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You're telling me that cities are picking minority areas to put these in just for ill intent? Also, the devices don't "enforce crimes", they only alert approxi

by monksy 4y ago

You're telling me that cities are picking minority areas to put these in just for ill intent? Also, the devices don't "enforce crimes", they only alert approximate areas where a gunshot/firework may have gone off at.

warkdarrior 4y ago
Hopefully what is being enforced is the law, not the crimes.
- elil17 4y ago
  Sometimes police manage to enforce both…
PuppyTailWags 4y ago
I don't think anyone truly intends ill. However, someone who chooses a technology that doesn't have real evidence of working as well as it's advertised, and then uses applications of that technology on primarily minority populations, the result can only be concluded as illness on the people.
- lkschubert8 4y ago
  I'm hard pressed to believe that there aren't some folks who have ill intent. The problem is weeding them out from people who are just using crappy metrics and people who just barely know what's going on.
  - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
    I mean, I genuinely think most people don't intend ill. The most nasty, abusive people I know simply believe that they are in the moral right. In fact, believing that being morally right justifies their behavior is the biggest sign to me of a dangerous person, not a person who knowingly thinks evil things.
    - dmix 4y ago
      The only question then is whether the police biased these installations in minority neighborhoods without connecting it to high amounts of shootings, which could easily be proven with data. That's the sort of thing that would be useful in court if it's true. Are local police required to publish where they are deploying ShotSpotters? Shootings and racial demographic data is certainly already public. I've read the entire Vice court report and don't remember seeing that data. Haven't read the Chicago one. Edit: reading the original Motherboard source all of the examples were described as small 'pilot programs' so they were usually only a single part of each city, in Cleveland for example : > the Cleveland Police Foundation—has been deployed in a small section of Southeast Cleveland that city officials have described as a high-crime area. > Those neighborhoods also happen to be among the least white in the city and those hit hardest by economic recession and the pandemic, according to local community organizers. > The area the division chose for Shotspotter accounted for 37 percent of all shots fired calls, 37 percent of felonious assaults, and 45% of all homicides within district four, Sergeant Jennifer Ciaccia wrote to Motherboard in an email. https://www.vice.com/en/article/88nd3z/gunshot-detecting-tech-is-summoning-armed-police-to-black-neighborhoods https://www.vice.com/en/article/88nd3z/gunshot-detecting-tec... (Motherboard didn't provide crime stats in the other 3 example cities cited, only the demographic profile which was consistently non-white)
      - jjeaff 4y ago
        You seem to imply that intent is all that matters. But the law and history regarding discrimination in the US is more nuanced. For example, perhaps literacy tests in order to vote in the Jim Crow south were purely based out of concern that only informed voters should be able to vote. Assuming they were applied evenly to both whites and minorities (they weren't), one could draw the conclusion that even though most of the people prohibited from voting were minorities, the intent wasn't racist. But that's not how most racism works.
        dmix 4y ago
        So basically even if we assume the data shows they were only deployed to the highest crime areas (and for sake of discussion we're not debating the legitimacy of that data like you could with biased Jim Crow literacy tests AND feigning that shotspotter actually provides some IRL value), it would still be discrimination because in a wider context it's just another tool that contributes to the oppression of minorities? Which, in the sum of everything, ultimately out-ranks the value of attempting to address the homicides and gun violence that plagues their communities through law enforcement. Therefore it's a net negative for society? (Apologies if I'm being overly literal here, my brain tends to seek the most rational explanations for everything).
elil17 4y ago
They didn’t comment on motives, just on reality. That is where these systems are deployed.
- daenz 4y ago
  Another way of phrasing it is: these gunshot detection systems are deployed where the vast majority of gunshots occur.
  - elil17 4y ago
    Well the system wouldn’t really be a problem if it wasn’t faulty. It’s the false positives that are an issue. You could put it next to the house of the biggest gun nut in America and it still wouldn’t be a fair system because it just doesn’t work well.
    - daenz 4y ago
      According to the data from the uncharitable vice article, their numbers seem pretty good.
- ALittleLight 4y ago
  It's worded in a way that implies racism. You could write "high crime areas" or "low socioeconomic status neighborhoods" or any of a dozen equally accurate terms. Instead, the author chose something vague (are they being placed in Jewish neighborhoods? Chinese neighborhoods? Indian? Hispanic?) And suggestive.
  - elil17 4y ago
    If something has a racist outcome then I don’t see how its “implied” to be racist. It is racist. They just didn’t say anything about whether it was intentional (which no one can know except people who decided where to put the systems).
    - ALittleLight 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

by monksy 4y ago

warkdarrior 4y ago

Hopefully what is being enforced is the law, not the crimes.

