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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 th

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 decided it's time to take it down. edit: in private channels for POC, which I was a part of, people were incensed at the insensitivity. At the time I felt it was a particularly stupid choice for marketing material but not necessarily a moral wrong.

_bxg1 6y ago
A few years ago I would've thought thought that was an overreaction (assuming police were just using it as customers, and not something like surveillance). This week, I no longer feel that way.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  To be fair the customer and surveilance are linked as a matter of conflict of interest in general. Not quite a concern for a single local PD but say all of NYPD or whole states would be a big enough contract to be able to exert pressure by threatening to switch to more "cooperative" providers.
- netsharc 6y ago
  Honest foreigner question: are all US police that "stinky" that any association with them is now bad, or is it an overreaction? Surely there are good police departments, ones that work with the community and not against them? But maybe I'm not seeing it from the perspective of those black employees...
  - JCharante 6y ago
    I've seen videos of unjustified force by PDs in not just my hometown but my college town as well. Surely there are good police departments, but there are far too many police departments ending up in this GitHub repo that tracks police brutality https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality
  - PragmaticPulp 6y ago
    The problem is a lack of accountability for the bad police. If good police are standing by while the bad police are abusing their power, they aren’t really good police. If the bad police are walking away without repercussions or, in some cases, even retaining their taxpayer-paid pensions, we can’t trust the police force as a whole. The job of police is to maintain order, not to protect their own.
    - Spivak 6y ago
      You're absolutely right but I don't think holding someone's retirement account over their heads is a good move. Let them keep their pension for the number of years they actually did serve. Strip them of their right to serve sure, but don't go back in time and pull their paycheck.
      - freeone3000 6y ago
        I feel there needs to be some form of individual accountability. With a 99.87% acquittal rate, mostly due to dismissals, and an immunity from civil suits, it's currently impossible to actually punish any individual officer for wrongdoing. If they were opened up to individual civil liability, sure, we can let a jury decide how much damage they caused.
      - mtnGoat 6y ago
        i am OK with them having the money they put in themselves prior to their abuse of power, as long as any litigation is settled from it first. However i don't think they should get a pension that includes any monies from other parties like taxes.
  - brandmeyer 6y ago
    Honest native answer: it depends on which side of the political spectrum you are on. Plenty of citizens are defending the police's actions, even their current actions during the protests, as completely justified. The POTUS doesn't make his fiery speeches in a vacuum; his base completely supports that attitude. Edit amendment: Folks, OP wasn't asking whether or not the police actions were justified or not justified. He was asking about whether association with them would be interpreted as inherently "stinky" in the future. Whether good or bad, a prospective employer's feelings about a prospective employee's work history with US law enforcement is strongly coupled to their political views. That's true for military service, its true for ICE, and now its true for local police as well.
  - 1123581321 6y ago
    Most police forces and sheriff departments in the US are small and go years or decades between controversy.
  - kop316 6y ago
    The issue isn't there are good or bad cops. In any large organization there will be "bad apples" (malicious actors), that just statistically will happen. What is very important is how misconduct is handled, and how these "bad apples" are handled. Due to the legal concept of qualified immunity, it is very difficult to sue the police for civil or criminal liability. I understand the intent of qualified immunity. The idea is that a police officer did the best they could knowing what they know, and it is very easy to look at things after the fact (hindsight is 20/20), so it makes it easier for a police officer to do their job without constant worry of lawsuit. However, it has been abused to the point that it is next to impossible to sue for criminal/civil liability. Additionally, there is wide conception that police do not police their own (look up "blue wall of silence"), and police unions are very strong, so it is extremely difficult for an outside organization to police them. Case in point, it is argued that if it weren't for the cell phone video of George Floyd, the police officers would not have even been charged with misconduct and would still have their jobs, much less criminal charges. If you have an organization that has a monopoly on violence and there is not a good way to keep that in check, THIS WILL LEAD TO MASSIVE PROBLEMS.
    - johannes1234321 6y ago
      The question is not only about how "bad apples" are handled, but also what techniques are taught, what kind of leadership is given. If you stick cops in heavily protected gear this gives them stronger feelings. If you have a President (who isn't directly responsible for police) cheering to be "tough" ("Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over? Like, don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody — don’t hit their head. I said, you can take the hand away, okay?" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/07/28/trumps-speech-encouraging-police-to-be-rough-annotated/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/07/28/t...) and then not have a leadership promoting other values you encourage to be like the "bad apple" not like the good apple. If you then also often have cops alone on duty or with fixed partners, thus no rotation you have less internal checking. If you are then also in a country where the police officers have to assume that the citizen they pulled over might be armed you certainly don't help them to relax. The list goes on - true, most cops certainly want to be good, but there are systematic issues emporing the bad ones.
