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What to do if a cop tries to scan your face during a traffic stop (gizmodo.com)
96 points by danso on Feb 23, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 159 comments



American here, let me spoil it for you: If a cop tries to scan your face, you LET THEM.

You do not move, you do not pout, you do not cover your face, you do not duck down into the car, you do not roll up your window. You LET THEM SCAN YOUR FACE. If you are feeling particularly privileged, you may gently, at-most-once, convey (ORALLY ONLY) that you do not wish to be scanned/photographed.

Then you fight it like hell with the police department's grievance process, with your local courts, and with your local city/municipal council, who should have budget oversight to the police force.

Headlines like this get people killed. Seriously.


I think a lot of rebellious sentiment in this thread comes from a position of privilege. If you've ever interacted with cops when they have their kid gloves off, you know. You don't fuck with them. You do what they say. Because unless you have your own verifiable proof of whats going on, it will always be their word over yours. And even with your proof... even that isn't enough for the courts sometimes.

If you want to improve your odds get a dash cam that records the road and yourself, with audio. Have the cop on video, and preferably some way to upload video footage so they can't just confiscate your SD card when their bodycams 'fail' as they violate your rights.


Also because it really doesn’t matter if you were in the right if you’re dead.


>Headlines like this get people killed. Seriously.

It's amazing we have gotten to this point where any wrong move in front of a cop is more dangerous to the public than any danger the perpetrator of a traffic violation could impose.

Honest question, statistically who is more likely to die in a traffic stop? Police or the suspect?


Honest perception. The stopped person is more likely to die. Even when they are the 'suspect' of more than a traffic stop.


The headline "what to do if a cop tries to scan your face during a traffic stop", is going to get people killed?

The only recommendations in the article are to "verbally tell an officer that they do not consent to have their biometrics collected." and "People also have the legal right to record a police officer with their own phone".


> "People also have the legal right to record a police officer with their own phone".

People have been shot dead for reaching into their center console or glovebox. So you'd better think very carefully about how you're getting your phone out.


Nobody here is saying you should try and prevent them - we know how fucking insane US cops are. But if you don't say anything, your chances of successfully suing or at least getting erased from their database afterwards are way lower. Saying "I won't resist, but I do not consent to my face being scanned" while holding your hands in a visible position won't increase your chance of being shot unless it's already so high you're basically dead anyways.

Also, please record everything. Put a voice activated recorder on your phone so you don't get shot when reaching for it (didn't Siri have that built in at some point) and have recordings synced to the cloud, have a dashcam or better a 360° cam always running, hide a digital audio recorder in the dash - or even better use an old smartphone on a modest data plan...

I know not everyone can afford to do that, but if you can, you should. Especially if you're in a group that gets targeted often, this is the best thing you can do to make sure these fuckers are held accountable if they do something illegal or worse.


The top post is the kind of over-the-top comment that comes from a position of privilege of someone who has clearly never actually had to deal with law enforcement in a situation like this before.

I have, as a lawyer, and as a regular civilian interacting with the police. You do not have to let the cops scan your face. Refusing to be searched, or scanned, or taken to the station will not get you killed. It will not get you beat up. It will not get you sent to jail.

In fact, if you consent to letting them scan your face, (or search you or your belongings, etc) there won't be a "grievance process," there won't be a pot of gold, there won't be a voided conviction (if they found anything)...because you consented.

Comments like the OPs get people in trouble. Seriously.


You’re talking about two different things and you’re both right. You should absolutely assert your rights and refuse any scans, searches, what have you. HOWEVER if the officer doesn’t honor your refusal and does it anyway you risk death by doing anything that obstructs them even if technically you have the right to.


does it anyway you risk death by doing anything that obstructs them.

This is simply FUD being spread by someone who knows absolutely nothing about what he's talking about. Police in the U.S. aren't all like the ones you "see on TV." That's the 0.1% of the bad cops being used to define all cops.

Unless you're okay with everyone thinking that all programmers are sacks of shit because of the 0.1% that are cryptocurrency scam artists?


[flagged]


Your rights entitle you to relief in court, not to engage in street fights with law enforcement.


