
How three teenagers invented an app to police the cops - RachelF
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21684687-high-school-students-want-citizens-rate-their-interactions-officers-how-three
======
nmc
Since the author of the article did not even bother linking to the teenagers'
website or even showing some screenshots of the app, here are some links:

\- The Five-O app on Pinetart Inc. (the teenagers' company) website:
[http://pinetartinc.com/?p=44](http://pinetartinc.com/?p=44)

\- The Five-O app on Google Play:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.five_o](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.five_o)

\- The "international contest for justice-related initiatives" mentioned in
the article: [https://innovatingjustice.com/en/pages/innovating-justice-
fo...](https://innovatingjustice.com/en/pages/innovating-justice-forum-2015)

~~~
Wingman4l7
It's a fundamental failure of journalism posted on the Internet to not
actually link to the subject of your reporting.

~~~
pasbesoin
Often, I experience it as deliberate. There is so much rehashing; if you link
to the source, people may simply go there -- especially if it proves to be
better than your hash.

~~~
sleepychu
If the hash is reversible then it's not a hash!

~~~
TeMPOraL
Reencrypting?... Nah.

(Looks into a dictionary.)

Turns out we already have a word for that. Regurgitating.

------
jacquesm
This is the kind of impact that start-ups rarely have, in spite of the 'make
something people want' and 'lets go and improve the world' mission statements.

Kudos to these three, it's the kind of development one would be proud to be a
part of. Watching the watchers is badly needed, not just in America, elsewhere
too.

~~~
pjc50
Unlike most startups, it's not going to be easy to profit from and has a good
chance of suffering reprisals.

~~~
joeriel
Like most startups, it's not going to be easy to profit from...

------
drglitch
I'm glad to see that a lens flare photoshop filter is still a rite-of-passage
in design just like it was back in late 90s :)

Joking aside, this will have same terrible bias as BBB - bad reviews will be
the only ones making it in. I am right up there with thinking cops
significantly (and often) overstep their bounds but this is treating a symptom
not the root cause.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
> I am right up there with thinking cops significantly (and often) overstep
> their bounds...

Really? Are you sure this isn't just because the bad ones are reported often
and hardly any good ones? I mean, there are a LOT of officers in the U.S.
Surely they aren't all overstepping.

One thing to remember about officers; they see the worst of US day in and day
out, every single day. I'm sure it colors one's view of the world after a
while. But even given this, I hardly believe that officers are "significantly
(and often) overstepping their bounds".

~~~
nkoren
I'm an American expat living in the UK, so I am interested in judging things
on comparative rather than absolute terms.

In the UK, the police are on track to have killed 3 people in 2015[1]. In the
US, the police are on track to have killed 1,200 people[2]. Adjusted for
population, the US has a police homicide rate that is 79 times higher than in
the UK. In some places, police violence is now the no. 1 form of homicide,
ahead of gang violence, petty crime, domestic violence, child abuse, and any
other category of violence.[3]

Actual homicide is just the tip of the iceberg, of course, but if this doesn't
qualify as "significantly and often" then I'm not sure what does.

This is not just a civilian attitude. There are plenty of (ex-) police who
feel this way too.[4]

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_Kingdom)

2: [http://killedbypolice.net/](http://killedbypolice.net/)

3: [http://www.sltrib.com/news/1842489-155/killings-by-utah-
poli...](http://www.sltrib.com/news/1842489-155/killings-by-utah-police-
outpacing-gang)

4:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/06/...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/06/i-was-
a-st-louis-cop-my-peers-were-racist-and-violent-and-theres-only-one-fix/)

~~~
at-fates-hands
>> Actual homicide is just the tip of the iceberg, of course, but if this
doesn't qualify as "significantly and often" then I'm not sure what does.

