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Edit: This was not a well-thought out post lol and I'm deleting it.

webkike 6y ago
I’ve been to plenty of protests in low income areas, and the push to defund the police is coming from them, not the higher income areas.
- mc32 6y ago
  A question to ask is what are the demographics? Is the support a plurality, old people, young people, homeowners, a silent majority a vocal minority, do we know?
  - webkike 6y ago
    Seemed to me to be made up of a wide variety of demographics, but organized by respected community leaders who typically are homeowners in the areas they live.
wonderwonder 6y ago
I hear what you are saying but disagree to a point. How many of these people getting arrested for the serious crimes have pre existing arrests / convictions for minor crimes? Once you have a couple of minor arrests and you are in the system, finding a career and advancing yourself becomes increasingly difficult. I would make an uneducated assumption that if they had not gotten the minor infractions and had a future perhaps the major infractions would not have happened. With that said there are always going to be bad people that require police intervention. Further adding to this if you grow up in an environment where there is a high criminal element you may be more predisposed to it, starting with minor infractions like marijuana use and then you are arrested and the self fulfilling prophecy repeats. Massively increased policing has created the environment in which many of these people are born and turn to crime. If you are constantly treated like a criminal, you may come to think of yourself as one.
- xd 6y ago
  In the UK we have what's know as youth offending services, the main aim of which is to keep youths out of the courts and criminal system by utilising more appropriate methods of disposal for minor offences like drug possession.
  - wonderwonder 6y ago
    This seems like a great idea. We should not be essentially damning people to a much more challenging life due to youthful indiscretions. Obviously some crimes are worse than others.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
xd 6y ago
I agree up until you say "few good people living in those neighbourhoods" it's the other way around .. you'd be amazed at how few people are generally responsible for crime in any given area.
godelski 6y ago
Except we are [0]. Here's the breakdown of why people are in jail (numbers rounded) - Drug offenses: 46% - Weapons, Explosives, Arson: 20% - Sex Offenses: 11% - Extortion, Fraud, Bribery: 6% - Immigration: 5% - Burglary, Larceny, Property Offenses: 5% - Robbery: 3% - Homicide, Aggravated Assault, and Kidnapping Offenses: 3% So drugs vs (WEA + BLPO + R + HAAKO) is 46% vs 39%. Last I checked 46 > 39, so yeah we are talking about things like pot. [0] https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen... __EDIT__: It appears that the parent has removed their comment, so let me add context. Here I'm responding to the parent's claim that you can outright dismiss drug related crimes because it is all about violent offenses. I'm just trying to show that drugs play a big role and thus dismissing them is naive.
- tmoravec 6y ago
  Is that global statistics or statistics for "over policed" neighbourhoods the article and discussion is about?
  - godelski 6y ago
    > Is that global statistics or statistics for "over policed" neighbourhoods the article and discussion is about? Neither, it is US statistics. Getting specifically the "over policed neighborhoods" statistics is a little trickier but when you do some location of arrest lookups you do see a higher percentage of arrests coming from those neighborhoods, so it would make for a reasonable assumption that those neighborhoods are a representative demographic of this dataset (if you're drawing from two jars and you draw 80% from one jar and 20% from the second jar, the marbles you have is a better representation of the contents of the first jar than they are of the second jar).
- kortilla 6y ago
  > so yeah we are talking about things like pot. Only if you want to talk about the non-violent half to paint a picture that it’s pointless. For the sake of discussion, assume pot is legal and those drug arrests didn’t happen. Low income areas still have higher rates of violent crime. Is your argument that drug criminalization is causing other violent crimes?
drhayes9 6y ago
> We’re talking rape, burglary, murder, vandalism, and assault... Conversely, low-income neighborhoods have tons of hardcore crime like I’ve described. Tons? Rape seems an unnecessarily emotional grab here, since most rapes are perpetrated by someone the victim knows and aren't restricted by income. Vandalism happens everywhere as well. > It’s always the people in the white upper-class neighborhoods who think the police are the problem. My mom grew up poor and told me to not trust the police and certainly not let them in the house without a warrant. > ...because they celebrate... Who is "they", in this context? "Tons." "Always." "They." Your language suggests an agenda that you're presenting in absolutes.
- jimbob45 6y ago
  I was more upset that the parent was implying that his neighborhood would have equal arrest numbers if the police had been more present on account of his pot smoking. I hope everyone can see what a stupid argument that is and that’s the hill I’m willing to die on here.
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    > There are tons of other stupid things I did when younger where if there had been more cops around I would have gone to jail. That's what the person you replied to said. Not that more police would have been more arrests based on (just) their pot smoking, but on other behavior as well. I saw a lot of vandalism that led to kids being dragged by their ears back to their parents in middle-class neighborhoods, that would've resulted in arrests (even for misdemeanors) for kids in poor neighborhoods (where I've also lived and seen this difference). In white neighborhoods small crimes would lead to police dragging the kid home, in minority neighborhoods they'd end up with a misdemeanor record (at least). All of this creates a bias in the algorithms which generally assume that someone with a criminal record of some sort is going to be a higher risk individual (which is probably a safe assumption for many crimes), but it is biased because people aren't charged with crimes at equal rates due to the biases in the existing system that these algorithms are more likely to exacerbate than alleviate. Now that the minority community has a thicker criminal record, the policing in that neighborhood continues to go up which continues to create increased conflict between the police and residents as the police end up arresting people for increasingly minor offenses, along with the major ones. A lack of policing or difference in attitude of the police in poor and/or minority communities versus middle-class/wealthy and/or white communities is very much present in the US (and probably the world). This leads algorithms like those under discussion to end up inheriting the same or similar biases, whether the developers and marketers intended it or not.
adjkant 6y ago
> We’re not taking about specious arguments like pot arrests and improper turn signals. We’re talking rape, burglary, murder, vandalism, and assault. Look at arrest data, the former is exactly what we're talking about. Most of these cases of police brutality come from basically random stops that focus on such minor violations (turn signals, jaywalking, etc) or "your car/description matches a potential subject". See parent and weed usage vs who gets caught with weed. Not to mention that you throw in rape/murder/assault into a sentence with vandalism. Police have a historically terrible track record with rapes in both processing cases as well as no record of stopping them. Police react to these incidents, not prevent them. The idea that police presence stops these is not supported either as when police reduced their presence in NYC neighborhoods, crime actually went down.[1] [1] https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-proactive-policing-crime-20170925-story.html https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-proacti...

