Police Reform Thread

[Allentown]

The guy doesn't believe a narrative about how evil his profession currently is which Fishwife and many people in that end of the political spectrum believe with absolute certainty and beyond any shadow of a doubt.

Lets not do this yet. Lets have the new forum for a month or so before we start arguing made-up positions people haven't taken. Or, at least, use DR instead, because I'm pretty sure at least he would agree with that. And I don't think I'm going out on a limb when I suggest Fishwife & DR are not on the same end of the political spectrum.

[aurelius]

The cop picked a poor way to lighten the mood and ease a tense situation. But you could argue, assuming he was joking, that in doing so he showed a higher level of self awareness of public perceptions than some cops. All in all I don't think it was a firing offense unless there's more to the story.

Agreed.

It is interesting that LE is so concerned about public perception that they fire a cop for making a bad joke about shooting black people instead of just stop shooting black people.

[ithryn]

That is the second worst idea I have ever heard. The recurring theme in Cop Kills Harmless/Innocent Man stories is that cops have WAY too high an opinion of themselves and their authority. They need to be reminded that they are fucking servants. Or fired. Fired is better.

That....occurs occasionally, but the overwhelming theme is stressed cop in a stressful situation freaking the heck out. They react how I would. I'd be blowing everybody away because I want to go home that day.

We can't both hold them to higher standards and tell them they're, nationally, across the industry, piece of shit racist bullies.

THAT is the worst idea I've ever heard. That would only lead to more officers with not shit to do but drum up citations and shit.

You and Black Lives Matter both.

Maybe in Kentucky, but in the cities? It's necessary. It's strongly correlated to decreased crime.

[ithryn]

The guy doesn't believe a narrative about how evil his profession currently is which Fishwife and many people in that end of the political spectrum believe with absolute certainty and beyond any shadow of a doubt.

Lets not do this yet. Lets have the new forum for a month or so before we start arguing made-up positions people haven't taken. Or, at least, use DR instead, because I'm pretty sure at least he would agree with that. And I don't think I'm going out on a limb when I suggest Fishwife & DR are not on the same end of the political spectrum.

Maybe I misascribed a hard leftist position to fw because of this and other comments:

I do agree he was probably fired because he spoke a truth that the police department absolutely doesn't want acknowledged, even in jest.

The truth that police only kill black people? They shoot black people more or less in proportion to black crime. That's just an unfortunate fact. I rail against it all the time.

But there's a strong vocal position on the left that crime stats should be ignored and they shoot black people merely because they hate black people. This cop probably disagrees. He probably knows his department shoots whites too. Hence the tongue in cheek gallows humor.

I was just jumping to conclusions on fw's position on this, so I shouldn't have said "evil." "Problematic"?

Just in general there are plenty of people who think policing, like all human activities, are inherently racist. These people are driving the narrative right now, generating these riots and this CYA mentality in police departments.

Read a founder of BLM is interviewed here maintaining that finding bad cops isn't enough, every cop is inherently racist, the entire apparatus is a function of racist state terrorism, and that we need to abolish the police, dethrone capitalism, and try socialism. Or that the police are just a slave capturing force and we need to abolish them and "come up with community solutions for transformative justice." Abolish prisons too. This is a whole narrative drive that is totally foreign to the LEO in question and I'm just saying I don't think he should be crucified for not adhering to it.

This is the context we're dealing with.

I didn't mean to link DR and fw together, but libertarianism does oddly wind right around to being uneasy bedfellows with all these anti-police socialists: The Libertarian Republic: Black Lives Matter Wants to Abolish the Police – Are They Wrong?

[cwd]

I'm in favor of abolishing prison, myself.

Our societal goals when sentencing criminals are:
1) deterrence
2) reform/rehab
3) protecting the rest of us from the criminal
4) vengeance

Long prison sentences are basically only good at 3, isolation.
It's probably actively harmful re: 2 reform/rehab.
And it's poor at 1 deterrence because the sentencing takes so long and extends beyond the time-horizon of most criminals' planning.

Torture followed by quick release (i.e. caning) would be a lot better for deterrence and vengeance. And more merciful IMO.
We could add a period of really strict probation to improve 2 and 3: a tracking anklet, weekly interviews with instant but minor punishments/rewards for progress towards being a decent citizen.

This sort of very-involved probation would be expensive. Probably more so that the prison system. Which is probably why we don't do it.

[mikeylikey]

The truth that police only kill black people? They shoot black people more or less in proportion to black crime. That's just an unfortunate fact. I rail against it all the time.

Can you show your work on this?

[mikeylikey]

I'm in favor of abolishing prison, myself.

Our societal goals when sentencing criminals are:
1) deterrence
2) reform/rehab
3) protecting the rest of us from the criminal
4) vengeance

Long prison sentences are basically only good at 3, isolation.
It's probably actively harmful re: 2 reform/rehab.
And it's poor at 1 deterrence because the sentencing takes so long and extends beyond the time-horizon of most criminals' planning.

