[HN Gopher] Fighting crime by checking buildings, not suspects
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Fighting crime by checking buildings, not suspects
Author : dangerman
Score : 33 points
Date : 2022-06-25 18:15 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newsnationnow.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newsnationnow.com)
| unwind wrote:
| Meta: Geo-fenced. They can fight their failure at publishing
| information with less tracking (or whatever issue they have with
| EU privacy laws), so they can include us poor schmucks from
| Europe in their readership, in my opinion. It would be a great
| courtesy if articles like this were marked up somehow, to save me
| the click but I guess we're the minority.
| V__ wrote:
| For anyone in the EU who wants to read the article, 12ft.io:
| https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https://www.newsnationnow.com/soluti...
| seany wrote:
| https://archive.ph/D0RtT
| googlryas wrote:
| There was a lot of FUD thrown around about GDPR back when it
| was first coming into law - probably a lot of people just
| decided it was easier to add 1 line to their frontend config to
| block the 1% of European connections they get than even to ask
| a lawyer what the deal with GDPR was.
| csours wrote:
| One could make a "Papers, Please" style game, but for being a
| police chief.
| Hinrik wrote:
| You might enjoy
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_the_Police
| squarefoot wrote:
| "This site is currently unavailable to visitors from the European
| Economic Area while we work to ensure your data is protected in
| accordance with applicable EU laws."
|
| Translation: "We can't put an article online without cramming it
| with cookies, analytics and other annoyances that serve no other
| purpose than profiling users; we actually _don 't want_ to
| protect your data, but they caught us with the pants down and
| enacted laws to prevent all this, so we'd rather block access
| from the EU than do the right thing, that is, protecting your
| data by removing that junk."
| LegitShady wrote:
| "all of our pages are full of things that the EU wants us to
| ask permission for. Since we only get a small amount of EU
| traffic, we can't be bothered to spend the money to deal with
| your laws, please go do something else. You are important to us
| - elsewhere."
| baxtr wrote:
| Thanks to the EU, the internet is more balkanized than before.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Thanks to assholes who can't dream of not sucking up all the
| private data they can get their hands on, not thanks to the
| EU.
| car_analogy wrote:
| > we'd rather block access from the EU than do the right thing,
| that is, protecting your data by removing that junk
|
| This phrasing is misleading. It's not "protecting our data"
| (implying they need to take extra precautions to prevent our
| data, defenseless on its own, from falling into the wrong
| hands).
|
| It's _refraining from actively spying on us_. There 's no
| "protection" needed - if they just _do nothing_ , that would
| comply with the GDPR.
| Stevvo wrote:
| The headline is "Our European visitors are important to us."
| Clearly they are not. I most often see this on US local news
| sites.
| pacarvalho wrote:
| It is a tricky thing. At some point someone needs to be paid
| for writing the article. I can think of 3 ways to accomplish
| that at the moment:
|
| 1. Government subsidizes media. No cookies or profiling
| required. However, unclear if one government should support
| articles that are mostly read abroad and, of course, there are
| many issues with this related to equitable distribution of
| funds and impartiality.
|
| 2. They can run ads. However, ads tend have better ROI when
| well targeted which requires profiling. For instance, if I am
| reading an article about suits. If they know my age they can
| make sure to show me people around my age wearing that suit.
| Which makes me more likely to envision myself wearing it and
| thus buy it. Cookies (or similar) required.
|
| 3. A paywall where the reader pays for it directly. However, we
| seem to be very resistant to that idea given we were trained to
| use a "free" (sell your data model) internet. Nonetheless, by
| seeing your browsing history from your account server-side (no
| analytics cookies needed) they can place you in cohorts server
| side. So not that much more private. If anything, less private
| since they have your real data through your payment method.
|
| Ensuring privacy while still getting access to free things and
| not bankrupting companies (especially small ones) is a hard
| problem.
| dqpb wrote:
| There is also the Spotify model, where a subscription gets
| you access to everything, and publishers get paid for what's
| read.