Depending on the circumstances your rights absolutely entitle you to engage in street fights with the police. It may not be wise, but you can do it legally (in some circumstances).

A couple of famous cases come to mind - Tupac, the rapper, was once driving down the street when he witnessed two police officers beating up a random guy. He grabbed his gun and engaged in a brief gun fight with the police. Completely justified at court.

Randy Weaver, at Ruby Ridge, was ambushed by federal marshals. In a gunfight he shot and killed a marshal and successfully argued it was justified at court.

You can legally fight and kill the police in some circumstances. It's dangerous, and you'd better be sure you're in the right, but it is legal.

(I'm also emphatically not saying you'd be justified in fighting the police over a face scan)


Besides, can't they just take you to station and take fingerprints to verify identity?

Pretty sure that's an option.


Depends on the circumstances, but not really.


just ask to be arrested.

i guess they can cuff you and scan your face anyway then. but maybe not.


Only if they have your prints to begin with.


If you are the driver, they collect your prints at license issuance.


This depends on the state. Maine does not have my prints on file


[flagged]


This is what I don't understand:

- I agree with your frustration and stance

- I am prone to think "Wow, people are really scared of the police. Why?" not "oh clearly they just love authority".

You can find the latter to the be result of literal deaths at the hands of the cops for no reason, little reason, and always little recourse. These stories are available at the tiniest google search.

You could also find it to be the result of cop propaganda.

This note though, fully not useful, not a value-add.


No one said anything about justifying it.


Hyperbolic much? you could also say "no, I would like to speak with your supervisor and understand the department policy on this before allowing it." if you are at a traffic stop and nothing has escalated you can absolutely communicate with police like this effectively.

in your scenario this is where i guess they pull out their dual wielded grenade launchers and kill your family but in reality this is likely to be the part where they decide its not worth it unless they are on very firm ground and write you a ticket and drive off.

I find this whole attitude to be bizarre and kind of creepy.


Hasn't crime in the US trended downward for the last 50+ years? There is no justification for this. It will incite distrust in an already hated police force. This is an authoritarian regime's wet dream. Such a thing is another brick in a wall people face to get a bullet in their head. Take this brick and throw it threw a window.


> Hasn't crime in the US trended downward for the last 50+ years?

Mostly. There's been a sizeable blip up during the pandemic (it's unknown if that's the cause) and that's led to talking heads talking about "the greatest rise in crime in 50 years", but that's talking about the percent increase year-over-year, and it's been trending down for a while. It's still below the rates it was at in the 1990s, which was lower than the rates in the 1970's and 1980's.

The analogy would be if you owned MySpace stock (I know, it's not public) since 1999. Sure, maybe it shot up 20% this year, but who cares you're still out most of your money.


Not to be pedantic, but crime peaked in the late 80’s / early 90’s and has steadily decreased since then (apart from recent spikes).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States


Is it concidence that lead in petrol (gas in the US) was phased out during the 80s that might explain the downward trends in crime?


So many things happened "during the 80s", such a broad correlation is basically meaningless. I have heard some much tighter correlations have been found and some possible causal links, but I never looked into it so I might be misremembering.


It's not based just on "they happened in the 80s in the US". It's an international trend that you see most countries follow as they ban leaded gas.


I would only quibble with it being sizable. In my major city property crime dropped throughout the pandemic and violent crime was down during the beginning of the pandemic but returned to a level higher than pre-pandemic times, which is still quite a bit lower than historic records.


Growing up in 90s many/most politicians ran on a get tough on crime platform. Crime rates naturally fell.

Current trend last the few years is to be soft on crime. So now crime rates are rising.

There is also increasing shift away from the mindset that one has the right to defend oneself. Both as a private citizen and as a police officer.

If someone comes up and pulls a knife on you, and you pull a gun out. The results can be anywhere from being treated as hero to a villain. For sides of the confrontation.


Crime fell nationwide in the 90s after steadily growing since the 60s because of the elimination of leaded gasoline. The evidence is really strong.


Roe v Wade is also cited as a factor because all of those kids aborted in the 70s would have been the neglected kids of the 80s and crims of the 90s.


