[HN Gopher] NYC major crime complaints fell when cops took a bre...
___________________________________________________________________
NYC major crime complaints fell when cops took a break from
'proactive policing'
Author : spideymans
Score : 122 points
Date : 2021-08-30 21:20 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.latimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.latimes.com)
| anigbrowl wrote:
| (2017)
|
| This is a good and interesting story but it's not new
| information, nor does it seem to have been updated with more
| recent data.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Tickets and such for minor violations, impounds, etc, all these
| can represent a major financial hit to a struggling family or
| young adult. I have worried for a long time that over-policing
| causes more crime than it prevents, and it generates distrust of
| the police as a group that is there to make your life trouble
| rather than keep you safe. There is just an incredible amount of
| research confirming that over-enforcement of petty infractions
| accumulates into community economic hardship, crime, and
| instability.
| spideymans wrote:
| >Tickets and such for minor violations, impounds, etc, all
| these can represent a major financial hit to a struggling
| family or young adult.
|
| A very minor mistake - the kind of mistake I'm sure we've all
| made at some point - can easily send the life of a poor person
| spiralling out of control.
|
| Get thrown in jail for a night, you could lose your job. If you
| lose your job, you will miss rent. If you miss rent, the lack
| of social safety net means you're essentially screwed. It's
| even worse if you're find or a parent. It's no mystery why
| people in this situation would turn to crime.
| amatecha wrote:
| https://archive.is/rrBsp
| scythe wrote:
| From the linked article:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0211-5
|
| >In sharp contrast to this trend, evidence shows that _arrests by
| the Detective Bureau increased significantly during the
| slowdown_. This result is highly relevant to one of our
| theoretical mechanisms, since the Detective Bureau is charged
| with intensive investigations, rather than proactive policing.
| Further confirming that the slowdown's effects were localized to
| proactive policing, we find no evidence that 'Major crime
| arrests' were significantly affected by the slowdown when we
| condition our estimates on 'Major crime complaints'.
|
| This paragraph appears to rule out many of the "armchair"
| objections being raised in the comments. If it is a robust
| finding, it would imply that some "proactive policing" arrests
| are effectively a nuisance to prosecutors and detectives as they
| work to combat severe criminality.
|
| Nonetheless, I was surprised to see how much confidence the
| authors report with such limited data. They are not shy about
| saying "our results _imply_... " (cf. _suggest_ ) and go on to
| assert the existence of a "vicious feedback between proactive
| policing and major crime" It's one study, in one city, over a
| brief time period. Further work is needed to see if the results
| generalize.
| exogeny wrote:
| I've lived in a few different major cities and NYC for the last
| decade, and I can definitely say I have never seen more broken,
| ineffective policing than here. It's truly ridiculous. Your
| experience, obviously, may vary.
|
| Multiple instances of police openly threatening citizens. Phones
| ripped out of hands and smashed onto the ground, for the mere
| crime of filming an interaction. During the BLM protests, every
| single act of instigation and provocation was started by the
| police.
|
| I don't know what the answer is. But it is very clear the police
| here are a paramilitary jackboot squad, and that the city and the
| strength of their union protects them. They have almost complete
| impunity, and they see normal, everyday citizens as the enemy. I
| fear that we're in for more trouble now that we've elected an ex-
| cop Mayor of the city.
|
| (For background, I'm a tall, white man. I can't imagine how bad
| it would be if I wasn't.)
| johnnyb9 wrote:
| I have lived in NYC for 10+ years and I can't say I've had a
| single encounter with the police.
| dopamean wrote:
| Lucky you.
| sjm wrote:
| Yeah it really feels like the NYPD has a lot of contempt for
| the city they operate in, politically, socially, culturally. I
| saw the same thing at every protest I attended -- when there
| were no cops around, it was extremely peaceful. I only ever saw
| it get ugly when cops were harassing people, pushing people
| around, or trying to basically shut down protests by blocking
| off surrounding streets and trying to close in on protesters.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _NYPD has a lot of contempt for the city they operate in_
|
| A lot of New York cops live outside the areas they patrol.
| The ones who live in the city are overrepresented on Staten
| Island. That said, for every peaceful protest last summer
| there were unprovoked nighttime riots which seemed to occur
| more when the cops were somewhere else.