| phailhaus wrote:
| Spotify is one of a handful of music streaming products out
| there, and an absolute juggernaut that gives you access to
| basically all music and podcasts. By contrast, there are
| thousands of news sites, and subscribing to one of them
| only gives you access to _their_ content. There is absolute
| no way "News Nation" is going to get enough dedicated
| subscribers to subsidize their reporting.
| dqpb wrote:
| > There is absolute no way "News Nation" is going to get
| enough dedicated subscribers to subsidize their
| reporting.
|
| That's exactly why there should be a Spotify for text.
| j5155 wrote:
| Are you describing Apple News plus?
| dqpb wrote:
| Maybe, I haven't used it. Is it good?
| RajT88 wrote:
| Community improvement should be the focus of policing efforts.
|
| Not maximizing penalties.
|
| Systemically, you are going to have better long term outcomes.
| lupire wrote:
| > Community improvement should be the focus of policing
| efforts.
|
| Why drag police into this? The basic problem with policing is
| sending in strangers with guns to do social work. The PD isn't
| the only city agency.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220625185002/https://www.newsn...
| V__ wrote:
| > Overall, proactive enforcement activity -- where police were
| affirmatively going out and making these stops and similar
| interventions -- dropped by around 60 percent in these areas.
|
| These are impressive numbers, but I wonder: Where did the crime
| go? Were most of these merely crimes of opportunity which got
| eliminated, or did some other areas see a spike instead?
| projektfu wrote:
| David Kennedy, author of "Don't Shoot", was on the radio
| talking about his approach. He said by closing the open drug
| markets in the street the drugs have to be traded in people's
| houses and the other elements aren't attracted to the area. He
| then said something like "You know what we used to call the
| places where drugs are sold quietly inside people's houses? The
| suburbs."
|
| It's a really good book. Totally opened my mind that these
| problems are tractable so long as the typical dynamic of cops
| and clockers is put away in exchange for a focus on the
| community.
| jl6 wrote:
| I would guess that low-effort opportunistic crimes may have
| been prevented, but entrenched criminal enterprises will have
| just relocated.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| This is like solving homelessness by putting spikes on benches to
| keep people from sleeping there: It doesn't solve the problem, it
| just pushes it out of your jurisdiction.
| LegitShady wrote:
| the spikes aren't there to solve homelessness, they're there to
| keep people from sleeping on the benches.
| hinkley wrote:
| For certain classes of crime, pushing the criminals out also
| increases the crime rate.
|
| I recall reading about a study on this where pushing criminals
| out of a 'bad neighborhood' caused the crime rate in that area
| to drop, but the rate in two adjacent neighborhoods went up by
| 60% of the drop in the 'bad' one.
| wizofaus wrote:
| That would be an argument against any attempt to clean up
| crime that wasn't done at a greater-city-wide scale. And
| maybe that really is true - the only genuinely effective
| measures you can take to reduce crime have to be applied to a
| sufficiently wide area. I'm not sure if we have enough data
| points to draw that conclusion though.
| hinkley wrote:
| Could be. It may also be a factor of whether the high crime
| area is the first or the last occurence, since in the case
| of it being the first, you cause a diaspora. Whereas if
| it's the last, then you're squeezing.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Maybe, but that's assuming criminals are no more likely to opt
| instead for going clean if circumstances change in such a way
| that committing crimes becomes less rewarding than it is for
| homeless people to "opt" for purchasing/renting a home if
| circumstances change that make sleeping rough less attractive.
| tomxor wrote:
| Many criminals can't get a job just like many homeless can't
| afford rent (the sad thing is that the latter sometimes do
| have a job).
|
| How does it make sense to dissuade those people from doing
| something they don't have a choice in. As the parent said, it
| will only displace, it's as uninformed as shouting "get a job
| you lazy bum" at people.
| drewcoo wrote:
| Hasn't "broken windows"[1] been debunked?
|
| Isn't this that bunk?
|
| This is pure cop-aganda garbage.
|
| [1] https://phys.org/news/2019-05-evidence-broken-windows-
| theory...
| lupire wrote:
| "broken windows policing" is when you claim to do the stuff in
| the article, but actually just harass residents.
