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Comment by carlmr | Hacker News Reader

>NB: stop and frisk isn't done in the "good" neighborhoods at all. There's not going to be any data about what happens when e.g. stopping and frisking white men in suits in lower Manhattan because it will never be done. The idea of being able to do controls hinges on something for which there is no political will.

I already addressed that caveat by forcing the algorithm to stop and frisk a minimum amount in the good neighbourhood. Like a minimum of 10% of frisks taking place in good neighbourhoods.

>How comfortable are we with the notion that people should be targeted on the basis of the neighborhoods they live in?

If I live in such a neighbourhood, I'd want more police presence. They will stop and frisk and do that to me, too. At the same time they will have the chance to stop some criminals that might kill or rob me and my family.

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I think a lot of times as engineers we imagine the tech divorced from the reality of the world it exists in. It would likely be politically untenable to start stopping and frisking Wall Street bankers.

And the Wall Street Banker is unlikely to be on his way to a in-person mugging appointment. Rich people usually avoid petty or violent crimes.

It doesn't seem that outlandish, though, that he might be in possession of controlled substances. The point of stop-and-frisk isn't to catch someone "heading to a mugging;" how would you even discern that?

Stop and Frisk is intended for finding illegal knives or handguns.

Sounds like it didn't work as intended then. https://www.google.com/amp/www.nydailynews.com/amp/new-york/...

Pot possession only makes up 16% and I'd consider 84% a success.

In a broader sense, only 11% of stops led to anything.

> I already addressed that caveat by forcing the algorithm to stop and frisk a minimum amount in the good neighbourhood. Like a minimum of 10% of frisks taking place in good neighbourhoods.

That's exactly my point. It's fine to say that, knowing full well that there is absolutely no way this would ever happen. This line of thinking guarantees unequal application of the law based on neighborhood or other signifiers (in the US: ethnicity).

> They will stop and frisk and do that to me, too.

This is not true generally in the US. The way stop and frisk works is the police identify brown men and stop and frisk them. (It's worse if they happen to be in one of the "bad" areas, but in practice the main thing was they are young-looking brown men.) The stop and frisk program would have been stillborn if the NYPD were applying it evenly to people walking around New York City.

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