California Launches Mandatory Data Collection For Police Use-of-Force (seattletimes.com) 117
An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes the AP:
All 800 police departments in California must begin using a new online tool launched Thursday to report and help track every time officers use force that causes serious injuries... The tool, named URSUS for the bear on California's flag, includes fields for the race of those injured and the officers involved, how their interaction began and why force was deemed necessary.
"It's sort of like TurboTax for use-of-force incidents," said Justin Erlich, a special assistant attorney general overseeing the data collection and analysis. Departments must report the data under a new state law passed last November. Though some departments already tracked such data on their own, many did not... "As a country, we must engage in an honest, transparent, and data-driven conversation about police use of force," California Attorney General Kamala Harris said in a news release.
It's an open source tool developed by Bayes Impact, and California plans to share the code with other interested law enforcement agencies across the country. Only three other states currently require their police departments to track data about use-of-force incidents, "but their systems aren't digital, and in Colorado's case, only capture shootings."
"It's sort of like TurboTax for use-of-force incidents," said Justin Erlich, a special assistant attorney general overseeing the data collection and analysis. Departments must report the data under a new state law passed last November. Though some departments already tracked such data on their own, many did not... "As a country, we must engage in an honest, transparent, and data-driven conversation about police use of force," California Attorney General Kamala Harris said in a news release.
It's an open source tool developed by Bayes Impact, and California plans to share the code with other interested law enforcement agencies across the country. Only three other states currently require their police departments to track data about use-of-force incidents, "but their systems aren't digital, and in Colorado's case, only capture shootings."
Re:Well, that's a start. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Well, that's a start. (Score:5, Insightful)
And when the cop shoots you [cnn.com] for following his "lawful orders"? How about when they shoot you before saying anything, like Tamir Rice or John Crawford?
No amount of authoritarian bootlicking will save your ass from a cop bent on shooting you.
Re:Well, that's a start. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah. Hell, the ONLY reason these things are even making the news is because there is a/v evidence that it happened. But these things didn't just start happening now that portable video cameras are everywhere. They've been happening ALL ALONG, and the police have just been lying about it.
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Of your three cases, the officer in the first is facing criminal charges with up to 20 years in jail. Obviously the system works.
The second two were running around in public with realistic looking guns, and didn't quickly do what the officers ordered... Are you suggesting that people should be able to point fake guns at cops with no repercussions? Too many officers get killed on the job, already. Requiring psychic abilities in use of force decisions will make that number sky rocket.
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Not to mention, did the cops identify themselves and give some sort of order? Or did they just open fire in surprise?
If a cop tells you to put your gun down, IT DOESN'T MATTER if it's either "not a real gun" or a "legally owned and carried gun", you PUT THE GOWN DOWN, PERIOD.
It's not that hard.
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The video has no sound. It was certainly a quick encounter, but the officers swear they ordered him to show his hands 3 times, and the video doesn't show enough to contradict their statement. There are no other witnesses to contradict them, either.
Non-experts analyzing videos often come to completely wrong conclusions. The conspiracy theories around the JFK assassination come to mind...
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Key factor. THe video without the corresponding audio makes it kinda useless since there is so much left out of this particular equation...
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Are the majority of police officers reasonable human beings? Yes.
[Citation needed] A simple examination of the rampant practice [wikipedia.org] of "good" cops participating in coverups, committing perjury, and planting/fabricating evidence in the defense of "bad" cops will paint a very different picture.
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Racist projection and hand waving noted. Cops are quite happy to screw over or murder innocent white people as well - just ask Michael Morton, Kelly Thomas and Cameron Todd Willingham.
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I am no authoritarian bootlicking servant. In 99% of police interactions if you comply with their instructions, you will not be injured or worse... Are the majority of police officers reasonable human beings? Yes.
99% is far too weak a standard here (and don't even get me started on "majority"). One in a thousand is also too much (due to the base rate fallacy, look it up). One in a hundred thousand is a safe conservative estimate.
