Police are not primarily crime fighters, according to the data
A new report adds to a growing line of research showing that police departments don’t solve serious or violent crimes with any regularity, and in fact, spend very little time on crime control, in contrast to popular narratives.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They spend lots of time
dealingkilling people with mental illness and substance abuse issues and they think those can be solved with violence.
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.
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.
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.
Speed cameras trap people new to an area.
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.
Here in L.I it definitely is not done fairly. 9/10 times the cameras are only in low income neighborhoods... It's disgusting.
Over the past decade, “consistently less than half of all violent crime and less than twenty-five percent of all property crime were cleared...
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.
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.
As anarchist Allen Thornton observes, “Police aren’t in the protection business; they’re in the revenge business.” Forget about Batman driving around interrupting crimes in progress. Police patrol does not prevent crime or catch criminals. When police patrol was discontinued secretly and selectively in Kansas City neighborhoods, the crime rate stayed the same. Other research likewise finds that detective work, crime labs, etc. have no effect on the crime rate. But when neighbors get together to watch over each other and warn off would-be criminals, criminals try another neighborhood which is protected only by the police. The criminals know that they are in little danger there.
Here's an article about the Kansas City experiment on Wikipedia.
Kind of hard fighting crime when they're the ones starting said crime....
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.
Color me surpised.
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 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
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.
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.
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:
The departments were mostly non-responsive to my questions.
Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco said the data -- which is self-reported -- is flawed. All four departments declined to answer specific questions about how officers spend their time, and didn’t provide contradictory information.
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.
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/
This user worships Lenin (known for killing over 8 million people). Look up their username and you'll see they're known on Reddit for posting tankie spam everywhere.
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