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First Huff Post article I've liked

davidmcbeth

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From OP's approved article .... "Black lives matter."

I assume that this is where he gets his nod of approval.

Good for him finding something he likes.
 

WalkingWolf

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Not going to happen, we do need enforcement of traffic laws more than anything to save lives. The rest of the force should concentrate on conducting investigations for crimes already committed. But police has become an industry, tied to the political industry, the public are the victims of these industries.

The only short term solution I can see is for the public to use one of the police tactics against them. Create an non profit organization to collect funds for offering rewards for information leading to arrest of corrupt police officers. The rewards should be higher for whistle blowers. With a financial incentive it may be the push for those officers disgusted with the corruption but afraid to lose their jobs.

Congress, and state legislatures need to implement laws to protect police whistle blowers from harassment, and job loss.
 

since9

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The piece is rather idealistic. For example, "Here’s the catch: you can’t have a free society where this “protection” occurs in advance. The federal and every state constitution assumes the government can’t and shouldn’t do anything to prevent a crime."

Sure you can. Law enforcement catches criminals all the time who are planning crimes, often by means of good, old-fashioned networking i.e. human intelligence.

"The job we ask police to do today annihilates the principle of the Fourth Amendment. Regardless of statutes and Supreme Court rulings, police surveilling all of society all of the time is as unreasonable a search as there ever was. Only decades of becoming accustomed to the idea allows us to see it any other way. It hasn’t always been this way. The modern police department as we know it is a product of the 20th century. Prior to that, peace officers were generally dispatched in response to a complaint by the victim of a real crime, usually with a warrant. Contrary to legend, this did not lead to chaos, even in the inappropriately named “Wild West.” "

Sorry, but this depiction of modern policing is false. By and large, modern police departments still operate in response to inputs by citizens. Usually it's in the form of a report of a crime, although sometimes it's in response to a complaint of aberrant behavior or report of suspicious behavior.

After all, since this is precisely what 911 is for, it's extremely difficult for the author to argue that modern police "surveils all of society all of the time."

In fact, the author's claim is rather preposterous.
 

utbagpiper

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"The critical flaw in the system is the obscene notion of 'crime prevention'.
If you are not stopping an actual crime in progress, then any police act to 'prevent crime' is an improper excess of authority exercised against those who are not engaged in criminal acts.
It's a guaranteed death-spiral into totalitarianism. The only way to genuinely prevent all crime is to prevent all unsupervised activity.
It sounds like such a great idea -- who doesn't want to 'prevent crime'?
But in practice, it becomes crimes by the state against non-criminal individuals. A license to dominate, to improperly exercise improper 'authority'."

Cutting and pasting the same emphatic assertion, across 10 different threads starts to look like spamming. But goose and gander. Here is my copy and paste reply to your copy and paste emphatic assertion.

And using slippery slope arguments and reducto ad absurdum are both bad logic.

There are many things police and other officials can do to "prevent crime" that are not anywhere close to an improper excess of authority.

Imposing proper penalties on convicted criminals to reduce their desire or ability to re-offend is obvious.

Police assisting neighbors to form and operate effective Neighborhood Watch Programs is not an excess of authority.

Police providing home security audits and education people on how to make their property less appealing to criminals, when requested by the individual, is not an excess of authority.

A police officer doing paperwork in the parking lot of an all night convenience store, a school, or other location is not an excess of authority (so long as the property owner has invited them to do that). But it can help prevent crime.

A proper show of police force can be the difference between protests remaining peaceful and getting way out of hand.

A police officer in his cruiser with his lights flashing can provide enhanced safety to road crews working in construction zones, while also increasing the safety of the driving public.

Yes, a lot of injustice can occur under the guise of "crime prevention." A lot of injustice and harm can also occur if cops are entirely reactive, rather than doing what can properly be done in a proactive manner.

Enough with the emphatic assertion of bumper sticker logic demanding all-or-nothing solutions.

Charles
 

solus

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such hypocritical behaviour shows your focus is truly slipping as it is out of character, even for you mate, and you might wish to take a break...

ipse
 

WalkingWolf

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If police prevent crime, how is it that cities with the highest percentage of cops to people have a higher crime rate?

2010-04-06-size_of_police_force_and_number_of_homicides_in_large_us_cities_2008.png


police-per-1000-people-jpg.jpg

crimes-committed-per-100k-ppl-jpg.jpg


Clear evidence that police does not deter crime, social responsibility reduces crime.

NYC has had a reduction in crime, BUT they have also reduced the ratio of officers to people.
 
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WalkingWolf

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such hypocritical behaviour shows your focus is truly slipping as it is out of character, even for you mate, and you might wish to take a break...

ipse

Stop wasting your time, it is clear he has elite statist, he is the Hillary Clinton of OCDO.
 

utbagpiper

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If police prevent crime, how is it that cities with the highest percentage of cops to people have a higher crime rate?

Could be that areas lacking in social responsibility, with higher crime, end up deploying more police in an effort to combat the crime.

Clear evidence that police does not deter crime, social responsibility reduces crime.

No. Clear evidence that someone doesn't understand enough about stats to know that determining causality from correlation is often not easy. Determining the direction of causality can often be even more difficult.

Kind of like folks living in high crime areas or otherwise at risk of being victims of violent crime might be more likely to keep a gun in the home than would be someone with much lower risk of being victimized. We are well aware of the stats "proving" that having a gun in the home increases the risk of dying from a gunshot wound. Such conclusions are crap when the gun grabbers apply them to our RKBA.

They are no less crap when an anti-cop bigot tries to apply them to number of cops in a city.


NYC has had a reduction in crime, BUT they have also reduced the ratio of officers to people.

And they employed "broken windows" policing, and engaged in stop and frisk. Which of those had as much or more effect than reducing the number of cops? For that matter, was the ratio of cops reduced before or after the crime rate dropped? Put another way, were any cops let go? Or did the ratio decline because the population of NYC increased dramatically after crime was brought under control:


The U.S. Census Bureau has estimated New York City’s population at 8,550,405, as of July 2015. This represented an increase of 375,300 residents (or 4.6 percent) over the April 2010 decennial census count of 8,175,133. The city has not witnessed such a robust pace of growth since the 1920s. Population growth has been fueled by the continued surplus of births over deaths, partly due to record high life expectancy coupled with a net influx of people into the City, a phenomenon not experienced for over a half-century.
(emphasis added)

The uneducated and ignorant should be careful trying to use simple correlation to "prove" their points. It exposes their ignorance.

Charles
 

utbagpiper

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Frequentist statistics are founded on the fiction of repeatability. Flip a fair coin a million times and the next fall cannot be predicted any better than the first one.

+1

OTOH, if after a million flips the ratio between heads and tails isn't pretty close to 50-50, we maybe ought to examine whether the coin and flipping mechanism are really "fair". :)
 
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