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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".
apple will want 30% of ticket / court fees.
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
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...
you could just keep your hands on the wheel and not unexpectedly reach for something in the car.
Everyone needs to know these simple rules when they are approached by the police:
Rule #1 - Don't run.
Rule #2 - Listen to what the police officer says.
Rule #3 - Do what the police officer tells you to do.
Rule #4 - Keep your mouth shut.
If you don't want to follow these rules and you don't understand why we need the police, just chimp out and get shot. We are trying to have a civil society, you don't belong here.
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.
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
If Clinton's assault weapon ban been in force, 50 Pulse patrons and many police would be alive right now.
Maybe. Maybe not. Norway has some of the strictest gun laws in the world, yet Anders Breivik was able to kill 77 people. Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people with a pair of handguns. Timothy McVeigh killed 168 with a truck full of fertilizer. Assault weapons are responsible for less than 1% of gun deaths in America.
The US needs to join Australia and Venezuela in stricter gun laws if the country is to actually have an actual future.
Perhaps, but that has very little to do with police-on-civilian killings. Trying to change the subject from excessive force by police, to disarming civilians, is misleading and unproductive.
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.
How about the police just leave people alone unless there's a genuine danger?
Bringing the police into a situation can be dangerous for police and for those around them. So
1. repeal the laws that regulate non-violent, non-recklessly-dangerous behavior,
2. if you do decide to enforce some minor rule, the only means to enforce it is to take a photo and send a ticket in the mail,
3. make keeping everyone safe the #1 priority of police and hold them accountable for failures to keep people safe, even if it means criminals get away a lot more often
4. instruct officers that their role is to provide a service to the people in the community and their attitude needs to match that role unless they want a desk job
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.
This ignores the unspoken policy that traffic stops are not always about enforcing traffic law and collecting small fines, but rather the police want that interaction with the driver so they can fish for bigger violations. Traffic stops are "pretext stops", a loophole to get around the 4th amendment.
Running your plate and taking your ID isn't about making sure they assign points to the right person, but also about looking for wants and warrants. Getting you to roll down the window and talk to the officer isn't really about checking whether you smell like booze or pot, or seem nervous. There is no right to remain silent when an automobile is involved., and traffic stops are one of the most productive ways to find and arrest people with outstanding warrants.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
The problem is how the police are chosen and trained.
No. There is more than one problem. That is sometimes one of the problems, because it is not like that is uniform either.
If people broke laws less, we would also have less need for police. So having too many laws is also a problem.
So is breaking the laws, and anything that incentivizes people to break the laws.
So is mistreating criminal suspects in ways which may be as you are trained to do, but which will cause their entire community to distrust police officers forever.
So is abuse of alcohol and inhibited judgment.
So is any society where the punishment for a simple misdemeanor includes not being able to rent an apartment.
So is a police culture where reporting a concern about a fellow officer's behavior makes you a pariah.
So is a society where police lives are at risk at every traffic stop.
It's not just one problem.
Real lawyers write in C++
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.
But *do* they shoot every motorist who makes a sudden move?
Really, straight up question. How many drivers are pulled over every day in America? How many of those result in LE shooting someone that might be innocent? Is it one out of every ten traffic stops? One out of a hundred? One out of 10,000 or one out of a million?
Can't help it, I'm a software developer. I always want to know what the numbers are. Anyone know of a source for the data?
Tragedy always sells papers or at least clicks these days, but what are the numbers?
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
Which is as it should be. You should never speak to the police. Let them run your plates, run your license and check your registration and insurance while you remain completely silent.
Talking to police who have stopped you has never been anything but a waste of time. Just do as they say and be on your way. If they wrong you, you take them to court AFTER you have complied with what they tell you to do.
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