I’ve been to plenty of protests in low income areas, and the push to defund the police is coming from them, not the higher income areas.

mc32 6y ago
A question to ask is what are the demographics? Is the support a plurality, old people, young people, homeowners, a silent majority a vocal minority, do we know?
- webkike 6y ago
  Seemed to me to be made up of a wide variety of demographics, but organized by respected community leaders who typically are homeowners in the areas they live.

wonderwonder 6y ago

I hear what you are saying but disagree to a point. How many of these people getting arrested for the serious crimes have pre existing arrests / convictions for minor crimes? Once you have a couple of minor arrests and you are in the system, finding a career and advancing yourself becomes increasingly difficult. I would make an uneducated assumption that if they had not gotten the minor infractions and had a future perhaps the major infractions would not have happened. With that said there are always going to be bad people that require police intervention. Further adding to this if you grow up in an environment where there is a high criminal element you may be more predisposed to it, starting with minor infractions like marijuana use and then you are arrested and the self fulfilling prophecy repeats. Massively increased policing has created the environment in which many of these people are born and turn to crime. If you are constantly treated like a criminal, you may come to think of yourself as one.

xd 6y ago
In the UK we have what's know as youth offending services, the main aim of which is to keep youths out of the courts and criminal system by utilising more appropriate methods of disposal for minor offences like drug possession.
- wonderwonder 6y ago
  This seems like a great idea. We should not be essentially damning people to a much more challenging life due to youthful indiscretions. Obviously some crimes are worse than others.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

xd 6y ago

I agree up until you say "few good people living in those neighbourhoods" it's the other way around .. you'd be amazed at how few people are generally responsible for crime in any given area.

godelski 6y ago

Except we are [0]. Here's the breakdown of why people are in jail (numbers rounded) - Drug offenses: 46% - Weapons, Explosives, Arson: 20% - Sex Offenses: 11% - Extortion, Fraud, Bribery: 6% - Immigration: 5% - Burglary, Larceny, Property Offenses: 5% - Robbery: 3% - Homicide, Aggravated Assault, and Kidnapping Offenses: 3% So drugs vs (WEA + BLPO + R + HAAKO) is 46% vs 39%. Last I checked 46 > 39, so yeah we are talking about things like pot. [0] https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offenses.jsp https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen... __EDIT__: It appears that the parent has removed their comment, so let me add context. Here I'm responding to the parent's claim that you can outright dismiss drug related crimes because it is all about violent offenses. I'm just trying to show that drugs play a big role and thus dismissing them is naive.

