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If you do read the story further, and the NBC story it links to, you'll see that these 16 000 arrest warrants were issued by the Ferguson Municipal Court; they'

by dghf 12y ago

If you do read the story further, and the NBC story it links to, you'll see that these 16 000 arrest warrants were issued by the Ferguson Municipal Court; they're not merely warrants known to Ferguson police but originating elsewhere. > It tells us that people are comparing numbers in a way that does not make sense. From the HuffPo article: "To give some context as to how truly extreme this is, a comparison may be useful. In 2014, the Boston Municipal Court System, for a city of 645,000 people, issued about 2,300 criminal warrants. The Ferguson Municipal Court issued 9,000, for a population 1/30th the size of Boston's." Seems like a reasonable comparison to me.

ptaipale 12y ago
"arrest warrants on more than half of its citizens" -- that is clearly not true. Many of the warrants are on people who are not its citizens. There sure are problems in places like Ferguson, but this comparison seems not entirely honest. Why do you compare arrest warrants of a single municipal court vs. number of residents in that small municipality, and then the arrest warrants of a much larger municipal court system and number of residents in that much larger municipal system? Of course these ratios are different, because by nature a single, small municipality issues many arrest warrants for people who are not residents, while a larger system mostly handles people living inside its constituency. Compare St. Louis metropolitan area and Boston metropolitan area, then you see the scale of problems. It is there, so there should be no need to do flimsy tricks on apples and oranges. The war on drugs sure brings problems, and this is one symptom.
- dghf 12y ago
  > Of course these ratios are different, because by nature a single, small municipality issues many arrest warrants for people who are not residents, while a larger system mostly handles people living inside its constituency. Could you explain that in more detail? I would have assumed, perhaps naively, that the larger municipality would have had more non-residents (commuters, tourists, out-of-town shoppers, people coming in for an evening out) than the smaller one. And even accepting your point for the sake of argument, can that really account for the Ferguson courts issuing a hundred times more warrants per head of population than Boston's?
  - ptaipale 12y ago
    When the small municipality is part of a larger metro area, those commuters and out-of-town shoppers come from a large area and pass through this small administrational area, so it is natural that the ratio of things like arrest warrants can be large when compared to number of residents. To understand this outside the context of Ferguson and the racially loaded atmosphere in this discussion, take for an example the City of London Police. It's a police force that handles an area which has just 7400 residents. (Yes, that's the resident population in City of London). The police force for this area has 1300 employees, 750 of them full-time police officers. Are we saying that the ratio of policemen to residents is a sign of a horrible police state in London, with every tenth person in the city a police officer? No, of course not. There's a huge amount of crime? Well, many think so. The ratio is so silly precisely because we're looking at a small area that belongs to a greater metropolis.
    - dghf 12y ago
      > It's a police force that handles an area which has just 7400 residents. And about 300,000 daily commuters. What's the commuter/resident ratio for Ferguson? The City of London Police also have certain national responsibilities, in the fields of fraud and intellectual property.
      - ptaipale 12y ago
        I suppose the problem in Ferguson is more about out-of-town shoppers than commuters. Specifically, out-of-town shoppers for controlled substances. So this is yet another symptom/consequence/whatever in the war on drugs. Just because you made me interested, I googled and found e.g. this: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-darren-wilson-arrest-20140929-story.html http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-darren-wilson-arrest-201... Should Brooks, a resident, and Johnson, a non-resident, have been arrested? According to law, yes. Is this fight on drugs working? Probably not. But should the residence status impact whether they are arrested? No. Does this make it silly to compare number of arrest warrants to number of residents? To some extent, yes. No doubt that the situation is worse in St. Louis than in Boston, but it's not just one Ferguson.

by dghf 12y ago

ptaipale 12y ago

"arrest warrants on more than half of its citizens" -- that is clearly not true. Many of the warrants are on people who are not its citizens. There sure are problems in places like Ferguson, but this comparison seems not entirely honest. Why do you compare arrest warrants of a single municipal court vs. number of residents in that small municipality, and then the arrest warrants of a much larger municipal court system and number of residents in that much larger municipal system? Of course these ratios are different, because by nature a single, small municipality issues many arrest warrants for people who are not residents, while a larger system mostly handles people living inside its constituency. Compare St. Louis metropolitan area and Boston metropolitan area, then you see the scale of problems. It is there, so there should be no need to do flimsy tricks on apples and oranges. The war on drugs sure brings problems, and this is one symptom.

dghf 12y ago
> Of course these ratios are different, because by nature a single, small municipality issues many arrest warrants for people who are not residents, while a larger system mostly handles people living inside its constituency. Could you explain that in more detail? I would have assumed, perhaps naively, that the larger municipality would have had more non-residents (commuters, tourists, out-of-town shoppers, people coming in for an evening out) than the smaller one. And even accepting your point for the sake of argument, can that really account for the Ferguson courts issuing a hundred times more warrants per head of population than Boston's?
- ptaipale 12y ago
  When the small municipality is part of a larger metro area, those commuters and out-of-town shoppers come from a large area and pass through this small administrational area, so it is natural that the ratio of things like arrest warrants can be large when compared to number of residents. To understand this outside the context of Ferguson and the racially loaded atmosphere in this discussion, take for an example the City of London Police. It's a police force that handles an area which has just 7400 residents. (Yes, that's the resident population in City of London). The police force for this area has 1300 employees, 750 of them full-time police officers. Are we saying that the ratio of policemen to residents is a sign of a horrible police state in London, with every tenth person in the city a police officer? No, of course not. There's a huge amount of crime? Well, many think so. The ratio is so silly precisely because we're looking at a small area that belongs to a greater metropolis.
  - dghf 12y ago
    > It's a police force that handles an area which has just 7400 residents. And about 300,000 daily commuters. What's the commuter/resident ratio for Ferguson? The City of London Police also have certain national responsibilities, in the fields of fraud and intellectual property.
    - ptaipale 12y ago
      I suppose the problem in Ferguson is more about out-of-town shoppers than commuters. Specifically, out-of-town shoppers for controlled substances. So this is yet another symptom/consequence/whatever in the war on drugs. Just because you made me interested, I googled and found e.g. this: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-darren-wilson-arrest-20140929-story.html http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-darren-wilson-arrest-201... Should Brooks, a resident, and Johnson, a non-resident, have been arrested? According to law, yes. Is this fight on drugs working? Probably not. But should the residence status impact whether they are arrested? No. Does this make it silly to compare number of arrest warrants to number of residents? To some extent, yes. No doubt that the situation is worse in St. Louis than in Boston, but it's not just one Ferguson.