The New Zealand Police are trying to convince me that they have a sense of humor, are compassionate, (fairly) sensible, and well-trained.
Meanwhile in the US, the police have (that we know of) killed 109 people. [wapo] When I first found that link, last week, the number was only 99.
Just to give you some average mortality statistics, since 2002 (2001 had an unusual spike) the average number of Americans that die worldwide in terrorist attacks has been around 70. So, it’s not even mid February and cops have already killed more Americans than ISIS and Al Qaeda and the KKK – combined.
Police shootings appear to be a pretty consistent drumbeat of death and destruction:
Unfortunately, there is no single place in the US that’s safer than any of the others, except for the extremely rural areas.
Avoid Houston, LA, and Atlanta
In 2017, this is the skin color/ethnic breakdown in police shootings:
About twice as many white people were killed than black people. When you add black people and hispanic people together, it’s about even. Interestingly, the population of white to non-white is getting closer to even – 60% of the population is white. So it looks like the police are getting less discriminatory – they’ll shoot anyone.
I think it’s telling that you separate out the KKK from the police.
The video was brilliant.
I liked the dog morphing into a bobcat.
Raucous Indignation@#1:
I think it’s telling that you separate out the KKK from the police.
Am I being optimistic? I suppose I could be counting the same individuals acting in dual capacities.
chigau@#2:
I liked the dog morphing into a bobcat.
I liked the one where the agent runs into the car, and another agent bursts out the other side.
And, of course, when the guy walks out and starts getting his funk on in the intersection.
Marcus Ranum #4
Amen. Like that “on-hold” muzak on telephones but waaaay better.
Wait. You mean they SHOT 44 people and they don’t know what their skin color is? Or are they saying they don’t know the ethnicity?
Weird idea, I know, but maybe check? I’m sure their grieving families know. ***cloud of anger***
The commercial is funny. I like it when she is shouting at the dog to “drop it!”. And the dog very obediently does.
kestrel@#6:
Wait. You mean they SHOT 44 people and they don’t know what their skin color is?
I don’t think we know. The Washington Post keeps those statistics based on what is reported in news. Because, don’t you know: cop unions make sure cop departments aren’t allowed to report that sort of thing. There may be some change, where some cop departments are supposed to report to the FBI but it’s a compliance problem.
chigau@2
Bobcat. BOBCAT!!!
Sorry, we don’t have bobcats in NZ (except small digging machines) , that’s a standard issue moggie.
Yes it’s a nice video and NZ police don’t shoot as many people as US police, but they’re still, you know, POLICE.
Maybe we should consult Maori people as to how benign they are. One of them, who almost made Assistant Commissioner, (= 2nd in command) was a rapist, so there’s that.
And, while they do make some efforts towards ethnic diversity, they’re still mostly white men.
Do US folks have a racial/ethnic category recorded in their personal ID, or is it based on someone’s estimate on the spot, or do they ask the family what a dead person would’ve have identified as?
(For comparison, my country records everyone’s first language for policy purposes)
The first principle of effective management is “if you care about something, you have to measure it”. The corollary to that is that if you’re not measuring something, you don’t care about it.
Recently, there have been at least two shootouts where cops have been killed (and the ‘suspect’ too, natch), so 3 cops dead in the last couple of weeks, some in Georgia, I forget where else. For every cop killed, the amount of citizens being killed spikes up, and cops keep getting away with it, because cop killings give credence to every whine of “I was in fear of my life”, even when they have zero evidence to back it up.
A disturbing amount of cops are KKK, or some other flavour shite supremacist, especially in the South.
Lumipuna:
Mine has hair and eye colour, and a photo.
Do US folks have a racial/ethnic category recorded in their personal ID
It would be pretty hard to tell my racial/ethnic category based on my passport. In my passport, I have a black and white photo (such that it is impossible to tell my hair or eye color, or even the exact shade of how light or dark my skin is, because the photo is reduced to a neutral shade of medium grey). Other personal details that are recorded in the passport are my full name, sex, date of birth, height, place of birth, citizenship, and my national identification number. And that’s it, there’s nothing related to race, nationality, languages I speak or anything similar.
In Latvian passports citizens can choose to optionally write their ethnic background. For example, there are plenty of Russians who have Latvians citizenship and Latvian passports and they can choose to write in their passports that they are Russian. I chose not to have this crap written in my passport. I’m not sure how large percentage of Latvian citizens chooses to have it. Some years ago Latvian nationalist political party fought to have the right to have your ethnic background written in your passport, they got the option, and I presume they are also using it.
