[tptacek]

This is an extremely online belief. Oak Park, IL, the inner-ring suburb of Chicago where I live, is almost certainly one of the 10 most progressive and left-leaning municipalities in the country. Oak Parkers (not me) have the opposite concern: we're below our threshold number of sworn officers, and desperate to add more. The median Oak Parker has very positive views of the police (and also all the standard progressive concerns about abuses.)

Lots of political beliefs are like this! There are plenty of things people believe very strongly, and get near universal reinforcement on in their communities, that don't survive contact with actual living grass. The median American has an extraordinarily high opinion of Amazon, for instance, something you'd never know unless you sought out polling (or, you know, took a walk down a residential block and looked at the stoops.)

[duld]

To clarify, you're stating that "Don't talk to the police" is an "extremely online belief"? Or were you referencing the dating portion of the comment?

[tptacek]

Correct: "never talk to the police" is a very online belief. I watch people talk to police all the time. People go out of their way to do it.

I don't even know what to do with the "never date police officers" thing. Most police officers are married. It's a shift-work job, so they have high divorce rates, but they just remarry.

[watwut]

> I don't even know what to do with the "never date police officers" thing. Most police officers are married. It's a shift-work job, so they have high divorce rates, but they just remarry.

They have also unusually high domestic violence rates. That is where the bit comes from.

[tptacek]

So do firefighters.

[watwut]

This is first time I have seen the claim that firefighters have the same domestic violence rates as police. I have seen multiple studies on police vs regular citizens and police were more violent in all of them. I did not seen comparable numbers about firefighters.

The factors police have and firemen dont are a.) victim not being able to go to police, cause those are his buddies b.) training teaches cops to take and keep charge (escalating aggression until compliance is acquired).

[s1artibartfast]

Nobody said "the same".

The question in my mind is what people are expecting? What do they think this proves? Policing is a conflict focused job that involves violence so I wouldnt expect it to be the same as baseline to begin with.

I would caution against "just so" explainations. There are obviously lots of complex reasons and one can speculate a lot of stories one way or another.

[joquarky]

This site attracts ivory tower residents. Your comment is a great example of this.

Try growing up poor and see how your perspective changes on the police.

[fzeroracer]

Saying never talk to the police is an 'online belief' is frankly baffling.

There are multiple examples of prominent law professors bringing in ex-police professionals who all say the exact same thing: never talk to the police. If you spend five minutes around a lawyer they will say the same thing. If you ever end up finding yourself in legal turmoil it is the very first thing a lawyer will directly advise you to do.

People being stupid I don't think suddenly makes this advice terminally online. I was hearing it, in person, when I was in college over a decade ago.

[tptacek]

Most people simply don't see themselves as being in zero-sum contests with the police. If you are in such a contest, those videos you've watched are quite useful and important. But when there's a hit and run on your block, expect your neighbors to go out of their way to volunteer information to the police.

I've read threads here where people have made impassioned arguments that you yourself should never volunteer information to the police investigating a crime such as a hit and run. The police will turn it against you and somehow make you the target of their investigation! Ordinary people out in the world do not think that way, and you will not succeed in making them think that way by showing them videos of lawyers explaining why the only thing you should ever say is "I do not consent to any searches and will not answer any of your questions".

If you said that to a police officer doing a canvass in my neighborhood, people would look at you like a space alien.

I think it's helpful to understand all this stuff when reading things about Flock. People on HN and in activist communities seem gobsmacked that all the Flock cameras haven't been taken down yet (in fact: ALPR deployments are growing, not shrinking). But they have wildly different priors about policing than the median resident of a muni with ALPR cameras.

[watwut]

> Most people simply don't see themselves as being in zero-sum contests with the police.

Yes, that is why they don't do it. It does not mean the advice is "terminally online". It is the advice coming from layers that deal with the system.

Layers saying those things, online and offline, are not terminally online.

[rcxdude]

No, but online is where you see this advice being most commonly posted and repeated. Second-most might be in lawyer's offices, but a) most people don't interact with lawyers, especially not in the context of criminal investigations, and b) the lawyers themselves have a distorted view of this system, because they are almost always dealing with people who, for one reason or another, should not talk to the police.

[DFHippie]

You mean "lawyers", right?

[Teever]

Surely there's more interesting conversation to be had here than just "your opinions about interacting with law enforcement are moot because I know people in my Chicago neighbourhood who disagree with them."

[rcxdude]

The main contention seems to be 'surely everyone knows you shouldn't talk to the police' and 'no, quite a lot of people believe the opposite, but it's not as common to see that belief online', with a bit of this being conflated with whether this belief is accurate or not.

[lukan]

Multiple? I only ever see that one guy's video linked.

[BrenBarn]

The fact that most people believe it's not good advice doesn't mean it actually is not good advice.

[tptacek]

I'm not making a normative claim about what your best strategy is to protect yourself from a police investigation, but rather a positive claim about ordinary people's attitudes towards the police, which are not (gesturing towards this thread) this.

[Retric]

Meanwhile I’ve spent way too much time around people in real life on both sides of the isle that absolutely loathed the police.

The general attitude seems extremely positively correlated with income, and the average American isn’t particularly well off.

[tptacek]

The biggest complaint working class families on the west side of Chicago have about the police is that they're never around when they're needed.

[joxdosba]

I don’t know, as someone firmly in the top 0.1% of taxpayers, most cops seem gleefully unaware of their place in life.

But perhaps that just reflects the public/private split when it comes to quality of services

[BrenBarn]

Okay, but "never talk to the police" is a normative statement, not a descriptive statement, so your contrast of it with a people's attitudes towards police is kind of apples and oranges.

[joxdosba]

>I don't even know what to do with the "never date police officers" thing. Most police officers are married. It's a shift-work job, so they have high divorce rates, but they just remarry.

This is a deeply masculine take, Zuck would be proud.

This is such a widely known problem, I’m really surprised you’re not familiar with it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Officer-involved_domestic_viol...

“Never date a cop” is very common advice women will give to each other, has nothing to do with politics or being excessively online.

[M95D]

Don't talk to the police - advice given to university students by a lawyer and then by a cop:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

If this isn't trustworthy, I don't know what is.

[qmr]

Isn't his follow up "be extremely careful when talking to the police"? He gave a follow up lecture some years later.

[M95D]

I didn't see that. Link?

[xigoi]

If all cops are evil, why would you take advice from a cop?

[joquarky]

Because reality doesn't work like board game rules.

[boring_twenties]

No one said or implied that "all" cops are evil, or anything remotely close to that.

[rexpop]

Everything you believe about the police you gleaned from children's cartoons as a toddler.

[tptacek]

Sick burn.

[Eufrat]

Oak Park. Home to Frank Lloyd Wright’s original studio/home and multiple works designed by him? Birthplace and hometown of Ernest Hemingway?

A municipality comparable to Berkeley, California or New Rochelle, New York?

What?

I agree with you that a blanket statement of not talking to the police is ridiculous, but arguing that Oak Park is a good representation outside of affluent America is not to be taken seriously.

[tptacek]

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Berkeley is more affluent than Oak Park, and (by a little bit) so is New Rochelle.