Slashdot Mirror
FBI Chief Links Video Scrutiny of Police To Rise In Violent Crime (nytimes.com)
HughPickens.com writes: This year, murders have spiked in major cities across America. According to FBI director James B. Comey the additional scrutiny and criticism of police officers that has come in the wake of highly publicized incidents of police brutality may be the main reason for the recent increase in violent crime. "I don't know whether that explains it entirely, but I do have a strong sense that some part of the explanation is a chill wind that has blown through American law enforcement over the last year," says Comey. He says he's been told by many police leaders that officers who normally would stop to question suspicious people are opting to stay in their patrol cars for fear of having their encounters recorded and become video sensations.
That hesitancy has led to missed opportunities to apprehend suspects and has decreased the police presence on the streets of the country's most violent cities. Officers tell Comey that youths surround police when they get out of their vehicles, taunting them and making videos of the spectacle with their cell phones. "In today's YouTube world, there are officers reluctant to get out of their cars and do the work that controls violent crime," says Comey. "Our officers are answering 911 calls, but avoiding the informal contact that keeps bad guys from standing around, especially with guns."
That hesitancy has led to missed opportunities to apprehend suspects and has decreased the police presence on the streets of the country's most violent cities. Officers tell Comey that youths surround police when they get out of their vehicles, taunting them and making videos of the spectacle with their cell phones. "In today's YouTube world, there are officers reluctant to get out of their cars and do the work that controls violent crime," says Comey. "Our officers are answering 911 calls, but avoiding the informal contact that keeps bad guys from standing around, especially with guns."
If the police acted respectfully during encounters with private citizens, I doubt there would be much need to record these encounters. I know I don't record my neighbor getting his mail or washing his car, because I don't consider either behavior threatening. Police have abused their positions of trust and the recording is one of many symptoms of this fact.
Sorry, but do your job withing the confines of the law (including the constitution). You get no free pass. If you cannot do your job within those confines, then press to have those laws changed, in an open and democratic manner. If you do not, you are little (or no) better than the thugs and gangsters you wish to imprison.
Silence is a state of mime.
Here is a radical proposal:
don't choke to death petty criminals, don't shoot fleeing suspects in the back. Don't kill people in the vans on their way to the police station, etc... And more importantly: don't support the police officers who do this!
And finally, actually discipline officers for their misdeeds.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Yes. It's the evil stoners. Aggressive lot. They'd kill for their fix on junk food...tomorrow!
the best part is that the director of the FBI says police are afraid of kids with phones who mock them. the police should resign if they are so afraid.
2012 had the lowest crime rate since 1970 and even with the so called spike, the murder rate stills remains far below the record marks witnessed two to three decades ago, in the late 1980s and early ’90s. Can someone in the media call bullshit ?
Whether or not to stop, detain, punch or shoot a suspect is always a judgement call — calculations weighting pros and cons, risk and reward are automatically made in our heads.
The additional scrutiny — and TFA talks about all kinds of scrutiny, not just video, that's Hugh Pickens' manipulations — shifts that balance towards the safer (for the policeman) course of action. Because if they do apprehend a dangerous criminal cleanly, at most, they'll get a pat on the back. But if they screw up, or even if they don't, but merely appear to — the entire "Hands up don't shoot" meme is based on a lie, remember? — their lives will change dramatically. For the worse.
The scrutiny is not going anywhere and that, on balance, is a good thing, in my opinion. The public — and the police — just need to learn not to rush to judgement. And the wronged cops need to receive their days in court — of public opinion — not merely "left alone", when they are exonerated. That might push the balance back a little...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
is a license to break the law. Cops need to be held accountable for their misdeeds, just like everyone else. Maybe the cops that are afraid to be recorded don't know how to do their jobs while following the law.
In other words, police have no idea how to do their job without being able to assault people, racially profile them, and generally be dicks. If these police are afraid to do their jobs because they might be filmed, the easiest solution is to hire police officers who don't do anything wrong that will be an issue if it ends up on tape. The reason people are taping the police constantly now is because they expect the police to do something wrong because they have shown in a lot of cases they do. If the police get better and stop setting the expectation they will treat people like garbage, then people won;t expect it and won't feel the need to film them constantly.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
"In today's YouTube world, there are officers reluctant to get out of their cars and do the work that controls violent crime," says Comey.
If they have nothing to hide, why are they afraid of being recorded? If they aren't breaking the law, then they should not fear to do their jobs. That's what they've been telling us all along; if we have nothing to hide, we shouldn't fear their disregard for the fourth amendment. But if the cops have to break the law to save it, what are they fighting for anyway?
The cops are still playing this issue like it's part of the non-existent "war on cops". There is no such thing. Instead, there's a ground swell of support for the idea that the cops should be made to follow the law just like the rest of us, or even moreso. With great power comes great responsibility.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
But he acknowledged that there is so far no data to back up his assertion
Now there's a surprise.