  - mtnGoat 6y ago
    I would say most American citizens are fearful(or at least shy of) of the police, avoid interacting with them if possible and generally have a disdain for how they operate. Not to say they are not recognized as necessary, most just don't like their tactics and their "code" of protecting one another. Basically you never know if you are going to get a good cop or a bad one, so you just avoid them all. Likewise anyone supporting them is seem as possibly supporting their questionable use of force and other bad practices.
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      What the police are supposed to be is determined by local culture. Here's a police recruitment ad from Georgia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIgt8pmh7CU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIgt8pmh7CU Here's one from California: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_rKA6ROAVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_rKA6ROAVk (The original blog post that highlighted the difference between these is down, but here's an archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20140209085808/http://www.theagitator.com/2012/07/05/two-videos-two-cities-two-attitudes/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140209085808/http://www.theagi... . I pulled the youtube URLs because the archived page doesn't appear to work.)
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - baddox 6y ago
    I suspect any police force that is sufficiently large and has militarized and "riot" gear will tend to have similar problems. I'm sure that small town police departments have much more variation in their patterns of behavior.
  - blattimwind 6y ago
    A look into American popular culture is rather revealing in this aspect. Consider the currently running series "SWAT", which portrays the rise of a good-cop SWAT leader. That's the lead "good character" of the series, and he and his team are brutalizing suspects, some instances of which may actually be torture, commit various felonies on a "dime a dozen" basis, constantly abuse police powers, lie to superior officers, frequently recklessly endanger civilians and commit morally despicable acts like blatant entrapment and much more. Those figures are the good cops in media. This is the popular media idea of "policing done right" in the US. While just one particular example, but if you look around in American media the "good cops" exhibit at least some of these aspects the grand majority of the time.
    - pstuart 6y ago
      I remember SWAT from way back. I guess this is a reboot. Ugh. The other show that comes to mind is "Cops" which seems to promote a deification of the police. That's guesswork because I don't have the stomach to watch it.
      - __s 6y ago
        I remember watching Cops as documentation of police brutality before social media was rampant
- akerro 6y ago
  The post is from 2017, which is long after Snowden era.
paxys 6y ago
It was a particularly stupid decision IMO since "we partner/co-operate with US police departments" is the last thing that large companies - especially foreign ones - want to hear from an app that stores their most sensitive data.
xwowsersx 6y ago
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?
- revscat 6y ago
  In the abstract police are necessary. In today’s America, with the police as they actually exist today, they are very much not necessary, and are a drain on public safety, social order, and personal liberty.
  - javagram 6y ago
    That doesn’t make sense. There are 300 million guns in America and plenty of crime happens every year. It’s true crime is down from the historical highs of the 70s and 80s, but there are very much still murders and thefts that need to be investigated and punished. The reality is if police were abolished we’d go back to the bad old days of private detective agencies being used for security. Would you rather have some sort of unholy fusion of Blackwater and the Pinkerton detective agency performing policing tasks in our country?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - detaro 6y ago
      The argument by most seems to be not "get rid of all police and then nothing", but rather to replace it as much as possible from the ground up. Which might very well mean re-allocating resources and removing responsibilities from police, e.g. around mental health, but not getting rid all law enforcement. Phrased this way and not as a "reform" because they believe attempting to reform the existing system slowly won't work.
    - mywittyname 6y ago
      The bulk of crimes committed in the USA do not require traditional LEO aside from apprehensions. Investigations, evidence collection, interviews, etc can all be done by any old bureaucrat. Much like the FDA investigators and Fire Marshals don't need the authority of an LEO. There's no need for police to be first-responders in purely medical situations. It's unfair to expect that police also take up the burden of medical care. While we are at it, it's also silly that the fire department responds to non-fire medical incidents in their big ass fire truck. Doing so compromises their abilities to handle situations where their expertise is explicitly required. Every town in America does not need a SWAT team. Thsoe should be specialized agencies that serve a particular region and have a limited number of deployments. If we were building a system from scratch today, people would not suggest dumping these duties on beat cops.
siruncledrew 6y ago
From a pure marketing perspective, it’s a bad idea to publish things that carry heavy current negatives, making them not good “evergreen” content pieces. In the same (corporate) sense as publishing a use case about a payday loan company or oil drilling company is a bad idea. Maybe they will evolve and become better over time - but that doesn’t matter if the current ‘ROI’ is bad. It would be like ‘HODLing’ a falling stock hoping it will one day go up again.