Torture followed by quick release (i.e. caning) would be a lot better for deterrence and vengeance. And more merciful IMO.
We could add a period of really strict probation to improve 2 and 3: a tracking anklet, weekly interviews with instant but minor punishments/rewards for progress towards being a decent citizen.

This sort of very-involved probation would be expensive. Probably more so that the prison system. Which is probably why we don't do it.

I'm not sure (4) is such a good goal anyway. I think it's too easy for <being okay with doing violence to criminals> to turn into <being okay with violence>. And then you end up with Dick Cheney on TV saying he's comfortable with the knowledge that 25% of CIA torture victims turned out to have been innocent, and millions of people agreeing with him Because The Greater Good.

[cwd]

Re: 4 Vengeance

I'm not sure (4) is such a good goal anyway. I think it's too easy for <being okay with doing violence to criminals> to turn into <being okay with violence>. And then you end up with Dick Cheney on TV saying he's comfortable with the knowledge that 25% of CIA torture victims turned out to have been innocent, and millions of people agreeing with him Because The Greater Good.

Yeah, in an ideal world we'd forego vengeance. Every religion says so.

But humans have an instinct for vengeance. Policy needs to take that into account, in a democracy.

The more the criminal/justice system comes to be seen as over-lenient, the more voters and politicians will tend to go on anti-crime moral panics.
This is how we get three-strikes laws.

The problem with prisons is that the suffering is invisible. People rot in jail, getting slowly brutalized, going insane in solitary. The voters don't see it.

A public caning, on the other hand, is visible. The voters can *see* that the offender suffered for what he's done. He screams and bleeds, it's horrible and visible.
And then the punishment over, and he's still young, and we can start trying to rehab him and reintegrate him to society.

[mikeylikey]

Re: 4 Vengeance

I'm not sure (4) is such a good goal anyway. I think it's too easy for <being okay with doing violence to criminals> to turn into <being okay with violence>. And then you end up with Dick Cheney on TV saying he's comfortable with the knowledge that 25% of CIA torture victims turned out to have been innocent, and millions of people agreeing with him Because The Greater Good.

Yeah, in an ideal world we'd forego vengeance. Every religion says so.

But humans have an instinct for vengeance. Policy needs to take that into account, in a democracy.

Humans also have an instinct for burning witches and selling their daughters to landed suitors. Over time we get better about Not Doing these things. That takes two forms:
A) Human beings realize That Shit Isn't Cool. Technically, this has to happen on an individual basis but it is observable as an aggregate social change
B) We stop giving our institutional blessing to these behaviors.

Opinion: Personally, I think (B) pretty much exclusively occurs as the result of (A). Which is not to say that no individual ever stopped being a shithead because of institutional change, but I'm confident that the mechanism is primarily one-directional. A hallmark of liberal/progressives is the belief that (B) can achieve or significantly assist (A). /Opinion.

The more the criminal/justice system comes to be seen as over-lenient, the more voters and politicians will tend to go on anti-crime moral panics.
This is how we get three-strikes laws.The problem with prisons is that the suffering is invisible. People rot in jail, getting slowly brutalized, going insane in solitary. The voters don't see it.

These are problems, but they are not immutable. Popular perception can change. Prohibition. Inter-racial marriage. Witch Trials. Etc etc etc. Society does get better.

A public caning, on the other hand, is visible. The voters can *see* that the offender suffered for what he's done. He screams and bleeds, it's horrible and visible.
And then the punishment over, and he's still young, and we can start trying to rehab him and reintegrate him to society.

But what have we done to ourselves in the process?

[Allentown]

But what have we done to ourselves in the process?

[cwd]

Humans also have an instinct for burning witches and selling their daughters to landed suitors. Over time we get better about Not Doing these things.

Moral progress is real. But I think the root cause is the increase in wealth and safety.

Humans who grow up afraid or hungry tend to be vicious and xenophobic. As we get richer and safer, we become kinder. This then is reflected in our institutions.

You propose that punishing a convicted armed robber with a public caning would coarsen our society and make us more evil.
You might have a point, I'm not sure.
Playing violent video games doesn't seem to cause violent crime though.

Our current practice, of punishing that armed robber by locking him in a cement cage with other brutal men for 10 years, is much crueler but less visible.
Is that better?

[mikeylikey]

Humans also have an instinct for burning witches and selling their daughters to landed suitors. Over time we get better about Not Doing these things.

Moral progress is real. But I think the root cause is the increase in wealth and safety.

Humans who grow up afraid or hungry tend to be vicious and xenophobic. As we get richer and safer, we become kinder. This then is reflected in our institutions.

Very true. So would we have the same wealth and safety without doing violence to criminals? Would we have arrived at the current condition of <pretty nice amounts of wealth and safety> sooner, or later, had we not spent the past several thousand years doing violence to criminals?

