There may not be enough unsolved violent crime to justify facial recognition, but one thing there is too much of in Seattle, Portland, SF, LA, NYC is un-prosecuted violent crime.

Do you have any sources I can read through on this? I'm very interested to hear that this is the case.

There's a great book on ~roughly this topic - Ghettoside, by Jill Leovy. The thesis is that police in some cities (her work is in LA, but I lived in Chicago for a while and the idea transfers seamlessly) do an abysmal job of solving homicides.

That has all sorts of knock-on effects: people close to a murder victim lose the sense that the state will do something about their loss, so they take the matter into their own hands; people who commit homicide are a tiny minority but if they're not apprehended, they can keep committing homicides, which makes a broader society feel less safe; people sense that the state, their city, their neighbors, etc don't care about them because if the homicide was of someone in a richer neighborhood, it would be more likely to be solved; etc. Been a while since I read it so I'm forgetting a lot.

I think this goes some way towards explaining why people in neighborhoods where lots of violent crime is committed have such ambivalent feelings about the police - they are at once underpoliced (police don't solve major crimes in their neighborhood) and overpoliced (police bust people for all kinds of small-time stuff, which has devastating long-term consequences).

At the same time as all of the above, it's also true that it's basically never been safer to live in a big American city (ok ok, at least since like the 1960s - before then the picture gets significantly more complicated). So it's safer than ever, but big crimes don't get prosecuted or solved, unless they happen in the "right" neighborhoods. The solution therefore isn't more of the same police; maybe it's more policing but the policing itself needs to change.

This has already been a fantastic read: thank you!!

Not a read, but this feature from KOMO goes over the Seattle situation pretty well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WijoL3Hy_Bw

That piece, and KOMO's larger project, are toxic right-wing propaganda. Please don't consider that a reliable source.

I don't think calling it propaganda is quite right. "Muckraking" is probably more accurate.

Muckraking implies at least a casual desire to stick to the facts, which is entirely absent from Sinclair-owned stations.

Have you walked through Pioneer Square or down Third Avenue in Seattle recently?

Yep, I have!

Homelessness is a profound and society-wide problem, with no easy answers unless you consider "spend way more money, build way more housing" an easy answer (which I do).

Until we do those things, it should be no surprise that a region with skyrocketing rents has a housing crisis, and that will present itself in myriad unpleasant ways.

I don't even want to begin to engage upon what you purport KOMO to be, because I don't really care... But the people and lives that video shows are real. Do you have left-wing friendly media pieces to balance it out? This is not something that is typically portrayed positively in media in Seattle, so it's not easy to find good news

You do you HN. Downvote the uncomfortable opinions! That'll surely help everyone

We’re not talking about the police, we’re talking about violent criminals who are arrested and then let go.

If someone is beating me, I'm not likely to be able to focus on his number and memorize it. When a thug put his gun in my face to rob me, I later could describe the gun in great detail, but not his face.

I'm not sure how this conversation changed to talk about police brutality, but I think the argument is that if there is a bystander watching or recording, the police officer can later be identified.

Compare to a situation in which identification is not required and the officer can't be identified even with video evidence.

But with all the smartphones around, someone can get the officer's badge number hopefully while they're beating you.

I don’t think we’re discussing police brutality here, not that it isn’t terrible and more common than it should be. I live in King County and every week it seems some person assaults another for little to no reason (often with a hilarious number of priors) and walks the same night. That is the violent crime that isn’t prosecuted here that the GP was referring to.

Smartphones don't have the resolution to pick up a badge number.

It's great to see the US leading the way on this, i hope that Europe takes notice.

Specifically on this, yes but keep in mind the US is far behind Europe in terms of civil rights / privacy and other protections for citizens (See GDPR for ex.).

I just learned about this "traffic light labelling" going on in the EU and was blown away that this was implemented 4 YEARS ago. [1] I'm hoping the US catches to Europe for everything else, we're far behind.

[1] https://www.euractiv.com/section/agriculture-food/news/traff...