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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32050 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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Matthew Yglesias has a post about fare evasion. I especially love this part:

In theory, if you’re out on bail but you skipped your court date, you ought to be extra-cautious in your day-to-day behavior. In practice, a lot of people who commit crimes don’t make that decision. The police walking around the street aren’t clairvoyant; they don’t know which passersby have outstanding warrants. But if they catch someone jumping the turnstile, that’s a perfectly valid reason to run them through the system. Police can catch bail skippers or people who are already wanted for some other reason — they can also catch people carrying illegal guns.

I know he's moved away from Vox/Slate towards the center, but just this year, places like Philly and Oregon no longer allow the police to pull people over for broken lights because it is racist, and here is Mr Yglesias, literally advocating for more terry stops. I actually think it's a good thing: if both neolibs and neocons are trying to re-center and narrow down the Overton window, this thread might get slow and boring.

I think it's just generally bad policy to use minor crimes like that as a pretext for finding people with active warrants. It is detrimental to society as a whole.

First, you're mostly just going to catch the stupidest criminals this way. The smarter criminals will be able to evade capture for much longer. So we're only catching people who would have eventually been caught, anyways.

Second, stupid criminals will make stupid choices. They'll make the decision to run/fight more often than not. This means cops could get injured, or some dumb criminal (and many criminals are legitimately mentally retarded) will get hurt/killed. And today that could lead to city-wide protests that cause hundreds of millions in damages (from looting, vandalism, and just lost economic opportunity from businesses being closed and consumers staying away).

Third, as a political consequence, we end up with police pulling back, and stupid policies saying not to enforce quality of life crimes, and even some non-violent crimes (primarily drug and property crimes). And that's just going to make life worse for everyone.

Here's what a better system would be. We get a bunch of lowly paid people who issue small tickets to people who violate simple laws. Traffic and parking violations, fare evasion, jay walking, littering, etc. We put these people in stupid, non-threatening uniforms. They are instructed not to chase people, not to look for warrants, not to arrest people. If something goes wrong, they run. If a citizen ever lays hands on these individuals, we send in the real police to do a summary execution. Otherwise cops aren't involved in anything to do with those stops or enforcement of those laws.

We take cops, and instead of paying them $100k+/year to hopefully catch people with warrants and guns while enforcing petty crimes and civil violations, we send them to catch people with warrants by actually looking for the people who have warrants. And they can do things like respond to burglaries, stolen property complaints, things like that.

And this way, if cops end up killing someone, it likely won't be over some petty shit. And if riots do break out over that, politicians and citizens won't be targeting the quality of life enforcers. They can still operate and continue a constant level of enforcement, so that cities don't fall to shit.

It's absurd to pay police officers to be stopping people for broken traffic lights, or for littering, or for evading fares. Because then everybody becomes guarded in their interactions with police. You'll always worry that a stop is about something more. It's unhealthy to have a populace that is constantly worried when police are around, especially if crime is high and you want police around more.

Here's what a better system would be. We get a bunch of lowly paid people who issue small tickets to people who violate simple laws. Traffic and parking violations, fare evasion, jay walking, littering, etc. We put these people in stupid, non-threatening uniforms. They are instructed not to chase people, not to look for warrants, not to arrest people.

This is just anarcho-tyranny formalized. The ordinary mostly-law-abiding citizen has to worry about swarms of officers harassing them and eating out their substance (by fining them). The criminal can just run and get away with not only the minor crime, but whatever major crime they would have been arrested for.

In an ideal world, the police would be focusing their resources on catching those criminals, rather than hoping a random broken tail light will lead to a major bust. And major criminals wouldn't feel the need to run (or kill) in order to evade a minor ticket.

If we are simply using minor laws to capture criminals, then why not make more minor laws to catch criminals? I'd prefer to live in a society where laws are meant to keep people on track, rather than to undermine people in order for cops to hold broader investigations. So having wider enforcement, but smaller punishments, for minor crimes and civil violations seems more important, overall.

Police have no incentive in actually reducing minor crime if their purpose is to simply use minor crime as a pretext to find people with warrants, guns, drugs, etc.

We shouldn't make minor laws for the purpose of catching criminals. If we're going to have them, the purpose should be for them to be good in themselves. If they aren't we should just repeal them. That does NOT mean we should go to the point of the minor laws not being enforced against those willing to just run away.

Yep.

The second you say "okay you guys are charged with enforcing the law, but don't put too much effort into people who might be hard to catch," you're just licensing them to sit back and target the most law-abiding, peaceful citizens.

Wait, wouldn’t the same moral hazard apply to the real police? We have to have feedback systems like “firing commissioners” and “cutting funding” to limit them from sitting back and only chasing the easy cases.

Speed trap towns are still a thing.

Yes, it would, and it probably often does. Denver has a notoriously unresponsive (and arguably undermanned) police, but just last week there was a video of DPD trying to arrest a woman sitting on the ground because she had a sealed bottle of beer in public.

Unfortunately, my only knowledge of the DPD comes from video games. They seemed pretty competent there.

Minor in Possession CRS§ 18-13-122 seems pretty applicable and Eric Brandt was asking why they were asking for ID. That video is from pre-COVID anyways since Brandt has been serving a 12-year prison sentence since 2019. Makes sense why the cops would just walk away from him though, he's something of a well known character.

Makes sense why the cops would just walk away from him though, he's something of a well known character.

So you agree the police are willing to do nothing if they have to deal with the obstacle of "one dude yelling at them"?

For one the only evidence they were going to cite her at all is Brandt's editorial text on the video. They might not have been interested in citing an unclassified petty offense at all while talking to her. Some scuttlebutt that they were asking for information to investigate who sold the underaged woman the alcohol. Given the context and a mentally unwell, activist with a history of escalating and suing everyone involved and occasionally winning, exercising discretion to deescalate does not seem out of line. If Denver had laws more like Singapore then perhaps there would be more cause to condemn them for failure to cite.

It applies to almost everything, honestly.

If a system isn't designed to expend extra energy on 'difficult' cases it will select for the easy ones, for better or worse.

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