Having your nationality written in your passport isn’t mandatory, so I don’t care much about this crap, except that sometimes it gets ugly when the country starts telling you what your nationality is supposed to be. For example, my aunt wanted her passport to state that she is Russian. Government employees responsible for issuing passports didn’t let her have it. My grandparents (her parents) are supposedly Latvian and that somehow means that my aunt couldn’t call herself Russian. Yet that’s how she saw herself, she went to a Russian school, she had Russian friends, she knew Russian language better than Latvian. The moment governments start addressing the question of nationality/race/ethnic category, it turns into a freaking mess.
Speaking of things passports shouldn’t be recording, I have seen some Latvian passports from 1930ties and one of the things recorded in those was people’s religious affiliation (Catholic, Lutheran, Eastern Orthodox, and Jewish being the available options, I have no idea whether anybody had a passport stating “atheist”). I really dislike these kind of things.
I’m also mildly annoyed by the fact that my passport states that I’m female. I’m not a woman, I’m a human. How dare the state force a sex on me? Where the fuck is the “neither” option?
Ieva:
Well, that’s messed up. In Finland you can supposedly update your “first language” into whatever you want, not that I’ve tried.
We still have the church-run population registries, just like Baltic countries apparently had before Soviet era. A separate secular registry has been in use since the 1920s for people whose religious affiliation is none or unconventional. I updated myself from “Lutheran” to “secular” in 2003.
And yes, binary gender in mandatory here, and updating it is only possible with a lot of hoop-jumping.
Ieva Skrebele@#13:
The moment governments start addressing the question of nationality/race/ethnic category, it turns into a freaking mess.
Yes; and we know why. This is one of those things where, literally, there is no way they can ask that without ill intent somewhere.
lumipuna@#14:
And yes, binary gender in mandatory here, and updating it is only possible with a lot of hoop-jumping.
I hate that. I wish, at a minimum, that countries could allow a question mark. Usually it’s a field in a database that’s a single character, and the only complexity is that somewhere there’s code that looks like:
if(c.gender != ‘m’ and c.gender != ‘f’) {
/* fail */
Another clause in that if( ) statement would be pretty simple, though a lot of code would probably error. I see such things as an exercise in finding and fixing bad code but for government IT it would be an expense.
The question mark can be pronounced “none of your business” or “ask me.”
There is some small value for government to know gender for demographic metrics, policing statistics, etc. but at the point where that data is coming into play the individual’s identity is no longer relevant.
It could be worse; in Turkey your religion used to be a field on your ID card. That used to be the case in Greece, too. It still is in the Palestinian zones (go figure)…
Marcus @15: Really, literally? So getting the data that tells us that First Nations folk in Canada have much higher suicide, mortality and incarceration rates, that women are paid less than men, and so on, necessarily involves ill intent?
“much higher…rates than average”
Rob Grignanis@#17:
So getting the data that tells us that First Nations folk in Canada have much higher suicide, mortality and incarceration rates, that women are paid less than men, and so on, necessarily involves ill intent?
In that case, detecting ill intent – I’d say that’s “involvement.”
I clarified a bit at #16: once you move past individuals and into demographic trends, the individual’s identity can be masked. So, there’s definitely value in detecting differences in mortality between populations, but it’s still not necessary to force an individual to carry that information on a card that they are required to present to the police for inspection. The reason that they want to be able to look at your identity papers and see your religion or ethnicity is not so they can collect broad demographics; they can request that information at appropriate times – and a traffic stop is not one of those times.
Interesting a former West Virginia cop just won a wrongful dismissal lawsuit involving a police shooting. Stephan Mader was fired from the force in Weirton after he didn’t shoot a suspect during a standoff. When confronted by a suicidal man with a gun Mader tried to convince him to put down the gun he was holding. But when two fellow officers arrived on scene they almost immediately shot the man.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/12/stephen-mader-west-virginia-police-officer-settles-lawsuit
It’s not like governments even bother to ask you. They just force you into some category based on who your parents were and how your body looks like.
But, frankly, that’s not my main issue with this. Even if governments bothered to ask and knew how to ask politely, I’d still have a problem with this whole idea. I’m inherently against people being forced into categories. Why should I even be forced to contemplate what’s my gender or nationality or race? Why can’t I just choose not to put myself into any neat and clearly defined category? Why do we even need those kinds of cookie cutters? And, assuming some people like having them and feel like they belong to whatever group, why make it mandatory for everybody to belong to some category?