Not rhetorical questions, but one of your theses (with which I agree) is that deterrence isn't effective? Or is it that JAIL isn't an effective deterrent. I may have gotten that mixed up.

Anyway, how do you connect beating criminals to increased wealth and safety?

You propose that punishing a convicted armed robber with a public caning would coarsen our society and make us more evil.
You might have a point, I'm not sure.
Playing violent video games doesn't seem to cause violent crime though.

I suspect that this is because, as it turns out, violent video games contain precisely zero Actual Violence. (that seems more sarcastic than it is, making a genuine point)

As a corollary, (did I use that correctly?) consider the amount of PTSD & suicide experienced by drone operators. They are getting precisely the same sensory experience as a person playing a video game; if anything the video games are more graphic and visceral, in terms of the stimulus to the user. The difference is the drone operator knows he's killing and maiming human beings.

Violence in war, including the suffering of innocents, and violent punishment of criminals are ethically adjacent. I don't know if one is predicated on the other, or not. My hunch would be that a society that has forsaken the taking of vengeance on criminals is much closer to forsaking gratuitous war as well.

[cwd]

Very true. So would we have the same wealth and safety without doing violence to criminals?

Not rhetorical questions, but one of your theses (with which I agree) is that deterrence isn't effective? Or is it that JAIL isn't an effective deterrent. I may have gotten that mixed up.

Anyway, how do you connect beating criminals to increased wealth and safety?

We have wealth and safety because we have secure property rights. Those depend on police and courts, which necessarily inflict violence of some kind on criminals.

I'm claiming that replacing long prison terms with brief torture sessions would be:
- kinder to criminals (less of their lives destroyed)
- more effective as a deterrent
-more compatible with separate changes I also propose for better rehabilitation

I'm not pro-torture. I'm just theorizing it would be less bad than what we do now.

Ideally, the police officer would wave a magic wand and make the criminal so happy and calm that he no longer wants to harm other people...

[ithryn]

Can you show your work on this?

I actually misspoke. Black people get killed by police at a disproportionately high rate compared to their relative population, but at a disproportionately low rate compared to their violent crime rate.

In other words they would be getting killed more often if there was an even correlation between crime and getting shot, and at a staggeringly high rate if police were enacting some kind of racist pogrom.

I want to be absolutely clear there's no genetic component to this argument. It's just stats reflecting the shitty position we've put them in.

This is an admittedly conservative piece with the numbers but it links to the raw WaPo database that tried to look into this as well as their interpretation (they judge police shootings against total population, criminal or not, and judge that police are racist)
http://www.dailywire.com/news/7264/5-st ... on-bandler

[tersh]

This is an admittedly conservative piece with the numbers but it links to the raw WaPo database that tried to look into this as well as their interpretation (they judge police shootings against total population, criminal or not, and judge that police are racist)
http://www.dailywire.com/news/7264/5-st ... on-bandler

I think it's worth making the distinction between "police are racist" and "policing is racist as an institution".

Individual cops may or may not be racist, and there's not a lot one can do about that.

If the rules and norms that they follow and which govern the way they engage with the public is racist (say, in a way that is intended to extract wealth from certain populations, or ensuring that black men are viewed as violent and dangerous), the attitudes of individual cops isn't all that important.

[tersh]

We have wealth and safety because we have secure property rights.

I reckon this is 100% assertion, and exceedingly difficult to support with anything other than handwaving.

[iamsmu]

Lemoine's recent article is sparking some debate.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/4 ... tually-say

[tersh]

Lemoine's recent article is sparking some debate.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/4 ... tually-say

Hmm. Interesting work, and I glanced through his code, which is simple enough. His thoughts are based on two years of data.

I feel like before I can comment on the validity of his conclusions from the survey data, I want to look at how the surveys he is drawing on are conducted, and how they deal with response rate problems (the people most likely to be impacted by police violence are also among the most likely to not respond to surveys), where they do their sampling, etc.

It's also worth pointing out that the Gun Violence Archive (http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/past-tolls) has the number of Officer Involved Shootings at 1,907 for 2016.
I'll eat my hat if a mere 36 involved black male fatalities.

[fishwife]

Rate of violent crime should be only tangentially related to police killings. Just because someone has committed a violent crime doesn't mean that person is being violent or a threat to a police officer's or bystander's life or limb at the moment of the police interaction.

If you're going to talk about %ages and use the WaPo data, this is what happens when you select only known unarmed people killed by police.

2015:


2016:


2017:

[tersh]

Rate of violent crime should be only tangentially related to police killings. Just because someone has committed a violent crime doesn't mean that person is being violent or a threat to a police officer's or bystander's life or limb at the moment of the police interaction.

I suspect there's some correlation, but that it varies strongly with the crime in question, and a bunch of other factors. And race is almost certainly among those.
Previous version of the Cop Thread have documented that often violence during an arrest is due to escalation in force by the police.

On the other hand, we have seen several spree/mass shooters apprehend without violence by police in the last few years....