no way to compare departments, or tell which policies or initiatives have a positive or negative effect.
  - weberc2 10y ago
    > I'm not convinced that a study that relies on IQ (which is itself a biased metric) and self-reported data (self-reported data is low quality) makes the picture "unclear". 1. I didn't intend to communicate that this paper alone makes the picture unclear. This paper is just one source that indicates no bias in law enforcement. 2. This paper explains why IQ is a reasonable factor 3. This paper explains why this self-reported data is reasonable 4. The data from convicted criminals, victims, and law-enforcement all tell a similar story (African Americans commit crimes disproportionately) I agree with you that there are huuuuge gaps in our data collection, and this is a really serious problem. Besides the gaps you mentioned, Eric Holder's justice department stopped releasing information on race of perpetrators in 2009 and many large (liberal) cities don't report this information either. This information is obviously critical if we want to determine whether or not we have a racial bias in law enforcement.

the-dude 10y ago

Do you mean not investigating rape rings because of fear of being called racist? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploitation_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit...

colemickens 10y ago
Oh, a "counter" incident. Institutional racism is officially over!
- the-dude 10y ago
  It is not over, what I pointed at IS racism. This is not an incident however, this is happening all over Europe. Police are hesitant to reveal real rates of crime, Dutch police advising victims not to press charges because the Northern-African suspects are known to make your life miserable. Calling statistical profiling racial profiling instead etc.
  - lukeschlather 10y ago
    Ethnic profiling is bunk. It kind of works in areas like Israel, where there is literally a war on and the goal of profiling is not to determine criminality, but which side of the war you are on. If you're trying to determine criminality, ethnic profiling doesn't work. It's been proven time and again. It's amazing that we're still having this debate 70 years after the West shed eugenics.
    - Chris2048 10y ago
      > proven time and again ... after the West shed eugenics Given how you conflate racial profiling and eugenics, I'd be skeptical of what you consider proven. But you are right, race doesn't correlate directly with criminality - but it does correlate if it correlates with something else that does e.g. religious membership.
  - richmarr 10y ago
    > It is not over, what I pointed at IS racism. Not sure it's either accurate or useful to classify the Rotherham situation as racism.
richmarr 10y ago
What's your point? Are you claiming that a significant base of evidence is somehow disproven because of one incident?
- the-dude 10y ago
  My point is that in Western Europe police is being accused of racism because they employ statistical profiling. Which is then called racist by its opponents.
  - lostlogin 10y ago
    With the track records of the police forces involved, are you surprised people have a degree of scepticism?
    - the-dude 10y ago
      What track record of the Dutch police? Do you have sources? If anything, the Dutch police force is one of most docile of the world. And my feeling is this holds true for the UK as well.
      - lostlogin 10y ago
        Excuse the Daily Mail link sorry and the other link is a police murder with the mayor discussing police racism. The Dutch police are very good by nearly all accounts, but it's not hard to find accounts of racism. The UK police have a very long and much worse history of racism with the Met being front and centre (less so now than 10+ years ago though). I won't post a link for them as it is extremely easy to find many many cases unfortunately. Pick you examples with them, beatings, killings, harassment, illegal searches etc. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3163974/Boy-13-handcuffed-motorcycle-police-officer-run.html www.nltimes.nl/2015/07/09/hague-mayor-admits-police-racism-chief-breaks-down-over-fatal-arrest/
- ptaipale 10y ago
  It wasn't exactly "one incident". The Rotherham thing was a systematic failure caused by intentionally engineered race/ethnicity-based policy.

hueving 10y ago

Provide citations when you state such loaded things (cops are racist). Otherwise things just degrade people into two sides (each group starting and staying on the side they agree with).

richmarr 10y ago
I don't intend to spend my day providing citations for statements that aren't reasonably disputed, just in case some random guy on the internet disagrees. Police organisations (in the UK at least) accept they have a historical problem with institutional racism. This is a well discussed problem. UK police are currently putting significant effort into fixing the problem.... for example recent work to reduce the disproportionately high drop-out rate amongst applicants from minorities in order to help make the police representative of the community at large.
- Chris2048 10y ago
  > There's a long catalogue of evidence > I don't intend to spend my day providing citations If it takes a day, then I assume the evidence isn't at hand, in which case how do you know it exists? Do you have first-hand experience of this evidence, or are you just assured it exists by sources you consider "reasonable". you are also a "random guy on the internet" and since you made the claim, the burden is on you. Some hand-waving "reasonable dispute" doesn't cut it - if it's so obvious, accepted and supported, it should be as easy to demonstrate. I'd also add you comments about historical racism lack context - i.e timelines, impact, magnitude etc all of which would feed into the main question; Are the UK police racist today? Muddying the waters with vague or unsupported claims doesn't help answer this question, especially given that there are lots of efforts to answer it, and reasonable sources of information in existence.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    The UK's gold standard evidence is probably the MacPherson report: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/277111/4262.pdf https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...

