But if most of our money is going to the police, then what resources are available to do the longer-term work on gangs and neighborhoods?

In software development terms (since this is HN), it would be like spending more and more money on QA and support because your products have so many problems. At some point a wise manager is going to say "wait, we should invest in better product development instead."

If you have infinite funding, you can do both. If you don't have infinite funding, you need to look at changing your allocation.

Put yourself in the shoes of an innocent PoC who's house just got robbed. Will not having cops available to your neighborhood to respond to the call make you feel more or less prejudiced against? Will they derive that much comfort in knowing that maybe, in one or two generations thing MIGHT be slightly less bad. And will the criminal elements, seeing the lowering in police response, not grow more bold and escalate?

Aside from that, I think there is more to consider than just what will appeal to public opinion; dry attempts to shift one’s words to match opinion polls is how many politicians lose elections by coming off as pandering. There is a sense of urgency and emotion in the original phrase that might be important in the broader picture and in the long term.

This solution urgently needs to be considered by San Francisco; the housing shortage will be immediately reversed and ASP will plummet, allowing POCs to populate the area, creating racial justice. https://www.zillow.com/minneapolis-mn/

> People saying “defund the police” are not advocating the complete elimination of police forces

And Minneapolis is absolutely not completely eliminating their police force.

Minneapolis council member Phillipe Cunningham said [1]:

> ”This isn't like, tomorrow we're not going to have a police department and we're going to have this huge gap," he said. "There will be intentional transition and investments and policies. I just want to make sure folks understand that there's not going to be suddenly no one to call when they need help.“

Councilman Jeremiah Ellison said [2]:

> “I don’t want there to be this confusion of just, that there’s going to be nobody doing anything, that there’s gonna be nobody solving murders. No,” Ellison said. “We’re going to absolutely make sure there are systems in place to address an active shooter situation, for example.”

In the link you just provided:

> Councilman Jeremiah Ellison, who represents North Minneapolis, said he would not frame what the Council was doing as defunding the police, but rather as “funding a different safety strategy.”

What concerns me is there are many people who are implying (if not outright saying) that people don’t want safety. And frankly that’s just silly. Every proposal I’ve seen has had community safety at its forefront. And a gradual shifting of funds towards alternatives to our (USians) current version of police does not mean that communities suddenly don’t value safety and stability.

Either way, Minneapolis is absolutely not going to eliminate their police departments, no matter how panicky certain news orgs try to make people. They’re going to actually, over time, dismantle their current clusterfuck which makes communities’ quality of life terrible, and actually implement real changes. What does this look like? We don’t know yet, but at least they’re doing more than empty platitudes. They readily say “We’re going to make mistakes along the way.” but at least they’re finally actually addressing the situation and willing to do the work.

[1] https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/06/07/vetoproof-majority-...

[2] https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/george-floyd/minne...

This is from Obama's town hall on June 3rd. The speaker is on the city council in Minneapolis, which seems to be leading the charge on this issue.

*This isn't an example of an area that is actively dismantling their police force. But this person's view is that the target should be no police at all, not reduced police responsibilities.

Edit: for reference, the list of principles that were issued to each new police officer in London from 1829 onward.

1. The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder

2. The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police actions

3. Police must secure the willing co-operation of the public in voluntary observance of the law to be able to secure and maintain the respect of the public

4. The degree of co-operation of the public that can be secured diminishes proportionately to the necessity of the use of physical force

5. Police seek and preserve public favour not by pandering to public opinion but by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service to the law

6. Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient

7. Police, at all times, should maintain a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police; the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence

8. Police should always direct their action strictly towards their functions and never appear to usurp the powers of the judiciary

9. The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it

I find much wisdom there, and as I go down that list I find it hard not to think for each item of counter-anecdotes from the news about US policing in recent years.

Take the UK for example. The UK also has a history of importing slaves, it also has minorities living in poor neighborhoods, it has a similar degree of income inequality as the US, but the rate at which UK police kill civilians is orders of magnitude lower. The UK has as many police killings in a quarter century as the US has in a month, despite having a fifth of the population.

The US police system’s approach seems to be to fight fire with fire, not prevent the fires in the first place. Hence the call to defund the police and invest in prevention. But I think defunding is only part, the police need to be retrained to prevent and deescalate, not to respond to all resistance with deadly force.

