QPP 32: The Changes Are Upon Us
In this episode, Peter and Nick announce the big change that Nick mentioned a couple of episodes ago: this is Nick’s last episode.
Episode:
https://www.spreaker.com/episode/15540615
Now, now, it’s not that they had a spat (which is a good thing, since they are now close-by neighbors), but rather that Nick has taken a new job at a rather larger police agency in the New York area, and their policy is a bit more, ah, stringent than that at Nick’s current agency. So no more podcasts. Or saying anything interesting.
Yes, Nick has now returned to his city of birth, New York.
Peter and Nick shot the breeze for a bit about what Nick was doing at his Texas Agency, and they they move on to more important things. . .
We had both noticed that more and more of the “bad police videos” involve police not doing anything bad. We compare outrage-based reform to true and meaningful reform.
When public employees do something stupid, it’s good to call them out, but discerning whether this is a systemic thing or just one jerk is important.
We need more of that.
We raise this because it used to be about cops shooting at unarmed people, now its about cops shooting people who have guns, who take their guns out, who threaten people or police, and that’s just cuckoo-bananas.
Nick mentioned his disillusionment with the fact that, in law enforcement debates as in the gun debate in America, data and facts seem to be lost in a sea of invective and talking points – and not to get too Trumpian here, but it’s on all sides.
Peter then mentioned police abolitionists, which we discuss for a few minutes – this is a very growing issue.
Speaking of this, we discuss Chicago violence spikes, and contrasting the presumption that police violence is unnecessary with 70 people being shot in a single weekend and zero arrests. Peter points out rightly that the extreme crime spike in Chicago happened exactly when policing changed in Chicago – and at the least, poverty didn’t double, racism didn’t double, police racism didn’t double, but violent crime did. There must be a connection.
Nick mentioned his good friend who was shocked to learn that there were already long-standing programs of sensitivity, de-escalation, mental health, anti-bias, and other training for cops. This was a stunning surprise to Nick, because this is an intelligent and engaged person who prides herself on understanding what’s going in society.
Peter pointed out that the big issues remain mental health, drug overdoses, and suicides. If you want to reduce the number of police involved homicides, tackling those things could reduce by half these numbers. We can save 500 lives a year. It’s not always about the cops, society has a big role in this.
We then discussed that New York City has announced that it will no longer charge inmates for phone calls from Riker’s Island. This is an important development in this arena, because jail call fees have been a controversial issue across the country. New York’s plan is said to cost the city $5 million a year, which is interesting, because Riker’s is huge (it’s 400 acres; its daily inmate population has been as high as 10,000, though this has been reduced in recent years to below 9,000) and as it turns out they already charged far less for calls than most rural jails.
We then talk about Stand Your Ground, and raise some cases in which it has recently played a role.
Peter reminisces about his recent trip to Amsterdam, Belfast, and the Isle of Man, and junkies on the streets of Amsterdam, of which there are hardly any anymore. How they did it is interesting.
Nick pointed out – screwing up the number a little – that Americans consume (this is the correct figure:) 80 percent of the world’s opioids and 99 percent of the world’s hydrocodone. For reference, Americans comprise less than 5 percent of the world’s populace. (Nick had said 90% and 99%. What do you want, he’s gone now, anyway.)