headmelted 10y ago

"The conclusion drawn seems like the most realistic explanation." I'm not sure I agree. I imagine either of us could find evidence of police corruption, institutional racism, or myriad other issues. There are a lot of police in the world. I'm not excusing racist or crooked police, I'm suggesting that there could be multiple explanations for the drop in complaints. "Your alternatives don't seem credible considering the change also occurred when police weren't wearing cameras." And that would seem to indicate that on average, the officer's in question were behaving better, and I expect that's the case. It could also mean that the public was aware of the cameras too, and that word gets around, which is likely in smaller communities. If I had to guess, I would guess it's the former. But I'm not a police officer, an ombudsman, or a victim of police abuse, so I would be speaking from zero experience. There's also a long catalogue of evidence that white people as a group have been institutionally racist. Your own race (just as an example) is none of my business, and obviously I sincerely hope you're not racist (which I very much doubt you are), but in any case I'm in no rush to jump to conclusions about either, which is kind of my point. Presumption of innocence exists for more reasons than just protecting citizens from the state (although that's an important one). It's because our gut instincts are most unscientific judges of character. I will say that I'm glad they've found a strategy that seems to have such a strong positive impact on police-public relations, though.

richmarr 10y ago
> ...there could be multiple explanations for the drop in complaints Uh huh, so, this particular study covered 1,429,868 officer hours across the six different police forces in the UK and the US, and found a 93% drop in complaints. Some forces found a 100% drop in complaints. Meanwhile, here's another Cambridge study from 2012 that shows police cameras reduce the incidence of unacceptable use of force. https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/first-scientific-report-shows-police-body-worn-cameras-can-prevent-unacceptable-use-of-force https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/first-scientific-report-...
- headmelted 10y ago
  I had thought it was clear that I was referring to this discussion, i.e. that the drop in complaints was due to the use of body cameras, but it was not proven why. Was that not obvious? If not, my bad.

weberc2 10y ago

> There's a long catalogue of evidence that the police have been insitutionally racist At best, the evidence paints an unclear picture in the U.S.: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256079484_No_evidence_of_racial_discrimination_in_criminal_justice_processing_Results_from_the_National_Longitudinal_Study_of_Adolescent_Health https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256079484_No_eviden...

richmarr 10y ago
I'm not convinced that a study that relies on IQ (which is itself a biased metric) and self-reported data (self-reported data is low quality) makes the picture "unclear". Fryer's "Use of Force" paper would be a stronger argument I feel, but even that relies on very patchy data and doesn't take into account the higher likelyhood of minorities being stopped without cause. Managing a small law enforcement operation is hard. On a national scale it's a monumental task, and human beings are biased and irrational at the best of times. Not sure why the US doesn't record statistics on things like police shootings. Given the lack of data, if US law enforcement doesn't suffer from insitutional racism then it may well be through pure dumb luck; as there's no way to compare departments, or tell which policies or initiatives have a positive or negative effect.
- weberc2 10y ago
  > I'm not convinced that a study that relies on IQ (which is itself a biased metric) and self-reported data (self-reported data is low quality) makes the picture "unclear". 1. I didn't intend to communicate that this paper alone makes the picture unclear. This paper is just one source that indicates no bias in law enforcement. 2. This paper explains why IQ is a reasonable factor 3. This paper explains why this self-reported data is reasonable 4. The data from convicted criminals, victims, and law-enforcement all tell a similar story (African Americans commit crimes disproportionately) I agree with you that there are huuuuge gaps in our data collection, and this is a really serious problem. Besides the gaps you mentioned, Eric Holder's justice department stopped releasing information on race of perpetrators in 2009 and many large (liberal) cities don't report this information either. This information is obviously critical if we want to determine whether or not we have a racial bias in law enforcement.