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> Two strikingly different types of areas experience high police vehicle deployments — 1) dense, higher-income, commercial areas and 2) lower-income neighborhoo
by policepost 3y ago
> Two strikingly different types of areas experience high police vehicle deployments — 1) dense, higher-income, commercial areas and 2) lower-income neighborhoods with higher proportions of Black and Hispanic residents. We discuss the implications of these disparities for policing equity and for algorithms trained on policing data.
You can see the history of police in this. Uniformed police depts were founded by merchants wanting to protect their property and socialize the costs.
Prior to uniformed police, we had town watch/night watch/shire reeves . These folks were drawn from the citizenry and pulled a shift watching things, and it was considered quite a nuisance and unglamorous.
Eventually, wealthy folks started paying others to take their shifts on the watch, and a cottage industry emerged. At that time, watches were still loosely organized and without uniform.
In the mid 1800s, two phenomena occurred that molded police. The first was the idea that a uniformed guard would have a preventative effect on crime in wealthier areas (which resulted in early police depts in London and Boston, iirc). And the second was the increasingly structured and bold slave patrols. The two concepts both focused on protecting wealth (at that time, slaves were property just like warehouses and factories).
Over time, the two merged somewhat. Some police departments emerged directly from slave patrols, others never had anything to do with slave patrols and instead focused on protecting docks and the like.
The results of this research saying, "wealth and race seem to be where police are deployed" is a fascinating rhyme to the origins of police.
(Note, I'm deliberately not saying "cause" or "reflection" here - I do not have the data to say why police are deployed this way. I'm just noting the way it rhymes with history.)
- LudwigNagasena 3y ago> Prior to uniformed police, we had town watch/night watch/shire reeves . So what is the difference between them beyond the uniform and the name? Law enforcement is law enforcement no matter how you call it. > The results of this research saying, "wealth and race seem to be where police are deployed" is a fascinating rhyme to the origins of police. I don’t think it is appropriate to compare protection of people in destitute areas to slave patrols. You are stigmatising helping poor people.
- danaris 3y ago> So what is the difference between them beyond the uniform and the name? The goals and incentives.
- LudwigNagasena 3y agoThey got paid to enforce the law.
- danaris 3y agoWhich (even to the extent it was true—it wasn't, always) doesn't change the fact that their goals and incentives weren't the same as those of modern professional law enforcement.
- policepost 3y agoI'm saying the opposite. Originally, enforcement was communal - it was a periodic expectation, something you did but didn't get paid for. Then the wealthy started paying people to take the unpleasant shift, but even then the pay wasn't to enforce the law, it was pay to take over for some rich guy who didn't want to be up all night. People whose career is law enforcement is newer and the compensation and expectations are different.
- LudwigNagasena 3y agoYou are saying that for thousands of years of civilization nobody got paid for law enforcement before capitalism? Yeah, that doesn't sound very plausible.
- raincom 3y agoIt was not so much law enforcement, but protection of property. Especially during harvest seasons in old days, farmers pay a share of harvest to protectors. Some kind of such protection has had existed, for sure, without formal laws or without formal law enforcements. It was more of customs, traditions, with some sense of reasonableness.