He has been pulled over many times in the area so is cautious, but it turns out that is a problem too. https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/h0xxva/comment/ftq6...

I bet you didn’t intend it to be but your argument basically blames the victim, when it’s the oppressor who is guilty of a crime - not the oppressed.

It’s the fault of the oppressor for oppressing, that is the blocker to progress, not the response of the oppressed.

The police are what need to change because they were and are a core part of the problem.

Your other points may also have relevance, but are irrelevant until the root cause - which I describe above - is addressed.

If your point was that because of America’s history of racial violence and terror, we need to defund (as opposed to reform with Peelian principles) the police since they were a key component of that system, or something along those lines, then please forgive my mis-understanding :).

The main issue this represents in your story is that it's not correct for the most part to present an "Australian experience" of policing, as the laws and enforcement are state level matters (of which there are ~8). A level i think we're missing might be city-based law enforcement? Each state has its own laws, population, and police force. while it's true we're not going to have as much variation as say France vs Sierra Leone, policing in QLD/ACT/NSW/NT/VIC is liable to be fundamentally different. furthermore, we've got federal gun control, and in a federal welfare system that would almost look like a universal income to many American contexts (indeed, I recall one discussion I had recently with an online friend about where the UBI rates being discussed as impossible were effectively the ones our welfare system currently provides), notwithstanding the difference in practice between remote indigenous/rural/urban/ migrant law enforcement.

All this can make it somewhat frustrating drawing analogies between the American experience and the local one (and I'm not just talking about Americans drawing lessons from ours, I also mean Australians being influenced by portrayals of American law enforcement and issues in popular media/culture). I imagine that's just as frustrating as pretending that law enforcement is the same across a nation as diverse as America.

The state had 32 years of unbroken rule by the national party of Australia, which ended, not coincidentally to the end of the rule or this topic, after an inquiry into police corruption at the end of the 80's. It is also no coincidence that the state was the founding site of Australia's one nation party. As you move further north you begin to have more isolation and contact with indigenous communities, but its also a diverse and complex state, hosting both the brisbane/gold-coast and cairns areas, hubs of tourism that ferment more "liberal-eco" attitudes in contrast to some of the rural/farming/conservative bents. There is a significant military/mining presence in the north, as well as a significant retiree community/attraction because of the climate/weather.

I'm trying to describe it as objectively as I can. Its also stunningly beautiful and I grew up there :P I'd joke and say to my american readers, it would be like using florida/texas/alabama/bahamas/california as representative of the practices of US policing, but that is an honestly terrible analogy.

My run ins with them are generally pretty decent, mj isnt legal in nz but if they catch you they're generally more annoyed youre not doing it at home. Because then they have to write you up.

Australian police are much more americanized, theyre far more interested in catching people out with sniffer dogs at train stations and the like. NZ you dont see this sort of thing because criminalizing drugs is well proven to be ineffective.

I would say the major difference is that nz cops arent armed by default. Their guns are locked in the boot of their car and takes some serious circumstances to get them drawn.

America it seems like all you need is a traffic stop at night.

The cops in Oz are truly awful! There was a recent scandal where cops were strip-searching teenage girls just for fun. Cops there will also spend more time fining people on bicycles that don't have a bell, than they would in any important crimes.

It differs a bit by state. Apparently NSW and Vic have it worst, although QLD is right up there. Of course in the nation's capital, Canberra, they have the soft ones.

People like blaming it on poverty and lack of education funding and all kinds of other things. Yet compare former Soviet countries to the US. All of them spend less on education than the US does. Their populations are likely poorer than even the poor in the US. Their quality of life is lower, however, gangs aren't as big of an issue because they're not allowed to fester. The culture doesn't view gangs as something to aspire to. Being part of a gang isn't seen as "cool" by large groups of people nor is failing in education.

I do agree that a lack of education and subsequent opportunities is a large part of the problem, but it's probably not a lack of education funding that's causing it. Learning simply isn't considered "cool" by a lot of people. This puts them on a path with few opportunities, which leads to their kids having fewer opportunities.

