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Junk science is a huge problem in law enforcement. Treating lie detectors as canonical, the blood splatter analysis to recreate crime scenes, this kind of stuf

• thecrash 4y ago
  "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair
• Sakos 4y ago
  > Junk science is a huge problem in law enforcement. Treating lie detectors as canonical, the blood splatter analysis to recreate crime scenes, this kind of stuff. I'm not sure what's the bigger problem. The use of junk science by law enforcement or how law enforcement and their methods are portrayed by popular media that ensure the use of junk science (and other harmful methods) can persist long-term. I'm sure everybody and their mother has seen Dexter (who works as a blood splatter analyst) or any number of shows/movies or all the news where police dogs are portrayed in an incredibly positive light (I'm looking at you, Paw Patrol).
  • watwut 4y ago
    Those are at least fiction. I have seen documentaries where pseudo psychology (not holding eye contact means you are lying, this or that entirely normal behavior treated as something chillingly sinister, parent deemed nit sufficiently crying) was treated as sure clue of guilt. And gut feelings, gut feelings of detectives were literally treated as evidence in those documentaries
    • scarmig 4y ago
      Most documentaries should be considered a subgenre of fiction. Inspired by reality, but mostly interested in telling a compelling narrative.
    • britneybitch 4y ago
      They're not always treated as fiction though. Some police officers model their behavior after what they see on TV. And police departments have given shows access to locations and props in exchange for favorable portrayal. John Oliver did a show about it recently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNy6F7ZwX8I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNy6F7ZwX8I
      • cratermoon 4y ago
        LA PD essentially invented the cop show. https://timeline.com/dragnet-lapd-propaganda-cop-bb19d9a5fb6f https://timeline.com/dragnet-lapd-propaganda-cop-bb19d9a5fb6...
    • tetraca 4y ago
      I think the practice is supposed to be a little more than what's depicted there. When they start an interrogation, they try to ask light or at least easy questions to see how a suspect answers without real pressure, then when they hit a hard question, they compare the responses and look for clusters of behavior which might indicate deception when taking into account how they behaved in contrast through the rest of the questioning. Not to say that it's going to be particularly accurate/good.
      • NikolaNovak 4y ago
        Right, but to oversimplify, as innocent as I am, I will react differently when asked "enjoying the weather today", "where were you on night if December 12th", and "did you murder Mukelefa Stanjipoljic". There'll be contrast just as baseline! I had a law enforcement in-law who was confident he could figure out a man by shaking his hand and looking at him in the eye, etc etc. He was perennial favourite of all the sleezy salespeople around because while he was certain he was getting a deal and being taken care of and getting the good stuff, for anything I had any insight into (computer, car, photo, and music stuff), he was getting ripped six ways to Sunday. But his confidence was not to be shaken.
  • kneebonian 4y ago
    > any number of shows/movies or all the news where police dogs are portrayed in an incredibly positive light (I'm looking at you, Paw Patrol). Listen dude there I have enough beef with paw patrol to make a texas ranchers BBQ look ill equipped, from the fact the mayor is an idiot, that obnoxious chicken the fact the town has outsourced all of it's emergency functions to what is basically the mafia, the fact that they sit on a money printer of toys and the fact that the song haunts my house day in and day out. But to say that Paw Patrol is a problem because it has a police dog in it and that he helps people is equivalent to saying that Daniel Tiger is anti-Democracy because it has a Royal Family.
    • Mikeb85 4y ago
      As someone with a 5 month old this post is simultaneously enlightening, hilarious and terrifying.
    • britneybitch 4y ago
      Other than the chicken, that description is a perfect match for New York City.
    • scrollaway 4y ago
      I think you will enjoy this video breakdown from Skip Intro: https://youtube.com/watch?v=rwhUpu9MfZ0 https://youtube.com/watch?v=rwhUpu9MfZ0 It’s a superb video essay and absolutely worth the watch! But to be clear, it’s also playing into the meme that paw patrol is copaganda, so take it as a mix of comedy and serious analysis :) The gist of the video is that, while paw patrol is not copaganda, it is problematic for parallel reasons. It’s also a terrible tv show as you noted.
