Vallejo CA police shared data in violation of state law, watchdog says | Hacker News Reader

Vallejo CA police shared data in violation of state law, watchdog says

vallejosun.com

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The Vallejo police are effectively organized crime running the city.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/23/how-a-deadly-p...

The police can control any election they want by simply adjusting how well they do their job

- A key concern for voters is crime

- People often blame elected official for problems regardless of fault

- the police often have strong union protection making it difficult to terminate officers

- (opinion) people rarely blame the police for an increase in crime

> (opinion) people rarely blame the police for an increase in crime

I see blame in every direction but what's funny is if they're blaming cops for uptick in crime, it's because of a perception of the cops working less, when it seems that when cops work less, crime goes down: https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/nyc-cops-did-a-work-...

That was an interesting natural experiment.

But… I wouldn’t pretend like that correlation is causation:

  - police departments control the official crime metrics
  - there were fewer officers to write the paperwork that officially tracks crimes
  - when the “blue flu” happens publicly, more crime victims will avoid reporting out of frustration

I highly doubt criminals took a holiday when police decided to coordinate minimum work days.

> During the slowdown, police continued to respond to calls, and the arrest rate for major crimes (murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny, and grand theft auto) remained constant. But the arrest rate for non-major crime and narcotic offenses dropped, as did the number of stop-and-frisk events. It took until mid-January for things to begin to return to normal.

Do you believe that quote supports or refutes my comment?

Refutes, it wasn't that people were reporting less crime or that cops weren't responding to violent crimes. It seems "active enforcement," or police departments going out of their way to "do policing," leads to an increase in actual crime committed.

I’m not sure that’s the only possible interpretation.

Crimes aren’t always reported. Stop-and-frisk mostly turns up crimes such as illegal possession of weapon, illegal possession of substance, and parole violation. None of these are likely to be reported by by anyone because the nature of them is mostly that only the participants in the crime know about the crime.

Also, I’m not making any moral or ethical claims above. I dislike stop-and-frisk because it is too subjective, not targeted enough, and corrodes the trust between police and citizens that benefit most from that trust. I’m also not making similar judgements about which actions should be crimes in the law — I’m sure we have too many. But I do highly value talking honestly about the data we use for policy decisions.

And in the context of the Vallejo article, I think corrupt police departments very much increase crime in their jurisdictions. I was in LA when the Rampart District scandal became public and I was nearby when LAPD brass tried to figure out how to handle it.

The problem is confounded by what exactly you are measuring. You can't measure crime directly, but you can measure arrests/tickets and reports of crime. Various municipalities even try to adjust their crime statistics by making it harder for some victims to report petty crime.

Someone mentioned this later but "This included fewer tickets and a huge drop in arrests...During the slowdown, police continued to respond to calls, and the arrest rate for major crimes (murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny, and grand theft auto) remained constant. But the arrest rate for non-major crime and narcotic offenses dropped, as did the number of stop-and-frisk events."

When people start to worry in mass about crime rates it's not because of an increase in moving violations. However the article you posted does show a counterintuitive view of what would happen if police have a slow down.

I found this https://www.jstor.org/stable/26379438 and it seems to help your point by at least showing constant or minimal increases in crime.

I'll admit I made those points because it seems intuitive, that if someone is a criminal they would be less hesitant to commit crimes if they thought they wouldn't get caught. But that doesn't seem to be the case.

> Five months before Monterrosa was killed, the V.P.O.A. had replaced its president, Detective Mat Mustard, who had run the union for ten years. Mustard was notorious in Vallejo for the investigation he led into the kidnapping of a woman named Denise Huskins, in 2015. Someone broke into the house where she and her boyfriend were sleeping, blindfolded and drugged them, and put her in the trunk of a car. When the boyfriend reported the crime, Mustard suspected that he had killed Huskins and invented the kidnapping story. At the police station, the boyfriend said, officers dressed him in jail clothes, then Mustard and others interrogated him for eighteen hours, calling him a murderer. Huskins, who was being held a hundred and sixty miles away, was raped repeatedly. After she was released, the Vallejo police publicly accused her and her boyfriend of faking the kidnapping, comparing the situation to the movie “Gone Girl.” The police threatened to press charges against the couple, and after the rapist e-mailed the San Francisco Chronicle, confessing to the kidnapping, the police accused Huskins and her boyfriend of writing the e-mail. Soon, the rapist was arrested in South Lake Tahoe, after trying to repeat the crime. Even then, the Vallejo police insisted that Huskins and her boyfriend were lying. The couple sued Mustard and the city, eventually winning a $2.5-million settlement. In a show of defiance, the police department named Mustard officer of the year.

