5 ms·

Apologies for my ignorance but how is this going to police the police? I read the original blog post, there was lots of inferences/could and might be's/etc made

Apologies for my ignorance but how is this going to police the police? I read the original blog post, there was lots of inferences/could and might be's/etc made but little in the way of proof of anything. What's to stop the police saying it was just circumstance that provided your results? I'm not here defending the police, or denigrating the project, just playing devils advocate. What happens if the police just ignore you?

lazyasciiart 4y ago
The goal of projects like this (I have no contact with this one) is usually to convince politicians and/or the public of their results, and those groups are the ones to actually push change.
- josh-pdap 4y ago
  In our case it’s about working with local activists and journalists. Police are decentralized; each department acts independently, for the most part. Most people using the data seem to be using it locally; when policies are changed, they are changed locally. If the changes make a positive impact, sometimes other departments or governing bodies take notice. I’d like to aim higher than a quotable statistic for a politician, in any case :)
josh-pdap 4y ago
Aren't forums like this for devil's advocating, like, almost exclusively? Working as expected! We've come a long way since that post in terms of strategy and focus. Most of that time was spent with between 1 and 3 volunteers, working a couple hours a week. Transparency is a good goal in itself, I think. People are already using this public data, we're just trying to make it more accessible. "Policing the police" was the original phrase used on reddit, but if you look at our website (https://pdap.io https://pdap.io), that's not a phrase we use.
vmh1928 4y ago
Assuming the data is accurate it can be used to show disparities between groups for a variety of situations - traffic stops, arrests, jail vs. diversion programs, charge stacking, etc..
- yucky 4y ago
  Depends on what the data shows. For instance, nobody ever wants to talk about why 95% of those killed in police shootings are males. It's far more disproportionate than any of the race based numbers that make headlines daily, and yet..nothing. This seems to indicate the data will always and only be used to tell a preferred narrative.
  - account-5 4y ago
    Downvotes aside I think I'm more worried about this. The preferred native approach, that's the risk that undermines things like this. Despite the downvotes your example is good I think it's safe to say the 95% male to female ratio is likely to be down to males more likely to be involved in violent incidents than females. No one really has a problem with this until skin colour comes into it. As a society though tackling the cause of why males get into violent confrontations seems like a no brainer.
  - KingMob 4y ago
    ...because there's a plausible and uncontested rationale, unlike skin color? Men generally have more testosterone, which leads to aggression and worse impulse control. Nobody's talking about the reason men are 95% of police shootings because it's pretty obvious.
    - logicalmonster 4y ago
      > ...because there's a plausible and uncontested rationale, unlike skin color? Men generally have more testosterone, which leads to aggression and worse impulse control. Why isn't it plausible that different groups are different in some ways? For instance, when it comes to testosterone, this seems to be the science. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK20759/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK20759/ > In fact, African American men have higher exposure to testosterone, the main biologically potent circulating androgen, than their Caucasian and Asian counterparts, beginning in the in utero period. African American women have testosterone levels that exceed those of Caucasian women by 50% or more in early pregnancy, an exposure that has been hypothesized to permanently alter the “gonadostat,” the hypothalamic-pituitary-testicular axis, in African American male offspring relative to Caucasians. African American men during young adulthood also have substantially higher circulating testosterone levels than their Caucasian counterparts (approximately 13 to 15% difference at age 20 years). Although this difference appears to dissipate with age, African American men still have slightly higher testosterone levels than Caucasians (≈3% higher) at age 40 years.

lazyasciiart 4y ago

The goal of projects like this (I have no contact with this one) is usually to convince politicians and/or the public of their results, and those groups are the ones to actually push change.

josh-pdap 4y ago
In our case it’s about working with local activists and journalists. Police are decentralized; each department acts independently, for the most part. Most people using the data seem to be using it locally; when policies are changed, they are changed locally. If the changes make a positive impact, sometimes other departments or governing bodies take notice. I’d like to aim higher than a quotable statistic for a politician, in any case :)

josh-pdap 4y ago

Aren't forums like this for devil's advocating, like, almost exclusively? Working as expected! We've come a long way since that post in terms of strategy and focus. Most of that time was spent with between 1 and 3 volunteers, working a couple hours a week. Transparency is a good goal in itself, I think. People are already using this public data, we're just trying to make it more accessible. "Policing the police" was the original phrase used on reddit, but if you look at our website (https://pdap.io https://pdap.io), that's not a phrase we use.

vmh1928 4y ago

Assuming the data is accurate it can be used to show disparities between groups for a variety of situations - traffic stops, arrests, jail vs. diversion programs, charge stacking, etc..

yucky 4y ago
Depends on what the data shows. For instance, nobody ever wants to talk about why 95% of those killed in police shootings are males. It's far more disproportionate than any of the race based numbers that make headlines daily, and yet..nothing. This seems to indicate the data will always and only be used to tell a preferred narrative.
- account-5 4y ago
  Downvotes aside I think I'm more worried about this. The preferred native approach, that's the risk that undermines things like this. Despite the downvotes your example is good I think it's safe to say the 95% male to female ratio is likely to be down to males more likely to be involved in violent incidents than females. No one really has a problem with this until skin colour comes into it. As a society though tackling the cause of why males get into violent confrontations seems like a no brainer.
- KingMob 4y ago
  ...because there's a plausible and uncontested rationale, unlike skin color? Men generally have more testosterone, which leads to aggression and worse impulse control. Nobody's talking about the reason men are 95% of police shootings because it's pretty obvious.
  - logicalmonster 4y ago
    > ...because there's a plausible and uncontested rationale, unlike skin color? Men generally have more testosterone, which leads to aggression and worse impulse control. Why isn't it plausible that different groups are different in some ways? For instance, when it comes to testosterone, this seems to be the science. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK20759/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK20759/ > In fact, African American men have higher exposure to testosterone, the main biologically potent circulating androgen, than their Caucasian and Asian counterparts, beginning in the in utero period. African American women have testosterone levels that exceed those of Caucasian women by 50% or more in early pregnancy, an exposure that has been hypothesized to permanently alter the “gonadostat,” the hypothalamic-pituitary-testicular axis, in African American male offspring relative to Caucasians. African American men during young adulthood also have substantially higher circulating testosterone levels than their Caucasian counterparts (approximately 13 to 15% difference at age 20 years). Although this difference appears to dissipate with age, African American men still have slightly higher testosterone levels than Caucasians (≈3% higher) at age 40 years.