elil17 4y ago
Sometimes police manage to enforce both…

PuppyTailWags 4y ago

I don't think anyone truly intends ill. However, someone who chooses a technology that doesn't have real evidence of working as well as it's advertised, and then uses applications of that technology on primarily minority populations, the result can only be concluded as illness on the people.

lkschubert8 4y ago
I'm hard pressed to believe that there aren't some folks who have ill intent. The problem is weeding them out from people who are just using crappy metrics and people who just barely know what's going on.
- PuppyTailWags 4y ago
  I mean, I genuinely think most people don't intend ill. The most nasty, abusive people I know simply believe that they are in the moral right. In fact, believing that being morally right justifies their behavior is the biggest sign to me of a dangerous person, not a person who knowingly thinks evil things.
  - dmix 4y ago
    The only question then is whether the police biased these installations in minority neighborhoods without connecting it to high amounts of shootings, which could easily be proven with data. That's the sort of thing that would be useful in court if it's true. Are local police required to publish where they are deploying ShotSpotters? Shootings and racial demographic data is certainly already public. I've read the entire Vice court report and don't remember seeing that data. Haven't read the Chicago one. Edit: reading the original Motherboard source all of the examples were described as small 'pilot programs' so they were usually only a single part of each city, in Cleveland for example : > the Cleveland Police Foundation—has been deployed in a small section of Southeast Cleveland that city officials have described as a high-crime area. > Those neighborhoods also happen to be among the least white in the city and those hit hardest by economic recession and the pandemic, according to local community organizers. > The area the division chose for Shotspotter accounted for 37 percent of all shots fired calls, 37 percent of felonious assaults, and 45% of all homicides within district four, Sergeant Jennifer Ciaccia wrote to Motherboard in an email. https://www.vice.com/en/article/88nd3z/gunshot-detecting-tech-is-summoning-armed-police-to-black-neighborhoods https://www.vice.com/en/article/88nd3z/gunshot-detecting-tec... (Motherboard didn't provide crime stats in the other 3 example cities cited, only the demographic profile which was consistently non-white)
    - jjeaff 4y ago
      You seem to imply that intent is all that matters. But the law and history regarding discrimination in the US is more nuanced. For example, perhaps literacy tests in order to vote in the Jim Crow south were purely based out of concern that only informed voters should be able to vote. Assuming they were applied evenly to both whites and minorities (they weren't), one could draw the conclusion that even though most of the people prohibited from voting were minorities, the intent wasn't racist. But that's not how most racism works.
      - dmix 4y ago
        So basically even if we assume the data shows they were only deployed to the highest crime areas (and for sake of discussion we're not debating the legitimacy of that data like you could with biased Jim Crow literacy tests AND feigning that shotspotter actually provides some IRL value), it would still be discrimination because in a wider context it's just another tool that contributes to the oppression of minorities? Which, in the sum of everything, ultimately out-ranks the value of attempting to address the homicides and gun violence that plagues their communities through law enforcement. Therefore it's a net negative for society? (Apologies if I'm being overly literal here, my brain tends to seek the most rational explanations for everything).

elil17 4y ago

They didn’t comment on motives, just on reality. That is where these systems are deployed.

daenz 4y ago
Another way of phrasing it is: these gunshot detection systems are deployed where the vast majority of gunshots occur.
- elil17 4y ago
  Well the system wouldn’t really be a problem if it wasn’t faulty. It’s the false positives that are an issue. You could put it next to the house of the biggest gun nut in America and it still wouldn’t be a fair system because it just doesn’t work well.
  - daenz 4y ago
    According to the data from the uncharitable vice article, their numbers seem pretty good.
ALittleLight 4y ago
It's worded in a way that implies racism. You could write "high crime areas" or "low socioeconomic status neighborhoods" or any of a dozen equally accurate terms. Instead, the author chose something vague (are they being placed in Jewish neighborhoods? Chinese neighborhoods? Indian? Hispanic?) And suggestive.
- elil17 4y ago
  If something has a racist outcome then I don’t see how its “implied” to be racist. It is racist. They just didn’t say anything about whether it was intentional (which no one can know except people who decided where to put the systems).
  - ALittleLight 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]