Mainly because police departments do not keep these kinds of statistics, so
the data is horribly incomplete. And as anybody knows, you can massage the
data to show anything you want when you don't have the complete picture:

 _Officials with the Justice Department keep no comprehensive database or
record of police shootings, instead allowing the nation’s more than 17,000 law
enforcement agencies to self-report officer-involved shootings as part of the
FBI’s annual data on “justifiable homicides” by law enforcement._

 _That number – which only includes self-reported information from about 750
law enforcement agencies – hovers around 400 “justifiable homicides” by police
officers each year. The DOJ’s Bureau of Justice Statistics also tracks
“arrest-related deaths.” But the department stopped releasing those numbers
after 2009, because, like the FBI data, they were widely regarded as
unreliable._

source: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-
nation/wp/2014/09/0...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-
nation/wp/2014/09/08/how-many-police-shootings-a-year-no-one-knows/)

The other problem with your data is that there is no firm evidence how each of
these scenario's played out. Did the person being shot pull a firearm? What
about brandishing a weapon or charging the officer, or attempting to assault
the officer? We don't know because this kind of evidence is never taken into
account. All people see is a cop who killed a citizen, nobody knows the exact
circumstances around _every single_ one of these instances - which makes ALL
the data that much more suspect.

So yeah, when you look at the raw numbers, they look bad, but when you add in
the circumstances by which these played out, you'd probably find out a lot of
these were justified - which is why cops tend to get a lot of leeway in these
kinds of scenarios, and are rarely charged.

~~~
DanBC
As I understand it (I don't know much about guns) a weapon is a measure of
last resort. The officer should only discharge the weapon if someone is about
to die and all other efforts have failed. And when they discharge their weapon
they must shot for "centre mass" \- shoot to wound is a myth.

So if that's true why isn't information gathered about every single round of
ammunition that's fired? Because every time that trigger is pulled is a time
when someone (the officer, a member of the public) is at risk of death, and
pulling the trigger carries a very real risk of killing the alleged
perpetrator. (Or innocent bystanders).

It's baffling to me that statistics like these are not kept.

Maybe this would be too high a burden. But at least they should keep numbers
on how many people they kill, and what the precise situation was around that
death.

~~~
newman314
Does this look like last resort? [1]

And obviously this is not an isolated incident hence much of the anger
directed at police. Guns _should_ be last resort but sadly is not the case
today.

[1] [http://heavy.com/news/2015/12/san-francisco-sfpd-police-
shoo...](http://heavy.com/news/2015/12/san-francisco-sfpd-police-shoot-
suspect-man-bayview-district-instagram-youtube-video/)

------
ck2
Put aside the whole idea of the app for a moment.

Think about how this reflects on society when this becomes therapy for
teenagers at the formative years in their life to deal with something very bad
that happened to them by people who were supposed to protect them.

~~~
vacri
Teenagers and young adults are ripe for causes. It's part of their
psychological makeup; find a cause and be passionate about it. It's why
protest groups are mostly young adults, and why armies are full of teenage
signups.

------
mariuolo
Noble intent, but I fear these kids will be in the sights for a long time now.

~~~
Namrog84
I do wonder if the app becomes popular and then an officer recognizes the kid
in a pull over or situation how it will influence the interaction.

~~~
bitJericho
A cop's going to mess with a couple of kids because he might recognize them as
having created an app? That makes no sense at all.

~~~
logfromblammo
No, he won't recognize them. As he is running the plates and driver's license
through the official public computer system, he will also be whipping out his
personal phone to run that name through a few private databases, run by ex-
cops, with subscription access granted only to cops and ex-cops.

Those databases will tell him, essentially, "This guy created a popular app
that puts _your job_ under a microscope. Also, he probably got a bunch of
money for it, and may be carrying a lot of cash."

It won't actually _say_ anything about harassing him. That will be entirely up
to the investigating officer, and all the other investigating officers that he
may have alerted via the aforementioned databases to watch out for cars with
the same model and color.

~~~
e28eta
Sounds like an excellent idea for a honeypot. Are you building it?

~~~
logfromblammo
I'd be a bit late to that party.