| addicted wrote:
| My sister lives on 6th Ave. cops would congregate right
| outside her building before the protests so she could
| observe the entire process.
|
| The cops were deliberately ignoring the rioters while
| strong arming the largely peaceful protestors.
|
| She has videos of 50 cops standing while someone broke into
| a store (by throwing a rock through the glass window),
| picked up a POS system, and runs, with not a single cop
| twitching, while just a few hours earlier you had their
| lieutenant or whatever come kneel with the protesters and
| as soon as the higher ups left, cops attack 100 lb women
| from behind as they were walking away.
|
| They were deliberately attacking peaceful protestors and
| deliberately ignoring looters and rioters.
|
| You could also see on the signal app which was tracking
| these gangs of kids who were looting major stores like
| Macy's, as well as protestors, and the cops were always
| where the protestors were and never where the rioters, who
| were only a few blocks behind, were.
|
| It was a very blatant attempt by the NYPD to make the
| protests appear violent by encouraging looting while
| discouraging peaceful protesting.
| akudha wrote:
| I saw 5 or 6 cops tackle a drunk guy. He was so drunk, barely
| able to stand, a 10 year old kid could've taken him down. The
| amount of force used in the most trivial of cases blew my mind.
|
| During the occupy wall street protests, I saw the cops a few
| times (I was working in a nearby building). The amount of
| serious gear they had, it was insane. I bet they are better
| armed than most militaries.
|
| All I can say is they are super scary.
| mc32 wrote:
| I've witnessed the same. Police responding with overwhelming
| force. Unfortunately, we're not unarmed like in Japan (or
| most of the UK), so there have been instances of police being
| caught off-guard and killed for being too "chill" so by
| policy they must respond with almost worse-case-scenario.
|
| With that, I will say they need to learn how to use less than
| lethal tactics and force to apprehend a violent person.
| Firearms should be very the last resort as a result of non-
| confrontation. In other words, the police at times provoke
| more violence by the way they address an issue. A violent
| drunk. Instead of getting up close so they lunge with a
| knife, get far back, get people to move away and then corral
| the drunk in or use alternate methods of subduction and use
| lethal violence only when the perp makes it necessary.
| achenatx wrote:
| As people have done analysis of what percent of the time police
| spend on various types of calls, it becomes clear that we only
| need armed police for around 5%.
|
| investigation, forensics, traffic control, etc etc dont need
| weapons and tactical training. Let the armed police be like
| fire fighters and be specifically called in when needed.
| j_walter wrote:
| That's not a fair analysis though. That's like saying EMTs
| only need morphine around 5% of the time, so they shouldn't
| have it in their ambulance. You don't know when you might
| need it, so you carry it all the time.
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Police in the UK do not carry firearms, at all. Regular
| police have a taser, there are also firearms units on call
| when needed. This is an outlier even for Europe, where I
| believe it is standard to carry a pistol.
|
| This has some interesting consequences. The police
| effectively can't position themselves in opposition to "the
| people of the street". Two police officers against a rowdy
| pub is poor chances for the law.
|
| As a result, the training emphasises deescalation, talking
| people down from stupid ideas etc. This part seems
| particularly effective.
|
| Most days I still think it's crazy the police here are
| effectively unarmed, but it does seem to work.
| whall6 wrote:
| Aren't there like way more police per capita in the UK
| though?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| This same effect has been seen in cities where the police go on
| "strike" by not proactively enforcing all the petty crime laws
| that the city makes money on, notably Baltimore.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Didn't "The Wire" already show this? The police decided not to
| enforce any drug dealing related law so long as it was done in a
| confined area. This not only made crime go "down" but also
| resulted in less auxiliary crime since the market was safe and
| plentiful and because dealers were not being taken out there
| weren't turf wars for corners to sell on.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| From the "correlation is not causation" school of thought, I
| immediately had 3 thoughts:
|
| 1. The # of phone calls to the police about a crime are not
| necessarily indicative of how common that crime is. If people
| think the police won't do anything, they're less likely to bother
| calling (I see this often in my area with things like stolen
| bikes and catalytic converters... people often don't bother
| getting a police report unless their insurance requires it).
|
| 2. Throughout the 2010s the crime rate trended downward
|
| 3. Crime rates can have seasonal variations (but this can vary
| based upon location and type of crime)
|
| Skimming through the paper, #1 wasn't addressed at all.
