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>With regard to the article, why is it obvious that police are putting surveillance in areas with the highest rates of gun crime? Because there are nicer neigh

>With regard to the article, why is it obvious that police are putting surveillance in areas with the highest rates of gun crime? Because there are nicer neighborhoods and less than nice neighborhoods? In so far as I can tell this is true to various degrees in every place I've ever lived or visited. Colloquially, some neighborhoods have manicured lawns, other neighborhoods have cars on blocks - it's 'obvious'[0] that the latter warrants more policing. [0]The truth of it is arguable, perhaps, but it is very obvious.

Blahah 3y ago
> it's 'obvious'[0] that the latter warrants more policing. Is it? I don't see it as at all obvious. It seems utterly ridiculous to me to increase policing in sync with socioeconomic deprivation. The blindingly obvious thing is to invest in solving the problems that cause the disparity, not to criminalize people who are living in poverty.
- philwelch 3y ago
  Crime is one of the problems that causes the disparity.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
jakelazaroff 3y ago
It’s actually incredibly unclear why houses with cars on blocks would warrant more policing than houses with manicured lawns. Why don’t you elaborate?
- resolutebat 3y ago
  "Incredibly unclear"? Really? Not the OP, but let's spell it out: Manicuring a lawn is expensive and serves no useful purpose, so most practitioners have disposable income and/or spare time, and care about keeping up appearances. Putting a car up on blocks implies it's being used for spare parts, which is generally not something the well-off need to engage in (they buy new and use professionals for repairs as needed), and having one on your front lawn in particular implies that you value spare parts more than appearances. So both are reasonable proxies of wealth, and wealth correlates inversely with the kind of violent crime you could detect with gunshots.
  - jakelazaroff 3y ago
    The reason it’s unclear is that nothing either of you have said has anything to do with policing. Edit: you added the correlation bit after I replied, but why do you believe that to be the case? If you have more police in an area, of course they’ll hear more gunshots there. That doesn’t necessarily mean there actually are more gunshots. What you’re actually saying is “poor people need more policing”, which is A) offensive and B) counterproductive.
    - resolutebat 3y ago
      Why? Let's imagine a city divided in two halves of equal population. West City is poor and has a high crime rate, East City is rich and has a low crime rate. Should police resources be allocated equally to both? How about public health facilities or welfare payments?
      - jakelazaroff 3y ago
        In the real world, wealth is relatively easily measured and crime rate is not. The question no one seems to be willing to answer is: why do you believe poor people commit more crime?
        resolutebat 3y ago
        It's not a matter of belief, there's a well known link between poverty and crime. The ultimate reason is that if you are poor, the proceeds of crime (theft, burglary, robbery etc) are comparatively more meaningful than to somebody who is wealthy, while the cost of getting caught is comparatively less. A rich professional does not steal loaves of bread to feed their family, because they don't need to and they risk losing their entire livelihood if they do. If you're poor, unemployed and your kids are hungry, the risk/reward calculus is very different.
        jakelazaroff 3y ago
        The most costly form of theft — by far — is not burglary or robbery but wage theft. That is a crime overwhelmingly committed by rich professionals and rarely enforced. So if we really want to get serious about stopping theft, we should allocate much more resources to investigating businesses than putting beat cops on the street. There’s not actually a well known link between poverty and crime in the way you imply. We’ve just decided that we only care about some people committing some crime some of the time.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  What seems more obvious to me is that the more surveillance you do in any area (regardless of whether the lawns are manicured), the more crime you're going to find there. If you put 5 cops patrolling the wealthiest, nicest areas of your city, and 1 cop patrolling a less wealthy less nice area, the 5 cops will find more crime than the 1 cop. Even if you don't assume crime is uniformly distributed (which it probably isn't), it's logical that more surveillance -> more crime found.
  - jakelazaroff 3y ago
    Yeah, that’s the original point I made which is currently being downvoted.
    - ryandrake 3y ago
      I think there's a lot of quiet classism going on in this thread, and it's easier for these guys to just drive by and hit the downvote button than to actually speak their mind and tell us why they think poor people -> criminals. The causation more likely goes the other way: When an area gets the reputation of being higher crime (because of reality or because of bias from more police saturation), that area becomes cheaper to live in, and poorer people can then afford to live there.
      - WalterBright 3y ago
        In Seattle, the bank tellers are behind bulletproof glass. In the surrounding communities, there's no bulletproof glass. I don't think it's more police presence that causes banks to install the armor. More likely it's the lack of police presence that results in armored banks.
        seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        Uhm, I’ve only seen one bank in Seattle like that (in pioneer square), maybe there are more south Seattle? Definitely my Bank of America branch in Ballard doesn’t have bullet proof glass.

