[Sakos]

> Junk science is a huge problem in law enforcement. Treating lie detectors as canonical, the blood splatter analysis to recreate crime scenes, this kind of stuff.

I'm not sure what's the bigger problem. The use of junk science by law enforcement or how law enforcement and their methods are portrayed by popular media that ensure the use of junk science (and other harmful methods) can persist long-term. I'm sure everybody and their mother has seen Dexter (who works as a blood splatter analyst) or any number of shows/movies or all the news where police dogs are portrayed in an incredibly positive light (I'm looking at you, Paw Patrol).

[kneebonian]

> any number of shows/movies or all the news where police dogs are portrayed in an incredibly positive light (I'm looking at you, Paw Patrol).

Listen dude there I have enough beef with paw patrol to make a texas ranchers BBQ look ill equipped, from the fact the mayor is an idiot, that obnoxious chicken the fact the town has outsourced all of it's emergency functions to what is basically the mafia, the fact that they sit on a money printer of toys and the fact that the song haunts my house day in and day out.

But to say that Paw Patrol is a problem because it has a police dog in it and that he helps people is equivalent to saying that Daniel Tiger is anti-Democracy because it has a Royal Family.

[xapata]

Does Daniel Tiger portray a royal family as benevolent, and a democratically elected leader as incompetent? If so, it sounds like it's anti-democracy. Perhaps unintentionally so, but perpetuating those mythologies nonetheless.

[r3trohack3r]

> the fact the mayor is an idiot, that obnoxious chicken

Man, for real. Literally every other episode this lady loses her chicken and the paw patrol have to risk life and limb to get it back. Like, at some point, maybe you shouldn't have a pet chicken?

[scrollaway]

I think you will enjoy this video breakdown from Skip Intro: https://youtube.com/watch?v=rwhUpu9MfZ0

It’s a superb video essay and absolutely worth the watch! But to be clear, it’s also playing into the meme that paw patrol is copaganda, so take it as a mix of comedy and serious analysis :)

The gist of the video is that, while paw patrol is not copaganda, it is problematic for parallel reasons. It’s also a terrible tv show as you noted.

[dinkumthinkum]

I wouldn’t say it is superb. On this channel every third video is about how sone random show is “copaganda”, literally. The concept of that portmanteau is already fairly stupid to begin with.

[scrollaway]

Ever heard "don't judge a book by its cover"?

Skip Intro has excellent videos all in all. "Copaganda" is his series diving into cop shows (and analyzing them in the context of what is and isn't copaganda). He doesn't claim that a particular show is copaganda just because he's analyzing it.

If you "wouldn't say [the video] is superb" because, instead of watching it, you've looked at the titles of his other videos, I dunno what to tell you.

[britneybitch]

Other than the chicken, that description is a perfect match for New York City.

[Mikeb85]

As someone with a 5 month old this post is simultaneously enlightening, hilarious and terrifying.

[kondor6c]

Also, why isn't there more supervision of Alex who has to be near 6?

Daring Danny X and his antics have with Alex's accidents have got to be near a third of their call volume

[baryphonic]

HN comment of the year

[kneebonian]

Glad this didn't come 4 days later.

[Sakos]

How? It's mostly devoid of substance or any real insight or understanding. It's not a great comment just because you happen to agree with it. Just check out the Skip Intro video if you don't get it, it's like a 101 course on media as propaganda and the effects of media on cultural values.

[mcguire]

This is the HN comment of the year: whiny, pedantic, and with a weird agenda.

[Sakos]

So you have nothing to say of substance either. This is HN, not Reddit. If you can't contribute, this isn't the place for you.

And yes, my agenda of wanting more accountability for police who murder citizens and destroy their lives by abusing their power is "weird". What's wrong with you?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_v._Harris Or maybe you just don't care that the Supreme Court decided that police dogs are fine and current training is sufficient to prove their reliability despite overwhelming evidence showing otherwise

> Harris was the first Supreme Court case to challenge the dog's reliability, backed by data that asserts that on average, up to 80% of a dog's alerts are wrong.

> In the first 9 months of 2011, dogs alerted (and police searched) 14,102 times, and drugs were found only 2,854 times—a false alert rate of 80%. Those results, they say, are surprisingly consistent – in 2010, the false alert rate was 74%.[3] Further still, the study found that individual dog's performance varied wildly, with accuracy rates ranging from a high of 56% to a low of 7%, with two-thirds of the dogs performing below the average.

> The United States Supreme Court returned a unanimous decision on February 19, 2013, ruling against Harris and overturning the ruling of the Florida Supreme Court.[29] In the unanimous opinion, Justice Elena Kagan stated that the dog's certification and continued training are adequate indication of his reliability, and thus is sufficient to presume the dog's alert provides probable cause to search, using the "totality-of-the-circumstances" test per Illinois v. Gates. She wrote that the Florida Supreme Court instead established "a strict evidentiary checklist", where "an alert cannot establish probable cause ... unless the State introduces comprehensive documentation of the dog's prior 'hits' and 'misses' in the field ... No matter how much other proof the State offers of the dog's reliability, the absent field performance records will preclude a finding of probable cause."[30]

[dinkumthinkum]

You joke but there are leftist articles about Paw Patrol and the patriarchy, globalism, and every other -ism you can imagine.

