Not sure why this is getting downvoted, increasing exposure to police increases number of shootings, especially for minorities. And don’t ask for citations, this is and has been all over everywhere for years.

Without definitively having some stat that proves or disproves this, the way this opinion was expressed feels a lot like survivor bias because you're reacting to the relatively small number of negative police interactions that are hyped up by the media (because they play on emotions well) and mentioning nothing of the millions and millions of police interactions that go positively or times that police presence prevented a crime.

Okay, I'll bite. I downvoted it because, even if true, it's irrelevant and promotes a toxic (and I use that term advisedly) narrative.

Yes, when you enforce laws, some people are a-holes and escalate to unlawful violence. Sometimes cops, sometimes civilians.

The appropriate reaction to make sure that isn't tolerated either, to improve police-community relations, to train police better, and to review whether we need to update laws to match consensus on expected human behavior.

The appropriate reaction is not in a hundred miles of "oh, well, gosh, do we really need to enforce laws anymore? Someone might get hurt!", and the forum is a worse place for tolerating that mentality.

Now, to be sure, there are many laws that fit the last category above and should probably be scaled back for being petty and kafkaesque. But, "don't wake up a million people around you for your own personal thrills" does not make the list.

Agreed that the solution is not to _not_ enforce laws but the article is about enforcing the law without using Police “on the ground” to do so which helps alleviate the issue of possible escalation. The parent of my comment calls out that issue in response to their parent saying “let’s just get police involved” so in that regard this is a totally reasonable point to make in response to it and on topic for HN as it’s about automation of enforcement vs alternatives.

Only 13 unarmed black men were shot by police in 2019 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/23/fac...

...Did you read the article you linked to? The bulk of the article is dedicated to discussing why that number is misleading, and how it reflects our lack of data/transparency when it comes to policing, particularly when it comes to police involvement in homicide.

Yep, and I am not persuaded by their special pleading.

What about armed Black men? Having a gun is not grounds to shoot someone. Remember, we have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

Well as long as only 13 innocent unarmed people were unloaded on by law enforcement everything is fine

1. unarmed does not mean they were not a threat or innocent

2. No human endeavor is perfect. I am willing to accept some tragic mistakes in exchange for the prevention of crimes and the dissuasion of criminals.

> I am willing to accept some tragic mistakes in exchange for the prevention of crimes and the dissuasion of criminals.

I mostly agree with this, but there needs to be an effort to hold people accountable when mistakes are made, and to change processes to help ensure that these mistakes don't happen again, or at least happen less often. Police departments across the US seem near-violently resistant to this.

I think that irresponsibly spreading propaganda which implies “police are more dangerous than criminals” while simultaneously demanding “accountability” is unlikely to convince the police that any “accountability process” is going to be carried out in good faith.

I also think the existing criminal courts and prosecutors hold police reasonably accountable. They could do better.

1. True, but neither one was shown here, so you can choose any assumption you want, and mine was innocence (the law requires the same assumption until proven otherwise)

2. There is no evidence that any prevention of crime was gained in exchange for the deaths of these innocent unarmed people. If anything it created an environment where the law is respected less.

1. true 2. false

In one particular country perhaps, not a phenomenon worldwide.

edit: misread the title, assumed this was about them doing this in Paris (also recently announced)

But we're talking about that country right now.

I haven’t actually seen normalized statistics with respect to police density, ‘exposure’ or time on patrol. Do you know who publishes such numbers?

Well, the current approach of decreasing exposure to police has increased crime

It seems to me most traffic citations ought to be issued by mail based on dashcam footage now that the technology to do so is widespread. It would also reduce traffic stops as a pretext for searches, which act as an end-run around legal protections from unreasonable search.

Traffic stops could then be relegated to imminent dangers like drunk or otherwise reckless drivers, and serious crimes.

They used to do this when red light cameras were popular in California. You could just write a letter saying the person in the pic wasn't you. As long as the ticket is tied to a driver you can basically get away with it via this route.

If the ticket is for the vehicle owner then yes I could see this working. Perfect for emissions violations and vehicle code violations. You could also double-check for stolen license plates as it should be fairly easy to automate the detection of most car makes/models as long as the car hasn't been heavily modified.

> You could just write a letter saying the person in the pic wasn't you.

In Australia its still your problem. If someone else was borrowing the car you have to get them to admit they were using it at the time. The only way I think you will get off is if you report the car as stolen at the time.

>You could just write a letter saying the person in the pic wasn't you. As long as the ticket is tied to a driver you can basically get away with it via this route.

That seems like an asinine way to apply that law. If the vehicle is registered to you, it's your responsibility. Lent it to your uncle and he rolled a stop? Well, the car's registered to an owner, that's their problem to sort out.

Yeah, I think this makes more sense, as long as you limit it to automated-fine infractions (and not things like vehicular manslaughter), and these infractions don't affect the car owner's driving record or insurance premiums.

I think it would only take one instance of a friend borrowing my car, getting a fine, and that friend refusing to pay the fine, for me to stop lending them my car -- lesson learned. Or hell, why would I even want to be friends with someone who would do that to me?

The vehicle is my responsibility, but that's not proof that I committed the crime.

That's a good start but people in New York literally deface their license plate and nobody gives a fuck - because half of them are cops or driving government vehicles.

And since legislation to have unarmed officers handle non-violent citations has gone nowhere in the last decade the push is now for just eliminating all the minor citations that, historically, have selective enforcement against the already vulnerable and tackling them differently.

Jaywalking is a good example, it doesn't get enforced basically ever and when it does it's overwhelmingly poor minorities. So the city has just been adding pedestrian crossings in areas where people where people jaywalk to reduce the incentive.

If they're not willing to do the job then they need to get a different job.

Don't worry, we have ShotSpotter for that