Police are not primarily crime fighters, according to the data
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/police-are-not-primarily-crime-fighters-according-data-2022-11-02/Open linkView original on lemmy.world446
Comments100https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/police-are-not-primarily-crime-fighters-according-data-2022-11-02/Open linkView original on lemmy.world
My job was broken in to. They sent a detective. He looked around and told us there was basically zero chance he'd catch the guy.
I found a cigarette butt outside. He said "It could be anybody". I said "nobody here smokes". He said "even if it's his, there's little chance it's a DNA match."
To his credit, the detective took the cigarette butt and tested it. There was a DNA match to a guy living in our small town who'd been in jail three times for robbery meaning the cops knew exactly who he was and what he did for a living but weren't doing anything to stop him.
When they went to his house they found everything of ours that he couldn't sell.
Cops are just next level lazy pieces of shit in my experience. They average six figure salaries in most cities. They just fucking sit around and eat donuts. Act like your a piece of shit for even suggesting they do their jobs.
Detective doing his job, protecting capital.
Really mind blowing how few crimes are actually solved. I've had real world experience of being a robbery victim and there was absolutely no attempt at solving it.
Someone told me if you have a problem and call the police, now you have two problems.
I was robbed when I worked as a cashier. I literally did all the work and found the dudes name because he came in earlier and paid with a card and signed his name. Gave them his name and they didn't care. Nothing was ever done, I still see the dude walking around frequently.
We had a guy come in for training. His first day. During lunch he left, slashed a tire on every car and smashed two windows.
We had him on tape and we had all his info because he was just hired.
Cops wouldn't do shit about it. Didn't even look for the guy.
Many years ago, before identity theft was a thing, my mom (who live with me), had our mail stolen. That day was the day that Oregon was sending out our "kicker checks", those are refund checks from the Oregon Dept of Revenue, and also the day that my mom's bank sent out her bank statement.
We found out because I got a letter from the Oregon Dept of Revenue that my kicker check was cashed at a different amount than it was issued. I did get a replacement, but I pointed out to the Oregon Dept of Revenue that the kicker check did have my social security number on it. They agreed and stated that will be the last year that will be a thing.
My mom fared worse, since she had a bank statement that was stolen. The thief went to an office supply store where they sold paper check templates and used the bank account number that the bank helpfully included in full on the bank statement, and printed out fake checks and wrote several at WalMart. To this day my mom is banned from writing checks there.
I never did get the police to care. Identity theft was not a thing at time. They flatly stated that they were not going to even write a report because I was getting a replacement check, so there was no crime.
That never did make sense. If my car gets stolen and the insurance company gets me another one, the thief, if caught, will get charged with something.
Cops will often not do jack shit if it means they have to actually get off their fat mattress and work.
Couple of years ago, I received a package from the FBI which contained a number of bank statements and DMV letters that apparently had been recovered in Florida, clear across the country from where I live. These were letters dated less than a month before.
Apparently the FBI were investigating some identity theft, and found thousands of people's mail and other identification at this place in Florida. And then they sent back the material to the various victims. Luckily, I never found any fake accounts or anything in my name but that was pretty crazy.
So apparently the FBI are still doing some work...
Next time something like this happens, report it to USPSIS, they're much more serious about investigating mail crimes (which this falls under since they stole your mail), and they don't fuck around.
Yeah the dude who robbed me didn't wear a mask and you could clearly see his face on the tape. They didn't care.
I'm sorry that happened to you.
They've basically became untrained social workers who are terrible at their jobs. They spend lots of time dealing with mental illness and substance abuse issues and they think those can be solved with violence.
Not even that. Read the article. They spend 11% of their time responding to calls. The rest of the time they're harassing people which are 50% of the time minorities.
That you got wrong, it's way more than 50% minorities.
They're a gang.
Full stop.
No, worse, they're an organized crime syndicate.
Usually only if they aren't white. If they're mentally ill an white, they still might get roughed up and tasered, but they usually reserve the gun for darker skin tones.
You forgot the gunshot. They love shooting defenseless people, especially if they're anything but white.
Why not just automate traffic violations and remove 83% of police?
Some cities have been sued for doing that. You can't face your accuser in court if your accuser is a computer.
That doesn't sound right. The accuser is the state regardless, no?
what if your family member or friend was using your car? what if your car was stolen? also, some of those cameras will ticket for legal right on red.
they just catch plates and send a ticket in the mail to the registered owner. it's not great. source - i live in a city with these, though state law now means the city can no longer enforce tickets. also, the idea of camera/computer generated rosters of law-breakers is unsettling.