What makes all of this even worse is that prisons in the US are breeding grounds for gangs. As long as things like that remain a part of society you won't be getting rid of gangs no matter how much money you throw at education.

Harsh policing would not change culture, even if it was done fairly, in the interest of community welfare. But U.S. policing is far from fair: U.S. police instill fear, rather than respect in the public, even in many moderately well-off areas that are free of street gangs. Legal and regulated prostitution, a definitive end to the drug war, would allow us to significantly defund the police, and pour those into efforts that could actually help. Moreover, this would decimate the revenue streams of many street gangs, which immediately reduces their "coolness factor".

There is some concern that most of the money freed up by this could end up poured into efforts that have a track record of not working. Alas, I think this is fairly likely, but it's no big loss: currently, all of that same money is being poured into different efforts that still definitely do not work. And if we get lucky, a fraction of the money may actually go to efforts that actually have a positive impact on cultural problems.

Here's some reading on them in Russia: https://www.londonmet.ac.uk/news/articles/svetlana-stephenso...

I'm going to challenge you to find a citation to back up this belief before you continue going through life believing it, because it's a dangerous one, rooted in ignorance, that causes racism.

Ideally we could spend 100% on the long term but that is impractical.

1. Police are often a large percentage of a city budget, so if all city expenditures were decreased equally, it would inevitably look like the police were giving up more in absolute terms.

2. If the current solution to the problem is only more policing, then the only thing in the "solution to this problem" sub-budget that could be reduced is the police. In other words if X is the amount allocated to the problem and X is currently 100% police, it may be worth rebalancing X to a more diversified portfolio.

1. That's the only thing they suggested, and they framed it as either/or "If you have infinite funding, you can do both." (Implies we cant do both, because we obviously dont have infinite funding)

2. The overarching context of this conversation is about "defunding the police"

>If the current solution to the problem is only more policing

Is anyone seriously suggesting that? If so, its safe to discount these types of facile absolutist views ("we need more police to solve the problem" & "We need to eliminate the police to solve the problem")

Edit: I'd like to add thay I jusy reviewed my cities budget, and was surprised to see how large the law enforcement budget was compared to everything else. Thank you for bringing that to my attention.

This may be utopian and fails the "perfect is the enemy of good" maxim. Meanwhile entire neighbourhoods if not cities (and sometimes entire countries) are anti-social, where the average resident has to suffer through a constant threat of violence.

Society is varied across county, city, state and country lines, and we are in our infancy in understanding what policies work, when, where and why. Combine that with no overt expected outcome, i.e. do we expect this policy to have an absolute outcome (assert(absolute_wealth > X)) or if we want a comparative outcome (assert(relative_income > 0.77)), and we end up with arguments about spending that are judged by rhetoric rather than success or failure on what should be a knowable scale.

Being more overt in how society judges government spending, especially when the goal is a social good, gives us the best shot at spending more on effective interventions, and less on ineffective ones. I think it also helps mitigate the circus nature of politics, where politicians gain kudos simply for with their spending decisions, and are rarely held accountable to actual outcomes. Like TDD, it would by no means be a panacea, but it would be a step in the right direction.

While it true that a policy can be fantastic for society, but exacerbate inequalities (i.e. get better at extracted value from smart people), or be terrible for society but reduce inequality (just make sure everyone has nothing and job done), if we at least tested the policy along some overt lines, and threw out the very worst policies, I can't imagine social spending would have worse outcomes, if only until the loopholes are worked out.

Neighbourhood gangs, esp in chicago are territorial and they try to "protect the neighbourhoods." (I think they do cause more problems) This came up during the riots earlier this month. The police were stretched way too thin. Gangs did stop the looters and rioters from extending into their neighbourhoods. (Deeper within Logan Square and Little Village were an example)

The conversations aren't about less police, they're about defunding the police and putting that money to better use. If the police choose to reduce their numbers in order to afford riot gear, tear gas guns, armored personnel carriers, warrior training, and all the other BS well then there won't be armies of them assaulting the public.

> Folks in neighborhoods living with the constant threat of gang violence don't have the luxury to sit in their aeron chairs and argue about defunding the police. They face the very real threat of themselves or their loved ones being shot on the streets and statistically not by police.