tmoravec 6y ago
Is that global statistics or statistics for "over policed" neighbourhoods the article and discussion is about?
- godelski 6y ago
  > Is that global statistics or statistics for "over policed" neighbourhoods the article and discussion is about? Neither, it is US statistics. Getting specifically the "over policed neighborhoods" statistics is a little trickier but when you do some location of arrest lookups you do see a higher percentage of arrests coming from those neighborhoods, so it would make for a reasonable assumption that those neighborhoods are a representative demographic of this dataset (if you're drawing from two jars and you draw 80% from one jar and 20% from the second jar, the marbles you have is a better representation of the contents of the first jar than they are of the second jar).
kortilla 6y ago
> so yeah we are talking about things like pot. Only if you want to talk about the non-violent half to paint a picture that it’s pointless. For the sake of discussion, assume pot is legal and those drug arrests didn’t happen. Low income areas still have higher rates of violent crime. Is your argument that drug criminalization is causing other violent crimes?

drhayes9 6y ago

> We’re talking rape, burglary, murder, vandalism, and assault... Conversely, low-income neighborhoods have tons of hardcore crime like I’ve described. Tons? Rape seems an unnecessarily emotional grab here, since most rapes are perpetrated by someone the victim knows and aren't restricted by income. Vandalism happens everywhere as well. > It’s always the people in the white upper-class neighborhoods who think the police are the problem. My mom grew up poor and told me to not trust the police and certainly not let them in the house without a warrant. > ...because they celebrate... Who is "they", in this context? "Tons." "Always." "They." Your language suggests an agenda that you're presenting in absolutes.

jimbob45 6y ago
I was more upset that the parent was implying that his neighborhood would have equal arrest numbers if the police had been more present on account of his pot smoking. I hope everyone can see what a stupid argument that is and that’s the hill I’m willing to die on here.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  > There are tons of other stupid things I did when younger where if there had been more cops around I would have gone to jail. That's what the person you replied to said. Not that more police would have been more arrests based on (just) their pot smoking, but on other behavior as well. I saw a lot of vandalism that led to kids being dragged by their ears back to their parents in middle-class neighborhoods, that would've resulted in arrests (even for misdemeanors) for kids in poor neighborhoods (where I've also lived and seen this difference). In white neighborhoods small crimes would lead to police dragging the kid home, in minority neighborhoods they'd end up with a misdemeanor record (at least). All of this creates a bias in the algorithms which generally assume that someone with a criminal record of some sort is going to be a higher risk individual (which is probably a safe assumption for many crimes), but it is biased because people aren't charged with crimes at equal rates due to the biases in the existing system that these algorithms are more likely to exacerbate than alleviate. Now that the minority community has a thicker criminal record, the policing in that neighborhood continues to go up which continues to create increased conflict between the police and residents as the police end up arresting people for increasingly minor offenses, along with the major ones. A lack of policing or difference in attitude of the police in poor and/or minority communities versus middle-class/wealthy and/or white communities is very much present in the US (and probably the world). This leads algorithms like those under discussion to end up inheriting the same or similar biases, whether the developers and marketers intended it or not.

adjkant 6y ago

> We’re not taking about specious arguments like pot arrests and improper turn signals. We’re talking rape, burglary, murder, vandalism, and assault. Look at arrest data, the former is exactly what we're talking about. Most of these cases of police brutality come from basically random stops that focus on such minor violations (turn signals, jaywalking, etc) or "your car/description matches a potential subject". See parent and weed usage vs who gets caught with weed. Not to mention that you throw in rape/murder/assault into a sentence with vandalism. Police have a historically terrible track record with rapes in both processing cases as well as no record of stopping them. Police react to these incidents, not prevent them. The idea that police presence stops these is not supported either as when police reduced their presence in NYC neighborhoods, crime actually went down.[1] [1] https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-proactive-policing-crime-20170925-story.html https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-proacti...