If your car was reported stolen, then you document that and get the ticket canceled. I don't see how the presence of a police officer changes anything about that.
I don't have a problem with the owner getting a ticket if someone else was driving. I also, again, don't see how that's relevant. It's not like the police officer is going to remember who was in the car.
The camera ticketing for something legal is a technical issue that should be fixed.
Sort of, the idea is that you can face the citing officer in court. Granted, all the officer has to do is lie and the judge is likely to side with them over a rando citizen, but that's the intent of the law.
I don't understand why that's important. The officer is just a biological camera. They're there to document what you did wrong.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/11/16/22785644/red-light-camera-tickets-right-turn-on-red-stone-park-michael-tock-bob-fioretti
Red light cameras, sure. It can be done fairly - not that it is everywhere.
Speed cameras just trap people new to an area. The people who live in an area learn to avoid them and thus they don't stop habitual speeders who are a danger. Plus they can't be everywhere.
The bias needs to be taken out of it. Police can't seem to stop themselves from racial profiling. Its like a compulsion.
I used to drive truck over the road, and I can attest to the fact that those red light cameras can also be made very deliberately unfair. The city of Hannibal, Missouri had these cameras at the intersection of Highway 61 and Red Devil, at the bottom of a steep hill. About 1/5 of a mile up the hill south of the intersection was a pole with a sensor on it set to about 12'6". I observed that any time any vehicle over that height passed that sensor, the light would trip to red. And it was set at a distance that a loaded semi would be all but guaranteed to run that light. Those of us who traveled that corridor with any frequency knew the sensor was there, and would try to want other drivers over the CB, but a lot of drivers had stopped routinely using the CB by then, so the light proved quite lucrative. At least, until it started causing wrecks from the trucks jackknifing in the intersection in the winter. That setup ran for three or four years before the city was dragged into court over it and forced to remove the red light cameras, though it was done in such a way as to question the enforceability of the tickets and without ever directly acknowledging that the cameras were set up to entrap commercial vehicles.
Gridlock cameras can be added to red light cameras, also reducing congestion policing costs.
Or they could just, not speed? And speed cameras can be everywhere. They cost up to $50k to deploy and collect to 2k+ fines per year (based in my location, this obviously varies wildly), so they run net positive. Rotating locations can also get after the habits of locals, though that's the 50k cost, I'd guess statics are cheaper.
If immediate reduction is most important than habit changing over time (i.e. a school zone or highway transition) speed linked red lights can achieve the effect. Such to say, if you drive over the limit, the light turns red. This forces you to stop and pisses off everyone behind you, providing social pressure. These are only in the pilot stage, so I don't know the real deployment costs.
Speed traps are called speed traps because the limit suddenly drops like 20-30 mph in a very short distance. Saying "just don't speed" completely ignores how speed traps work and why they exist .
Just realised this is a US politics forum, my insights my not be useful.
Speed cameras in my region require at least one warming sign and a sign on the camera itself, yet they still catch people (myself included...)
The short distance limit dropping sounds like a failure in road design if cars aren't naturally lowering speeds due to the changing streetscape.
Regardless, the point of enforcement (and the rules they informed) should be based on keeping roads safe, not "trapping" people. I'm sorry you have to go through that.
But I want to drive 65 in a 30 zone! It's a conspiracy by the deep state agenda 21 liberal fascist police to prevent me from doing that!
/S
Here in L.I it definitely is not done fairly. 9/10 times the cameras are only in low income neighborhoods... It's disgusting.
The response to a car break in is always, just call your insurance company. Imagine if they took it seriously and used forensic tools. Most car breakins are done by a small number of the same people.
Tax collectors for the rich
Behind the Bastards did a six part special on the origins of the police called Behind the Police. It is very good, highly recommend.
I remember once my car got stolen. I reported it, and the police came to my house and accused me of stealing it. I was like “why the fuck would I do that.” Which they responded by threatening to make me take a polygraph test. When I was like “okay, fine, let’s do it” they decided to leave. I didn’t get my car back until it was in the impound, and I had to pay 200 dollars to get it back (?!?)
This whole experience is what made me truly realize that the police don’t do fuck all for working class people. They’re just there to take your money. Fuck those useless cops, and fuck the system that makes me pay when my car gets stolen.
— Anarchy 101 by Bob Black
Here's an article about the Kansas City experiment on Wikipedia.
