undefined | Better HN

0 pointsbko2y ago0 comments

If I were in one of these high crime neighborhoods where people are getting shot, I would want more surveillance and police. This position that they're being exploited by surveillance is mostly a rich white cosmopolitan belief rooted in fantasy

> In fact, large majorities of residents in low-income “fragile communities” — including in both urban and rural areas — want more police presence, not less. In the more than a dozen low-income urban areas surveyed, 53% of residents want more police presence while 41% want the same — only 6% want less.

Not being shot is pretty low on the hierarchy of needs. And let's be real, it's a tiny percentage of people that are committing violent crime. Increasing the odds of correctly putting one person in jail prob reduces future crime greatly.

The criminal element is real and I'm doubtful that you can give someone who's killing people access to a food bank or job training and they'll just become a productive member of society. Being a violent criminal is almost certainly the least economical thing you can do. You end up killed or in jail in a short time span so to think someone rationally picks this as a career opposed to a minimum wage job is not realistic.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/08/26/why-americ...

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Greed2y ago

> If I were in one of these high crime neighborhoods where people are getting shot, I would want more surveillance and police. This position that they're being exploited by surveillance is mostly a rich white cosmopolitan belief rooted in fantasy

But ARE you though? I'm in Chicago where we're in the tail end of phasing this system out specifically because it did not address the problems it claimed to. All it did was aggravate and harass locals _after_ the fact that had nothing to do with the initial crime.

The deterrence factor was not insignificant, but it definitely wasn't worth the far greater instances where it was not only creating false positives but also proactively CREATING crime in accordance with other "high tech" solutions like predictive crime algorithms which only really served to reinforce existing biased patrolling practices (which were driven by data generated by shot spotter, in part).

See: https://www.theverge.com/c/22444020/chicago-pd-predictive-po...

mcmcmc2y ago

Wow you did a great job cherry-picking from that article. Notice how the survey mentioned “police”, not covert surveillance.

People want more, better-trained police, not a third party listening in and directing police resources based on biased data, proprietary algorithms, and human analysts with dubious training and no public accountability.

All you’re telling me is that you lack human empathy and aren't interested in understanding the systemic causes of violence.

bkoOP2y ago

So people want more police presence but they draw the line of microphones to listen to gunfire to triangulate crime and arrest murderers? Seems like the second one is a lot less egregious but I guess since I don't have "source" you win the argument.

I'm pretty sure we should start arresting people who kill other people and remove them from society. Pretty high on priority

Talanes2y ago

You're taking the key crux of the argument, whether ShotSpotter works, as just a given. Just straight up begging the question.

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