So, you're about three orders of magnitude off...
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In 99% of police interactions if you comply with their instructions, you will not be injured or worse.
Oh good. So only 1% of the time will I be injured or worse. And only in 1% of of the time when people are detained or arrested will they be injured or worse. That percentage is completely unacceptable.
Are there overjealous, brutish police officers? Yes, undoubtedly. Are the majority of police officers reasonable human beings? Yes.
The guards in the Standford Prison Experiment were reasonable human beings. This problem has nothing to do with the character of the officers. They are *trained* to act like thugs, to steal property, to evade the law, and extenuate circumstances to justify their own actions. The difference between law en
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You seem to be saying that the trained police get to be impulsive and act out of fear, while untrained civilians are required to act responsibly and intelligently, and obey orders regardless of whether they can hear or perform them. Do you think this is rational?
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"As a country, we must engage in an honest, transparent, and data-driven conversation about police use of force," California Attorney General Kamala Harris said in a news release.
Obey the instructions of the police officer and let your lawyer / attorney / barrister handle any disputes. The solution does not even require technology. Priceless.
So you mean let your lawyer handle burying you in your grave?
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1. Really surprised that all violence against civilians isn't recorded, whether necessary or otherwise.
I don't think that it isn't recorded, rather I think this is more of a tool to make statistical gathering/reporting easier. Everything the police do that involves some kind of formal report is recorded somewhere in excruciating detail, but in the absence of something like this, I doubt there's any kind of detailed statistical gathering.
By excruciating, what I mean is this: I did a police ride along once, and everything that involves some kind of citation, no matter how small, invariably requires a solid min
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Up to this time the police have relied on the "Blue Line", which is to say their claim to infallibility which is backed up by every officer in the force agreeing on whatever an officer says. If an officer says it was a gun and not a book, then they all say they saw a gun.
In the past they believed that the was necessary to keep the public giving them money and respect
Nowadays, people are more familiar with quality improvement and the need to identify errors in order to correct them. The see a bunch of people
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It wasn't just cops backing each other up.
In the past, in cases where it was literally the cop's word against the defendant, the judges always assumed that the cop's testimony was more likely to be true.
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The police, the prosecutors and the judiciary all play a hand it in
And in many cases they are washing each other's hands as well
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Bigger problem (Score:1, Interesting)
This is mostly due to the idea that unarmed blacks are killed more often by cops than unarmed whites. But the data are scarce and police killings are so rare that it's hard to make this claim with any accuracy. The 800 pound elephant in the room that groups like Black Lives Matter refuse to address is that there's far more violent crime committed by blacks than other races, even when controlling for factors like socioeconomic status. Where's the outrage over all of the violent crime? Moreover, people who me
Re:Bigger problem (Score:4, Insightful)
I dunno, where is the outrage over home mortgage schemes that kept black people from buying new homes in the suburbs and living in inner city tenements?
Where is the outrage over failures to force the owners of those tenements from removing lead pain and plumbing?
Where is the outrage over the abandonment of inner city school systems?
If you take any population of humans, expose them to lead for their entire lives and then fail to educate them or giver them gainful employment which offers a chance for a better life...
Then you would end up with slums that are filled with whatever group is oppressed and the other groups, which managed to avoid said fate, pointing the finger at them and calling them animals
much like you have
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Hilarious that you can summarily sweep that under the rug.
A lot of it has to do with frequency and duration of exposure. If you live in a house with lead paint that was applied recently and that is not peeling, then it has little effect on you
If you live in a 30 year old building where lead pain is chipping off and children can eat those alarmingly sweet (yes it was used as a sweetener in the past) little tidbits, then you will have a much greater effect
Similarly, if your cheap-ass city administrator decide
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OK Barb, I see that your hatred of poor American's is deeply ingrained and that you will go to ridiculous lengths to defend your unwarranted position that lead contamination of inner city slums had a major impact on the people who live there, leading to furtherance of violence and poverty.