Throwing police at the problem of gang violence hasn't solved it. It hasn't made the neighborhoods safer. If overwhelming violence quelled violence, why has the Taliban outlasted two first world armies back by trillions of dollars?

That is not true. We have solid data from New York during the Giuliani era and more recently Camden, NJ. Whether or not we agree with how they accomplished that is another matter.

For example in New York a massive increase in arrests for nonviolent crime and much more proactively policing in order to check for warrants etc.

The truth is that nothing works in isolation. In New York we also saw a migration of younger professionals back into the city which reduced crime by forcing out poorer residents via gentrification.

The reality is that in any nation with a high prevalence of gun ownership combined with a large portion of the population without enough to provide for themselves and often, due to criminal records, no other choice but to commit crimes to provide for themselves.

This data shows 9 out of 10 people stopped were innocent. It also heavily showed that black and latino people were stopped much more frequently. https://www.nyclu.org/en/Stop-and-Frisk-data

I am glad that stop and frisk was ruled unconstitutional. https://civilrights.org/edfund/resource/nypds-infamous-stop-...

cutting police budget = less police

And that's not necessarily a bad thing if those dollars are invested in other types of emergency responders.

However, what I wanted to raise was this:

> the fact is... violent (fatal and nonfatal) crimes do happen at a much higher rate in poor neighborhoods

I think this statement is worth examining.

We certainly know that poor neighborhoods contact the police more often and that the police arrest more people (and record more crimes) in poor neighborhoods. As I said above, I have ever reason to believe residents of poor neighborhoods suffer crimes more often and that each crime does proportionally greater damage to their lives.

I also think that, as people get access to more resources, they are reasons to believe they are less likely to contact the police in all circumstances. That, of course, is the other way to read the stats you linked about poor neighborhoods contacting police. Police clearance rates are often low and contacting the police rarely directly addresses the harm caused by a crime. Also, because we are most likely to be harmed by people in our social circles, wealthier people are more likely to be harmed by more powerful people. These are all reasons that wealthier victims of crimes might choose not to contact the police and generate statistics about them. It's difficult to point to data about what isn't recorded (of course), but I think the feminist movement has done some great work trying to document how under-reported rapes (and other sexual crimes) are.

I just want to encourage skepticism about the systems through which data is collected. Structural elements strongly bias the data that's collected and, if we're serious about changing the system, I think it's advantageous to be skeptical of every element of the system.

> I think this statement is worth examining.

Are you trying to suggest that there are a large number of unreported, undiscovered murders in more affluent areas? Because that's one of the the kinds of violent crime that we're pretty sure happen disproportionately in poor or black communities. (you're more likely to be murdered if you're poor, and more likely to be murdered if you're black, with IIRC the richest 20% of blacks still being murdered more often than the poorest 20% of non-hispanic whites)

No. I didn't mention murders - is there a reason you're focused on them?

I'm saying that the same forces the put poor communities of color at risk for crime also likely disrupt the collection of statistics in more wealthy & powerful communities. This is important because both sides of the ratio matter. I believe there's more crime in vulnerable communities and I believe that we likely over-estimate how much more. This generates statistics that support the over-policing of poor communities.

I focused on murders because the grandparent DID mention them, and because murder rate is much less exposed to reporting bias than other crimes.

I agree that murder is one of the crimes least likely to go unreported, but they are still subject to the same pressures (even if those pressures are less efficacious). I'd be interested to see, for instance, if the ratio of murders to missing people changes as you move up the socioeconomic ladder.

But there's another ratio - violent crimes per murder. If there's 100 assaults for every murder in wealthy white communities, and 100 assaults for every murder in poor black communities, that ALSO tells us something.

Murders are harder to skew. That means that you should focus MORE on those statistics, not less.

Better training, more black officers, more rules around the use of force seem like better options. Of course, I don't really know what the people in these neighborhoods want so I am open to some alternatives, but ranting about predictive policing doesn't seem to solve much unless the answer really is defund the police.

From my understanding police are able to leave departments and not necessarily have their complaint history follow them to new departments. So if they have racked up complaints then they could move to a new department and essentially have a clean record.

If this solution ended up filtering out most black police, would racism be more or less of a problem than it is now?