Since wer're posting anecdotes and vague "feelings", here's what I've noticed.
I've lived in my neighborhood for decades, and haven't had any problem with police... except this year, in which I was stopped and questioned three times. Make that "stopped, handcuffed, searched, ID'd, and questioned" three times. One time I had a prescription in my jacket pocket (antibiotic), and the officer jotted down the drug, my name, and the prescription number in his notebook.
We're supposed to be free to go about our business, and we're not required to interact with police when they call out to us. Police can walk up to someone and try to start a conversation, but I've always been told that they are like any citizen, and you can choose not to interact with them.
In all three cases I *could not* avoid interacting with the police despite trying, and all three situations ended in a confrontation. The officer *began* the encounter visibly irate, and escalated to *enraged* when I wouldn't interact. (Yes, I'm aware of my state's "must identify" law. I don't/didn't lie to them, but I don't show ID when asked.)
One told me he was going to taser me if I didn't show ID, one actually arrested me for not having ID (while hiking on a public trail), but then changed the charge at the last minute. On that last one, the officer stated that not carrying an ID was illegal.
I'm white, elderly, and live in a low-crime bedroom community, and I can't take a walk at night without fear of being randomly intimidated by an angry cop.
A neighboring town had a pumpkin festival last year, and the police had snipers out during the event.
I don't know what it is with America these days, but we're definitely seeing more angry police, and this is reflected in the public's perception.
I think it's counter productive. I won't have anything to do with the police now, and I don't know anyone on my block who will. If they come door-to-door asking if we witnessed some crime, they get nothing from me.
The chance of abuse is too high for me to have any interaction with them. If they come door-to-door, I didn't see anything.
538 recently ran a piece on this misguided and largely misleading storyline police are touting. It's worth a read if you like facts. But this is /.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/fea...
He says he's been told by many police leaders that officers who normally would stop to question suspicious people are opting to stay in their patrol cars for fear of having their encounters recorded and become video sensations
Good...maybe they'll learn a little fucking restraint instead of popping out of their cars and shooting 12-year old kids for holding a toy gun.
Seriously, stay in your fucking copmobile unless you have a reason to be "interacting" with the public. It's not your job to go on fishing expeditions hoping to make another arrest or choking a guy to death for selling cigarettes or "jogging while black".
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Our criminal justice system is biased in favor of Type II errors (false negatives), rather than Type I errors (false positives). We think it is worse to jail, kill, or harass an innocent person than to let a criminal go free. Recently, we have had a lot of Type I errors (false positives), and we have corrected our procedures to reduce this type of error. There is a corresponding rise in false negatives (criminals going free), but this is the way we have deliberately designed the system. We are going back to the way we want things to be.
Martin wasn't "cornered". His body was not found in a corner or in any place where he wasn't readily able to flee from.
He attacked Zimmerman, Zimmerman defended himself. Nothing in the forensic evidence suggests that Zimmerman instigated the violence.
For example, murders are typically not stopped by police at all as they are very rarely crimes of opportunity. This person must know that. That he choses to ignore this knowledge is is a very bad sign, but what do you expect from the chief official of a police-state. What he also completely ignores is that some of the officers that have become "video sensations" are cold-blooded murderers. He seems to imply that these scum being caught is somehow a bad thing. Another strong indicator the US is a de-facto police-state, because only in a police-state is catching criminal policemen a bad thing.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
They are now using SWAT teams to deal with unlicensed SERVICE operations.
Running a barber shop without the appropriate license and fees? They will bust down your door, weapons drawn. Don't resist. Don't try to run. They are authorized to use lethal force.
Remember, they are on the side of the Law.
Could it be that so much police work is done illegally or in violation of policy that they have trouble doing their job unless they can commit criminal acts? And it is racist as it can be. How much stop and frisk and the like goes on in wealthy, white neighborhoods? If cops acted the same way with wealthy people that they do with poor people every cop on the force would get fired quite quickly.
There is no "rise in violent crime". It's still lower than it was in the '90s, and one data point does not a trend make.
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Also,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10...
So really, it could very well be that the rise in violent crime is the result of increased surveillance on the general population rather than increased surveillance on police.
You don't have to be dishonest to be in law enforcement, but it helps.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It depends on the department, I suppose. In my middle-class and rather quiet neighborhood, the police actually tracked down and caught a kid who ran into my lawn with this car, damaging some shrubbery, then fled the scene. They then stopped by and asked if I would like to press charged, and I got the officer's advice on whether or not I should do so. All very polite, professional, and efficient.