Doesn't seem likely. When you look at a variety of Europe countries which have a variety of different dates when it comes to loosing / strengthening abortion laws they also saw decreases in crime in the same time period as the US.


But aren't planned/wanted kids intrinsically more unlikely to be born into families that are able to support them financially and emotionally?

People who decide to get kids will always be more likely to do so when they can actually support them.

People who get kids by accident (or even against their will) will be more likely to put kids into unstable environments.

Kids in unstable environments are more likely to grow into adults that do crime.

One way of avoiding these kids is abortions. But you could also provide stable environments for kids that are actually born (which is very much what we in Europe did). Allowing abortions won't change a lot in a society that already does what it can to support all children and their parents — it however will change a lot in societies without social security.


You misread what I was saying.

I am not saying abortion doesn't have an impact, but Roe vs Wade did not. There were a lot of abortions prior to the legalization in the US. I am not positive, but it may have been legal in some states just not nationally (didn't want to look it up to confirm).

This is why the date of legalization of abortion did not seem to have an impact in Europe and also why restrictions on abortion in some countries did not have an impact.


The “freakeconomics paper” [1] tries to claim abortions Tower substantially after Roe. They don’t have hard data. This is what they offer:

> documented abortions rose sharply in the wake of Roe, from under 750,000 in 1973 (when live births totaled 3.1 million) to over 1.6 million in 1980 (when live births totaled 3.6 million). If illegal abortions were already being performed in equivalent numbers, one would not expect a seven-year lag in reaching a steady state. Moreover, the costs of an abortion — financial and otherwise —dropped considerably after legalization.

You are correct some states were legal earlier. Donohue and Levitt have a section on that in a 2019 follow up paper [2]. Claim: Crime dropped earlier in those states that legalized earlier.

[1] http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/DonohueLevittT...

[2] https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/BFI_WP_201975.pd...


I'm going to appeal to authority here. The economists who wrote freakonomics surely controlled for that. They are the ones who published the abortion dropping crime paper.


You misread what I was saying. I am not saying abortion doesn't have an impact, but Roe vs Wade did not. There were a lot of abortions prior to the legalization in the US. I am not positive, but it may have been legal in some states just not nationally (didn't want to look it up to confirm).

This is why the date of legalization of abortion did not seem to have an impact in Europe and also why restrictions on abortion in some countries did not have an impact.


This is almost certainly false, I have never heard this purported and this was discussed a lot in my economics classes. It almost certainly had to do with Roe v. Wade preventing unwanted births and people being born into situations where they would not be allowed to prosper.

If you have evidence I'd be happy to evaluate it.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead%E2%80%93crime_hypothesi...

The relationship between leaded gasoline and crime has been found consistent in every country that's been looked at, based on when leaded gasoline was legalized and then banned.


Leaded gasoline is still legal in the US and used every day. I watch vehicles burn it from my house every day. So I'm skeptical of any correlation, given that it never happened.


> Leaded gasoline is still legal in the US and used every day

Not in anything like the quantities it used to be when it's use wasn't as restricted as it is now (and, with use dropping, so did blood levels; this has been extensively studied.)


You can buy a plane that uses a piston engine running on leaded gasoline and fly it all day long, as long as you want. You need to stay out of restricted airspace, but that applies to all aircraft. This dumps lead into the atmosphere nonstop while taxi'ing and while in flight. The only limit on this activity is the depth of your wallet.


Really? What vehicles are being made today that use leaded gasoline and where are people buying it? I haven't seen a gas station selling leaded gas in decades now.


Almost every small general aviation aircraft that has a piston engine uses leaded gasoline. There are some alternatives, but the FAA has never mandated a transition.


Certainly crime rate has nothing to do with putting large numbers of violent people in jail.


Like the speed of a car has to do with how fast it goes.

But isn't the more interesting question how and why the crime rate is the way it is? Anyone who is actually interested in changing the impact crime has on a society has to look long and hard at those questions. Of course many also just take the topic as a political vehicle to reach other goals, that have nothing to do with actually making things better.