Just in case anybody else is interested in the overwhelming evidence counter to Barb's position can read any of these articles:
https://www.in.gov/isdh/files/Pb_behavior_problems_and_violence_fact_sheet.pdf
http://www.forbes
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Too bad that it's easy to disprove all of that. Almost every house built before 1980 has lead solder that is still leaching into the water. And of course, as I pointed out, everyone was exposed to lead in gasoline, which got into the air, the soil, and vegetables. No exceptions. How come we didn't see the same level of violence among everyone?
It's American culture that is to blame, not race per se. Economic disparity due to racism, not lead. Quit trying to get out of blaming white people for this shit situ
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Every country with electricity had decades of exposure to lead. Kettles, coffee-makers, percolators, etc. - all used lead solder.
Every other country had everyone exposed to lead piping for decades as well.
So why is it the US that has these problems, and nowhere else? American culture. Everything else, from exposure to lead paint to lead in gasoline was the same. Correlation is not causation, not when the correlation only works in the US.
There's a much stronger correlation with poverty. Quit blaming your
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How about the personal responsibility of employers who don't want people with black-sounding names, even though they love them when the same resume is submitted with a white-sounding name? How about the dearth of blacks and women as coders? Black engineers are nowhere near represented in the industry based on their proportion of the population with engineering degrees. Why not put some personal responsibility on those who allow such practices?
It's going to be the same as more and more jobs are lost to robo
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Just say it. You're dying to say it. "It's in their culture."
Everyone here was also exposed to lead, but we didn't have the level of racia violence the US had, or continues to have, so yes, of course, it's in American culture. You can't have a country whose economic foundation was slavery not have a cultural problem. Has nothing to do with lead, and everything to do with racism.
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You can't have a country whose economic foundation was slavery not have a cultural problem.
You might want to review history. At the time the US was founded, slavery was legal and practised in nearly every other country in the world. (And historically, slavery was almost never about race per se, just different social/cultural/economic groups. Islamic holders of Christian slaves, for example.)
That doesn't make it right, but it does mean you're full of shit. (Or perhaps you have a point: the west African na
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And yet the US continued to practice slavery long after most of the western world made it illegal. You were even stupid enough to fight a civil war over it, that's how deeply it's ingrained in your culture. Just look at the fuss with the confederate flag - those attitudes are still alive today. The industrial revolution didn't make slavery economically nonviable - to the contrary, it increased demand for slaves because the machines could process more cotton, and only the slaves could pick it.
It only died o
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What I was disputing is the claim that the industrial revolution caused the end of slavery, which would require not just the automation of cotton mills in England, but cotton picking in the US.
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Everyone here was also exposed to lead, but we didn't have the level of racia violence the US had, or continues to have, so yes, of course, it's in American culture.
No, it's not in "American culture." Being that I live in Canada, was born there, was raised there. We see similar things with our native populations. We're now also seeing it happen within the black communities that were imported from the Caribbean in the 80's and 90's. There are part of Toronto/GTA that are like Detroit of the 1980's with crime issues.
It has nothing to do with racism. In both cases here in Canada it's down to a few things: Poor and poor people believing that they can get no where, so
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Racism keeps them poor, because they are shut out of jobs. Keeping them on the reserves means that most Canadians never get to know one. It also opens the door to massive corruption, such as the band chief and her husband who took combined salaries of over half a million a year, tax-free, to "administer" a band of 80 people, and then had the nerve to say that there wasn't enough money to fix the problems. Of course not - they took a huge chunk of it.