There are obvious problems with this. If each of your parents has a different skin color or a different nationality, what are you supposed to be? And what about those families who have immigrated to some other country and lived there for a generation or two, how are they supposed to determine their single nationality? What about intersex and agender people? Sure, there will be people who will say, “I’m white and American and male and I’m happy to see myself as belonging to these categories.” But a significant part of human population does not fit neatly into these kinds of predefined categories. I certainly don’t fit in. I don’t see myself as having any nationality or gender (I speak multiple languages and have lived in different places and I see myself as agender). I also view skin color or race as inherently unimportant. None of those are part of my identity and how I see myself.
Why? The government needs to know, for example, whether males commit more traffic violations than females, yet the same government is perfectly comfortable not knowing whether people with blue eyes commit more traffic violations than people with green eyes. How comes gender is so important for statistics? Why is it even important? Why is it so much more important than any other random fact about people?
I’m willing to accept that knowing the patient’s gender is useful for doctors. For example, when doing a blood test, doctors need to know whether the sample is from a male or from a female. Since guys have more red blood cells, the same amount of erythrocytes in the blood sample can be a normal result for one sex, but indicate an illness for the other. Another example: in my country government pays for breast cancer screenings and regularly sends invitations to get a screening to every citizen who happens to be registered as a female and falls within a specific age range. After all, there would be no point sending these invitations to guys who happen to not have breasts.
So I’ll accept that recording a person’s sex is useful for medical purposes. But I’m a lot more skeptical about statistics in general. And why the fuck should it be written in the passport?
Oh, so we need statistics in order to confirm (as if we didn’t know that already) that certain groups of people—women, people of color, immigrants—do indeed suffer from discrimination that actually reduces their life quality and lifespan. Oh, how sweet, now we have all this clear and scientifically valid data, so that we can measure their suffering in numbers, just so that we can keep on discriminating these groups of people and not change anything. You know, certain groups of people get discriminated only because people insist on forcefully dividing everybody into these aforementioned groups. If people stopped caring about race or gender and stopped dividing everybody into groups, and instead they just started to treat everybody equally, discrimination would disappear and we would no longer need to gather statistics to find out just how badly exactly some groups are abused. When my government is gathering statistics, personally I’d prefer not to be counted into any subgroup of the population. I don’t see myself as belonging to any of those anyway.
police shoot and kill people? What a novel idea. NZ Police on general duties do not carry firearms. Many, but not all, NZ Police cars have firearms locked in the boot / trunk, but authorisation is still required from up the line to use deadly force.
Yes, the NZ Police do have a para military arm, but that mostly sit around playing games and are only deployed to meet genuine threats of violence, they don’t enforce warrants for traffic tickets.
Roj Blake@#22:
Yes, the NZ Police do have a para military arm, but that mostly sit around playing games and are only deployed to meet genuine threats of violence, they don’t enforce warrants for traffic tickets.
That seems so … civilized.
Ieva Skrebele@#21:
Oh, so we need statistics in order to confirm (as if we didn’t know that already) that certain groups of people—women, people of color, immigrants—do indeed suffer from discrimination that actually reduces their life quality and lifespan. Oh, how sweet, now we have all this clear and scientifically valid data, so that we can measure their suffering in numbers, just so that we can keep on discriminating these groups of people and not change anything.
There are people who will deny that there’s a problem. Evidence of the problem is sometimes what it takes (though, as we’ve seen, people who are inclined to deny a problem are also inclined to dismiss evidence) – but is there any other way to do it?
I should say, “short of authoritarianism, is there any other way…?” because, sure, if I was emperor of the planet, I’d fix that ricky-tick on pain of, uh, things.
timgueguen@#20:
And people ask why I hate America.
@ 17 Rob Grigjanis
I think you are misreading this. I think the intent was that you had some personal ID that specified Race or whatever and carried it on you. Many countries have a national ID card.
The only thing I can think of here is a SIN and I would bet that not everyone even has that.
The demographic data you are talking about is Census-based and even at origin is fairly anonymous. IIRC, you cannot even reliably identify who filled out the form in the household.
Note for other readers. Currently the Canadian passport only accepts M or F with the note that
The Government of Canada cannot guarantee entry or transit by border control authorities of another country. Choose the sex that you feel would make it easier to travel.
and
You will soon be able to have your sex marked as X (unspecified) on your passport or travel document. Until then, you can request an observation be added to your passport or travel document that says your sex should be X.
# 20 timgueguen
I remember a CBC As It Happens interview last year with the officer (or ex-officer at the time) and, from his account , he seemed to be doing everything correctly. I’d translate the two veteran officers actions here into second degree murder here though whether or not one could get a conviction is a question. Definitely a charge.
