
In NY major crime complaints fell when cops stopped ‘proactive policing’ (2017) - epistasis
https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-proactive-policing-crime-20170925-story.html
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mnm1
When you arrest or kill a drug dealer, many others come in and fight for his
place creating more violence. This is known and shown by studies and every
cop's experience ever. They know this and yet they still do it, causing more
violence and chaos on the streets, more deaths and more imprisonments. They
support keeping things criminalized because many would likely be out of a job,
or certainly out of an easy, low-risk job in favor of more difficult, actually
useful police work. Police knowingly and intentionally increase violence in
the communities they police.

Until we stop criminalizing normal activities, this won't change. The
stupidity of the drug war is now clear for all to see. In Colorado and other
states you can peacefully walk into a store and buy weed. In a state like
Alabama you might spend years in jail for a joint. The stupidity, inhumanity,
and cruelty is glaring and disturbing. And the system of violence that is
perpetrated by this situation in non-legal states and as regards to other
illicit substances starts and ends with the police. They arrest people for
breaking windows or some other such nonsense, then throw them in prison, give
them a record, and basically turn them into real criminals since they no
longer have a chance to contribute to society. The less involvement the police
have, the better off society is.

Does it make sense to criminalize jaywalking? We're giving the police a reason
to potentially _kill_ someone for crossing the street at the same time. That
goes for every petty crime out there. Every single crime that police enforce
might require that police use deadly force. Do we want to use deadly force for
weed smokers, jaywalkers, and single cigarette sellers? Because that's what
the 'broken windows' policy of idiocy advocates. Then we wonder why cops are
kneeling on people's necks or choking them out for selling a single cigarette?
Because as a society, we condone this and we especially encourage it be done
to minorities through the laws we pass, the police we hire, and the rules and
procedures we approve for enforcement.

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mikem170
>So, with the drop in relatively low-level police activity, what happened to
serious crime in the city? The scientists found that civilian complaints of
major crimes dropped by about 3% to 6% during the slowdown.

Is 3-6% a significant enough difference to draw conclusions from?

I wonder what is the normal variation in major crime complaints from one six
week window to another?

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f00_
yeah, it's not like this is a randomized experiment so there might be
confounding factors. Observational studies aren't very useful for determining
causation in general

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aquilaFiera
Malcom Gladwell addresses why proactive policing doesn't work at length in his
book "Talking to Strangers". He refers to it as Kansas City style policing.
Highly recommended.

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A4ET8a8uTh0
I do not want to sound flippant, but does that mean that crime did not happen,
because it sounds like we are now deciding that 'broken window' is not an
issue worth pursuing.

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ipnon
A rather terrifying statistic I remember from investigating crime in Chicago:

50% of homicides are brought to justice in Chicago, but the remaining half are
not normally distributed in terms of crimes per criminal. ~50 people are
responsible for half of the unsolved homicides in Chicago.

I am not going to be able to provide a direct reference for this claim. My
point is that the rate of severe crimes can be efficiently diminished by
targeting professional criminals and the networks that enable them. Policing
minor crimes is counterproductive because the harmful side effects of policing
(racial and social injustice, legal costs, adversity between police and
citizens) are greater than the benefit to the community of removing
misdemeanors like vandalism and drug use. You might say that broken windows
policing is not Pareto efficient.

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foolmeonce
I think it is entirely different to handle reports of misdemeanors by the
public with integrity and to attempt to catch misdemeanors in progress with
active surveillance.

The first can get you trust needed to identify your major criminals, the
second creates an alliance of presumed criminals that shares little with the
police.

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jmilloy
> we find that civilian complaints of major crimes (such as burglary, felony
> assault and grand larceny) decreased during and shortly after sharp
> reductions in proactive policing

This is based on a pay-walled article that would be interesting to read. One
major question that is unanswered in the abstract is whether a reduction in
complaints is a useful correlate for reduction in crime. That is just
something I don't anything about.

Another question, that I would bet is answered in the article, is if civilian
complaints of _petty_ crimes increased or decreased after reductions in
proactive policing.

Lastly, the results suggest that proactive policing may not deter major crimes
as it is meant to. Do the authers (or others) think this is because proactive
policing _causes_ an increase in major crime? Or does it just distract police
from major crime? Or is it something else entirely?

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Izkata
I'd like to dub this "the Batman effect", but unfortunately it's already
taken.

It's a pretty common theme in the various incarnations of Batman that the
primary reason Gotham City gets so many crazies is that the existence of
Batman either attracts or indirectly/accidentally creates them.

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annoyingnoob
Broken windows policing is why I hate police. My chances of calling police
under any circumstance is near zero. Having the cops kick your ass for no
reason does not help anyone in our society, it only breeds mistrust. That
mistrust can last a life time. Its going to take a generation or more to get
past this bullshit. Welcome to the United Police States of America.

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SpicyLemonZest
I'm not a fan either, but I think we have to acknowledge that it's an attempt
to address a real problem. There really are areas where people regularly try
to engage in petty crime, and the government has a duty to address that.

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rmrfstar
The US has the highest per-capita incarceration rate _in the world_ [1].

US: 655/100k

UK: 135/100K

China: 121/100K

Germany: 77/100K

Iceland: 37/100K

It feels like we are consuming just a little too much of the "security"
product. Maybe we should try consuming the "justice" product. I hear it's
pretty good.

[1] [https://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-
lowest/prison_popul...](https://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-
lowest/prison_population_rate?field_region_taxonomy_tid=All)

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
I agree, but the question is how to get from here to there. Releasing all the
nonviolent drug addicts - which we certainly should do! - still doesn't get us
close to those other countries.

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danenania
By the numbers, our best bet is probably revamping the prison system to focus
on rehabilitation instead of punishment, and then drastically reducing the
length of sentences.

Our goal should be to get someone as close as possible to 0 chance of
recidivism in as short a time as possible.

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close04
Education is usually another good place to start. Educated people tend to make
more informed choices, and informed choices tend to shape better futures.

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yters
i bet if police stop responding to 911 calls altogether then crime complaints
will drop to zero

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gotoeleven
Yeah in fact what they should do is punish the people who report the crimes,
that would definitely drop the rate of crime reporting!

You get what you optimize for.

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craftinator
> Yeah in fact what they should do is punish the people who report the crimes

This happens surprisingly often in the USA. I won't bother inundating HN with
all the sources that a simple search will turn up, but aside from many reports
of this happening, I have first-hand experience.

I called the non-emergency police number because my neighbor's large dog had
escaped and was kind of freaking out the neighborhood, growling at people it
didn't know, barking at people through their house windows, etc... Police
showed up 3 hours later, issued me a ticket for being parked 14 inches from
the street curb, gave me a verbal warning about "showing more respect" to
police when I re-stated the reason for calling them, then left without doing
anything about the dog. Protect and Serve.

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Simulacra
Following the murder of George Floyd, and the violence between citizen and
police, I can see the police as a body withdrawing from "policing" period.
After Freddy Gray's death, police stopped responding to calls form west
Baltimore. We want them to respond to our needs but they're not going to come
if people are going to shoot at the squad cars.

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minikites
You are badly misunderstanding the issue and why people are up in arms.