Recently, a gang of armed assailants broke into an apartment with a man sleeping on a couch. The man was armed with a gun, in line with his second amendment rights. However he didn't even have a chance to defend himself - seeing that the victim was armed, the gang responded by summarily executing him. Despite plenty of evidence and the identities of the attackers being well known to prosecutors, no arrests have been made. I'm speaking of course about Amir Locke. Is it any wonder how the right to defend oneself is being eroded when government sanctioned gangs can commit first degree murder and then escape justice?


This is an absolute fairy tale. The problem is it is a commonly shared one in the US.


The US saw a 30%+ increase in homicide rate in 2020, and though official stats are not available yet, early reports point to another large increase for 2021. This would put the US in a similar position to crime 50 years ago. Before the pandemic there was a clear trend downward. Undoing that so quickly is what has shocked a lot of people, though yes it has been worse than this at many points in history.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/10/27/what-we-kno...


high crime city nearby - absolutely true, no idea why this is downvoted except maybe "truth hurts" ? online narratives are not necessarily accurate, including for "good news", people


Sample data, from a city in the US:

https://heyjackass.com/2022-homicide-trend/

More interesting info on the main page:

https://heyjackass.com/home/


When globally nations lose influence, they tend to slowly devolve into authoritarian regimes. The reason for both is usually the same: Civil society becoming extremely averse of risk to life in general. So they won't come to the aid of their allies and also push heavy measures on their populace that try to minimise crime. Eventually the same measures are used to control the populace when they aren't happy with the direction their country is taking.


I would like to have an app that I can use to scan the face of a police officer and that tells me:

1) Officers name

2) Employment history

3) Current Salary

That's all public information. Not violating any officer's privacy.


Check out the OpenOversight database project:

https://openoversight.lucyparsonslabs.com/


I like the idea but how does one go about getting a photo of a police officer and their badge number etc without getting smashed into the sidewalk face first?


IANAL- but if you are in a public space, police officers can be photographed/videotaped for any/no reason. There is no presumption of privacy.


Tell that to the cop that doesn't give a shit about what's actually legal and will put you in cuffs for recording them anyways.


But then you hit a jackpot and a 5, 6 or even a 7 figure settlement.

Which will unfortunately be paid by the taxpayer.


One may have to decide which is easier: scan a law enforcement officer or study leet code problems for a month.


have you met a police being technically correct here won't put your teeth back in your head.


What does their salary have to do with this or most other grievances you might have with them?


plenty


Such as?


Wealthier cities can afford higher quality police officers.


This line of thought is so wrong on so many levels ...


This is just a fact. The police are better in wealthier municipalities because they can pay for better recruits. This includes higher crime big cities if they have a decent tax base.


but it isn’t often wrong.


I can only imagine the types of things a SV tech worker might say to a police officer at a traffic stop if they knew the officer's salary. And how the officer might respond.


You have some kind of fantasy-like misconception of SV tech workers. Most of the SV tech workers I know consider themselves not very rich at all (due to how much the cost of living is here) and definitely not snobby or daring enough to annoy an officer.


> definitely not snobby

Your perceptions differ from my own. I used to idolize SV until I moved here. I have never met a more entitled group in my life, and I grew up with multiple billionaires' children.


Don't keep us guessing.


Let your face get scanned and settle it in court. Best case scenario anything that is found is thrown out.

Or try to fight it on the street with the officer, get hit with a bunch of charges, and then you and your property get damaged and you end up settling it in court.


The article recommends saying “I don’t consent to having my face scanned.” Then let the officer do whatever they want. Basically, just resist verbally, not physically. Then fight it in court.

This has never been litigated but the act of verbally resisting might give you some legal grounds for recourse.


If they dismiss the case how are you going to get your face scan deleted from the 12 different databases they put it in?


As a driver presumably your face is already in those databases as seen on your driver’s license.


Yes, but you may not want to give the AI additional training material for it to better identify you (if it were used on a crowd of people for example).


you don't have any pictures in the cloud at all?


Sure, I do. Almost everyone in my generation does. But, this is not about us, we can't go back... it's about future generations who will be aware of the concerns about AI before they put their images on the internet. They should be able to choose if they want that. This is a powerful and potentially dangerous thing that needs to be carefully considered.


Sometimes the worse outcome for oneself is necessary to demonstrate one's principles, and, when combined with others doing the same, effect a better long-term outcome for everybody in that society.

