
How Cops Really Want to Police - etal
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/how-cops-really-want-to-police/
======
DenisM

      “You want to really lower crime? Carl began. 
      Let cops enforce the rules. The whole way. 
      You ask any cop on the street and he’ll tell 
      you that he would love to dish out the punishment, 
      on the spot
    

Unification of judical and executive branches?

They have a name for that sort of things - it's called Fascism. It was tried
before and while they meant well the results were horrific.

~~~
ardit33
I lived under communism for 10 years, and it worked. Crime was almost non-
existent in my country. It took few cops to keep peace in each town.

By the time somebody went in front of the judge, everybody new who did it, and
99% of the time they were found guilty, and where shipped to jail.

Of course, there are many drawbacks to it. If you oposed the party, you will
be swiftly send to jail.

Very effective, in a scary way. Then democracy came, and crime shot up. Still
relatively low (compared to the US), but still much higher that it used to be.

In a democratic society, it will be problematic to have cops being judges too.
The problem is that there will be always bad apples among the cops, and giving
them such great power, makes a fertile ground for abuse, and with no real
check and balances in place.

~~~
Tichy
Could it be there simply wasn't anything worthwhile to steal?

~~~
Oompa
Because theft is the only crime?

~~~
Tichy
No, but probably the most common kind of crime (including robberies)?

Another reason could be that everybody had enough - nobody was rich, but
nobody was starving in the streets, either?

------
Prrometheus
This post shows the flaw in the common argument of "I'm a cop, so I know what
to do with crime" or "I'm a teacher, so I know what to do with the schools" or
"I'm a soldier, so I know what to do with the war". People subject to the
internal incentives of a part of the system aren't the best people to make
objective judgments for the whole system.

~~~
wumi
_People subject to the internal incentives of a part of the system aren't the
best people to make objective judgments for the whole system._

And the alternative is ... "I'm the President, so I know what to do with
schools(NCLB)" ?

Actually, you pretty much hit the nail on the head -- ask any soldier who's
been involved boots on the ground in the American battlefronts in the middle
east, and I betcha alot of them have a better idea of what's going on than
your average news commentator or politician.

You may not like the analogy, but this very argument is the thesis of most
Pres. Bush administration policy -- refusing the advice of those with what you
call "internal incentives," which I'm loosely interpreting to mean -- on the
ground with first-hand experience.

~~~
tfinniga
Well, the alternative you suggested is not the only alternative. As you point
out, it's a rather bad one.

Perhaps a better one is to study similar situations, talk to all members of a
system and get feedback, and then make a decision based on the feedback of all
involved.

To use your example, asking soldiers what they want to do will result in one
set of answers. Asking generals another. Politicians another (politicians
certainly are incentivised/biased in this situation). Civilians in the
affected regions another.

But to come up with the most objective judgment for the system as a whole, you
should get people who are not in the system, but have access to all
information available on it, including the desires of all involved.

~~~
wumi
certainly a preferable alternative to the one I provided. :)

------
icey
One of the cops arguing for this happens to provide the exact reason why we
have a court system:

|"Well, I hate taking that son-of-a-bitch to the station because those tests
always fail and they get off (with little penalty). But these guys are a
terror around here. Everyone drinks and drives - especially those guys who
drive home after work. I’d love to give them a tattoo, right on their forehead
- like one of those scarlet letters."

And here is another choice quote:

|"If a drug addict robbed somebody, we used to take his drugs away and give
them to someone else. Then we used to make him watch his buddy smoke all his
stuff. THAT was real pain!"

I'd like to leave the Judge Dredd act at the movies, please.

~~~
wumi
I'm assuming that you have first-hand experience with a) the police system or
b) the criminal courts and legal system this cop is referring to. Bonus points
for living in the inner-city and being familiar with drug trafficking.

That would give us a lot more context into why you think what the cops were
doing was wrong, and, maybe more importantly, what your solution is to
improving the problem (if there is one, which, of course, you know all about).

As Prometheus said in the comments below, it's obviously sometimes a wise
decision to allow those to have an objective look at a situation -- not those
who are looking at the issue from two inches in front of their face -- figure
out how the system will operate.

I would submit, however, that that model is very reminiscent of the "Twitter
can't scale" debate, where everybody and their grandmother is offering
gratuitous advice on how the team on the ground should scale their project
when they don't even know how it's built, with what toolset, and what the core
problems are.

~~~
ibsulon
I happen to have a small bit of perspective on the situation. My mother grew
up on the wrong side of the tracks and much of my extended family is still
there. I spent part of my childhood in the environment, and there was a crack
house across the street from my home for a small part of it. My cousin was in
a gang. (This is in a major drug corridor in the southwest.)

There's a large difference between a community member as a judge and a cop who
doesn't even live in the area and views those who do with contempt. This
colors their judgement, and the punishment often has more to do with the
perception of the "defendant" than the actual crime.

Is the justice system often worthless? Yes. Are the cops any better? Not
really, and I'd find them much worse.

Fundamentally, the problem is that Johnny can't get a job because he can't do
basic math or read. Jobs within their reach aren't enough to pay bills, and
those who can get the jobs that pay the bills leave the community, sometimes
even their own families. (Those who can are often expected to provide for
those who can't, which gets really tiring.)

The role models are poor. Those who are raised in the inner city often speak
with an accent that isn't accepted by those in business. And these things
encourage those to get into markets that are less inhabited by convention ---
grey markets and crime.

Which the police don't understand -- they just see a thug.

The solution is that the police should live in the neighborhood in which
they're assigned, they should be from or previously lived in similar
neighborhoods, and the judges that see cases should be similarly informed.