Blahah 3y ago

> it's 'obvious'[0] that the latter warrants more policing. Is it? I don't see it as at all obvious. It seems utterly ridiculous to me to increase policing in sync with socioeconomic deprivation. The blindingly obvious thing is to invest in solving the problems that cause the disparity, not to criminalize people who are living in poverty.

philwelch 3y ago
Crime is one of the problems that causes the disparity.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

jakelazaroff 3y ago

It’s actually incredibly unclear why houses with cars on blocks would warrant more policing than houses with manicured lawns. Why don’t you elaborate?

resolutebat 3y ago
"Incredibly unclear"? Really? Not the OP, but let's spell it out: Manicuring a lawn is expensive and serves no useful purpose, so most practitioners have disposable income and/or spare time, and care about keeping up appearances. Putting a car up on blocks implies it's being used for spare parts, which is generally not something the well-off need to engage in (they buy new and use professionals for repairs as needed), and having one on your front lawn in particular implies that you value spare parts more than appearances. So both are reasonable proxies of wealth, and wealth correlates inversely with the kind of violent crime you could detect with gunshots.
- jakelazaroff 3y ago
  The reason it’s unclear is that nothing either of you have said has anything to do with policing. Edit: you added the correlation bit after I replied, but why do you believe that to be the case? If you have more police in an area, of course they’ll hear more gunshots there. That doesn’t necessarily mean there actually are more gunshots. What you’re actually saying is “poor people need more policing”, which is A) offensive and B) counterproductive.
  - resolutebat 3y ago
    Why? Let's imagine a city divided in two halves of equal population. West City is poor and has a high crime rate, East City is rich and has a low crime rate. Should police resources be allocated equally to both? How about public health facilities or welfare payments?
    - jakelazaroff 3y ago
      In the real world, wealth is relatively easily measured and crime rate is not. The question no one seems to be willing to answer is: why do you believe poor people commit more crime?
      - resolutebat 3y ago
        It's not a matter of belief, there's a well known link between poverty and crime. The ultimate reason is that if you are poor, the proceeds of crime (theft, burglary, robbery etc) are comparatively more meaningful than to somebody who is wealthy, while the cost of getting caught is comparatively less. A rich professional does not steal loaves of bread to feed their family, because they don't need to and they risk losing their entire livelihood if they do. If you're poor, unemployed and your kids are hungry, the risk/reward calculus is very different.
        jakelazaroff 3y ago
        The most costly form of theft — by far — is not burglary or robbery but wage theft. That is a crime overwhelmingly committed by rich professionals and rarely enforced. So if we really want to get serious about stopping theft, we should allocate much more resources to investigating businesses than putting beat cops on the street. There’s not actually a well known link between poverty and crime in the way you imply. We’ve just decided that we only care about some people committing some crime some of the time.
ryandrake 3y ago
What seems more obvious to me is that the more surveillance you do in any area (regardless of whether the lawns are manicured), the more crime you're going to find there. If you put 5 cops patrolling the wealthiest, nicest areas of your city, and 1 cop patrolling a less wealthy less nice area, the 5 cops will find more crime than the 1 cop. Even if you don't assume crime is uniformly distributed (which it probably isn't), it's logical that more surveillance -> more crime found.
- jakelazaroff 3y ago
  Yeah, that’s the original point I made which is currently being downvoted.
  - ryandrake 3y ago
    I think there's a lot of quiet classism going on in this thread, and it's easier for these guys to just drive by and hit the downvote button than to actually speak their mind and tell us why they think poor people -> criminals. The causation more likely goes the other way: When an area gets the reputation of being higher crime (because of reality or because of bias from more police saturation), that area becomes cheaper to live in, and poorer people can then afford to live there.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      In Seattle, the bank tellers are behind bulletproof glass. In the surrounding communities, there's no bulletproof glass. I don't think it's more police presence that causes banks to install the armor. More likely it's the lack of police presence that results in armored banks.
      - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        Uhm, I’ve only seen one bank in Seattle like that (in pioneer square), maybe there are more south Seattle? Definitely my Bank of America branch in Ballard doesn’t have bullet proof glass.