Edit: Weighing the short-term, personal best outcome against the long-term, public best outcome with any kind of objectivity is usually impossible, due to the highly unpredictable nature of the latter.


get hit with a bunch of charges,

And perhaps in the face. Or with worse outcomes I don't need to go into detail about.


This will make it less likely for them to bust up your face as they will need to use it for scans.


Like these officers think rationally, or even in terms of practical benefit.


> “Let’s say you are on a traffic stop and we have someone in the car who we suspect may be wanted?” Benigno asked. “How would you go about investigating somebody who you think may be trying to hide their apprehension and hide out who they are?”

How does this actually work? Presumably being wanted means that there's an arrest warrant or summons issued by a judge for a specific, previously identified person. Did the police somehow lose the person the first time?

Or is this some sort of James-Bond-like fantasy where one gets to scan a face and conveniently match a facial profile to some supposed well-known but elusive enemy of state from some intelligence database without any ambiguities?


>means that there's an arrest warrant or summons issued by a judge for a specific, previously identified person.

I would imagine usually its because they skip bail or violate probation. They can issue a warrant if you don't pay a ticket, fine, etc.


> Did the police somehow lose the person the first time?

They may not have had evidence to arrest them previously.


But then the police somehow got said evidence after the person left, and they know the person's identity - but presumably not from the driver's licence (which would have included residential address) - and then they're hoping to stumble upon said person in a random traffic stop? When they even admit they can't realistically go after every speeder on the road?

IMHO, if I had to guess at the probability of this scenario being realistically, my Occam razor sensor would say it's most likely a manufactured scenario that isn't actually grounded in reality. </two-cents>


> the police somehow got said evidence after the person left, and they know the person's identity

Yes. The police often show up after a crime has been committed and the suspect is long gone. If their investigation turns up clear evidence (a witness who knows the person, surveillance footage, etc) then they might be able to issue a warrant for that person.


I'm going to ask if you've ever talked to an actual police officer, then. It's not uncommon for police to recognize people with active warrants in the car at a traffic stop. It turns out that antisocial behaviors are often correlated, and "Was speeding/swerving through the road" is a common behavior of people with warrants out. Most people speeding/swerving are having a bad day, but of people speeding/swerving, there's a much higher concentration of antisocial assholes than in an overall population sample.


I have (on more than a few occasions in fact). On one occasion I had noted the offender's car plate number and from that the police tracked the person down to their house (all of this within the span of just a couple of hours, mind you). What I'm questioning is that it seems far more reliable to follow the documentation trail electronically from something like a car plate/registration/drivers license back to a domicile than it is for a random cop to randomly stumble upon a person of interest and in such a way that only face recognition can help. If there's a reason to believe that a person needs to be brought in (e.g. an active homicide investigation and an uncooperative driver in a vehicle matching a profile), they would have to bring the person in as a suspect anyways and that would certainly motivate an innocent person to provide identification.


Or you get out on bail and go to Mexico instead of your trial.


It is always very stupid when both sides try to argue whether or not regulating brand new technology falls under right or wrong based on legislation which was likely written decades ago. It is clearly a game of intepretation based on feelings.

Instead we need a system which actively recognizes and regulates new technology as it becomes available.


It's silly to the point where I read someone defending our right to use cryptography under the second amendment. It should be part of it's own modern bill of rights or something so there is no ambiguity.


>> It's silly to the point where I read someone defending our right to use cryptography under the second amendment.

That's really stupid. It's as bad as when the government wanted to classify cryptographic algorithms as munitions. To make the argument I think it's best to fall back to a right to privacy under the 4th amendment, and to the fact that it's just math which anyone can do.


Especially with how hard people fought to make cryptography NOT a munition.


Isn't "evidence in plain view" always permissible, and isn't a face in plain view (unless obscured, which would require a command to remove clothing)?


I hardly think a face scan during a traffic stop counts as evidence that the infraction was committed. “Look here your honor, anyone with that face would have run a stop sign. No not the face they have, but this photo/3d scan I took!”


It's really a matter of creating a false positive to give the officer permission to search a car or a phone and find more incriminating evidence. End of story.


