5 ms·

> 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 lar

by 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.
    - dghf 12y ago
      Well, your comment on London got me interested, and while I couldn't find arrest-warrant stats for the City, I did find this: http://www.met.police.uk/foi/pdfs/disclosure_2014/april_2014/2014030000365.pdf http://www.met.police.uk/foi/pdfs/disclosure_2014/april_2014... Among Greater London's boroughs (not including the City), the out and out winner for outstanding arrest warrants, with more than twice as many as the runner-up (in both absolute terms and per head of population), was the City of Westminster. The vast majority of these -- 535 of 587 -- were for "other offences" (i.e., not actual bodily harm, burglary, robbery, possession of an offensive weapon, serious violence, or sexual offences). What do you suppose that's all about? Can't all be MPs fiddling their expenses.

by dghf 12y ago

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.
  - dghf 12y ago
    Well, your comment on London got me interested, and while I couldn't find arrest-warrant stats for the City, I did find this: http://www.met.police.uk/foi/pdfs/disclosure_2014/april_2014/2014030000365.pdf http://www.met.police.uk/foi/pdfs/disclosure_2014/april_2014... Among Greater London's boroughs (not including the City), the out and out winner for outstanding arrest warrants, with more than twice as many as the runner-up (in both absolute terms and per head of population), was the City of Westminster. The vast majority of these -- 535 of 587 -- were for "other offences" (i.e., not actual bodily harm, burglary, robbery, possession of an offensive weapon, serious violence, or sexual offences). What do you suppose that's all about? Can't all be MPs fiddling their expenses.