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| I haven't read the original meta-analyses in full, but I often
| hear it parroted that "the broken window theory is debunked".
| Based on what I _have_ read about this so-called debunking, I
| am far from convinced. Maybe I just don 't understand the
| actual claims on either side.
|
| The way I understood the original idea is that when something
| is in a continuous state of disrepair, two things happen: the
| effort to repair it decreases, and more disrepair follows. A
| knock-on effect of disrepair is that the perception of value
| decreases, which can spiral into lowered socio-economic
| standing in that region... and AFAIK there's little argument
| about whether low socio-economic status is an important factor
| for potential criminal behavior (just argument about why and
| what specific behavior).
|
| I get the feeling the debunking of the theory is misinterpreted
| by many to mean "broken places don't cause broken people, if
| anything it's the other way around" which may in fact be true
| but is missing a lot of nuance.
| ipnon wrote:
| Five Points was once the worst neighborhood in the United States.
| It was razed and replaced with Columbus Park. Now its a safe
| center of the community in Manhattan's Chinatown.
|
| Gangs in Chicago were concentrated into a few high-rises owned by
| the public housing administration until the 1990s. The buildings
| were razed in an effort to curtail the rampant crime within them.
| The unintended consequence was that the once unified gangs were
| displaced throughout the broader Chicagoland area, and were able
| to grow immensely without the constraint of their former static,
| well-monitored domiciles. This effect of housing displacement
| leading to increases in both the frequency and geographic
| distribution in crime has been documented in other cities like
| Atlanta.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Surely you are not arguing that crime increased in frequency in
| Chicago (or any other American city) after 1990, because the
| statistics all indicate the opposite. Violent crime had fallen
| by half from 1990 rates by 2000, and now stands at less than
| 1/3rd the 1990 rate. Some fairly famous research indicates that
| homicide in Chicago is still highly concentrated, in real
| geographic distance and in social graph distance.
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3910040/pdf/AJP...
| O__________O wrote:
| Topic reminds me of the book, A Burglar's Guide to the City:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Burglars-Guide-City-Geoff-Manaugh/dp/...
|
| Which started out as a blog: https://bldgblog.com/
|
| Unlike the book, this city appears to think the solution to all
| their problems is to remove the architectures causing issues,
| instead of trying to make city planning and management choices
| that enable positive behavior; successful areas don't have
| abandoned building, bus stops that function as distribution point
| for illegal drugs, etc. Police are the last profession that
| should be making choices like that for a city. Using this sort of
| thinking, what's next, make warrentless, no knock searches legal
| and require every lock uses a masterkey the police have?
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > what's next, make warrentless, no knock searches legal
|
| For 60% of the US population, this is already the case. Not by
| police, but border agents have been granted warrantless hone
| access by the supreme court this month:
| https://nitter.net/anildash/status/1534639563167105025#m
| O__________O wrote:
| Maybe next time you see random post on Twitter you should
| research it before sharing. In the case, ruling had to do
| with an assault and the right to sue, not warrantless entry;
| victim was an informant and reported a crime, law enforcement
| responded, which is completely legal, unless I am missing
| something; obviously assaulting someone is not.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| > In the lawsuit against Egbert, Boule argued Egbert had
| retaliated against him in violation of his First Amendment
| rights and that he had entered his private property,
| refused to leave and pushed him to the ground violating his
| Fourth Amendment rights.
|
| As far as I understand it the decision does not contest
| that Boule's 4th amendment rights were violated, but it
| doesn't extend the right to sue a federal officer from
| "Bivens" to border patrol agents.
|
| So yes, while the case itself is not warrantless entry, the
| precedent extends to all fourth amendment rights and says
| that someone subjected to a warrantless search by border
| patrol has no recourse.
| projektfu wrote:
| They usually don't have them because someone cares enough to
| keep the fire lit, usually people with a lot of free time. I
| have lived in successful areas that had an abandoned building
| with boarded up windows. Soon a local started pushing the city
| to get involved until it was finally condemned, as the owner
| didn't want to sell it to someone who would use it.