I think what's really different in today's society is that *everyone* has a camera now, and we all have access to worldwide media, both as a consumer and as a publisher, via the internet. Any story can become a national story this way, and as such, it feels like we're seeing a lot more bad things happen, when in reality, those same things probably just never made the news before for lack of evidence or, more realistically, no one to tell the story to in the media.
Nowadays, you really can't expect any event to occur in public and *not* have it filmed and "published", where the entire world can see it uncensored. The police should simply embrace this reality and record everything themselves. This will help to protect both themselves and civilians, as well as provide important evidence (either way) in the case of wrongdoing.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Rodney King has crack cocaine in his system too.
Still? After all these years? Wow, must have been some party.
Okay, with that out of the way I'll try to be serious.
Nobody talks about the fact Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and *ALL* of the recent highly-publicized decedents that interfered with police had marijuana in their blood.
Some surveys of Americans show regular marijuana use as high as 25% of the population. Few will show marijuana use lower than 10%. Marijuana users tend to be the kind of people that would find themselves running into police. Marijuana can be detected in the blood and urine of casual users for days, perhaps weeks, after last use. Regular users will show detectable amounts of marijuana metabolites for a month or more.
Warning, sloppy use of statistics follows....
Assuming 25% of the population has used marijuana in the last year, and marijuana use can be detected for a week, then my math tells me that picking 50 people at random will show a high probability of finding someone with THC detectable in their blood or urine. If 10% of the population are regular users where marijuana can be detected for a month then just pulling 10 people at random and you'll find someone with THC in their system. Add on top of that selection bias, people that don't have marijuana in their system after getting arrested or killed don't make the news, and you have a recipe for equating marijuana use with criminal behavior.
While we're at it lets test these people for alcohol. Alcohol use can also be detected for a long time after use, as long as four days. If you pick up someone for speeding on a Monday morning, and test them for alcohol use like we do for marijuana, then we're going to have to clear out a lot of prison space for all of those "drunk" drivers.
Having read the history of marijuana prohibition I see that the prohibition was not based on anything scientific. What it was based on was racism, immigrants from Mexico brought their marijuana habit with them and people were looking for ways to make them look like the bad guys. Same goes for opiates, the Chinese brought opium with them and that scared people. Considering the damage alcohol does to society I think we did Prohibition all wrong, keep the alcohol ban but let people get their weed and heroin. However, Prohibition was doomed to fail, it's not like it takes a chemical engineering degree to make a moonshine still. Same goes for marijuana, it grows every where, why else do you think it's called "weed"?
Opium, on the other hand, doesn't grow well in the USA so banning it here may have worked in the age of sail. Now, with two day express shipping from China, there is no hope to contain it.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
really? thats what happened?
because his girlfriend said, in court, under oath, that trayvon made it home, and then went back out to confront "that cracker"
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Yes, yes, a handful of police officers breaking the law means all police officers are assholes. Just like a couple of citizens breaking the law means all citizens are assholes. Great job, everyone.
Honestly, this is simple to solve. The police should start taking videos of everything they do as well. If an edited video pops up of them doing bad things, then they can simply post the video from their perspective. Now no more "look at this video of a cop beating this innocent man" AFTER the supposed "innocent man" kicks the officer, except not on camera or edited out. Mass surveillance works in every way. Govt. -> public -> police -> public.
Their "jobs" were never to break the law. All this whining about pressure on cops is utter BS. If they had been doing their actual jobs, instead of being criminals, they'd be fine. This is simply their own malfeasance coming back to bite everyone -- us and them -- in the ass.
Every cop that breaks the law is a criminal. Every cop that knows about such things and does not turn the criminal in is a criminal accessory. That's cop culture. They think they are above the law, instead of its servants. I have no sympathy for their current situation at all. I do regret that they have been allowed, both by their internal culture and by the courts, to screw the public over so badly. And that the courts, in particular the supreme court, has failed to obey their oaths to uphold the constitution, instead wreaking sophist havoc on its meaning and intent.
I honestly do not think there is any chance at all of fixing this. The downhill slide is too profound; the public almost completely unaware of the issues at hand until they too are caught in the toxic, broken gears of the system. When that happens, they often disappear into the depths of the world's largest imprisonment undertaking. When (if) they come out of that, they're treated as unemployable and sometimes worse.
The "retribution, not rehabilitation" mindset the media has inculcated into the American public and to which their legislators pander, creates a permanent lower class whose only hope for advance is more lawbreaking, and this constrains almost all of those who actually pursue an upwards economic path. The rest are hopeless, and rightfully so. There is little hope to be had.
The root cause is bad legislators, bad law, bad police, and bad courts. There's actually no reason to expect this to work well. Nor does it.
Now the cops are paying for it, a little bit, as the Internet makes public what used to be a quiet secret known only to the cops themselves and their victims. It won't be enough, though. Because it isn't just the cops. The entire system reinforces these results, from top to bottom.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.