zlacker

police are falsely accused of bad behavior frequently, which can make it much harder to identify the actual extreme few bad apples which need to be identified and removed

If the problem isn’t systemic then how do you explain the various studies showing that minorities are disproportionately “stopped and frisked”?

>>scarfa+(OP)
I don’t know anything about those studies so I won’t form any opinion of them.

>>austin+16
https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/nyclu-releases-report-an...

Stop and Frisk disparity between Blacks and Whites

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/nyregion/nypd-social-dist...

https://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform/new-evidence-r...

>>scarfa+(OP)
Without knowing whether minorities also commit crimes at a disproportionate rate, this isn't very meaningful.

>>downer+89
The entire idea of “stop and frisk” is that the police have no idea whether they a are committing crimes or not beforehand. But if you stop more minorities than Whites in proportion to the population. even if the same number of crimes are being committed. Blacks will still be convicted more.

More evidence that Whites are less likely to get tickets for the same offense.

https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-racial-profiling...

>>scarfa+9a
Hmm--that doesn't match my impression. Rather, police would presumably stop and frisk people they pattern-matched as up to no good. (Popular niceties notwithstanding, police generally know the score.) If some group is committing a disproportionate number of crimes, it's entirely reasonable that they'd be stopped more.

I want my police to skillfully work on the crime problem, not carefully spend equal minutes on each demographic group.

>>downer+ye
And now you wonder why there are riots. Because people excuse police harassing people because of the color of there skin.

Why not make the people really safe and reinstate Jim Crow and laws against interracial marriage?

I’m sure you wouldn’t feel the same way if you were constantly stopped because of the color of your skin. But we should just accept it.

This also explains why minority owned startups get a lot less VC funding than people who “pattern match” with Zuckerberg.

And you wonder why there are riots...

Btw, they were wrong.

https://www.citylab.com/equity/2016/08/the-data-can-no-longe...

But it turns out that the New York Daily News was wrong about its forecasts, which the media outlet’s editorial board wrote in an op-ed Monday that it was “delighted” to admit. Instead of bedlam up in Brooklyn and hell up in Harlem, as the paper had warned would happen as a result of scaling back “stop and frisk,” the opposite happened: “Post stop-and-frisk, the facts are clear,” wrote the editorial board Monday. “New York is safer while friction between the NYPD and the city’s minority communities has eased.

>>scarfa+A6
That looks like New York specific stuff. As I have never been there my knowledge and interest of those conditions is absent.

So I looked it up for my state: https://www.superlawyers.com/texas/article/stop-and-frisk-in...

Here it seems to be related almost entirely to traffic stops. I suspect, but don’t know, that racial identity would play a lesser role in that case because an officer wouldn’t likely known a driver’s race until the vehicle is already pulled over. To play devils advocate though I am white and had law enforcement ask to search my vehicle several times in my youth.

>>austin+Zk
Really? You don’t think that police could look in a window and tell? We aren’t talking about anecdotes. We have statistics.

And these are the types of excuses White people make to justify and to gloss over problems.

Here are similar statistics for Florida.

https://www.aclu.org/blog/criminal-law-reform/new-evidence-r...

And GA.

https://www.wabe.org/study-3-ga-locations-black-latino-drive...

But you really think racial profiling only happens in one state.

>>scarfa+lq
You were talking about stop and frisk opposed to racial profiling more specifically. So I looked that up and it looks like Texas has already achieved transparency on that matter: https://www.tcole.texas.gov/content/racial-profiling-reports

Transparency is the only way to root out actual and suspected corruption. It’s not a cure but a required prerequisite.

>>austin+5Q
Sadly stop and frisk is something that cannot be done un-subjectively. Again like with most debates there are good arguments on both sides. It however comes down to where you draw your conclusion. It's a thin line that has to be carefully toed and when everybody has different ideas on what powers others should or should not have against them it is usually hard for all sides to agree

>>h3cate+vT
It seems to be a lot easier for people to think it’s okay as long as it doesn’t affect people that look like them. It’s like the tired “few bad apples” line.

Many of the same people on HN want government involvement because their favorite app can’t be side loaded on an iOS device (a few apps) but excuse police brutality. How many submissions have been flagged on issues regarding police brutality on HN while submissions about an app that Apple wouldn’t allow make the front page?

It shows you where people’s priorities lie.