[http://bigstory.ap.org/article/8632c929c3ba4773a2e130689f4b8...](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/8632c929c3ba4773a2e130689f4b8e69/private-
database-lets-police-skirt-license-plate-data)

[http://consumerist.com/2014/05/19/private-companies-
building...](http://consumerist.com/2014/05/19/private-companies-building-
giant-unregulated-databases-tracking-license-plate-location-info/)

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/st...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2014/09/06/stop-
and-seize/)

[https://desertsnow.com/](https://desertsnow.com/)

[https://bales.org/](https://bales.org/)

~~~
chaqke
ugh, oh god

~~~
bitJericho
HN really freaks me out sometimes!

------
mosselman
It must be very cool to be able to create any kind of app with your
brothers/sisters, especially if you then get some success together. How else
would you get a chance at starting a company at 15, 16 and 18.

------
biot
The article discusses "why" they created the app, but other than the fact that
they're mostly self-taught, there's nothing on the "how". Information on their
tech stack or how they're aggregating information would have been interesting
to read about.

~~~
zecho
Wow yeah. HUGE oversight by The Economist, imo.

------
zomg
the best way to police the police is to be aware of your local wire tapping
laws and roll video.

~~~
RankingMember
This is my thought, too. Video, unless thoroughly chopped up (which tends to
be obvious), doesn't lie. I've had an idea for a "RateMyCop" app for a bit,
but it looks like these kids have basically created it already. The only
problem with such an app is the natural human bias to be motivated to report
negative interactions over positive, as someone else mentioned in these
comments. Straight-up video recordings don't have this issue.

~~~
sleepychu
So let's have all government employed agents with body worn video cameras.

------
nickpsecurity
I'm with Temporal that this will be negatively biased against the police.
There will be some good ratings of good cops at least while this is a fad.
There might be a percentage that do it consistently. Yet, most people are
going to make this the goto app for ranting against the police. These rants
will vary in accuracy.

Overall, I mainly see it being an app for collecting negative claims about
police rather than truly holding them accountable. Body cams and attorney's
present are accountability. This isn't.

~~~
wruza
Bias is easily removed, just select your zero and scale.

Human reaction to police actions is a precious feedback that can make them
better, not throw them all to jails. What's good in police that is officially
correct, but unaccepted by the entire society?

~~~
nickpsecurity
You make something sound easy that I rarely see done well. The real problem is
willingness to convict cops. Not enough exists. Once that exists, clear
guidelines are necessary so cops can get stuff done while knowing when they'd
be crossing the line.

------
paulmd
Oh, gee, the cops will surely avoid shooting you if it ~ _damages their
rating_ ~. Why has nobody thought of _that_ before?

The implication here is that cops would care what you think of them. They
don't now, and they won't in the future either. The Chicago PD don't run that
torture warehouse for the Yelp ratings, yo.

This will be further enhanced by the fact that nobody likes being
arrested/jailed and thus the ratings will be pretty much 100% negative. Why
would a cop care about how much the perp is complaining, or a meaningless
aggregation thereof? On an individual basis (and ignoring the systemic
problems), being tough-skinned is basically a requirement for everyone in the
justice system.

Periscope is a good app that will help. This is dumb cargo-cult behavior that
does nothing. This app doesn't address the problem seriously and will be
forgotten in two weeks' time. Yes, they're kids and it's nice that they're
coding, but don't give a bad idea a handie just for the heck of it.

Tying recordings to specific officers to compile a history of bad behavior
would actually be fantastic. But the Yelp aspect of it doesn't accomplish
anything.

------
account5011
"won at an international contest for justice-related initiatives, organised by
a think-tank in the Netherlands."

I hope the think-tank is aware that the Dutch police currently employs Stasi
methods that are worse than anything that happens in the U.S.:

    
    
       http://vorige.nrc.nl/opinie/article1838531.ece
    

Be aware that the NRC is a conservative newspaper and most definitely not a
tabloid.

And this isn't happening to "suspected terrorists" only ...