Laws regularly go obsolete because of new technologies. The issue isn't the letter of the law but the inflexibility in adjusting to new, more intrusive ways of invading privacy.

That law was written at a time where it was believed humans don't have databases in their heads. That is still true, but the effect can now be simulated with a mobile device, which brings new threats to agency as a free citizen of a nation.


the inflexibility of the law? surely that's up to the interpretation of the judge?


What’s the point of scanning a face if you can already request and do a check on someone’s driver’s license?


"It's 2022 and I can scan faces so I will. Why wouldn't I? I'm an authority figure and it's for the public's own good."


Passengers would be one difference I suppose


In some states (probably a minority) it is permitted to not have your license on your person while driving. I think you get some kind of summons to produce it as soon as possible.

This is not to say that I am on board with the face scanning. Just a related point.


Another false positive that gives them invasive permissions into people's private lives. This is how they think.


Might be someone else's driver's license.


IF they have reasonable belief that the presented license is fake or altered, maybe a facial scan is justifiable. Gets into arguing over what is "reasonable" though.


in California and I think in all US states, significant and continued corruption is decades old.. forged-copies of official IDs are sold on blackmarkets, best if copied directly from the original, right? .. this extends into the US Mail handling of the IDs after they are printed but before they arrive at the citizens' possession. It is not discussed in public- why?


Is it a given that if you drive in the US you are going to get stopped by the police at some point?


In my experience, no. I’ve only gotten pulled over when I was pretty much asking for it. When people say they get pulled over often, I usually find stuff out like they were doing +20 on a residential road. But this is in nicer parts of the country.


There are also temporary "checkpoints" (the real term escapes me at the moment), where police park their cars, funnel traffic to one or two lanes, and ask for ID from all cars passing through. I've only ever seen this done at highway on-ramps or major roads on nights notorious for drinking. With those, anybody driving on the road would be stopped, even if they followed every law.


"Traffic stops" the term you're looking for? Or is that a different thin?


Absolutely. There are factors that make it more likely. But regardless, I don't know a single person who has _never_ been stopped by police.


Thanks. That is the impression I'm getting from news stories coming from the US.

I'm from the UK and I'd say it is the opposite. The majority of people have never been stopped by the police.


> I don't know a single person who has _never_ been stopped by police.

I imagine you probably are acquainted with such people but you merely don't know this fact about them... unless I guess you ask "have you ever been stopped by police?" every time you introduce yourself to someone.


I would say yes from the time you get your license. Speed, roll through a stop, something until you get a ticket and have to go to "traffic school". Basically, sit through 3 or 4 hours of the most boring driver education videos imaginable.

That is after sitting in court all day for the judge to send you to traffic school on a different day.

I think most drivers change their behavior after this experience a few times.

If you don't speed, come to a full stop at stop signs, don't run red lights and don't use your phone while driving you won't be pulled over but you will do one of those when you start.

I would say every time I drive I see at least one driver doing something that would get them pulled over so for that person it is just a matter of time.


> In that situation, Wessler warned police using facial recognition at a traffic stop could open themselves up to a false arrest lawsuit under the Fourth Amendment.

Doesn't seem to me that a face scan would be against the fourth amendment, unless the situation in the article happens, a officer makes an arrest based solely off a face scan. In practice, it'll play out like drug dogs. A "hit" will give the officer reasonable suspicion to search the vehicle or pull the passengers out.


Pretext traffic stops should not be allowed. The rest of the world gets by just fine without them (using traffic cameras and “programmatic stops” that focus on cargo trucks, DUI controls around night life areas, etc). And from what I’ve found, research supports the notion that they do more harm than good.


Honestly, what right does an officer have to start questioning passengers or asking them for ID?


Every right to ask. But the passengers are under no obligation whatsoever to comply.


I do not believe this is correct. Law By Mike says passengers must comply with reasonable requests. IANAL.

https://youtube.com/shorts/o_9Gu44e_Zg?feature=share


Could you simply contort your face? Could the officer prevent you from doing that?


Uncontrolled sobbing could do the trick.


They would probably consider it non-compliance/resistance.


If you're not white, you say yes less you turn into a statistic.