Or the band chief who grabbed almost a million, then foug
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Yeah, you have no idea of what you're talking about. They're not kept on reserves, they can leave whenever they wish and keep their traditions or not. Join society or not. The most vocal about the entire thing are...well...actual natives. Racism isn't keeping them poor, their own choices are keeping them poor. If a native has the choice between going to university, or even working or living the easy life on the reserve with everything provided, while they pound back booze and their kids are huffing. W
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Then there are those near larger communities. Landlords often refuse to rent to them. Employers often refuse to hire them. So, what else can they do? Discrimination against Canada's native peoples runs deep. My best friend in my late teens was a native, but I don't know any other white pe
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Many of them are in isolated reserves with no drinking water. 20 reserves have been under boil water advisories for more than a year. There's no nearby place for them to move to, so in effect they're stuck on the reserves.
Then there are those near larger communities. Landlords often refuse to rent to them. Employers often refuse to hire them. So, what else can they do? Discrimination against Canada's native peoples runs deep. My best friend in my late teens was a native, but I don't know any other white person who can say that.
You mean because they refuse to repair their equipment? Their money is being embezzled by the people they elected? That they refuse to allow transparency? Gee sounds like to me those are all self-created problems. FYI you can't refuse to rent to anyone in Canada, it's illegal under at least 3 federal acts, and at least 1 in each province. And I haven't even gotten to HRC clauses. Employers will hire anyone if they can do the job. You obviously don't live near any reserves, I live around 8. When I wa
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The problem, the consultants found, was that feasibility studies were often badly outdated by the time the department got around to approving projects, sometimes years later. And delays in funding approval meant that existing infrastructure on reserves deteriorated, further raising costs.
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In other words, their own policies and the policies that they want via the government are creating their own problems. And much like the BS at the one reserve in northern ontario with their suicide rate, it's caused by their own actions, lack of in-action, and their own choices. Then again, I bet you didn't hear that the city of Woodstock, Ontario has had a massive number of teen-suicides outstripping that reserve by a 3:1 ratio. Then again, it really wasn't reported on the news either, or in parliament.
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5 suicides in 4 months for a population of 38,000 is NOT "outstripping that reserve by a 3:1 ratio" for a reserve with a population of 2,000 (Attawapiskat) with even 1 suicide. For it to be outstripped 3:1, you'd need 57 suicides. (38000/2000*3).
And according to your reasoning, the suicides in Woodstock are created their own problems, it was caused by their own actions and their own choices.
In other words, your reasoning is totally f*cked up, unless you believe that suicide never has causes beyond a perso
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Neat goalpost moving, but the removal of lead from gas is a non sequitur on the subject of removing lead from pipes and paint.
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I didn't move any goalposts. I stated a truth. EVERY SINGLE PERSON in America was exposed to lead. Not just in paint. And it wasn't just the plumbing in poorer communities either. Or lead-based solder in copper plumbing, which is in pretty much every home built before before the 1980s that hasn't ripped out their plumbing. That's much of the housing stock still around. And newer homes have a higher risk of radon, so the poor are less likely to be exposed to that.
You simply cannot blame the behavior on lead
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Another fact is that, after a couple of decades of dropping, violence is increasing [nytimes.com]. More than 50 people were shot in Chicago in just one weekend this year. [chicagotribune.com].
On April 20, Chicago reached 1,000 shooting victims for the year, six to nine weeks earlier than in the previous four years, according to data compiled by the Tribune. That grim milestone, for instance, wasn't reached until June 4 last year.
Perhaps even more troubling, this marks the third consecutive year in which Chicago has seen double-digit increases in shootings.
Not surprisingly, homicides are also soaring in Chicago. Through Sunday, 196 people have been killed, a 55 percent increase over the 126 victims a year earlier, official Police Department figures show.
Going up, up, up.
Blacks are fleeing Chicago because of the increased violence [chicagotribune.com], so forget about blaming them either.
The 2010 census reported a 17 percent drop in the city's black population over the previous decade. That number declined another an additional 4 percent through 2014, to 852,756.
Is it lead? No, because rates were going down, and no
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The 800 pound elephant in the room that groups like Black Lives Matter refuse to address is that there's far more violent crime committed by blacks than other races, even when controlling for factors like socioeconomic status.
