[bko]

I don't think there is "widespread concern". I'd be willing to bet >99% of people don't know what Flock is.

But if you go ask people, in a non-duplicitous way, whether you want less of a police presence or curtail use technology to solve crimes, most people will not want less police. Here is an example

> When asked whether they want the police to spend more time, the same amount of time or less time than they currently do in their area, most Black Americans -- 61% -- want the police presence to remain the same. This is similar to the 67% of all U.S. adults preferring the status quo, including 71% of White Americans.

> Meanwhile, nearly equal proportions of Black Americans say they would like the police to spend more time in their area (20%) as say they'd like them to spend less time there (19%).

It's really a privileged out of touch luxury belief to believe that there is no need to deter or solve crime. People that are affected by crime and/or have common sense, understand that technology that helps solve or prevent criminal activities is actually a good thing.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-police-r...

[dualvariable]

Ask them what they think about cameras run by private companies being used to spy on them and their neighbors and see what the poll results look like.

Just because people want policing doesn't mean they want the kind of policing that we seem to be getting.

And that article you cite is a pretty good example of this.

The title is: Black Americans Want Police to Retain Local Presence

The bottom half is: Black Americans Lack Assurance Police Encounters Will Go Well

[bko]

Let me introduce you to Ring security cameras...

Police cameras are actually very popular, as is private security. I've even heard rich people voluntarily pay private security with guns (!) to protect them.

You're living in fantasy land my friend. No one outside of your bubble thinks about things this way. People are trying to live their lives and raise their kids. People don't like this chaos and have very little empathy for the few percent of people that terrorize their neighborhoods.

[dualvariable]

> The bottom half is: Black Americans Lack Assurance Police Encounters Will Go Well

My "bubble" is that I read past the headline and got more than halfway through that article that you cited.

[idle_zealot]

Black people wanting more police presence is a well known fact, as is the fact that increased police presence in their communities results in the police arresting and killing a lot of innocent people. This reflects a world where policing is broken, but it's the only discussed mechanism to reduce crime. In parallel the perception of crime rates has become totally unhinged from actual crime statistics. If you ask an average person whether they think crime has gone up or down they're likely to say "up by a lot." Which is basically uniformly untrue. So then they ask for more police, the only way they can think of to solve the real (but overestimated) problem.

It's not a luxury belief to grapple with reality instead of subjecting yourself to a false dichotomy where you either have police prowling the streets or gangs doing the same. Don't give this "common sense" crap, you know very well that intuition fails all the time, especially when applied to incredibly complex topics like governance or social policy.

[bko]

> If you ask an average person whether they think crime has gone up or down they're likely to say "up by a lot." Which is basically uniformly untrue.

If direct experience and official stats conflict, it's usually the official stats that are wrong.

Yes, I agree things like murder has gone down (especially since it's recent peak in 2020/2021)

But in terms of lawlessness, there is a lot less law and order in most large cities. There were always homeless people in my lifetime, but the fentanyl zombies is relatively new. Or let me give you another example, consider Eric Garner who was killed on Staten Island in 2014 after a confrontation for selling loose untaxed cigarettes.

Today I walk by the same person parked out every single day, with a sign selling loose cigarettes along with weed. This is breaking a number of laws in a highly policed area in NYC. However there is no will to prevent do anything about it.

> It's not a luxury belief to grapple with reality instead of subjecting yourself to a false dichotomy where you either have police prowling the streets or gangs doing the same. Don't give this "common sense" crap, you know very well that intuition fails all the time, especially when applied to incredibly complex topics like governance or social policy.

No, this isn't a complicated issue. People get arrested regularly but they get let out to re-offend. here's a stat:

Among persons admitted to state prison in 2014 across 34 states, 77% had five or more prior arrests in their criminal history, including the arrest that resulted in their prison sentence... The number of prisoners that have had 15 or more prior arrests is over 26%

How about common sense policy, after your 15th arrest, you stay in prison until you're an old man and relatively harmless to society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Eric_Garner

https://mleverything.substack.com/p/acceptance-of-crime-is-a...

[idle_zealot]

> No, this isn't a complicated issue. People get arrested regularly but they get let out to re-offend. here's a stat:

It is a complex issue. Even now we simultaneously let KnifecrimesMcGee out after 15 arrests while also locking up non-dangerous pot smokers for years. This isn't a "we're too lax" or "we're too strict" issue, it's both in different areas. Putting in an absolute 15 strikes program is going to hand more jaywalkers a life sentence than dangerous criminals for the simple fact that people get arrested over minor offenses more often than serious ones. Heavy-handed nonsense solves no problems. You need to acknowledge when an issue is beyond simple solutions if you're interested in solving it.

[Sanzig]

I don't think that's a particularly charitable read of people's objections with Flock.

If Flock was simply a network of plate readers with some additional computer vision classification features (make, model, colour, vehicle type) which only saved data on vehicles matching an active BOLO, there would be far less concern.

But Flock is not that. It saves a timestamp and location of every single plate it sees. It is a mass surveillance machine, enabling gross privacy violations by collecting and making available to law enforcement movement data on anyone with a car.

Flock also shares data with the federal government, particularly ICE, even when the local PD has specifically signed contracts forbidding the practice. People who may otherwise be comfortable with Flock providing data to their local PD may not be comfortable when that data is handed to the Trump administration.

The CEO calling those who disagree with him "domestic terrorists" is also ample reason to be skeptical of Flock's mission.