|
| For #2, the paper compared the 2015 data against 2014. I don't
| think they did anything to compensate for annual trends in crime
| rate. In other words, if the crime rate in Des Moines, Iowa
| lowered at the same time, is that actually a ripple effect from
| NYPD's actions? Or are both cities just part of a larger downward
| trend that we saw coming out of the 2009 recession?
|
| For #3, they actually took temperature and precipitation into
| account which was cool.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| Correlation is not causation, but there certainly is a lot of
| evidence that causally links poverty with crime and drug-use,
| and poverty from accumulating petty fines and late-fee
| penalties. It seems to me the burden is on the broken-window
| excuse of a hypothesis.
|
| I've spent weeks in a middle-class community never seeing a
| cop. Surprise surprise, the crime-rate is low...Yet I knew that
| plenty of recreational drugs were flowing through this white-
| middle class community...it was barely hidden. Meanwhile, in
| poorer communities like where I grew up, police are everywhere
| patrolling, waiting to harass anyone they don't like the look
| of... hell I was interrogated for sitting in my front yard
| once.
| Stupulous wrote:
| I don't think this works as a causal explanation. A decrease
| in petty fines shouldn't be significant enough at changing
| poverty to be reflected in crime rates in just a couple
| months. You'd also expect a delay as the fines that would
| otherwise be demanded in that time wouldn't be collected for
| some months, I assume.
|
| As an alternative, maybe people who are mistreated by police
| become immediately more likely to commit crimes? Or maybe
| police who would otherwise be doing proactive policing are
| doing something more beneficial instead? Those are just
| speculations, though.
| spideymans wrote:
| I've been blessed to run in many different social circles in
| life. Poor black kids, incredibly wealthy white kids, I've
| seen it all. My experience is completely in line with yours.
|
| The wealthy white kids I was around were loaded with hard
| drugs. Coke use was rampant. I could open random drawers at
| my friends place and see bags of the stuff. Heck, some were
| outright dealing the stuff.
|
| Meanwhile my poorer black friends pretty much only smoked
| weed, while occasionally dabbling in some other minor drugs
| (mushrooms, MDMA, etc...).
|
| Of course the only ones with stores of police harassment were
| my poorer friends. My rich friends got away with anything
| they wanted
| syops wrote:
| I haven't read the paper and by your admission you haven't
| either. You skimmed it. Do you find it reasonable to believe
| that you could come up with potential objections to the paper
| that the authors didn't also think about?
|
| You made a claim in #1 about the likelihood of people calling
| police when they think police won't do anything about it. That
| claim sounds plausible but is it correct? Do know of studies on
| this?
|
| If you, a non expert, can think immediately of three thoughts
| then it seems highly likely the authors - who spent effort and
| time on the topic - also thought about these same thoughts.
| Maybe these things aren't addressed because it's obvious to
| them that these aren't valid objections and it's obvious to
| their target audience.
| coryrc wrote:
| I get my car broken into biyearly. After the first time, I
| don't report because it's a waste of time. Same when bicycles
| are stolen from my friends. I don't need a study to say the
| sky is blue.
| coryrc wrote:
| But, I do have studies showing data is often made up or
| cherry-picked. So when a study disagrees with what most of
| us are experiencing, when cops have publicly announced they
| won't investigate crimes because the prosecutor won't
| prosecute, I'm going to need a lot more evidence that crime
| is actually decreasing.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
|
| https://crosscut.com/2014/12/d-word-seattle-confronts-
| dilemm...
| syops wrote:
| Here's an interesting Twitter thread that claims cops
| commit orders of magnitude more physical assaults than
| arrests for serious crimes. There is a possibility that
| having fewer police leads to less violence in the
| community.
|
| https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/14301599025514455
| 14
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| > You made a claim in #1 about the likelihood of people
| calling police when they think police won't do anything about
| it. That claim sounds plausible but is it correct? Do know of
| studies on this?
|
| There's a number of studies, some of them contradictory
| (perhaps because they're looking at different populations of
| people). Hagan et al[1] found that in urban African-American
| communities, cynicism towards police and the legal system was
| a major factor in whether or not someone called the police
| after being a victim of a crime (in a way that is actually a
| bit counterintuitive to me).