The problem is the police budget has dwarfed and subsumed all non-violent requests as well.

> The police are expected to deal with a whole community in a holistic way.

Which they manifestly fail to do effectively, for structural reasons. A paramilitary force with minimal entry education requirements whose training disproportionately focuses on the proper use of force to secure compliance is not a good general purpose community response tool.

The problem is that supposedly non-violent situations can turn violent or threatening very quickly. So, all officers need to be trained in use of force.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/police-aca...

"The majority of law-enforcement academies in the United States are loosely modeled on military boot camps."

https://www.charleskochinstitute.org/issue-areas/criminal-ju...

"Over 8,000 law enforcement agencies have utilized the 1033 program to access more than $6 billion worth of military equipment such as night-vision goggles, machine guns, armored vehicles, bayonets, grenade launchers, and military aircraft ...

... One study found that use of paramilitary-style teams by law enforcement increased by more than 1,400 percent since 1980."

https://cjmasters.eku.edu/sites/cjmasters.eku.edu/files/21st...

---

Or, just apply your eyes and look at the photos of St. Louis police with sniper rifles trained on crowds of people during the Ferguson protests. One is here:

https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/08/14/ferguson-and...

Showing up with a gun to some events is guaranteed to make things worse.

For welfare checks or mental illness incidents, then of course a social worker or analogue could be a better choice. For investigating criminal acts, that’s specifically what police do.

If someone calls in a rape, what happens when the suspect is still there? Rape is a violent crime and showing up with a gun is absolutely appropriate. It’s ridiculous to suggest violent crimes should be investigated by people who aren’t trained in criminal investigation nor trained to deal with violent and dangerous suspects. Is the social worker going to carry handcuffs? Are they going to be trained in apprehending suspects? If so, then that means the social worker is now a cop.

Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water here.

As to a sidearm – if I'd just been raped, someone showing up to protect me with a sidearm sounds like just the ticket.

Not sure what you are saying about a suspect not being a random stranger, that doesn't seem particularly relevant to whether or not the suspect is still there.

The police actually have a terrible record when it comes to handling the crime of rape.

They downplay it, deprioritize it, etc. Read about the massive backlog of rape kits.

Literally - rape crimes that are reported to the police, and that they deprioritize or ignore.

https://www.rainn.org/articles/addressing-rape-kit-backlog

So, I'm all for reasonable discussion and receiving feedback about what was unclear or counterproductive in what I said.

But, I encourage future readers to take silence as a sign that people really didn't have any facts or logic to back up their side of the argument ; ).

Even though that might be a bit unfair, since it's not as if everyone is on here all the time.

But I think it's important for technologists - scientists, engineers, etc - to embrace their role in society at large and the power we have.

And part of that involves discussing social issues, as frustrating as some of us might find discussing these non-quantifiable fields.

Hey, it can't be worse than having to talk about the latest hot new addition to the JS ecosystem ;)

Because this is statistically the form of policing most likely to get cops shot.

> Why does every cop in a school need a gun?

A symptom of America's school shooting problem. When your child is being gunned down you'll probably wish the police there were armed.

2018 was much worse with 37 kids killed in school shootings.

This is roughly the same as the number of unarmed black people shot and killed by police in the line of duty (at least this number has been trending downward for several years).

Reporting of school shootings is notoriously unreliable:

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/08/27/640323347/the-sch...

The 2018 numbers I was referencing was from this 10 year overview [3].

[1] - https://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/school-shooting...

[2] - https://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/school-shooting...

[3] - https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2019/07/us/ten-years-of-scho...

Because civilians have shot and killed police during traffic stops? And not just with guns. I seem to remember a road rage case in Colorado where the raging driver shot and killed another driver with a crossbow.

All crimes are selective in enforcement; reporting, police response, and prosecution all, for all crimes, have both unintentional biases and deliberate prioritization and acts of discretion involved.

> There's a worrying trend in the conversation these days that has shifted from "there's a serious problem with racism in how police go about their job" to "we need less police".

Well, worrying to people who are invested in the biases of the present law enforcement structure, and who perceive it as working well for their interests.

> Folks in neighborhoods living with the constant threat of gang violence don't have the luxury to sit in their aeron chairs and argue about defunding the police.