I'll never forget this woman I worked with a long time ago. She was in a clerical type of position, but she had an absolute shit-stain of a miserable scumbag for a husband that was actively dealing drugs in the community. She broke down and vented to me one day about the whole thing and I told her she really needs to report it to the police, and that she needs to really do it for her kids to get rid of the exposure they had to the drugs in the home.
She eventually willed up the courage to report it, and I helped her get info from the local sheriff's dept and PD. They had a deputy and detective who headed up this team.
Long story short, she gave them everything. Dates, times, locations, and all the people to bust. She agreed to be a witness, and it was enough to take down a significant distribution ring. Nothing ever came of it. 5 years later her husband was arrested for a traffic infraction, and then he finally ended up in prison because he had ten pounds of cocaine, and 50 some pounds of meth in his vehicle. They never busted up the ring.
I remember the feeling, that the whole thing was just a dog and pony show. I was in my 20's but I learned way back then that law enforcement is a silly joke. Cops don't do shit for the working class.
Kind of hard fighting crime when they're the ones starting said crime....
Color me surpised.
Police spend most of their day inserting themselves into the everyday lives of citizens who aren't doing anything wrong.
I have a criminal record. Minor drug charges. I still get pulled over constantly, for zero reason, just so the cop can take a look and see if they approve of my hair clothes etc, and whether or not they wanna ruin my life...because they can, without provocation. Ever get slapped with a resisting arrest because the other charges weren't gonna stick in court? Happens all the time.
Fuck cops.🖕
When i was a kid, I was weird and from a small town. I had no criminal record, gifted program at school, but I had a weird haircut and liked to walk to dunkin' donuts late at night because after midnight their donuts were on sale. This was enough to convince the local cops that I was one of the bad kids and, obviously, on drugs. Any time they saw me, they would stop me and harass me. It was the 90s, so the police could do anything to anyone as long as they said "Where are the drugs?" while they did it. You'll notice that nowadays the fashion seems to be to yell "stop resisting" or "gun" before they abuse private citizens without probable cause, but at the time is was "where are the drugs?" So, after a while of being stopped and harassed every time I left the house, I eventually got fed up and talked back to them. "Where are the drugs?" "The guy you're ignoring while you fuck with me has them". For that, I got my face busted off the hood of the cruiser a couple times before they let me go. They never found anything on me, because there never was anything on me, but being small town idiot cops they were sure that every time they didn't find drugs it was because I was really good at hiding them.
Sorry that happened to you. The drugs are a systematic and bullshit pretense now to meddle in anyone's lives they don't like. It's fucked.
I moved from a city, into a small town. The cops don't like me round here. I get cuffed every stop.
They even cuffed my partner once, while yelling "stop resisting" like you weigh 150 more lbs than her bro. She ain't doing shit.
The courts have ruled many times that the police have no duty to protect.
"To bully and oppress"
This article brought to you by "yet another thing we all already figured out years before the study."
Police in my town spend a significant amount of time at the scenes of car accidents. I wonder what percentage of their time?
Their priority should be on crime and accident response and prevention and I feel like it is in my small town. I don't know how this compares to police in larger cities, which makes studies like these valuable.
Police in the U.S. is a shit show and other countries are following because they all reduce the screening procedures, psychological care and training time. But just defunding them, without doing anything else, will make it worse.
You propaply have to build up some completely new type of police force, break it up and fill important positions with new people and start again from there.
Otherwise this will continue to spiral downwards. And with increasingly bad reputation of police you will attract more an more bad people into the job.
That's actually what one city did. They fired all their police, created new procedures for training and screening, amd hires all new police. During the months it took to do this they relied on country amd atate police, so there was very little poloce presence in town. The end result was people had more faith in police and no real change in crime, but fewer citations where issued
What city did this?
it was some where in new England I to say Maryland
There are countries in this world where the police actually consists of a body of well-trained specialists. People who don't shoot first and ask questions later. People who got trained on de-escalation procedures, psychology, foreign language basics, how to deal with people having issues, etc.
Here in Australia, they are more like revenue collectors.
They do that here in America too. And it's not just traffic tickets. Go watch the John Oliver episode about "civil forfeiture." The TLDR is that while you are not entitled to police protection, the police are entitled to your money.
Yeah but you guys cops are scary, like fear for my life scary, trigger finger maniacs with ego/power problems.