|
| Anyways, I owe the authors an apology. I took another look at
| the paper and noticed that they (sort of) addressed the issue
| of under-reporting, as was mentioned in the article.
|
| Tautologically, they point out that underreporting of the
| crime rate doesn't impact the accuracy of statistics showing
| that the number of reported crimes went down. However they do
| admit that this makes it harder to make a causal link.
|
| > Maybe these things aren't addressed because it's obvious to
| them that these aren't valid objections and it's obvious to
| their target audience.
|
| That's an interesting point, and I suppose it's hard to say
| without being an expert. OTOH, from talking to people I know
| who have left academia[2], the 'publish or perish' mentality
| makes it easier to put blinders on when faced with something
| that's inconvenient.
|
| [1]: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1722210115
|
| [2]: Admittedly this is going to be a biased sample
| syops wrote:
| Pertaining to your last paragraph. I very much agree with
| what you wrote. I think a better way to state my point is
| this. I try to read academic papers with skepticism and
| when I think of an obvious potential objection I think it
| highly likely the authors are aware of this and didn't
| address it because their knowledge of topic is such that
| they know it's not really an objection. I then try to find
| out whether or not my potential objection really is valid
| or invalid. I assume the latter when I don't have more
| information or the time to delve deeper into the topic.
|
| Thanks for the link to the study.
| newacct583 wrote:
| Most of those same criticisms can be levied against the "broken
| windows" theory on which the studied policy was based, though.
| dirkg wrote:
| Police in the US are thugs. They were created to protect property
| of the rich, and have never been legally obligated to 'protect
| and serve'. They steal more money than criminals in 'asset
| seizure' which is legalized theft, murder more innocent people,
| are literally above the law and cannot be punished thanks to
| nonsense like 'qualified immunity', and yet are worshipped as
| heroes, are always complaining and demanding more funds while
| being completely ineffective and dangerous to people, and the
| media perpetuates the 'risk their lives' myth.
| cletus wrote:
| So you need to look no further than NYC's gravity knife fiasco to
| see what's wrong with politics and policing.
|
| For reference, a "gravity knife" is something originally issued
| to paratroopers. They could get stuck in trees and need to cut
| themselves out of their chutes. They needed a knife they could
| use with limited mobility. The traditional gravity knife had a
| button that released the knife that fell into place and locked by
| force of gravity.
|
| These became popular later and evolved, most notably into the
| spring-loaded switch blade. To combat this and crime in the 70s
| and 80s, NYC clamped down on so-called gravity knives, which the
| law defined as anything that could be opened with one hand.
|
| This law was clearly abused. NYPD officers would forcefully try
| and open a knife with one hand, claim it was a gravity knife and
| the owner would be charged. With a prior arrest this may be
| upsold to a felony.
|
| This was such a problem for many professions that needed a knife
| for their job, most notably stagehands on Broadway and
| custodians. One custodian walking home at night ended up with a 5
| year prison sentence with an upsold felony charge.
|
| And of course minorities were overly targeted with this law.
|
| Through the 2010s reform was repeatedly attempted. Twice this was
| vetoed by Cuomo at the behest of the Manhattan DA. Cuomo at this
| time I'm convinced still thought he could be president some day
| (to be fair, he probably could still be if he switched parties
| based on recent evidence) so courted the "law and order" crowd
| and political support from the police unions (who opposed reform)
| and the DA. Vague reasons were given for the veto.
|
| Eventually this did pass but there still seems to be problems
| with that.
|
| So let's outline the problems here:
|
| 1. A so-called Democratic governor choosing personal ambition
| over targeted minorities;
|
| 2. Arrest targets within the NYPD that drive police to meet those
| targets;
|
| 3. Police unions wanting more ways to randomly charge people for
| doing their job just in case they wanted to; and
|
| 4. Targeting of minorities, likely because they were poor (and
| couldn't thus afford legal representation and were also more
| likely to have a criminal record so the charges would stick).
|
| For me I was glad to see Cuomo go but frankly I couldn't stand
| the guy long before the sexual harassment allegations came to
| light. It seems like every issue I looked into Cuomo landed on
| the wrong side of it and personal political gain seemed to be the
| reason. For example, NYC property tax reform and congestion
| charging for private vehicles in Manhattan.