I remember thinking, if he needs a new job, maybe we could hire him up here.
Some times police forces have humour. I remember hearing a report about flooding in and around Sydney NSW. The police were threatening to give any driver who got stranded by driving into a flooded area the worst DVD in the station.
Or, you care very deeply about it and don’t want anyone else noticing and fucking your sweet little thing up.
Ieva
For example because while there is a problem with toxic masculinity and with how boys are raised to behave, there is not a toxic blueyeity. There is absolutely no reason to expect that blue eyed people commit more traffic violations and if there is a problem to be adressed. Knowing where the problem lies is a first step towards solving it.
Or, alternately, you could and should use that data to educate the clueless parts of populace and adress the problem.
My main job is testing and measuring. And one of the things I have to constantly explain to managers wanting to cut corners is that even when your product and process are perfect (which they never are), you still have to measure it to be sure it stays so and so you can react in time in case it goes awry.
Since we do not have perfectly spherical people in a vacuum, we have to deal with people we have, in envrionments in which they live.
As Terry Prattchett states in The Night Watch (paraphrase): “The correct procedure is ‘this is what people are like, what can we do about it? and not ‘this is what people should be, how can we make them so?’
@Ieva Skrebele, #21:
Except men do have breast tissue (that can even produce milk!) and it can still suffer the kind of damage that ends up as cancer.
Charly@#30:
My main job is testing and measuring. And one of the things I have to constantly explain to managers wanting to cut corners is that even when your product and process are perfect (which they never are), you still have to measure it to be sure it stays so and so you can react in time in case it goes awry.
Yes!
I spend a significant amount of my time telling managers that metrics are not just an optimization tool, they’re a diagnostic and operational tool. Most of the interesting security breaches I’ve detected have been a result of some little data-point wandering outside the dotted lines. If there are no dotted lines, you’re blind. When I explain that to managers I’m a bit more in their face and say “you’re stupid AND you’re blind.”
xohjoh2n@#29:
Or, you care very deeply about it and don’t want anyone else noticing and fucking your sweet little thing up.
After all, if you’ve got nothing to hide, there’s no need to keep it secret.
Oh, cops hate when we say that to them.
For this to be the case, we need two conditions: 1) the government actually cares about improving oppressed people’s living conditions; 2) the government actually has tools for improving some group’s living conditions. Both of these conditions are necessary for this to work.
I would argue that neither is true in most countries, where some groups of people get consistently discriminated and mistreated. We already know about the problem, but it seems to me like nobody cares and nobody wants to do anything to improve the lives of these disadvantaged people.
Moreover, the next question is about whether governments can do things to improve the lives of these people. If there is a law that enables or facilitates discrimination, the government can change that. For example, if there’s a law that bans trans people from using public toilets, the government can fix that. But it’s not like we need statistics about the prevalence of urinary tract infections among trans people in order to figure out that this law needs fixing. The problem is obvious (just read the law and you’ll spot it), and trans activists are talking about it pretty loudly and they are demanding a change in laws. If you need carefully collected statistics in order to spot a problem, the chances are that it’s subtle enough that a new law won’t fix anything. This kind of subtle discrimination is the result of personal interactions between people. For example, if a company manager chooses to promote a white and not a black employee, the manager will claim that it was the result of the white person being more skilled. How are you supposed to prove that it was the result of their skin color? And how is the government supposed to fix this kind of problem?
Moreover, women, people of color and ethnic minorities aren’t the only groups suffering from discrimination. LGBTQ people, people on autism spectrum, people with HIV, people with disabilities, people with mental illnesses—there are countless groups of people who suffer discrimination. Yet somehow we still know and have some statistics about their problems despite the fact that government isn’t collecting data about these people. If the government started surveying people asking about their sexual orientation for the purpose of collecting statistics about the discrimination of homosexual people, many people would claim that their sexual orientation is none of governments’ business, that this is an intrusion in their private life. I believe that collecting data about people’s sex, race or ethnicity is no different.
I take this question personally, so I know that I must be biased. It pisses me off that my government wants to categorize my sex or my ethnicity, so I’m probably not inclined to see this objectively. But I’m really not convinced that there are significant benefits from my government knowing my personal data for the sake of collecting statistics.
I don’t know.
Once you change people’s minds to stop them from disliking or stigmatizing some groups, the discrimination disappears. The problem is—how do you change people’s minds? Laws that ban discrimination could help too, but how do you consistently enforce those?
