The Trump Presidency

[Doc Holliday]

I’ve been away from media for 4 days. Are things calming down?


...welp

[Fe 26]

the stuff below that is a cesspool

[Drewbacca]

Because it's not really a group, I don't think, it's just a vernacular that various unaffiliated groups use for starting shit/trying to provoke a race war. I think the effort to make it sound like an organization are misguided. But there are definitely people who are trying to discredit protesters by committing or inciting violent acts.

This is 100% why occupy protests failed hard. At least now the violence is tied to police reform. The police should be scared af. I am hoping serious police reform can get Biden in to the whitehouse.

Police need more than just body cameras – they don’t work in significantly changing behaviour. Yet many of my tech friends think this is the key to change. And bias training is a social science concept that has no significant evidence of behavioural change either (like most earnest social science applications). Body cam research: https://www.pnas.org/content/116/21/10329.short?rss=1

Though we should definitely keep body cams for compliance and audit purposes. I’d rather stop the brutality than just being able to reprimand after the fact.

You need stronger legislation against the use of force. Which has been studied over 30 years as a method to severely down brutality. Without this losers with guns will use their power to control others instead of patiently deescalating situations. http://useofforceproject.org/

Demilitarize police. This is probably responsible for the escalation in deaths since the 00s. If the only tool you have is a hammer every problem starts to look like a nail. Swat style gear and police shouldn’t have these tools. The National Guard might be ok though:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/ful...53168017712885

Union contracts probably are the biggest contributor to the apathetic attitude of the police. Most contracts have terms in them that purge the records of their officers. So there’s no accountability long term for violent criminal cops. The only time penalty occurs is when someone happens to film it. Like George Floyd.
https://www.checkthepolice.org/

Use predictive analytics on cops. This software is used to predict which known criminals have the greatest influence on others, allowing law enforcement to prioritize resources on these criminals. Because the police are also basically a collection of thugs in a power vacuum the heuristic can easily work on them too: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...mpression=true

Invest in alternatives to police as crime prevention strategies. Every 10 additional organizations in a city:
- Reduces the murder rate by 9%
- Reduces violent crime rate by 6%
- Reduces property crime rate by 4%

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs...03122417736289

Create mental health response units and route 911 calls to them first. They have the training and patience to handle these situations. There are actual well established tactics on how to prepare a room/space and control a patient safely cops aren’t trained on. Also longer term change the criteria for becoming a cop to include that training:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-me....co/YQ7NZTTHrk

They did this in Toronto after a streetcar shooting death by police. Surprise no more since. Police generally know they’re not qualified and don’t want to do this stuff either.

Lastly, start a federal watchdog group of oversight of police with transparent data social orgs can browse quarterly. Federal investigation and monitoring of police incidents needs to be regular. We know accountability is likely the most significant way to decrease violence it also gives governments data to spot trends and set goals that put pressure on jurisdictions. They did it in Oakland and shooting deaths dropped dramatically.
https://www.vice.com/amp/en_us/artic...mpression=true

Lastly normalize your distribution of tax. Using evidence based study is great, but it’s also been proven that black and latino Americans are over represented in monitored offended. If a police officer is likely to pull over a black man and make a legit arrest, or face a dangerous situation, of course they’re going to use more force on those groups. However it’s clear inequities in social funding leads to this culture. We’ve been able to measure this mathematically for a century now using the gini coefficient:
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/gini-index.asp

This would bring crime stats back in line with population distribution by race and make policing safer as well.

If I were a president I’d be running with such an obvious rallying platform. Instead we have scary racist Trump versus bumblingly racist Biden.

[kedawa]

The police unions know damn well that half their members have no business being cops, and they're going to oppose any reform that draws attention to that.
Body cams ideally should be used any time a cop interacts with a member of the public, but you can't trust them to turn it on. Having them on all the time is no good either, because even if battery and storage space aren't a concern, some people won't like the increased surveillance.

[Doc Holliday]

I love that LA cut the PD’s budget so they can get even shittier cops who can’t get other jobs. Everytime I worked somewhere with layoffs and budget cuts, morale and customer service really improved.

[Drewbacca]

The police unions know damn well that half their members have no business being cops, and they're going to oppose any reform that draws attention to that.
Body cams ideally should be used any time a cop interacts with a member of the public, but you can't trust them to turn it on. Having them on all the time is no good either, because even if battery and storage space aren't a concern, some people won't like the increased surveillance.

They also don’t stop racists from being racists in a department that normalizes racist things.

I love that LA cut the PD’s budget so they can get even shittier cops who can’t get other jobs. Everytime I worked somewhere with layoffs and budget cuts, morale and customer service really improved.

Defund the police always seemed like poorly thought out idea.

[kedawa]

I think having an independent body to review all injuries or deaths involving police has worked well in Canada. We mostly have to worry about the police not knowing what their job is or how to do it.

[Doc Holliday]

You also have significantly less crime. And probably better education.

When I saw my dad last I told him his generation did a terrible job raising their children. Social media acting as a constantly available megaphone exacerbates the problem, and decades of advertising devaluing self-worth is also to blame, but the root of our issues today are two generations of adults, X and Millennials, unable to healthy process their emotions. Instead, they lash out and let the feeling of the moment dictate their actions.

[Frogacuda]

I love that LA cut the PD’s budget so they can get even shittier cops who can’t get other jobs. Everytime I worked somewhere with layoffs and budget cuts, morale and customer service really improved.

To quote Chris Rock, "I don't think police officers get paid enough. And you get what you pay for."

[haohmaru]

To quote Chris Rock, "I don't think police officers get paid enough. And you get what you pay for."

Depends on what part of the country you live in. Where I moved from (Suffolk County, NY) the police pay was ridiculous ($136K average) compared to where I live now, Clay County FL, where it's $64K. It's still a great quote.