That's a bold claim. Where are you getting this info from? If you're stating that more blacks are convicted of violent crimes, then that's believable. But, the idea that black people are *actually* committing more crimes than whites seems pretty suspect. What seems more likely is that racial profiling causes more black folks to be arrested and convicted of violent crime. We have quite a bit of evidence to support the idea of racial profiling (e.g. tribalism) but very little (or no) data to support the idea
Sometimes they act like gangs (Score:1)
There are "gang enhancement" laws. Why aren't they used against the gang in blue when they do evil things?
And What Will Come of It? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think that collecting data is enough. Think of how many innocent people were killed by the police without being videoed. Our police are still allowed to be expert witnesses, in courts. I am sorry if this offends people, but there is nothing intrinsically different about police officers that makes them honest.
Re:And What Will Come of It? (Score:4, Insightful)
What gets measured gets managed.
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Of course collecting data not enough. But if anything is to change, that data collection is necessary.
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You mean other than their training? Compare what an officer is trained to see to a recent shooting in my area. The call came into 911 that a person, the son, had a knife to his mother's throat [pennlive.com], had locked her in a bedroom and said he was going to kill her.
When the police arrived they found, oddly, the son with a knife to his mother's throat. After repeated commands to drop the knife an officer fired a single
Re:And What Will Come of It? (Score:5, Informative)
but there is nothing intrinsically different about police officers that makes them honest.
You mean other than their training?
Just as a counterpoint to your example.
1. Officer Sherry Hall from Georgia who claimed that a black guy shot her. Who has now been charged with fabricating that story as well as various other offenses.
2. Officer Jason Stockley from St Louis kills guy then plants gun on him.
3. Officer Mark Wayne Rowe from VA Beach stealing gun bags from the evidence room
4. Pinellas County Sheriff’s deputy Wayne Wagner beats up on a woman and then accuses her of battery of him.
etc etc
So yeah, right. Training.
But what is non-sensical is (former) Officer Stephen Mader from Weirton Wha who was basically fired because he didn't shoot a suicidal man with a gun. Mader who is a former Marine had surveyed the situation, decided that the man in question was not really a threat and was trying to talk him down. Two other officers arrived, decided that the guy was dangerous and shot him dead. Mader was fired because his actions put the other officers at risk. Oh yeah, the gun was unloaded.
Re:And What Will Come of It? (Score:4, Informative)
You mean an anecdote? How about we look at the numbers of people who have been released from prison after being proved innocent, who were badgered into confessing by police interrogators - 65 out of 149 [motherjones.com] last year. Like prosecutors, cops are far, far, far more interested in "winning" than in actual justice.
And cops invariably lie when caught in an unjustified shooting, to cover their own asses. If a cop tells you that nighttime is darker than daytime? Go outside after sundown to check and make sure he was telling the truth.
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we cant control lightning.
we can however control the agents we empower to enforce our laws.
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65 times the number of examples given by the parent poster.
Or...just bein' willfully obtuse. Those 65 people tricked or intimidated into false confessions made up almost half - 44% - of the number of innocent people released from prison in 2015. And we know there are a lot more than 267 innocent people still in prison.
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.
I think this is a relevant argument. Cops shooting people up are just the tip of the iceberg. A symptom rather than the central problem. Not sure how widespread it is but the black commu
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It's easy to solve this problem. Put a camera on the gun. If it doesn't work, the gun still works and you're in no worse shape than you were before. If it does work, you'll see whether the suspect had a knife or not. Done and done.
Re:And What Will Come of It? (Score:4, Interesting)
There's another reason why collecting data is not enough.The police rules of engagement can move along a spectrum from military-like(enemy territory) to police-like(working for the public). I think they shifted a lot towards military-like rules: as soon as a potential risk has been acknowledged the person with the badge has the right to kill. So maybe one should ask european cops what they think of US cops killing and then their chiefs defending the actions.