| look_lookatme wrote:
| An important addendum is that if you leave any part of the
| knife exposed (such as knife on the inside of pocket, but clip
| on the outside) that is considered "brandishing" and can
| trigger a stop by the police. That's one of the ways they get
| you.
|
| When I lived there I switched to a Case folding knife so I
| wouldn't accidentally run afoul of this law.
| zone411 wrote:
| A random paper on crime and policing from 2017 covering two
| months in one city that shows a small difference in some types of
| crimes (complaints of felony assault, burglary, grand larceny)
| but not others (murder, rape, robbery, grand theft auto) and it's
| on Hacker News? How? Looking at the graph of the period after
| this slowdown, the crime also appears to be down year-over-year
| by about the same amount as during the slowdown.
| nanis wrote:
| > The scientists found that civilian complaints of major crimes
| dropped by about 3% to 6% during the slowdown.
|
| 1. Why call the cops if you know they won't do anything?
|
| 2. Relatedly, why "snitch" when you know there won't be any cops
| around?
| jstrH wrote:
| Yeah exactly; the stats are made up since the state induces
| snitching over petty nonsense to meet quotas, and earn trust of
| snitches for the times they're actually useful.
|
| Statistical achievement is a hollow basis for social
| organization.
| tus89 wrote:
| what does the word proactive mean to you?
| Aeolun wrote:
| You arrest people before they can commit the offence.
|
| I think there was a documentary about this a few years ago
| called Minority Report.
| [deleted]
| bkirwi wrote:
| FWIW, this is addressed in the article and the paper it covers:
| the slowdown involved reduced "proactive policing" --
| "systematic and aggressive enforcement of low-level violations"
| -- but the observed drop is in major crimes like burglary and
| assault. The authors also do some work to control for the
| overall crime reporting rate.
| falcrist wrote:
| I'm a bit confused... Everyone is assuming that the police
| wouldn't respond to calls during this period, but the article
| doesn't suggest that this was the case.
|
| Even looking through articles in 2014 and 2015 doesn't
| provide me with any evidence that police weren't showing up
| to crime scenes... just that they weren't doing the
| "proactive policing" thing.
|
| Am I missing something here?
| kevingadd wrote:
| I think you'll find many residents of many cities will call the
| cops even though they know the cops usually won't do anything.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Ages ago when I was a kid, our house was constantly being
| robbed. No city police in a town of 50,000
|
| County police who took an hour or more to show up finally
| told my dad to get a gun and explained how we should move the
| body to make it look like we were being attacked. So that we
| didn't get arrested.
|
| So yea we moved promptly.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| And now I want a Youtube tutorial...
| vimy wrote:
| Why was there no police?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| More importantly, why wasn't there a social worker to
| show up first? /s
| treeman79 wrote:
| A few years some parents left their kid home alone while
| on vacation.
|
| Neighbors _knew_ family had gone vacation and saw
| movement at night. Jumpy cop, dark house, sudden
| movement, dead kid...
|
| Family got big payout, City dismantled the police
| department.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Well, sure, because the insurance company's first question
| will be "is there a police report."
| whatgoodisaroad wrote:
| A police report != a 911 call from a legal standpoint (to
| my non lawyer knowledge).
| vanattab wrote:
| But it is the first step if you need a report written.
| colechristensen wrote:
| It really isn't. Where I am it is a form on a website.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| You can walk to a station and do it in person. That won't
| be logged in the 911 database.
| nanis wrote:
| I don't know anything about NYC, but, normally, a police
| report actually involves the police writing down some
| names. So, one lives in a high crime area and one notices
| that the police are no longer around, one has strong
| incentives not to go on the record about this or that
| crime.
| teawrecks wrote:
| I think their point is that it could explain the 3-6% drop.
| But yes, the other 94-97% of people still call.
| temp8964 wrote:
| The title suggests a causation on this 4.5% change?
|
| Paywalled, I didn't read the article.
| kevingadd wrote:
| The article does say the study attempted to control for those
| variables, yeah.
| nanis wrote:
| > "While we cannot entirely rule out the effects of under-
| reporting," the authors wrote, "our results show that crime
| complaints decreased, rather than increased, during a
| slowdown in proactive policing, contrary to deterrence
| theory."
