3 ms·

This is a dangerous abductive leap: the victim here is one of six people who were incorrectly arrested due to faulty facial recognition, in just a single mid-si

This is a dangerous abductive leap: the victim here is one of six people who were incorrectly arrested due to faulty facial recognition, in just a single mid-sized city. Not all of them received national news stories, and almost certainly never will. We're reading (rightfully) about this woman's story because it has all of the "right" parts: her innocence is painfully obvious, she's pregnant, a professional, a working mother of two, etc. There are others just like her, and the evidence we have points to there being many others just like her; they deserve attention as well, and not to be erased as statistical anomalies.

rootusrootus 3y ago
> This is a dangerous abductive leap I think I could make a plausibly convincing argument that the rate of abuse is low enough that the damage to police<->public relationship from media playing up these incidents has actually led to a more dangerous situation than the incidents themselves. Not quite ready to go there, but I think it's worth at least considering that everyone can fall prey to media hype and blow little things entirely out of proportion, leading to a worse overall outcome. We do want to improve oversight of the police, but making them out as a public enemy seems like it might be counterproductive.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  We live in an open society: the public is entitled to know when the police arrest citizens based on faulty evidence. Nobody made them perform an arrest here or in the other five cases; any damage to the police's image in the eyes of the public can be identified solely with their own actions. In this situation, the reporting seems pretty dispassionate to me (arguably more than it should be, given that a pregnant woman was arrested for a crime she manifestly could not have committed). I don't see a lack of proportion here.

3 ms·

This is a dangerous abductive leap: the victim here is one of six people who were incorrectly arrested due to faulty facial recognition, in just a single mid-si

by woodruffw 3y ago

rootusrootus 3y ago
> This is a dangerous abductive leap I think I could make a plausibly convincing argument that the rate of abuse is low enough that the damage to police<->public relationship from media playing up these incidents has actually led to a more dangerous situation than the incidents themselves. Not quite ready to go there, but I think it's worth at least considering that everyone can fall prey to media hype and blow little things entirely out of proportion, leading to a worse overall outcome. We do want to improve oversight of the police, but making them out as a public enemy seems like it might be counterproductive.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  We live in an open society: the public is entitled to know when the police arrest citizens based on faulty evidence. Nobody made them perform an arrest here or in the other five cases; any damage to the police's image in the eyes of the public can be identified solely with their own actions. In this situation, the reporting seems pretty dispassionate to me (arguably more than it should be, given that a pregnant woman was arrested for a crime she manifestly could not have committed). I don't see a lack of proportion here.