4 ms·

This is a fever which may kill or cripple the organism, but will probably pass eventually. Meanwhile, the tweets being criticized are such small potatoes that

This is a fever which may kill or cripple the organism, but will probably pass eventually. Meanwhile, the tweets being criticized are such small potatoes that the lot of signatories seem ridiculous to me. Removing the police is definitely dangerous. I grew up in a high-crime area, mugged 4 times before out of high school, and I definitely needed the police around. Berkeley is considering eliminating real traffic law enforcement. I do not look forward to the deaths that will occur when people speed through streets and stoplights just because they can. We have more than enough people in the Bay Area who will push any envelope that presents itself. I’ll explore the article with the idea that the disproportionate death rate is caused by disproportionate engagement rate. Intuitively and from personal experience it’s not the entire story but it may have explanatory power. Actual statistics (as opposed to regular lies and damn lies) are really useful and yet are going to anger someone whose worldview becomes endangered, whoever that is. A real scientist follows the data, not the fashion. Getting police that pay attention to the right things and avoid the wrong things is what we need.

Gibbon1 6y ago
You could always hand traffic enforcement over to the meter maids. No real reason you need armed police for that.
thephyber 6y ago
> Removing the police is definitely dangerous. Citation needed. NYC reduced their "stop and frisk" policies and WaPo analysis of crime pre/post change and the rates were more or less unchanged.[1][2] NYPD turned their back on the mayor when he didn't show in person to the funeral of 2 murdered officers (which is a rejection of civilian rule of law) then proceeded to do the minimum enforcement required by their employment contract for ~2 weeks. Crime didn't rise noticeably.[3][4][5] In the 1990s when "broken windows" policing was popular in NYC, crime levels fell but by no more than other areas of the world. It's far more likely that additional policing did little but increase the population of convicted felons and prisons because officials were so hypnotized by "tough on crime" advocates above falsifiable evidence. My city (top 10 population in the USA) cut a lot of police jobs after 2008 and replaced some of those former police numbers with a "Community Service Officer" role. CSOs are far cheaper, aren't armed, and take a lot of the basic workload off of the expensive officers. I'm tired of the incessant "we can't reduce their numbers". We've been doubling police numbers and budgets every 2-3 decades and so few people in power are willing to take a moderate stance to say we should experiment and reduce their numbers a little to see if we can save money for about the same levels of crime. It's not like giving police a lot more money actually increases their clearance rates. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/02/27/bloomberg-said-stop-frisk-decreased-crime-data-suggests-it-wasnt-major-factor-cutting-felonies/?arc404=true https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/02/27/bloomberg-s... [2] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/fact-sheet-stop-and-frisks-effect-crime-new-york-city https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/fact... [3] https://www.vox.com/2015/1/6/7501953/nypd-mayor-arrests-union https://www.vox.com/2015/1/6/7501953/nypd-mayor-arrests-unio... [4] https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/nyc-cops-did-a-work-stop-yet-crime-dropped/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/nyc-cops-did-a-work-... [5] 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...

Gibbon1 6y ago

You could always hand traffic enforcement over to the meter maids. No real reason you need armed police for that.

thephyber 6y ago

> Removing the police is definitely dangerous. Citation needed. NYC reduced their "stop and frisk" policies and WaPo analysis of crime pre/post change and the rates were more or less unchanged.[1][2] NYPD turned their back on the mayor when he didn't show in person to the funeral of 2 murdered officers (which is a rejection of civilian rule of law) then proceeded to do the minimum enforcement required by their employment contract for ~2 weeks. Crime didn't rise noticeably.[3][4][5] In the 1990s when "broken windows" policing was popular in NYC, crime levels fell but by no more than other areas of the world. It's far more likely that additional policing did little but increase the population of convicted felons and prisons because officials were so hypnotized by "tough on crime" advocates above falsifiable evidence. My city (top 10 population in the USA) cut a lot of police jobs after 2008 and replaced some of those former police numbers with a "Community Service Officer" role. CSOs are far cheaper, aren't armed, and take a lot of the basic workload off of the expensive officers. I'm tired of the incessant "we can't reduce their numbers". We've been doubling police numbers and budgets every 2-3 decades and so few people in power are willing to take a moderate stance to say we should experiment and reduce their numbers a little to see if we can save money for about the same levels of crime. It's not like giving police a lot more money actually increases their clearance rates. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/02/27/bloomberg-said-stop-frisk-decreased-crime-data-suggests-it-wasnt-major-factor-cutting-felonies/?arc404=true https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/02/27/bloomberg-s... [2] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/fact-sheet-stop-and-frisks-effect-crime-new-york-city https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/fact... [3] https://www.vox.com/2015/1/6/7501953/nypd-mayor-arrests-union https://www.vox.com/2015/1/6/7501953/nypd-mayor-arrests-unio... [4] https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/nyc-cops-did-a-work-stop-yet-crime-dropped/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/nyc-cops-did-a-work-... [5] 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...