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One would think that the military are a bit more coolheaded about it, but there seem to be similar cases with excessive rules of engagement.
Soldiers are willing to take risks to avoid casualties but their superiors tell them to do otherwise.
The reason is obvious. The ability for the US to project power is restrained by intolerance at home for soldiers returning in coffins.
So the rules of engagement are adapted accordingly, preference for killing by remote, and in case of direct contact, when in doubt, kill.
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but there is nothing intrinsically different about police officers that makes them honest.
And yet we apply this on a professional scale quite often. e.g. Australian government documents often need signatures witnessed. The gold standard is by a justice of the peace, a judge, or an attorney. However then we get down to medical professions such as doctor, chiropractor, physio, nurse, etc. To the questionable such as an engineer who is a registered member of engineers Australia excluding student members, police officer, sheriff, or a permanent employee of the Australian postal service with at least
Should they start sooner... (Score:2)
Maybe they need a tool to identify racial bias in all of their enforcement strategies. Self fulfilling prophecy and all that...
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maybe certain races should get their act together and they'd no longer be treated as lawless thugs by default. When a racial group that is 12% of the population commits over 50% of the violent crime, there is a problem all right.
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Or maybe you could stop being a racist shit. Black men use drugs at the same rate as white women, yet are 45 times more likely to serve time. Because of selective enforcement, which leads to a neat loop that took racists like yourself some time to perfect: minorities make up more of the convictions, so they are targeted more for arrest by cops. Which makes them more likely to be convicted...
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You write a completely false statistic then claim racism.
nice.
you are part of the problem, denying the magnitude of the problem.
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There is no way of knowing if these statistics are a sampling error due to enforcement issue, or some "inherent" factor (namely socioeconomic).
Nobody paid attention (Score:2)
open source
You mean they didn't put together a bidding process for a $2.8 billion dollar project which will come in at 437% overbudget and finally be ready in 2028?
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It's the police, not the Air force.
We need more (Score:2, Insightful)
Use of force tracking with detailed reports has been the standard in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) for a long time, including written reports from all employees who have witnessed the use of force. But for police, much more has to be done. Body cameras must be used, with files uploaded to the report and the reports must be "bundled" and cross referenced to allow administrators and the public to identify bad cops.
Is "serious" defined? (Score:2)
...and help track every time officers use force that causes serious injuries...
Who defines "serious?" They or the party involved? They mention something that excludes bruises...but I could be seriously psychologically or mentally harmed.
It's a positive first step if I may add.
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Records (Score:2)
I can see it now, this is going to turn out just like the federal seizure database
California is going to put all this data into the system, and 10 years from now, someone is going to ask "how many people have been killed by police so far?", and the police are going to say "We don't know, because it would crash the system if we tried to look it up".
At this rate... (Score:2)
No one is going to become a cop anymore. And if people though the police were tough on criminals, wait till they meet the citizen posse's who will NOT give the suspect a chance to repeat offend...
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If you mean that people who want to become police officers to help them be bullies don't apply, that alone would solve a lot of the problem.
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No, no one is going to want to take the risks involved in being a cop, for the low pay and the kinds of scumbags the cops have to deal with and the constant stream of hate from the media and the criminals trying to use their skin color as a "it's racism, I didn't do nuttin'!" get-out-of-responsibliity-free card.
I side with the cops barring any sort of glaring video+audio evidence.
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Other countries seem to have little difficulty getting enough police officers while holding them accountable. Is the US a sink of barbarism, that you say we can't?
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You don't have the level of distrust in police either.
It's OK, you're still people, just not Americans, so you don't really count :)
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So, what you're saying is that it's difficult to increase the accountability in the system, since it's easier to hire accountable police officers if they're more trusted, and accountability raises public trust? We've already done that to some extend, with dash and body cams, and some changes to make it easier to prosecute police for crimes, and departments haven't quit en masse. I'd suspect that most police know that being held accountable for serious crimes isn't going to hurt them, since they won't com