Worth its own pit thread. The New York Police Department applied business school methodologies in the early 1990s and crime went down. (Actually it started declining before they were introduced, but never mind.) Essentially it involved better tracking of crime and sending more cops to areas where there were more criminal incidents.
After a while further improvements became more difficult, though political pressures remained. So the data got fudged and the policing grew unnecessarily aggressive. De facto quotas were instituted for stop and frisks, even if they had no good justification in law enforcement terms. Crimes were re-categorized to juice the local numbers.
One cop owned a tape recorder and a memo pad. He was thrown in an asylum for observation for his troubles.
538 and ESPN present an online 18 minute documentary: “Crime By The Numbers”. Vox summarizes.
Personally I hate videos. The value added of this one is that you get to listen to a few of the whistleblower’s recordings of criminal activity under the cloak of law.
I pit criminals that wear the uniform. I praise those that uphold the law.
I think he is talking about Adrian Schoolcraft though I did not follow his links. This American Life did a podcast on him that is worth a listen: Right to Remain Silent.
ETA: I swear xenophon41’s post was not there when I posted… Damn.
That article has some problems - including its statement that he was involuntarily committed for six days (when the supposed hospital discharge summary says he was admitted on the third of the month and discharged on the sixth.
There’s also a conflict between Schoolcraft’s initial psych evaluation in the facility…
"The hospital’s report states:
"He is coherent, relevant with goal directed speech and good eye contact. ... His memory and concentration is intact. He is alert and oriented" but "his insight and judgment are impaired".[12] The report also says: "He expressed questionable paranoid ideas of conspiracy and cover-ups going [on] in the precinct. Since then, he started collecting 'evidence' to 'prove his point' and became suspicious 'They are after him."
…and the benign sounding statement on discharge (and then there’s the department psychiatrist’s conclusions prior to his commitment).
Maybe they really were out to get him, but it doesn’t appear anything has been settled yet. In any case,this affair was evidently more than his possessing a tape recorder and a memo pad.
There seems to be a tendency to accept uncritically whatever a self-styled whistleblower says. From my own experience, such assumptions may be unjustified.
The article on Stop and frisk in New York is decent. The sequence went Schoolcraft tapes -> Village Voice article -> ACLU litigation -> marches -> Stop and frisk declared unconstitutional -> Decision overturned on appeal -> Election of Bill DeBlasio, who pledged to reform stop and frisk -> More litigation -> Stop and frisk numbers are down somewhat.
The background situation is that CompStat can reduce crime by maybe 10%. Which is a good thing. Its effectiveness has been exaggerated though as it was introduced during a period of declining crime on a national levels. And when the stats are tampered with, it hinders the ability for the system to direct resources to crime hotspots.
I read a recent article in Rolling Stone that destroys the “Broken Windows” policing system that is the forefather of “Stop and Frisk”, yet does not offer an alternative.
Love the hand waving in this post. Corruption Schmurruption! What’s a few thousand illegal seizes and searches, violations of constitutional and human rights, manipulation of statistics, murders…
Who you gonna call when someone’s stealing your European Carryall?