And yet they are where the movement is strongest.

> They face the very real threat of themselves or their loved ones being shot on the streets and statistically not by police.

And, even then, the police don't care, don't help, further traumatize the victims when thet get involved in crime in those neighborhoods at all, and still drain resources that could be used to deal with the problems producing crime out of the community via their voracious appetite for funding.

I think people in crime-ridden areas are generally very interested in seeing greater police presence, not less. [1] Studies have shown a larger police presence results in lower arrest rates and lower use of force.

And in the vast majority of cases where police are called to a scene they do in fact care deeply, and help effectively.

I think it’s easy to get caught up in tempest and start blaming a large group for the actions of a small minority. I’m no expert, but my understanding is we’ve done decades of studies and had decades of progress toward reducing violent crime, and increased funding for police has been a main pillar of that effort. Obama’s efforts to provide billions of dollars of police funding, for example, saw decreases in crime rates for cities that received the funding versus increases in cities that missed out.

[1] - https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/2/13/18193661/h...

“The Crisis Management System: this network deploys teams of credible messengers who mediate conflicts on the street and connect high-risk individuals to services that can reduce the long-term risk of violence. In the last three years, the Crisis Management System has contributed to a 15 percent decline in shootings in the 17 highest violence precincts in New York City.”

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/peacenyc/interventions/crisis-mana...

I found the above cited in:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-the-police-coul...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-poli...

But, excluding the less police argument, how is the prevalence of violent crime in low income African American neighborhoods a justification for predictive policing? Given the risk of propagating bias and a history of racist policing messing up the data, wouldn't it just be better to keep humans in charge? They've been disappointing recently but I still think they have potential.

Maybe it would be helpful if I put better links here. I didn't expect this comment to get so many responses and my link was a bit flippant. This research probably does a better job of explaining the position than I do.

Here's a Stanford survey from 2016 in Oakland that showed that African Americans are ~4.5x as likely to be stopped as whites despite representing a smaller percentage of the population, that they are 4x as likely to be handcuffed in a stop, 4x as likely to be searched in a stop and 2.5x as likely to be arrested in a stop (which is, as mentioned, 4.5x as likely to happen.): https://news.stanford.edu/2016/06/15/stanford-big-data-study...

I got interested in racist inference due to this Harvard paper that showed that google search ads were much more likely to suggest arrest records for African American names than white names: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1301/1301.6822.pdf

I accepted that implicit bias is intrinsic and difficult to weed out when I heard about studies showing that resumes with African American names received much lower response rates than white names: https://cos.gatech.edu/facultyres/Diversity_Studies/Bertrand...

I remember reading somewhere that this effect even persisted with African American studies professors selecting grad students. I can't find that paper but this HBS article describes the phenomenon and discusses how the response rate effect is even present when the company claims to promote diversity within the application: https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/minorities-who-whiten-job-resumes...

I also advocate for learned epistemic helplessness (https://scienceforsustainability.org/wiki/Epistemic_Learned_...) even if I don't always practice it well. I'm only claiming to have knowledge in the small area of predicting bad behavior using machine learning. It's probably best to find a person of color with personal experience and a better knowledge of the literature for anything else. Of course, you already know that. I hope you're doing well!

> There's a worrying trend in the conversation these days that has shifted from "there's a serious problem with racism in how police go about their job" to "we need less police". Folks in neighborhoods living with the constant threat of gang violence don't have the luxury to sit in their aeron chairs and argue about defunding the police. They face the very real threat of themselves or their loved ones being shot on the streets and statistically not by police.

The contrary part:

> The threat of gang violence is not mitigated by police response. The threat of gang violence is mitigated by providing much better options for people who would otherwise join gangs. Police presence is immaterial to the lack of gangs in affluent neighborhoods.

Original comment basically said "police are important to protect against violence in neighborhoods where there's a lot of it. W/the implication that said violence is gang violence.

The response argued that if we want to decrease or eliminate gang violence, we have to address the root issue, which is basically criminal neglect of neighborhoods (lack of schools, hospitals, entire communities systematically oppressed, disenfranchised, and neglected, etc) b/c of systemic racism.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3698742/

'Conclusions. Relative “trauma deserts” with decreased access to immediate care were found in certain areas of Chicago and adversely affected mortality from GSWs. These results may inform decisions about trauma systems planning and funding.'

