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Uber Investor Suggests Addressing Police Killings With an App (usatoday.com)
An anonymous reader write: To address the problem of motorists killed by police officers, Shervin Pishevar, the Iranian-born VC who backed Uber, is suggesting an app that allows police officers to communicate with motorists during traffic stops without either party leaving their vehicles. USA Today reports that Pishevar "says he has slept very little in the past 48 hours as he seeks input from law enforcement, software engineers and designers, lawmakers and from community members," and he's now working with former New York City police commissioner. Engadget has criticized Pishevar's proposal, writing "Dear Silicon Valley, not everything can be solved with apps."
At midnight on Friday, Uber also shut down their service for one minute "to create a moment of reflection for the Uber Community,", and also added a peace sign to their app, encouraging its users to "take a moment to think about what we can do to help," and changed the countdown for the arrival of a car into the amount of time left "to reflect on gun violence".
At midnight on Friday, Uber also shut down their service for one minute "to create a moment of reflection for the Uber Community,", and also added a peace sign to their app, encouraging its users to "take a moment to think about what we can do to help," and changed the countdown for the arrival of a car into the amount of time left "to reflect on gun violence".
Non-kinetic solutions will not solve kinetic problems. How's about we all just take a step back and count to five before we make any sudden motions, literal or metaphorical.
Except for the situation where the officer tells you to give him your ID and then shoots you when you reach for it.
This capability already exists, but it's not an app. It's a loudspeaker behind the police car's grille. I have no idea how someone could come up with such a ridiculous idea, to use an app to communicate to a car.
-SR
How about a real time audio communications system is added to the cellphones? SOmething that can use the cellphone's microphone, convert it to digital data, and then send it across the network in real time to another cellphone in the police officer's car? Perhaps we could use some kind of numbering system to uniqlely identify each cellphone, with perhaps a three digit or short number for emergency services coordination.
Now for a name... hmm... well, obviously, it's phonic because that means sound, and it is at a distance, which as we know from ancient greek, is "tele". So... something like telephnr. Becauese adding an "r" makes it an awesome app...
Oh wait.
Or perhaps police officers could try and be a bit less twitchy, and not shoot motorists who make a sudden move after being stopped for a broken taillight. They should "protect and serve", meaning that their safety most definitely comes second after that of ordinary citizens. I'm not talking about police confronting armed individuals who are obviously criminal, but about people pulled over in an ordinary traffic stop. In 2015, about 50 police officers in the USA died of gunfire, and only a small part of that concerns people pulling out a gun during a routine check. That number is in stark contrast with the couple of hundred unarmed citizens killed by police officers.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Michael Brown was attacking the officer trying to take his firearm away, i would have shot him too in that situation
Sure. Michael Brown was a violent thug, and the preponderance of the evidence is that the shooting was justified. But he was unarmed when he was killed, and his death had little to do with "gun violence".
i have to agree too that Eric Garner should not have been shot
He wasn't shot. He was wrestled to the ground and died of a heart attack. He was unarmed, and the police never drew their weapons. "Reflecting on gun violence" would have done nothing to prevent his death.
if i was a cop i would have ignored Eric Garner and let him sell his cigarettes
If the police ignore people selling untaxed cigarettes, then all cigarettes will be sold untaxed.
People already get shot for holding a cellphone so what makes you think a smartphone app will improve the situation? Also, if you don't have a smartphone then will they just assume you are hostile and/or antisocial?
The problem is how the police are chosen and trained.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
If you, as a police officer, tell someone to stay in the car and they get out, or you tell them to get out and they stay in, don't you think that's a pretty damn clear answer? You can't fix stupid, not even with an app.
Highly unlikely. Several states have similar or more restrictive controls on so called 'assault weapons'... and as we saw in San Bernardino, it didn't stop a thing.. and they even modified the rifles in a way which was illegal under California law. More so, during the 'ban', much the same rifles were still available, only with minor cosmetic changes to make them legal (ie thumb in hole stock instead of a pistol grip).
And yet the gun deaths are not evenly distributed across the country, instead they are primarily centralized in in a handful of locations... which if you discount their influence, the actual national rate drops like a rock.
Maybe it's not the firearms which are the problem?
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Maybe you haven't heard. Police are never, ever responsible in these situations.
Tamir Rice was big, how could they have known he was only 12 years old? How could they have known his gun (which was in his pants when he was shot) wasn't real? How could they know Eric Garner would die from (not) choking him out? How could the police know Philippe wasn't reaching for a gun? How could the police know Freddie Gray would die of a broken back?
We've been told over and over, police have zero responsibility to find out what's going on before acting, zero responsibility for the consequences of those actions if the officer could reasonably be said to be afraid, zero responsibility for "accidents" that injure people due to police actions, and zero responsibility for "mistakes" like raiding the wrong house or shooting bystanders during a manhunt.
Everyone else is 100% responsible to make sure officers feel completely safe and respected at all times.
"At midnight on Friday, Uber also shut down their service for one minute "to create a moment of reflection for the Uber Community,"
Wow, a whole minute. They must really have been broken up about all that murder and killing and stuff.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
The U.S. doesn't need rubbish like this either. They need to stop lowering the bar in efforts to be inclusive and demand more training, higher standards, and evaluate officers periodically.
They especially need to take officers who served in combat to the side and reprogram their life and death response because the majority of their encounters will not even get close to this. Of course as far as I know, the cops involved in most of the shootings were not combat vets but they could convey a message that others are incorrectly picking up.
Training and tactics can prevent most police shootings. Trust and professionalism go a long way too.
So even if the cops believed they could be dealing with armed robbers, the occupants of the car were only suspects at this points, and on really thin grounds at that. Absolutely no reason for the police to start shooting at the merest hint of trouble. And at this point all we have to go on is this unconfirmed police radio recording from a single source.
Also, if they suspected the occupants might be armed robbers, would the police just walk up to the driver's window and ask for ID? That just seems monumentally stupid.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
As it stands now, the US is in the world's top five countries when it comes to people being killed by guns.
Wrong. The US is #11.
To be fair, it's top of the list of developed, "first world" nations, at 10.54 per 100k people. Next is Finland at 3.25, mostly due to suicides (the gun related murder rate is 1/10th that of the US). In fact all other developed nations have just a fraction of the gun crime per head of population.
What the US needs is a proper mental healthcare system, that helps people before they become violent or suicidal.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC