Law Enforcement Reform Thread (formerly Defund the Police) (2 Viewers)

[First Time Poster]

So I got busy the other day with the intention to revisit this topic and answer some of the responses put forward but I realized the thread was deleted. But, I felt we had good dialogue happening before I left so I wanted to restart the topic to get the conversation going again. We started some dialogue about it on the liberal board but I feel this topic transcends party lines so I'm making a MCB thread. Post #2, or my next post, is the post I made on the liberal board when asked to elaborate how I felt.

 

[CoolBrees]

You are missing my point. You can’t solve for two variables. Not statistically anyway.

your whole premise is incalculable. And frankly the fact that you can so cavalierly create data and be taken aback when your method is questioned kind of tips your hand.

I mean this sincerely, and without any type of ill will. You just aren’t doing it right. Each time you try, you are starting out in the wrong place. You will never get the right answer when that happens. But trust me it happens all the time in all areas. It’s called inherent bias. It has a meaning specific to statistics. It is also the scourge of our engineering times.

 

[Lapaz]

You are missing my point. You can’t solve for two variables. Not statistically anyway.

your whole premise is incalculable. And frankly the fact that you can so cavalierly create data and be taken aback when your method is questioned kind of tips your hand.

I mean this sincerely, and without any type of ill will. You just aren’t doing it right. Each time you try, you are starting out in the wrong place. You will never get the right answer when that happens. But trust me it happens all the time in all areas. It’s called inherent bias. It has a meaning specific to statistics. It is also the scourge of our engineering times.

What are the 2 variables?

 

[Ayo]

Field drug tests are also used to pressure civilians to commit to or confess to things or get people into a system, even though their unreliability is known. Even by police officers.

and the use of these are another tool of racial disproportionality.

 

[Ayo]

thought this was interesting. It's not often that a paper like this gets pulled, so it caught my intention that it did.

https://retractionwatch.com/2020/07...raction-citing-continued-misuse-in-the-media/

the statement from the researchers:

We were careless when describing the inferences that could be made from our data. This led to the misuse of our article to support the position that the probability of being shot by police did not differ between Black and White Americans (MacDonald, 2019). To be clear, our work does not speak to this issue and should not be used to support such statements. We accordingly issued a correction to rectify this statement (Johnson & Cesario, 2020).

Although our data and statistical approach were valid to estimate the question we actually tested (the race of civilians fatally shot by police), given continued misuse of the article (e.g., MacDonald, 2020) we felt the right decision was to retract the article rather than publish further corrections. We take full responsibility for not being careful enough with the inferences made in our original article, as this directly led to the misunderstanding of our research.

they also make reference to Hsu, who made news because some in the media made his "demotion" as not following the party line, which wasn't true apparently.

This is an example of data done by professional researchers - and really wasn't done well, but this was apparent early to anyone who knows anything about research - that ends up the hands of those with an agenda, a preconceived assumption, or bias. Because citing 'research' is something that is believed to give an argument legitimacy and a false sense of security of their conclusions, based on faulty data.

The researchers faced making corrections - which is normal. But they would be so considerable, the article would end up being something different. And so retraction became the only real route.

Standards for conducting research, developing methodologies, clearing ethics boards, writing up results, and drawing conclusions are rigorous for a reason.

 

[Ayo]

and as a postscript to the post above - here's a Justice and Policing Equity professor breaking down some further implications in a twitter thread, which is also useful reading.

 

[Eeyore]

Can we, at least, defund these two?

Suspended Buffalo Police officers back on payroll

Two suspended Buffalo Police officers are now back on the city payroll despite being charged with felony assault.

www.wkbw.com

 

[JimEverett]

It is absolutely absurd that a study should be retracted because other people are misusing it. This is a perfect example of the demise of academic freedom.

 

[Ayo]

It is absolutely absurd that a study should be retracted because other people are misusing it. This is a perfect example of the demise of academic freedom.

Except that’s not what I understood what happened. The retraction reasons were not due to the misuse but rather the discussion of the findings and the inferences. These are staple sections of an academic research paper. And corrections were needed, independent of “misuse”

 

[JimEverett]

Except that’s not what I understood what happened. The retraction reasons were not due to the misuse but rather the discussion of the findings and the inferences. These are staple sections of an academic research paper. And corrections were needed, independent of “misuse”

This is the statement from the authors:

"We were careless when describing the inferences that could be made from our data. This led to the misuse of our article to support the position that the probability of being shot by police did not differ between Black and White Americans (MacDonald, 2019). To be clear, our work does not speak to this issue and should not be used to support such statements. We accordingly issued a correction to rectify this statement (Johnson & Cesario, 2020).

Although our data and statistical approach were valid to estimate the question we actually tested (the race of civilians fatally shot by police), given continued misuse of the article (e.g., MacDonald, 2020) we felt the right decision was to retract the article rather than publish further corrections. We take full responsibility for not being careful enough with the inferences made in our original article, as this directly led to the misunderstanding of our research."

The authors have stood by their central argument

 

[Ayo]

I didn’t say the authors changed their mind regarding the argument, though. Like I said, every pretty much every article follows the same pattern. They have the same sections in the same order. The argument is just one. The methodology is another. The data yet another. Those could all be unchanged but the statements around inferences, analysis, context and relation to other research, recommendations for future inquiry and other sections can change considerably.

Seems to me that is what is happening here.

 

[JimEverett]

I didn’t say the authors changed their mind regarding the argument, though. Like I said, every pretty much every article follows the same pattern. They have the same sections in the same order. The argument is just one. The methodology is another. The data yet another. Those could all be unchanged but the statements around inferences, analysis, context and relation to other research, recommendations for future inquiry and other sections can change considerably.

Seems to me that is what is happening here.

What corrections were needed?
This is the only correction I could find:

Although we were clear about the quantity we estimated and provide justification for calculating Pr(race|shot, X) in our report (see also 2, 3), we want to correct a sentence in our significance statement that has been quoted by others stating ‘White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers.’ This sentence refers to estimating Pr(shot|race, X). As we estimated Pr(race|shot, X), this sentence should read: ‘As the proportion of White officers in a fatal officer-involved shooting increased, a person fatally shot was not more likely to be of a racial minority.’ This is consistent with our framing of the results in the abstract and main text.

Correction for Johnson et al., Officer characteristics and racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings

PSYCHOLOGICAL AND COGNITIVE SCIENCES Correction for “Officer characteristics and racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings,” by David J. Johnson, Trevor Tress, Nicole Burkel, Carley Taylor, and Joseph Cesario, which was first published July 22, 2019; 10.1073/pnas.1903856116 ( Proc...

www.pnas.org

That seems very very far from requiring or needing a retraction of the study itself.

 

[Ayo]

You can email the authors and ask them. I wouldn’t presume to speak for them.

But that single difference is actually pretty significant.

And I think this single example is very very far from the demise of academic freedom.

 

[JimEverett]

You can email the authors and ask them. I wouldn’t presume to speak for them.

But that single difference is actually pretty significant.

And I think this single example is very very far from the demise of academic freedom.

Why would I email the authors to ask them what corrections you were referring?

As far as the correction I posted, I am not aware of anyone claiming the correction was not significant - just that it did not warrant retracting the entire study.

And, again, no one is claiming that this example is the demise of academic freedom - obviously, no single instance will do as much, hence the word "example"

 

[Farb]

Would this be something someone would chalk up to the demise of academic freedom?

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc...icized-over-removal-transgender-study-n906741

 

[cuddlemonkey]

Would this be something someone would chalk up to the demise of academic freedom?

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc...icized-over-removal-transgender-study-n906741

No.

 

[Ayo]

Would this be something someone would chalk up to the demise of academic freedom?

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc...icized-over-removal-transgender-study-n906741

Not something I feel like getting into in this thread, tbh

 

[Farb]

Not something I feel like getting into in this thread, tbh

Fair enough and I understand. Didn't mean to derail, just something that popped in my head when reading the last couple of posts.

 

[Ayo]

Criminology stats are already difficult to get. Even the data available, which also comes from self-reporting and recording, needs to be handled carefully. All sorts of contextual considerations need to be in place.

It’s already difficult enough to do, but when the access to what data is availability is being restricted or altered in any way, it makes difficult work even harder.

I don’t know if there was nefarious intent. It doesn’t look good but maybe the tool was actually faulty. Nonetheless the gathering and analysis became much less accessible and impacts the transparency and accountability.

Chicago Police Department arrest API shutdown is its own kind of ‘cover up’ - The Chicago Reporter

Blocking access to key law enforcement data hinders critical accountability efforts by journalists and researchers and ultimately limits discourse on public safety.

www.chicagoreporter.com

CPD’s API provided access to comprehensive and timely data about arrests going back to 2014 in ways that can be processed and analyzed by software engineers and reporters.

The Chicago Reporter used the API last month to analyze police tactics during local mass protests following the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd. CPD had released figures stating that the majority of arrests made on the weekend of May 29 were for criminal conduct related to looting, not protesting.

But by using CPD’s own data from the arrest API, we found the opposite to be true: the majority of civil unrest-related arrests made that weekend had been for offenses related to protesting. CPD revised their numbers and acknowledged that a number of arrests had been miscategorized. The mayor’s office also addressed the discrepancy in a statement to The Chicago Reporter, saying it was “working with the Chicago Police Department to ensure they re-run all data during this period of time to ensure a more accurate representation of arrests throughout the city.”

Within a day of our publishing this analysis, CPD removed access to the API for all users.