|
| Original research is here:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0211-5
|
| Both authors are political scientists who are highly unlikely
| to have a command of econometrics. I am not sure if they took
| into account the panel nature of the data and in those
| circumstances where authors focus solely on either the cross-
| section or the time-series nature of the process, it is not
| uncommon for "results" to be nonsense.
| 5faulker wrote:
| The apathy is real
| [deleted]
| pope_meat wrote:
| Police are like hammers that see everything as nails.
|
| It's just not working.
| kevingadd wrote:
| Good example of how sometimes a strategy you apply can prove
| itself necessary but only because it's addressing a problem it
| creates. Sometimes you have to just grit your teeth and try a new
| approach to see if it's going to be an improvement
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| I'm not sure why you got the hammer, your comment is exactly
| correct. Overpolice->More crime->Oh No we Need more
| Policing->More Crime->...->...
| nickff wrote:
| > _" "While we cannot entirely rule out the effects of under-
| reporting," the authors wrote, "our results show that crime
| complaints decreased, rather than increased, during a slowdown in
| proactive policing, contrary to deterrence theory.""_
|
| > _" Each week during the slowdown saw civilians report an
| estimated 43 fewer felony assaults, 40 fewer burglaries and 40
| fewer acts of grand larceny. And this slight suppression of major
| crime rates actually continued for seven to 14 weeks after those
| drops in proactive policing -- which led the researchers to
| estimate that overall, the slowdown resulted in about 2,100 fewer
| major-crimes complaints."_
|
| The fact that assaults, robberies, and burglaries aren't being
| reported would seem to indicate that people just weren't
| bothering to contact the police, because they knew the police
| would not help. Murder, rape, and (hospital-reported) shooting
| rates dropping would be more indicative that less policing would
| reduce crime.
| kevingadd wrote:
| Are you suggesting rape and murder have the same causes as
| assaults and burglaries? The article describes the claim that
| "proactive policing" creates pressures that would lead to
| (among other issues) assaults and robberies. Why would removing
| those pressures reduce the frequency of rape?
| nickff wrote:
| I'm suggesting that assaults and burglaries tend to be under-
| reported, and would be more 'marginalized' by under-policing.
| I think the reporting rate for rape and murder is much higher
| (and less variable) than those of burglary and assault.
| ipaddr wrote:
| I would suggest the other way around. Many women don't
| report.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| >Are you suggesting rape and murder have the same causes as
| assaults and burglaries?
|
| They absolutely do - and the cause is having violent
| criminals running loose on the streets. The overwhelming
| majority of serious crime, from rape and murder to assault
| and burglary is committed by an extremely small number of
| people. When those people aren't removed from society after
| committing crimes, they are out on the street committing
| other crimes. As a resident of NY for over 4 decades I
| haven't seen the situation this bad since the bad old days of
| the 80s and 90s. The streets are littered with people booting
| up on the sidewalks, in midtown, in broad daylight.
| Aggressive "panhandlers" harass, threaten and assault
| passersby without fear of reproach or arrest. The fact that
| crimes are not being reported or prosecuted does not mean
| that there has been a reduction of crime - quite the opposite
| - which is abundantly apparent to anyone who lives here.
| Since the "no bail" law was passed as well as laws preventing
| people under 18 from being prosecuted as adults (among other
| things), there has been a massive spike in crime. In years
| passed, getting caught with an illegal gun, let alone using
| it in a crime, would mean automatic jail time. Today, that
| criminal is back out on the street in hours. There is a good
| reason that New Yorkers rejected Bill Deblasio's buddies in
| favor of former cop Eric Adams to be the next mayor - the
| city is a disaster zone.
| kevingadd wrote:
| There are many sources to support a claim that most rapists
| know their victims, rapes are not primarily committed by
| "violent criminals running loose on the streets".
| https://www.rainn.org/statistics/perpetrators-sexual-
| violenc...
| koolba wrote:
| The only major crime statistic that I'll trust is the murder
| rate. It's the only one that can't be faked. Petty crime goes
| unreported. Arrest and conviction rates can be gamed. But you
| can't hide people dying.
| runnerup wrote:
| Yes you can, just rule it a suicide or accident. I've seen a
| likely murder in mountain view misclassified as a diabetes-
| related accidental drowning.