_bxg1 6y ago

A few years ago I would've thought thought that was an overreaction (assuming police were just using it as customers, and not something like surveillance). This week, I no longer feel that way.

Nasrudith 6y ago
To be fair the customer and surveilance are linked as a matter of conflict of interest in general. Not quite a concern for a single local PD but say all of NYPD or whole states would be a big enough contract to be able to exert pressure by threatening to switch to more "cooperative" providers.
netsharc 6y ago
Honest foreigner question: are all US police that "stinky" that any association with them is now bad, or is it an overreaction? Surely there are good police departments, ones that work with the community and not against them? But maybe I'm not seeing it from the perspective of those black employees...
- JCharante 6y ago
  I've seen videos of unjustified force by PDs in not just my hometown but my college town as well. Surely there are good police departments, but there are far too many police departments ending up in this GitHub repo that tracks police brutality https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  The problem is a lack of accountability for the bad police. If good police are standing by while the bad police are abusing their power, they aren’t really good police. If the bad police are walking away without repercussions or, in some cases, even retaining their taxpayer-paid pensions, we can’t trust the police force as a whole. The job of police is to maintain order, not to protect their own.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    You're absolutely right but I don't think holding someone's retirement account over their heads is a good move. Let them keep their pension for the number of years they actually did serve. Strip them of their right to serve sure, but don't go back in time and pull their paycheck.
    - freeone3000 6y ago
      I feel there needs to be some form of individual accountability. With a 99.87% acquittal rate, mostly due to dismissals, and an immunity from civil suits, it's currently impossible to actually punish any individual officer for wrongdoing. If they were opened up to individual civil liability, sure, we can let a jury decide how much damage they caused.
    - mtnGoat 6y ago
      i am OK with them having the money they put in themselves prior to their abuse of power, as long as any litigation is settled from it first. However i don't think they should get a pension that includes any monies from other parties like taxes.
- brandmeyer 6y ago
  Honest native answer: it depends on which side of the political spectrum you are on. Plenty of citizens are defending the police's actions, even their current actions during the protests, as completely justified. The POTUS doesn't make his fiery speeches in a vacuum; his base completely supports that attitude. Edit amendment: Folks, OP wasn't asking whether or not the police actions were justified or not justified. He was asking about whether association with them would be interpreted as inherently "stinky" in the future. Whether good or bad, a prospective employer's feelings about a prospective employee's work history with US law enforcement is strongly coupled to their political views. That's true for military service, its true for ICE, and now its true for local police as well.
- 1123581321 6y ago
  Most police forces and sheriff departments in the US are small and go years or decades between controversy.
- kop316 6y ago
  The issue isn't there are good or bad cops. In any large organization there will be "bad apples" (malicious actors), that just statistically will happen. What is very important is how misconduct is handled, and how these "bad apples" are handled. Due to the legal concept of qualified immunity, it is very difficult to sue the police for civil or criminal liability. I understand the intent of qualified immunity. The idea is that a police officer did the best they could knowing what they know, and it is very easy to look at things after the fact (hindsight is 20/20), so it makes it easier for a police officer to do their job without constant worry of lawsuit. However, it has been abused to the point that it is next to impossible to sue for criminal/civil liability. Additionally, there is wide conception that police do not police their own (look up "blue wall of silence"), and police unions are very strong, so it is extremely difficult for an outside organization to police them. Case in point, it is argued that if it weren't for the cell phone video of George Floyd, the police officers would not have even been charged with misconduct and would still have their jobs, much less criminal charges. If you have an organization that has a monopoly on violence and there is not a good way to keep that in check, THIS WILL LEAD TO MASSIVE PROBLEMS.
  - johannes1234321 6y ago
    The question is not only about how "bad apples" are handled, but also what techniques are taught, what kind of leadership is given. If you stick cops in heavily protected gear this gives them stronger feelings. If you have a President (who isn't directly responsible for police) cheering to be "tough" ("Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over? Like, don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody — don’t hit their head. I said, you can take the hand away, okay?" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/07/28/trumps-speech-encouraging-police-to-be-rough-annotated/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/07/28/t...) and then not have a leadership promoting other values you encourage to be like the "bad apple" not like the good apple. If you then also often have cops alone on duty or with fixed partners, thus no rotation you have less internal checking. If you are then also in a country where the police officers have to assume that the citizen they pulled over might be armed you certainly don't help them to relax. The list goes on - true, most cops certainly want to be good, but there are systematic issues emporing the bad ones.
- mtnGoat 6y ago
  I would say most American citizens are fearful(or at least shy of) of the police, avoid interacting with them if possible and generally have a disdain for how they operate. Not to say they are not recognized as necessary, most just don't like their tactics and their "code" of protecting one another. Basically you never know if you are going to get a good cop or a bad one, so you just avoid them all. Likewise anyone supporting them is seem as possibly supporting their questionable use of force and other bad practices.
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    What the police are supposed to be is determined by local culture. Here's a police recruitment ad from Georgia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIgt8pmh7CU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIgt8pmh7CU Here's one from California: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_rKA6ROAVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_rKA6ROAVk (The original blog post that highlighted the difference between these is down, but here's an archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20140209085808/http://www.theagitator.com/2012/07/05/two-videos-two-cities-two-attitudes/ https://web.archive.org/web/20140209085808/http://www.theagi... . I pulled the youtube URLs because the archived page doesn't appear to work.)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- baddox 6y ago
  I suspect any police force that is sufficiently large and has militarized and "riot" gear will tend to have similar problems. I'm sure that small town police departments have much more variation in their patterns of behavior.
- blattimwind 6y ago
  A look into American popular culture is rather revealing in this aspect. Consider the currently running series "SWAT", which portrays the rise of a good-cop SWAT leader. That's the lead "good character" of the series, and he and his team are brutalizing suspects, some instances of which may actually be torture, commit various felonies on a "dime a dozen" basis, constantly abuse police powers, lie to superior officers, frequently recklessly endanger civilians and commit morally despicable acts like blatant entrapment and much more. Those figures are the good cops in media. This is the popular media idea of "policing done right" in the US. While just one particular example, but if you look around in American media the "good cops" exhibit at least some of these aspects the grand majority of the time.
  - pstuart 6y ago
    I remember SWAT from way back. I guess this is a reboot. Ugh. The other show that comes to mind is "Cops" which seems to promote a deification of the police. That's guesswork because I don't have the stomach to watch it.
    - __s 6y ago
      I remember watching Cops as documentation of police brutality before social media was rampant
akerro 6y ago
The post is from 2017, which is long after Snowden era.