Where's the funding for hospitals where it's needed?

Or.

Let's look at the LA uprising (aka the LA riots). Let's look at Ferguson. Let's look at the riots in Baltimore. Those communities clearly had very strong feelings about the police.

The person you were quoting did not provide rock-solid proof that having police helps reduce violence, but they did provide a citation showing that:

> Violence against persons in poor (51%) and low-income (50%) households was more likely to be reported to police than violence against persons in mid- (43%) and high-income (45%) households

from https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hpnvv0812.pdf

So you could certainly argue that they are actually irrational to call the police and thus the higher rate is explained by them incorrectly thinking police would help them. But it's tricky to argue that with no data :)

Cheers

To find the criminals that did that and put them in prison to prevent them from doing that again?

https://www.npr.org/2018/12/12/675359781/americas-growing-co...

https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/national-politics/the-...

It will only get worse.

I wonder if AI and robotics will need to be used in the future assuming that the police shortage trend continues or gets even worse?

In most countries, you won't end up in jail because you make less than $X, the US penalizes being poor. The US jail population as a % of the world's total jailed population is a clear indicator.

Also its quite interesting that American whites commit crime at a higher rate than UK blacks. There is something systemic at work here.

It seems the few decades of gutting social safety nets compounded with the trend of shutting down schools to make funds available for policing and jail building created a pipeline directly to jail for the newly undereducated and poor. A pipeline with perverse incentives that helped corporations and the US government exploit almost free ($0.25/hr) domestic prison slave labor for weapons, defense, and general manufacturing.

Of course poverty isn't the only factor. But it's a hugely important one.

aka more property taxes

aka more money for education and police to keep everybody safe

These things are evenly distributed across society, but when overly targeting minorities it further marginalizes them.

Exhibit A) YOU might not be able to relate to people that routinely have a bag of coke on them, but a proportionate demographics of the population do.

Exhibit B) Silicon Valley openly brags about microdosing acid to perform at work at their half million $ jobs. Overpolicing would ensnare them if overpolicing existed in that demographic and then they would be ineligible for jobs the rest of their life. If you cant be subsidized by your family then you have actual crime to consider. Guess where you will live too.

This is an unproven assertion. You should provide evidence of it, because on its face it is a completely ludicrous claim. Rates of illicit drug activity, violent crime, etc are _not_ evenly distributed in society. Not even close.

> Exhibit B) Silicon Valley openly brags about microdosing acid to perform at work at their half million $ jobs. Overpolicing would ensnare them if overpolicing existed in that demographic and then they would be ineligible for jobs the rest of their life. If you cant be subsidized by your family then you have actual crime to consider. Guess where you will live too.

Quite simply, the reason people that microdose are not getting thrown in jail is because they're not doing the other things that would lead to them getting discovered, i.e. engaging in crime or driving a car with significant (meaning, more than a person can safely swallow to avoid arrest) quantities of lsd.

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Just incase you try to pin a belief-set on me, I oppose the war on drugs, no-knock raids, and even speeding tickets completely and would entirely abolish them if I were the BFDL.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2377408/

https://www.hamiltonproject.org/charts/rates_of_drug_use_and...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004723521...

A bullet fired, a body, etc. are much harder to hide.

From the parent post:

> It has to do with nonviolent infractions that marginalize people to begin with. Being actually caught with illicit substances , or caught for the unpaid ticket.

> These things are evenly distributed across society, but when overly targeting minorities it further marginalizes them.

It doesn't exist in isolation

There is no “culture that commits violent crime”

There is a marginalized population from overpolicing for nonviolent crimes

It cascades

It can be fixed by acknowledging this component

But regarding the rebuttal to microdosing users, if they were getting randomly frisked and randomly tested and randomly stopped for “broken” taillights, because the algorithm said so, they would be getting caught and reinforcing the algorithm and human biases

This is what is happening disproportionately to some demographics that dont have inherently different behavior from other demographics

Counterargument, it's well documented and studied that policies like "stop and frisk" and to some degree traffic enforcement disproportionately target minorities. Most of the people in SV "microdosing on LSD" are not.