|
| I can see how poor areas, especially with lots of renters and
| slumlords, are going to be less proactive themselves.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I'm a believer in the idea that better places lead to less crime,
| but I hope these governments are taking a quantitative, evidence-
| based approach to the subject. The article mentions streetlights,
| which will come up almost inevitably in these conversations, but
| there's really no evidence for the idea that light lowers crime,
| and there's plenty of cases where bright lighting is associated
| with higher crime. Nobody can prove that is causal, but criminals
| do need light to see what they are doing, so it might be.
| https://kinder.rice.edu/sites/default/files/documents/Kinder...
| SkeuomorphicBee wrote:
| > For example, in Kansas City a bus stop at a particular
| intersection was attracting drug sales and loitering. So the
| police called the local transportation authority and had the bus
| stop moved.
|
| > "I think within a week, maybe not even that, that immediately
| cut down on the loitering and foot traffic," Capt. Jonas Baughman
| told the local press.
|
| As an outsider, I have no words for how absurd this is to me. The
| fact that "cut down on the loitering and foot traffic" is somehow
| presented as a good thing is beyond surreal and infuriating. It
| is really difficult to comprehend a free society where standing
| still in a public space is a crime, and where the priority of
| police is to make people walk less and not hang out in public
| spaces.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Also tough shit if you were used to catching the bus there and
| now have to find and probably walk farther to another stop.
|
| There used to be 'beat cops' whose job was to just walk around
| neighborhoods and be familiar with them; not the most efficient
| approach to policing, but also not the most intimidating or
| heavy-handed. Now you only see police outside a cruiser if
| they're doing crowd control, managing a crime scene, or doing
| community outreach, as a form of PR.
| superjan wrote:
| A great example of positive action was the story of the Oakland
| Buddha. Intended to discourage littering but in the end cleaned
| up the entire neighberhood.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_Buddha
| https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-15-hes-neutral/
| antiterra wrote:
| 2009-2014 sounds a lot like tech gentrification years for
| Oakland, no?
| zemvpferreira wrote:
| As someone who briefly lived in Oakland around that time,
| both things can be true. It was (and might still be) pretty
| rough territory while it had us tech people all moved in.
| The Bhudda effect sure looked real to me.
| newsclues wrote:
| Isn't loitering and foot traffic code for drug dealers selling
| drugs illegally to their customers?
| AviationAtom wrote:
| It's generally people hanging out that don't have good
| intentions in mind, which might include drug transactions.
| Gigachad wrote:
| I imagine since in the US, no one walks and there is
| nothing of interest outside, anyone who is out standing
| around is probably engaging in some criminal activity.
|
| What a sad society where this is the case.
| mwt wrote:
| Outside the context of crime: loitering, yes, foot traffic,
| not really. It's possible this particular phrase is a
| euphemism used in crime reporting, I don't know, but if it is
| I don't know why they wouldn't just say "officers no longer
| suspected dealers were using this place" / "informants/word
| on the street was that distribution moved to xyz ... "
|
| That sentence read strangely to me as well; I think foot
| traffic is great and my favorite places in America are built
| around promoting it.
| newsclues wrote:
| I think it's both a euphemism and perhaps it's an area that
| no longer has regular foot traffic (closed businesses,
| vacant houses,etc) and the foot traffic was the clientele.
|
| I say this as someone who lives in a high crime area.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| Is it just my imagination, or does it seem like there's a weirdly
| quasi-commercial element around the push for "risk-based
| policing"? On one hand it's presented as simply being a
| scientific(-ish) approach that can be used to get better results
| than traditional methods, but on the other hand it's treated
| almost like a brand name, with a book titled "Risk-Based
| Policing" having an official website at riskbasedpolicing.com,
| with the implication being that you're not _really_ doing Risk-
| Based Policing [TM] unless you study the anointed materials.
| thaeli wrote:
| It's Six Sigma for cops.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| I initially assumed that you were just joking, but after a
| bit more reading it seems like it almost literally is Six
| Sigma for cops (to the extent that it's actually the job of
| cops to reduce crime, which is debatable).
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Consulting and training are money makers. Like the guys who
| teach officers they are wolves protecting the sheep, and to see
| all people as threats - you think they're doing that for free?
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