The word you were looking for is _lest_.


Oh, thank you!!


Would traffic stop biometric scanning be more acceptable if the scans were provably not stored after the stop ends?

Not saying I know how to do that but I wonder if it'd make a difference.


Abolition is the only path forward. You can't reform this.


Abolishing police means ... what? I don't understand this. How do you abolish something only to replace it with... a new copy of that something because you didn't change the rules.

Wouldn't it be better to just fire complete departments and clear them out from top to bottom? This would let you re-hire as necessary but with new rules in play. You might end up with some of the same old people but they now know the trapdoor can open.

Most of the problems with police are at the top. Not the bottom. This includes the laws they use like civil forfeiture and other silliness. That's your real target. Why aren't the abolish people going after that?


>replace it with... a new copy of that something because you didn't change the rules.

You don't abolish police -- you abolish policing. In order to do this society needs to identify and eliminate the reasons for crime in the first place--i.e., ensuring access to basic needs like food and housing, for one thing. Abolition necessarily involves a transformation of our entire society, and may take more than one generation.


> ensuring access to basic needs like food and housing, for one thing.

Plenty of wealthy people still commit crime.


Wealthy crime (white-collar) is for more costly than 'non-wealthy' crime (blue-collar)


And yet our justice system doesn't seem to try to stop them.


Utopias tend to turn into dystopias. What if the transformers say that in order to achieve nonviolence, embryos with certain DNA markers associated with antisocial behavior need to be forcibly aborted?


As far as I can see, we have this thing called a constitution and a bill of rights. I don't know what kind of society you're proposing that would somehow remove those things. I personally would prefer to keep our human and democratic rights. Coincidentally, reducing inequality is a great way to do that.


Five judges out of nine go a long way.

Also, not everywhere is America. Sweden had a fairly nasty eugenic program, for example.


>What if the transformers say...

>Five judges out of nine go a long way.

It sounds like you have some hidden assumptions. To me, it looks like you're casting aspersions on people who advocate progressive social change. But I'm sure that's not your aim, so why not just state outright what you really think and clear up my misunderstanding.


I am not planning any "casting aspersions" (wtf) games, I am stating quite outright what comes to my mind. That is it.


>what comes to my mind

… Which is? What, exactly, is coming to your mind?

Because it looks like you’ve drawn the conclusion that seeking to improve our society in any way is a slippery slope toward eugenics.

And I don’t see how that follows, so I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt to correct my misunderstanding, requesting for you to elaborate on your point.


I wish I had your optimism. My take is even a true utopia of boundless affluence and perfect childrearing will still produce the odd psychopath and plenty of people prone to crimes of passion.


The oil sheikhdoms in the Gulf are pretty rich.

From what I have heard, there is still quite a lot of domestic violence going on there, not to mention raping of female servants. And it has zilch to do with material insecurity.

Genghis Khan didn't build towers out of severed heads because he lacked gold and silver. Some people are just, sorry for saying that, sick fucks.


Prevalence is actually fairly high.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.6610...

"The prevalence of psychopathy in the general adult population can be estimated at 4.5%." Remember: it's much more frequent in males, where that number can be 2-3x of that, can be close to 1 in 10 in males.

"prevalence of psychopathy among university students is significantly higher than among people from the general community". I'd guess increased affluence and better childrearing will result in more university students as well.

I'd go as far as to say that "boundless affluence" and "perfect childrearing" may in fact produce even more psychopaths, not less, as it is not quite a pathology many assume. Many traits are actually more adaptive vs general population.

It's probably important to point that there is further nuance. in primary(as in born that way) psychopathy the hallmark is total absence of anxiety and remorse. In secondary (upbringing, trauma, etc) psychopathy, anxiety can often be fairly high.

You might reduce some secondary cases of psychopathy with your proposed measures, but boundless affluence will also result in higher SSRI usage to prevent unwanted anxiety or stress (the rich tend to use antidepressants more, don't have the reference handy now, but its fairly obvious the rich have fewer problems with access to mental health services), and SSRIs tend to increase some psychopathic traits (charm+boldness), which perhaps can push some borderline cases into the proper psychopathic territory: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3202964


The places in the USA where everyone lives with free food and housing tend to also be the most crime-ridden and violent.