paxys 6y ago

It was a particularly stupid decision IMO since "we partner/co-operate with US police departments" is the last thing that large companies - especially foreign ones - want to hear from an app that stores their most sensitive data.

xwowsersx 6y ago

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?

revscat 6y ago
In the abstract police are necessary. In today’s America, with the police as they actually exist today, they are very much not necessary, and are a drain on public safety, social order, and personal liberty.
- javagram 6y ago
  That doesn’t make sense. There are 300 million guns in America and plenty of crime happens every year. It’s true crime is down from the historical highs of the 70s and 80s, but there are very much still murders and thefts that need to be investigated and punished. The reality is if police were abolished we’d go back to the bad old days of private detective agencies being used for security. Would you rather have some sort of unholy fusion of Blackwater and the Pinkerton detective agency performing policing tasks in our country?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - detaro 6y ago
    The argument by most seems to be not "get rid of all police and then nothing", but rather to replace it as much as possible from the ground up. Which might very well mean re-allocating resources and removing responsibilities from police, e.g. around mental health, but not getting rid all law enforcement. Phrased this way and not as a "reform" because they believe attempting to reform the existing system slowly won't work.
  - mywittyname 6y ago
    The bulk of crimes committed in the USA do not require traditional LEO aside from apprehensions. Investigations, evidence collection, interviews, etc can all be done by any old bureaucrat. Much like the FDA investigators and Fire Marshals don't need the authority of an LEO. There's no need for police to be first-responders in purely medical situations. It's unfair to expect that police also take up the burden of medical care. While we are at it, it's also silly that the fire department responds to non-fire medical incidents in their big ass fire truck. Doing so compromises their abilities to handle situations where their expertise is explicitly required. Every town in America does not need a SWAT team. Thsoe should be specialized agencies that serve a particular region and have a limited number of deployments. If we were building a system from scratch today, people would not suggest dumping these duties on beat cops.

siruncledrew 6y ago

From a pure marketing perspective, it’s a bad idea to publish things that carry heavy current negatives, making them not good “evergreen” content pieces. In the same (corporate) sense as publishing a use case about a payday loan company or oil drilling company is a bad idea. Maybe they will evolve and become better over time - but that doesn’t matter if the current ‘ROI’ is bad. It would be like ‘HODLing’ a falling stock hoping it will one day go up again.