      • dinkumthinkum 4y ago
        I wouldn’t say it is superb. On this channel every third video is about how sone random show is “copaganda”, literally. The concept of that portmanteau is already fairly stupid to begin with.
        • 4y ago
  • rnd0 4y ago
    I'm pretty sure that the lack of police accountability is a far worse problem, to be honest. It eliminates any chance that we can reform law enforcement to any significant degree.
    • tyingq 4y ago
      They are somewhat intertwined though. If police can feed anyone to the DA, and the DA can then use a variety of sketchy tactics (including junk science, but mostly other stuff) to punish them, then it all works. If it kept resulting in cases that get thrown out, the feedback loop would slow it down some.
  • brookst 4y ago
    The media is a trailing indicator. It can lead to feedback loops and reinforce the bad behaviors it represents, but things like Dexter come about because some writer hears about police using blood spatter analysis and mythologizes it. If junk science were rejected where it matters, the media wouldn’t use it either, or would at least treat it they way they do dowsing or psychics. The media will serve any demand, no matter how dumb. But there has to be demand. That’s my theory anyway.
    • Sakos 4y ago
      It's a feedback loop, yes. You need popular support from voters to be able to implement changes in police procedure. Who's going to vote for the guy who wants to "gut" law enforcement methods when all their lives TV has told them that's just what the police does and how criminals are caught? Especially when the other guy is saying "look at him, he wants to protect criminals".
    • KennyBlanken 4y ago
      It's not a trailing indicator or feedback loop when you have the police and military actively pushing narratives on TV producers and Hollywood, even controlling scripts in exchange for access to extras and military equipment/facilities.
  • Agentlien 4y ago
    I've often wondered how exactly Paw Patrol's ample budget is allocated and under what authority they operate. Moreover, does the mayor using them for her personal errands constitute an abuse of power?
  • mbg721 4y ago
    I can absolutely imagine "CSI: Phrenology", if the timeline had worked out a little differently.
  • KennyBlanken 4y ago
    Portrayal of police dogs in a positive light is necessary because otherwise people would see them for what they are: living probable-cause generators and loopholes on laws and regulations on police brutality. There's plenty of evidence police dogs are worse than a coin flip and react to their handlers - but the supreme court said that was irrelevant and upheld basing a search off a dog's reaction to be valid. Dogs also act as a proxy for brutal, violent treatment of someone.
• loteck 4y ago
  Let's make sure we add "gunshot detection" to this list, since that is the currently popular for-profit junk science product that police are pouring millions of dollars into acquiring all over the US.
  • wrigby 4y ago
    I’d be interested in understanding this better - what kind of sensors do you have in mind that are junk?
    • dsfyu404ed 4y ago
      They use microphones to detect gunshots. It works in a controlled environment but in an actual municipality the data needs enough "massaging" by human analysts to get what are still fundamentally low-quality tips it's somewhere between redundant and a waste of resources.
      • cratermoon 4y ago
        > the data needs enough "massaging" by human analysts to get what are still fundamentally low-quality tips it's somewhere between redundant and a waste of resources. And those analysts are part of a law enforcement community that is rife with biases about crime and guns, which means most of the places where the system finds gunshots are where the biased people (who by default placed the detectors according to a bias) expect to hear gunshots.
    • BryantD 4y ago
      ShotSpotter’s results are iffy, which appears to be a combination of a) ShotSpotter employees overriding the AI and b) weaknesses in the tech. There’s also some potential for reinforcing bias if you only put the sensors in neighborhoods you’re already worried about. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28264686 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28264686 has previous discussion on this from a number of viewpoints.
      • googlryas 4y ago
• nucleogenesis 4y ago
  Yeah this isn’t surprising considering these are the people who think touching or breathing near fentanyl can kill you
• feet 4y ago
  It doesn't help that law enforcement organizations seem to higher the dullest knives in the drawer, of course they can't tell bs from non-bs. Whatever confirms their biases gets green-lit
  • anigbrowl 4y ago
    The thing is that prosecutors and courts are supposedly harboring some of the sharpest knives in the drawer, yet they cheerfully accept and often pass on BS at face value when it's expedient to do so.