I remember calling 911 and reporting multiple gun shots across the Street. I was told it was probably fireworks. I told them I own guns and know what a gun sounds like, they told me I don't, but they will send someone, I waited and they never came. I wake up the next day and guess what they found a dead guy in the park that had been shot... They never came to ask me questions or anything even though I had notes on how many shots and the time and they knew who I was and my number and address. Cops are useless, I also was a victim of the cops getting the wrong address, I woke up to a bang bang bang open up! I opened up to a shotgun in my face cocked and ready to blow my head off. Only after they realized my house wasn't the same as a house on a different street did they stop pointing guns at me
The article specifically mentions deputies, and how they don't spend time on violent crime, but the article never mentions ONCE, detectives, whose sole job is investigating violent crime. I'm not pro-police in any way, but... yeah. Also it seems like this article was written by an angsty teenager with lines like:
I'm all for criticizing the police, let's just write it a bit better next time, huh?
This is all fairly standard information for reportage involving coverage of an institution or organization--i.e., noting that they were contacted regarding the report, asking for a response, and detailing any pertinent information from the response. In this case, the response did not provide any further information on the report. What are you taking issue with? The comma splice?
So traffic violations are something we no longer want to enforce then? Nearly 43000 deaths in 2021 from automobiles.. https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/traffic-crash-death-estimates-2022
When 3/4 of traffic stops are warnings you know most of them are just the typical person making dumb mistakes since warnings are typically only given to people with no recent record.
No idea why "resonable suspicion" crimes are such a big focus.
Better roads help prevent crashes. People won't change just because they got a ticket. "Drive as fast as you can afford" is a warning I got when learning to drive. If all it is is a $300 ticket there are people who are more inconvenienced from being stopped than paying the fine. People don't care about car crashes.
Then you have to increase fines, make it a percentage of the person's income that hurts everybody equally.
Sounds to me like you just want to hurt people as opposed to fixing the problem.
You got to realize 100% of anything isn't feasible. Having better road engineering, and reducing the number of cars on the road will have results.
The drug wars stopped people doing drugs right?
Wow who would have guessed. Certainly not marxists who have been saying this for hundreds of years!
https://www.redpepper.org.uk/the-police-are-not-here-to-protect-you/
A thought-terminating cliche that has absolutely nothing to do with what I posted. "Don't listen to this person's completely reasonable point, they're [redscareword]"
Half my family grew up in the soviet union. Czech.
You two are the ones that completely derailed this conversation into talk about lenin and other crap. I commented about cops ffs.
I am not a man. Stop misgendering me. This is the second fucking time in this thread.
I just said we're the ones that we've been saying this forever, and linked to some further reading.
I've never praised "mass murderers". Get a grip.
No it isn't. You have a warped view of what eastern europe believes because you see us as caricatures to use as a political weapon. I have gone over this in the past, there is a very large amount of positivity towards the soviet union here:
7 out of 11 countries believe the end of the USSR harmed their countries rather than benefited them
Hungary: 72% of Hungarians say they are worse off today economically than under communism
Romania: 63% of the survey participants said their life was better during communism
Germany: more than half of former eastern Germans defend the GDR
28 percent of Czechs say they were better off under the Communist regime
81% of Serbians believe they lived best in Yugoslavia
Majority of Russians
Americans always say this stuff about europe because their brains are riddled with red scare brainworms and are completely devoid of any knowledge or understanding of what the left in Europe actually thinks because Americans do not have any experience with a left, they don't have one.
Ableism really gets your point across and makes you look good.
I don't worship them. I simply don't agree with your take that they're bad. Life was significantly worse under the Tsars and this is empirically provable with very simple data. For example a look at prison mortality rates before and after the revolution:
What you are functionally doing when you attack Lenin is say that you think the revolution shouldn't have happened. You're defending monsters yourself - the tsars.
The point isn't to defend the mistakes of past socialist endeavours of which there were certainly many, but to uphold the obvious improvements that they most certainly made over what came before them.
And you consistently ignore the fact that good people throughout history agree with me that Lenin was a revolutionary that fought for good, not a monster.
The author of that graph miscalculated and accidentally inflated the Tsarist era statistics. They were closer to this. (If I remember correctly, the original author might have misunderstood Wheatcroft when he wrote ‘These rates were extremely high in the 1880s, when they were more than five times the normal prison mortality rate[.]’)
The Tsars were still pretty awful, though, and were one of the reasons that made the October Revolution inevitable.
Your comment didn't bring anything meaningful to this discussion either. All you did was post a website link.
Maybe your post could actually include some meaningful discussion and comments that can stand on their own. Maybe next time?
Maybe try clicking it and reading next time?
Seeking as you did not post any meaningful comment, no thanks.
(Also I'm not a guy, you've been told this before. Stop intentionally misgendering me.)
http://www.mandela.gov.za/mandela_speeches/2002/021028_lenin.htm