~~~
chollida1
> The solution is that the police should live in the neighborhood in which
> they're assigned,

There is a very good reason why most cops don't live in the area that they are
assigned to.

It's called pay back.

If a cop arrests a gang member and they happen to be neighbours how long do
you think it will be before something happens to the cop's wife or children
when he is at work?

Cops, by design, don't patrol area's where they live.

~~~
ibsulon
1\. In this world, it's a lot easier to find someone's address and phone
number, making payback much easier no matter where one lives.

2\. While I understand the concern about the gang members and payback, the
fundamental piece missing is that there is no accountability to one's
community if you are an outsider to it. It breeds contempt, and it leads to
the abuses of power that we see.

There's a fundamental difference between "that gangbanger" and "Rosa's kid."
(Reminding us of the recent XKCD comment.)

Of course, crack changes everything and makes this ideal much harder, but the
comments in the article show how disconnected from the communities these cops
were. They no longer saw criminals even as human!

------
boredguy8
Police already have plenty of power: giving them carte blanche to be judge,
jury, and executioner is more than slightly problematic.

Cops can be wrong (gasp!). It might -seem- that such-and-such a person is
doing something wrong, but your "gut" isn't a reliable source of evidence.

At best this is an argument for more creative punishments from the bench. I
can buy that, or at least could be convinced of that. But vigilante justice?
No thanks. "Embarrassing" a husband because you _think_ he beat his wife is
not the same as embarrassing a husband because he was _convicted_ of beating
his wife. If public shaming will deter/stop domestic violence more than time
in jail, let's do it. But as much as possible, let's punish the guilty, not
the people some random Jane or Joe _thinks_ is guilty.

------
edw519
"Every time we take a programmer downtown for writing buggy code, nothing
happens. So now, instead, we just post their source on hacker news for
everyone to laugh at. They _really_ hate that."

(Sorry, just trying to preempt the inevitable "not hacker news" comment.)

~~~
swombat
s/hacker news/Daily WTF

------
gills
What a load of hooey.

Simply put: Police officers are not my peers. They do not represent a balanced
cross-section of my geographic or socioconomic neighborhood. A single police
officer cannot perform the duties of the jury afforded me by the constitution.

If we're going to have street justice, let's do it in style. A former
colleague's idea was to allow any arbitrary group of 12 people to act as
judge, jury, and executioner on the spot. The natural result would be armed
groups of 12 people riding around in vans...

------
gojomo
The civil libertarian in me shudders. The economist in me wonders if this
could be made efficient and on-balance fair.

Could beat cops be given a budget of arbitrary punishment, enough to deliver
on-the-spot 'justice' but not so much that any irreparable/irreversible damage
is done?

Can there be a expedited appeals process and community or expert review to
provide accountability and keep things from descending into a 'Training
Day'-like scenario?

Would technology like public video of all cop interactions make such a system
less prone to abuse?

It's the arbitrary informality of the process as described that scares me;
delegating some snap judgment/punishment powers could be rights-preserving and
welfare-promoting, with the right incentives and checks in place.

------
pavelludiq
I know a few people that have been victims of police aggression just because
they weared black hoodies and baggy jeans and had their ears pierced. Giving
more power to police officers is not that good. You don't fix the problems
with the court system by shifting their responsibilities to the officers.

------
almost
Am I the only person who thinks this shit should be sent back to reddit where
it belongs?

~~~
pg
Not all stories with the word "police" in the title are reddit bait.

------
spencermiles
Someone want to remind me how this is "Hacker news". Seriously people, we have
reddit for this. Don't dilute this community.

~~~
etal
See gojomo's comment. The cops' techniques for "hacking" the judicial system
are low-tech, but it doesn't have to be that way. I like to think that hacker
minds can solve problems beyond social web apps -- or in this case, a web app
for sharing information might be the right way to look at the problem.

Plenty of sites exist that deal with urban crime outside the judicial system:

\- ChicagoCrime.org (now EveryBlock.com)

\- Map mashups using data from Megan's Law registries

\- Some county traffic courts allow looking up offenses by the offender's name

\- Some courts also publish names and even mug shots of prostitution offenders

I haven't seen this discussed in mainstream news beyond some worried
mutterings about civil rights, and I think it's an interesting problem, so
there you go. Now, hopefully, the discussion will focus on smart solutions
instead of devolving into a collective rant about police.

------
henning
Cops want to be powertripping assholes who aren't subject to any oversight? No
way!

------
falsestprophet
I'm pretty sure a lot of them just want to tase you bro.

------
mhb
Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore's Eastern District is also good.

[http://www.amazon.com/Cop-Hood-Policing-Baltimores-
District/...](http://www.amazon.com/Cop-Hood-Policing-Baltimores-
District/dp/0691140081/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213825397&sr=8-1)

------
iamdave
I have more faith that a slew of cops with families of their own, who just
wants to make a living just like you would be a more endurable system than
dealing with politically elected officials who get paid off to swing
judgements certain ways, backed by a government that turns a blind eye and
tells us it's not actually happening.

------
cbryan
This is great! The way the post is worded, I thought I would disagree, but I
think that community policing is a great way to deal with problems. The court
system seems okay at handling large problems, yet fails with petty crime.

An anarchistic community-based justice model might just work, especially if
the police are already thinking this way.

~~~
bct
The structure of everything needs to be changed for that to work though. That
kind of power centralized in a small group is just begging for abuse, unless
there's someone trustworthy to prevent it.

------
kirse
I would argue that anyone who becomes a cop in a major inner-city would
eventually resort to similar tactics to deal with the overwhelming volume of
criminal activity.

------
redorb
give me a small percent of hope that some police know justice. I mean there is
a place to ignore rolled stop signs, and there are places not to (near a
school etc..)