–––––––––––
I know that what I’m going to write next is somewhat unrelated. But still, at the moment I’m angry, I’m pissed off, and I feel like complaining online.
In Latvia you can legally get yourself sterilized if you are at least 25 years old. That’s the only legal requirement. Some years ago I read about a Latvian woman (younger than 25 at the time) who flew to Thailand in order to get herself sterilized. I decided not to try anything similar, I was patient, I waited until I was 25.
Today morning was my appointment with a gynecologist. The start was pretty promising. Last time I told a gynecologist that I will never have children, she told me that I should never speak such a thing, because God can hear me. That happened several years ago, and I’d been really reluctant to go to a gynecologist after that one. So this time I already went to the doctor mentally prepared for similar crap. Today my doctor reacted reasonably the moment I said, “I’d like to get myself sterilized. Since I also dislike having periods, I was thinking about a hysterectomy instead of the usual tubal ligation.” She took the usual STI tests, told me about all the analysis I’ll have to get before I can have a surgery and so on. She was polite and seemed reasonable and I started getting my hopes up.
Unfortunately, it went downhill from there. This polite gynecologist sent me to the doctor who was in charge of the hospital’s gynecology department and she was the one with whom I would have to schedule the surgery. I entered this doctor’s office, and before I even had time to open my mouth to say “good morning,” I heard, “No doctor working in this hospital will sterilize you, get out of my office!” And the doctor’s voice tone was extremely rude and with noticeable anger. Basically, the conversation went approximately like this:
“No doctor working in this hospital will sterilize you, get out of my office!”
“I would like…”
“I’m not going to listen for your reasons why you want to get yourself sterilized, I have already made a decision that it won’t happen, get out!”
“But I…”
“Get out!”
“I am 25 years old, according to this country’s laws I can legally get myself sterilized.”
“At the moment you are in this office without permission, immediately leave this place!”
“What!? I had a scheduled appointment with a gynecologist today in this clinic, I have every right to be here!”
“Get out!”
“The thing is, I don’t consider myself a woman.”
“Then go to a psychiatrist and get your mind fixed.”
“Transsexuals aren’t treated by psychiatrists; they are treated by surgically altering their body and reproductive system.”
“In this hospital we sterilize only patients who have been diagnosed with schizophrenia or have other valid reasons for needing this procedure.”
“Please, tell me your full name so that I know about whom I should complain.”
“Leave this office immediately!” (By the way, later at home I found this doctor’s name in the hospital’s homepage, and I will complain about her.)
Fuck her! I was expecting a negative reaction, I was expecting pointless comments like, “You might regret this decision later.” I was expecting annoying and inappropriate questions like, “What is your partner thinking about this?” (Who cares? It’s my body!) But I wasn’t expecting to be simply kicked out from a doctor’s office. Fuck that bitch! So confident that she knows what’s best for every patient, treating her patients like infants who are unable to make decisions for themselves. And the way how she talked about trans people! Damn it!
So, I browse the Internet searching for Latvian hospitals where they do hysterectomies. I pick one and get an appointment with some doctor there. I wait several weeks for the appointment. I drive to the hospital; I pay for transportation and the fee of visiting a doctor. I enter the doctor’s office and get kicked out. Now I’m back to step one, I’m back to searching for another hospital, hoping that I’ll have better luck next time. I wonder how much time and money I’ll end up wasting. Who knows, maybe it’s actually faster and cheaper to fly to Thailand.
During our conversation the doctor kept on interrupting my words, because she was speaking in a raised and angry voice, while I intentionally stayed calm and polite. I’m an experienced debater, unless I allow them to do so, nobody can interrupt me (I do know how to speak louder than everybody else when I want to). But there was no possible benefit for me from displaying anger during that conversation. It sucks needing to stay polite when you are being abused like this. I can’t even remember the last time when I was so angry. It must have been months. It takes quite a lot to really piss me off; in general I’m quite unemotional.
Incidentally, I’m convinced that my government doesn’t give a fuck about me. Instead of helping disadvantaged minority groups, the government is doing the exact opposite: they are making laws that legalize discrimination. Doctors shouldn’t be able to legally mistreat LGBTQ people the way how I was mistreated today. If I’m doing well (and I’m mostly fine), then that’s despite (rather than thanks to) my government’s efforts. If my government proposed to collect data on me for the sake of compiling statistics about just how badly I’m being mistreated, my answer would be “no, thanks.” If government simply made laws that ban discrimination and left me alone, that would be sufficient for me.