Jesus Christ. Besides being absolutely vile, apparently just complete, very expensive incompetence from top to bottom.

Incompetence would end with the initial suspicion. The quote you've provided details an openly malicious and dangerous gang, one that is competent at being malicious and dangerous.

Well at least, they have uniform clothing and the gang signs promise the ilusion of protection.

To be honest, the mob as alternative does not seem so bad. Vote Uncle Enzo for Vallejo Police.

and this is just the stuff you hear about.

This is what happens when humans are injected with the drug of "righteousness". They believe that anything they do is good and anything their opponents do, and they become insulated in that.

Who watches the watchmen?

They destroyed records recently as well. Vallejo is managed by some truly corrupt, inept slobs.

This is an hour away from the tech capital of the world.

Shameful that the state of California or the FBI don't seem to care about this. Meanwhile we have to organize to fight self inflicted problems like banning algebra in high school.

> problems like banning algebra in high school.

Is that for public schools or private schools ?

I doubt rich parents who can afford private schools would want to intellectually cripple their children by putting up with this genius idea.

In like 95% cases it is moral panic that turned out nothing burger or a lie. In the 4% it is like one OP Ed somewhere. In remaining miniscule cases, something bad is actually happening.

Public schools: https://twitter.com/garrytan/status/1634079933432745986?s=20

> This is an hour away from the tech capital of the world.

bit of a non sequitur, eh?

That tech capital is full of the kind of people who've argued (on this very website) the position that ALPR exists and it'd be so damn easy to break any laws governing their use, so they might as well make the best damn ALPR product available and we all better get used to it.

I don't think I am going to say anything really new, but I think it is worth repeating.

If the data exists, it will be accessed. If it will be accessed, it will be shared.

I am personally annoyed so much about us is being generated daily despite of the above.

I’m sure Texas is going to retaliate by not giving California police access to their data unless they agree not enforce gun laws.

It seems really dumb and petty.

USA is divided into 4 factions:

* Texas

* California

* New York

* Florida

The rest of the states align with one of those but ultimately they're the ones making the laws and providing the income for everyone.

> rest of the states align with one of those

What? There are definitely political belts in American state legislatures. But to say the Midwest follows New York or Texas is laughable.

I’m cautiously curious which, erm, quadrant(?) the following fall into: Virginia, Montana, Maryland, New Mexico, Minnesota, Tennessee, Kansas, North Carolina, Iowa. Despite having a more than vague sense of the cultural spectra you’re describing, I can’t imagine placing any of these states on that plot without being hilariously wrong.

Why exactly is Minnesota so different from Iowa?

I didn’t mean to suggest any two states I mentioned are necessarily different from each other (or similar to each other, either). That said I did find Iowa felt pretty distinct from Minnesota when I lived in the latter, largely because MSP felt like it had more urban gravity than any place I visited in Iowa, and MSP had a strong cultural affinity with Chicago which I didn’t get a whiff of in Iowa.

They’re probably more alike than any other two states I mentioned, but they felt worlds apart even so.

It is usually just a ratio of urban to rural voting population, which is a proxy for some combination of ratio of young to old voting population, or ratio of white to non white voting population, or ratio of university educated to non university educated voting population.

Minnesota’s urban population is much higher than Iowa’s, so state level politics are more dictated by voters who are some combination of younger/non white/university educated, whereas in Iowa, it is the opposite.

good. police should share less data across state lines unless they have very good reason.

Zodiac vibes

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