Just going to note since this sort of comment usually gets some really shallow replies: You can maintain law and order without having a bunch of unaccountable armed dudes roaming around doing whatever they want without any oversight, and reform clearly is not changing what we have into what we need. "Abolition" does not mean "so let's move to anarchy"


Any examples showing that’s possible? I don’t know of any society (aside from maybe some tiny islands) where you don’t have some police to maintain law and order.


It's a bit of a leap from eliminating "having a bunch of unaccountable armed dudes roaming around doing whatever they want without any oversight" to eliminating all police.

A few random ideas:

* fewer armed police, and being armed requires a higher level of experience/training/psych evaluation

* 100% public access to all police body cam footage.

* require police officers to maintain their own liability insurance, and have rates based on the a number of KPIs related to public safety and ethics


I'll note that while body cam footage and citizen recordings have helped bring visibility to police misconduct, in general they don't seem to have actually fixed anything. In some cases they increase unrest because now when a police officer is acquitted for doing something, people can look at the footage and get even more upset about it. Cops also frequently disable their cams and aren't punished for it.

Body cams might be an example of something that is good on paper but actually just distracts people from things that actually address a problem.


To be sure, what I'm suggesting would require a reworking of how those cameras are used and disclosed, and probably would require technical solutions in addition to policy ones. I'm definitely suggesting going far beyond the status quo in an attempt for transparency (pretty much "open sourcing" the camera footage)


Right. Those all sound like great reform proposals. Particularly I feel like there is too little police training in this country.

Parent comment was dismissing reform as a path forward though.


Compared to the US, the NL seems to have far less cops. The cops are mostly just walking around or driving around.. they never pull you over, you just get a ticket in the mail. So there’s police, doing police things. But they never get involved in your day-to-day life unless you’re doing something obviously illegal. Granted, you can do a lot of things here that is illegal in the US, like prostitution, drugs, sit in the park with some beer and wine, pee in public, etc. Things are way more civil than the US was when I last visited a year ago.


What do you think abolition looks like, that won't devolve to anarchy?

And, do you have a working example?


A step multiple municipalities have taken in the past is to disband their entire police department and create a new one from scratch, which makes it feasible to eject large numbers of bad actors who would normally protect each other from expulsion while also setting new policies. I don't personally believe that's a complete solution, but it's a logical step and allows you to retain your existing power structures and systems without having to pass a bunch of new laws and create new roles. There are probably many police departments that would not really benefit from this step or merit it.

Another step would be to recognize that you cannot reform american police departments' roles in non-violent crime cases and offload some or all of those entirely to other agencies that don't carry guns. This doesn't fix everything, but it removes many opportunities for things to go wrong while also enabling armed police to focus on the threats that really need them.


"Abolish and re-create" is a lot different from "just abolish", though.


Especially important to differentiate given that some people really do mean abolish. There's a thought that it's possible to get rid police because people will do just fine policing their own home. And along with that they think that we also don't need a judicial system because disagreements can be solved through arbitration. I feel it should be obvious to most people why that's problematic (I don't want to turn this into a massive rambling tangent in a day old thread)



If you are disturbed by having your picture taken by a cop, then you should probably get rid of your smart phone.


I think you misunderstand. It's not that they took a picture. It's that they used some vague algorithm to determine if they have permission to rifle through your private life. Or arrest you even if you haven't committed a crime.


I agree with the premise that using a google-like AI to "detect someone who looks like a criminal" is a terrible idea; but I also think that if you're out in public you shouldn't expect privacy. Loads of people think if they go shopping at wallmart it is illegal to look at them and say "Oh hi Joe, how's the family?". I'm pretty sure the universal expectation of privacy is more harmful than taking a balanced approach and interacting with reality on reality's terms.

The best outcome here is for cops to get bored, ask the city to offer a tax incentive to businesses to scan for known criminal faces & report 10 seconds CCTV before + after a hit is found, and now the police have a statistic they can use for policing. The big scandal is when "known criminal faces" start to contain "just alleged that X did Y", at which point it's merely political. If you are X, wait for the arrest and sue the city when you're proven innocent.




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