| MegaButts wrote:
| Yeah, I've actually seen this happen enough times that I
| believe it's more common than people think. I don't have
| statistics, but I've noticed multiple people die under
| mysterious circumstances (including a close friend) and they
| were usually ruled a suicide, even when the family objected.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Well, that's a "technically" while still missing the point.
| It is much more difficult to meaningfully shift murder rate
| numbers via mass mis-reporting, compared to other statistics.
| co2benzoate wrote:
| Have you considered getting in touch with an investigative
| journalist?
| bshep wrote:
| Example: Where I grew up if you didnt die within 24hrs or
| being shot it was not considered a murder, the gorvernment
| changed the way the statistic measures murders many years ago
| to lower the 'murder' rate.
|
| Edit to add this link with the murder rates:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/984823/homicide-rate-
| pue...
| kevingadd wrote:
| Sadly many parts of the US (and other countries) have been
| hiding the death rate for our current pandemic with varying
| degrees of success, it's quite possible to hide murders too.
| You can disguise them as something else.
| air7 wrote:
| source?
| dataflow wrote:
| One example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_COVID-19
| _nursing_home...
| coding123 wrote:
| Wow, didn't hear about this til now.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Other places are adding deaths to the covid list.
| kolbe wrote:
| Even murder can be tricky because medical advancements or
| hospital shutdowns can really impact the survival of severely
| injured people
| [deleted]
| wnevets wrote:
| >The only major crime statistic that I'll trust is the murder
| rate. It's the only one that can't be faked.
|
| It absolutely can and has been. [1]
|
| > Photos of the teenager's corpse show a deep cut on his right
| arm, horrific bruising on his neck and chest. His face is
| swollen and covered with cuts. A silhouette of violence runs
| from the corner of his left eye over the cheekbone to his jaw,
| and his legs are pocked with small burns the size of a lighted
| cigarette. But police in Japan's Aichi prefecture saw something
| else when they looked at the body of Takashi Saito, a 17-year-
| old sumo wrestler who arrived at a hospital in June. The cause
| of death was "heart disease," police declared.
|
| [1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-nov-09-fg-
| autop...
| Avshalom wrote:
| murders go unreported/recorded all the time "NHI" "accident"
| "missing persons" and of course missing person implies there's
| some one who knows/is-willing-to-report that your missing.
| gervu wrote:
| Yeah, like the cops have never gotten caught claiming someone
| accidentally fell on 43 bullets before. Or like there haven't
| been numerous cases of misattributing COVID deaths because they
| were inconvenient for the genocidal robber nihilists we have
| passing for a major political party. And that's just
| malfeasance, there's plenty of just plain error involved.
|
| Having a deaths count -- which itself _definitely_ has error
| bars, otherwise what the heck are missing persons estimates --
| doesn 't mean you have a correct attribution of those deaths.
| Never trust data in the absence of auditing how it got there.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| Yep, I learned this from The Wire!
| timy2shoes wrote:
| Even the murder stats can be juked, like McNulty's arc in
| season 5 or the bodies in the vacants.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Fortunately, murder is a rare occurrence - so only trusting
| this isn't going to help much unless you live in a major US
| city.
|
| The murder rate in most areas of the US is under 5 in 100,000.
|
| There's less than 50 police departments in the US where you can
| expect even 50 murders per year. With numbers that small,
| you'll run into a lot of noise.
| retrac wrote:
| We suffer this here. Toronto has roughly 40 - 80 murders each
| year. So each year comes with helpful headlines informing us
| the homicide rate has halved or doubled over the previous
| year, often with some commentary about what this
| regression/progression indicates for our society. If you
| average over a few years, you find out it's basically flat.
| topspin wrote:
| Statistics Canada has the Toronto Metropolitan Area
| averaging well over 100/year for the last 3 years:
|
| https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=35100
| 0...
| spideymans wrote:
| You're just talking about two different areas.
|
| Your data is for the Greater Toronto Area. The commenter
| above you was referring to the City if Toronto (which is
| one of several municipalities in the Greater Toronto
| Area).
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| "Murders up by 156%!!" (i.e. 20 more than last year)
| [deleted]
| pengaru wrote:
| Murder stats only count the _found_ bodies, and even then as
| others have stated the classification as murder vs. other
| causes can and will be gamed.
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