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Multiple cases out of...how many kidnapped girlfriend cases? The cops behavior(and human behavior in general) makes a lot of sense if you view them as pattern

Multiple cases out of...how many kidnapped girlfriend cases? The cops behavior(and human behavior in general) makes a lot of sense if you view them as pattern matching machines. If you've seen 100 cases of a missing girlfriend, and in 97 of those cases the boyfriend is the cause of the missing girlfriend, it is going to be very difficult to convince a cop that the boyfriend isn't the most fruitful avenue for investigation for their 101st missing girlfriend case. And if merely "multiple cases" is enough to warrant cutting them out of your life, consider that you also need to cut out pizza delivery people (multiple cases of them robbing their clients), baristas(multiple cases of them raping people they meet on the job), mail men(multiple cases of them assaulting their clients), etc.

joshstrange 4y ago
Not to sound cliche but with great power comes great responsibly. Police should be held to a higher standard. As far as pattern-matching goes, very simply, they need to do better. They are being lazy if they refuse to consider alternatives, these are people’s lives we are talking about here. The couple in this story went through hell then the police make it even worse, that’s not ok. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that they don’t jump to conclusions like this. The police ignored evidence at the scene that corroborated what the couple told them and continued to insist they were right even though they had no evidence backing up their charges. Just their gut feeling and “pattern-matching”. When we here multiple stories about the other professions doing the things you mentioned and, this is key, them getting away with it, no repercussions, we can talk. The police are the only (aside from maybe very rich people/corporations who in some cases use the police to exercise their will) people who have this kind of impunity. The police have the power to kill you with impunity. The police have the power to absolutely ruin your life even if you did nothing wrong. The have the power to take your belonging and require you prove their innocence. They should have to answer for the times they get it wrong.
shkkmo 4y ago
> If you've seen 100 cases of a missing girlfriend, and in 97 of those cases the boyfriend is the cause of the missing girlfriend, it is going to be very difficult to convince a cop that the boyfriend isn't the most fruitful avenue for investigation for their 101st missing girlfriend case. Yet, that is the job. If it is difficult for police to keep an open mind, then they need systems and rules in place to force them to keep an investigation broad enough to correctly handle the 3% cases where their intuition/bias is wrong. In reality, I would guess that the failure rate for "cop intuition" is much, much higher than 3%. Allowing cops to overly trust their intuition results in some very biased, racist and clasist policing. One solution, is facing real consequences when you are wrong. I think it is absolutely incredible how few consequences the bad cops in this story faced (instead of consequences, they got promotions and the city paid for the settlement with the victims. The cops didn't even get around to apologizing for years.

joshstrange 4y ago

Not to sound cliche but with great power comes great responsibly. Police should be held to a higher standard. As far as pattern-matching goes, very simply, they need to do better. They are being lazy if they refuse to consider alternatives, these are people’s lives we are talking about here. The couple in this story went through hell then the police make it even worse, that’s not ok. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that they don’t jump to conclusions like this. The police ignored evidence at the scene that corroborated what the couple told them and continued to insist they were right even though they had no evidence backing up their charges. Just their gut feeling and “pattern-matching”. When we here multiple stories about the other professions doing the things you mentioned and, this is key, them getting away with it, no repercussions, we can talk. The police are the only (aside from maybe very rich people/corporations who in some cases use the police to exercise their will) people who have this kind of impunity. The police have the power to kill you with impunity. The police have the power to absolutely ruin your life even if you did nothing wrong. The have the power to take your belonging and require you prove their innocence. They should have to answer for the times they get it wrong.

shkkmo 4y ago

> If you've seen 100 cases of a missing girlfriend, and in 97 of those cases the boyfriend is the cause of the missing girlfriend, it is going to be very difficult to convince a cop that the boyfriend isn't the most fruitful avenue for investigation for their 101st missing girlfriend case. Yet, that is the job. If it is difficult for police to keep an open mind, then they need systems and rules in place to force them to keep an investigation broad enough to correctly handle the 3% cases where their intuition/bias is wrong. In reality, I would guess that the failure rate for "cop intuition" is much, much higher than 3%. Allowing cops to overly trust their intuition results in some very biased, racist and clasist policing. One solution, is facing real consequences when you are wrong. I think it is absolutely incredible how few consequences the bad cops in this story faced (instead of consequences, they got promotions and the city paid for the settlement with the victims. The cops didn't even get around to apologizing for years.