    • feet 4y ago
      Supposedly is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, considering the state of the system I have a hard time believing it
    • sobkas 4y ago
      > The thing is that prosecutors and courts are supposedly harboring some of the sharpest knives in the drawer, yet they cheerfully accept and often pass on BS at face value when it's expedient to do so. Court system have one basic goal, to be a test if accused party have enough money to spend on lawyers, experts and their expertise. Affluenza much?
• schwartzworld 4y ago
  Citations Needed did an episode a few years back on how TV Copaganda represents forensics as a much more solid "science" than it actually is. https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-94-the-goofy-pseudoscience-copaganda-of-tv-forensics https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-94-the-goofy-pseu...
• Waterluvian 4y ago
  I don’t think it’s that the market is full of garbage. There is a demand from law enforcement for the garbage. They want science tools to confirm their biases and broken practices.
  • 8note 4y ago
    Not really science tools. They want authoritative looking tools to confirm their biases and broken practices. A scientific tool could prove a different direction than what law enforcement wants it to say.
• Spooky23 4y ago
  Agree. The problem imo is that cops have an insular culture and are trained to control situations. That control is often an Illusion. They are also often exempt from some of the procurement rules that apply to other government entities. So they tend to accept handshake claims from people identified as “good guys” through some connection or the salesman’s former on the job status. Another issue is that they don’t pay for or maintain technology in many cases, and the organizations tend to want to fund overtime, gas and bullets over all else. Police rely on grants to buy stuff with tight timelines. So there’s a tendency to blow the federal grant quickly on something cool that some “good guy” promises.
• akudha 4y ago
  I am terrified of affecting someone's health, freedom or money (especially health and freedom) unknowingly, mistakenly etc. How do people who lie in court, use unproven tools etc to screw someone's entire life sleep at night? This is so far beyond my comprehension.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • 20after4 4y ago
    They convince themself that the person is really guilty (of something, maybe not even the thing they are accused of, just generally bad / evil / wrong color / wrong religion. really whatever it takes for them to believe someone deserves punishment) .... then the ends justify the means.
  • Bluestrike2 4y ago
    Well, for starters, they don't actually think their junk science is junk science. If you're confident that you were right all along, and you nailed the "bad guy," you're going to sleep just fine. All of these people believe they're helping further the cause of justice; very few go to work thinking "this is bullshit, I know it, and I don't care." Given their training and experience--even though it's experience in a field we later define as junk science--they become confident in their own work, and confirmation bias is omnipresent. Not just for individual cases, but for entire forensic fields and methods. It's not exactly the same, but there have been countless examples of prosecutors and police officers who, when faced with convictions overturned due to DNA evidence, continued to maintain that the person was nevertheless guilty despite that evidence. And if I'm being totally honest, I can't even imagine how tempting that fantasy would be. The alternative is acknowledging that you got it wrong and an innocent person paid an extraordinary price for your failure, losing years of their life behind bars. Worse yet, your failure allowed allowed the actual murderer/rapist/etc. to get off scot-free and potentially harm others. It's terrifying enough to imagine screwing up a single case. Now imagine screwing up hundreds or possibly thousands, after spending years using what you believed to be forensic science that turned out to be little more than bullshit. In that light, the temptation to search for alternative explanations, fight against information and evidence that contradicts your theory of the case, etc. has to be overwhelming. And while there are absolutely people in the justice system who don't succumb to that temptation, there are plenty who do.
• partdavid 4y ago
  The list goes on: instant-drug tests used for traffic stops with undeclared and uninvestigated false positive rates, drug sniffing dogs (cf. https://reason.com/2021/05/13/the-police-dog-who-cried-drugs-at-every-traffic-stop/ https://reason.com/2021/05/13/the-police-dog-who-cried-drugs... for example), burn patterns in arson investigation, etc.