[kneebonian]

Ya but there are leftists articles about everything it turns out when you put 7 billion people on the internet and give them the ability to say things you can find lots of stupid things.

[krapp]

> But to say that Paw Patrol is a problem because it has a police dog in it and that he helps people is equivalent to saying that Daniel Tiger is anti-Democracy because it has a Royal Family.

Any positive portrayal of police in US media is problematic. Teaching children to trust the police is only going to get some of them jailed on fabricated evidence or killed, especially if they aren't white and affluent.

edit: Ok, apparently Paw Patrol is Canadian, so mea culpa. I guess the police are actually civil servants there. It's still a problem when shown to US children.

[dinkumthinkum]

Why is and positive portrayal of police problematic? I think the leftist notion if “problematic” is problematic. You’re being very hyperbolic by writing that trusting police will get you killed and jailed. That is something someone living in a leftist / TikTok fantasy world would think.

[20after4]

It's what someone living in the real world would think. Ask any defense attorney if you don't want to believe random internet commenters.

[dinkumthinkum]

I love in the real world and know that’s nonsense. So, if I poll 10,000 defense attorneys, 90% or more are going to tell me this childish nonsense. What if I polled victims of crime, let’s include victims of police crime, my guess you might think the majority of crime must be done police.

Actually, by your logic, you must think the vast majority of crimes or an enormously significant amount of crimes are committed by police because you claim trusting police will get you killed or jailed. However, it is certainly true that enormous numbers of people “trust”, in some sense, the police but the problem we do not see the numbers of those people being killed/jailed to support your position.

[KennyBlanken]

Portrayal of police dogs in a positive light is necessary because otherwise people would see them for what they are: living probable-cause generators and loopholes on laws and regulations on police brutality.

There's plenty of evidence police dogs are worse than a coin flip and react to their handlers - but the supreme court said that was irrelevant and upheld basing a search off a dog's reaction to be valid. Dogs also act as a proxy for brutal, violent treatment of someone.

[brookst]

The media is a trailing indicator. It can lead to feedback loops and reinforce the bad behaviors it represents, but things like Dexter come about because some writer hears about police using blood spatter analysis and mythologizes it.

If junk science were rejected where it matters, the media wouldn’t use it either, or would at least treat it they way they do dowsing or psychics.

The media will serve any demand, no matter how dumb. But there has to be demand. That’s my theory anyway.

[Sakos]

It's a feedback loop, yes. You need popular support from voters to be able to implement changes in police procedure. Who's going to vote for the guy who wants to "gut" law enforcement methods when all their lives TV has told them that's just what the police does and how criminals are caught? Especially when the other guy is saying "look at him, he wants to protect criminals".

[KennyBlanken]

It's not a trailing indicator or feedback loop when you have the police and military actively pushing narratives on TV producers and Hollywood, even controlling scripts in exchange for access to extras and military equipment/facilities.

[watwut]

Those are at least fiction. I have seen documentaries where pseudo psychology (not holding eye contact means you are lying, this or that entirely normal behavior treated as something chillingly sinister, parent deemed nit sufficiently crying) was treated as sure clue of guilt.

And gut feelings, gut feelings of detectives were literally treated as evidence in those documentaries

[scarmig]

Most documentaries should be considered a subgenre of fiction. Inspired by reality, but mostly interested in telling a compelling narrative.

[britneybitch]

They're not always treated as fiction though. Some police officers model their behavior after what they see on TV. And police departments have given shows access to locations and props in exchange for favorable portrayal. John Oliver did a show about it recently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNy6F7ZwX8I

[cratermoon]

LA PD essentially invented the cop show. https://timeline.com/dragnet-lapd-propaganda-cop-bb19d9a5fb6...

[tetraca]

I think the practice is supposed to be a little more than what's depicted there. When they start an interrogation, they try to ask light or at least easy questions to see how a suspect answers without real pressure, then when they hit a hard question, they compare the responses and look for clusters of behavior which might indicate deception when taking into account how they behaved in contrast through the rest of the questioning. Not to say that it's going to be particularly accurate/good.

[NikolaNovak]

Right, but to oversimplify, as innocent as I am, I will react differently when asked "enjoying the weather today", "where were you on night if December 12th", and "did you murder Mukelefa Stanjipoljic". There'll be contrast just as baseline!

I had a law enforcement in-law who was confident he could figure out a man by shaking his hand and looking at him in the eye, etc etc. He was perennial favourite of all the sleezy salespeople around because while he was certain he was getting a deal and being taken care of and getting the good stuff, for anything I had any insight into (computer, car, photo, and music stuff), he was getting ripped six ways to Sunday. But his confidence was not to be shaken.

[rnd0]

I'm pretty sure that the lack of police accountability is a far worse problem, to be honest. It eliminates any chance that we can reform law enforcement to any significant degree.

[tyingq]

They are somewhat intertwined though. If police can feed anyone to the DA, and the DA can then use a variety of sketchy tactics (including junk science, but mostly other stuff) to punish them, then it all works. If it kept resulting in cases that get thrown out, the feedback loop would slow it down some.

[Agentlien]

I've often wondered how exactly Paw Patrol's ample budget is allocated and under what authority they operate. Moreover, does the mayor using them for her personal errands constitute an abuse of power?

[mbg721]

I can absolutely imagine "CSI: Phrenology", if the timeline had worked out a little differently.