I owe BJ commentor Phoebe many thanks for the link to Guernica‘s excellent Bill Moyers interview with David Simon, MacArthur ‘genius grant’ fellow and the man responsible for Homicide: Life on the Street, The Wire, and Treme. A sampling:
David Simon: One of the themes of The Wire really was that statistics will always lie. Statistics can be made to say anything. You show me anything that depicts institutional progress in America: school test scores, crime stats, arrest reports, anything that a politician can run on, anything that somebody can get a promotion on, and as soon as you invent that statistical category, fifty people in that institution will be at work trying to figure out a way to make it look as if progress is actually occurring when actually no progress is. I mean, our entire economic structure fell behind the idea that these mortgage-backed securities were actually valuable, and they had absolutely no value. They were toxic. And yet they were being traded and being hurled about, because somebody could make some short-term profit. In the same way that a police commissioner or a deputy commissioner can get promoted, and a major can become a colonel, and an assistant school superintendent can become a school superintendent, if they make it look like the kids are learning and that they’re solving crime. That was a front-row seat for me as a reporter, getting to figure out how once they got done with them the crime stats actually didn’t represent anything.
Bill Moyers: It’s also clear from your work that you think the drug war has destroyed the police.
__
David Simon: That’s the saddest thing in a way, again, because the stats mean nothing. Because a drug arrest in Baltimore means nothing. Real police work isn’t being done. In my city, the arrest rates for all major felonies have declined, precipitously, over the last twenty years. From murder to rape to robbery to assault.
__
Because to solve those crimes requires retroactive investigation. They have to be able to do a lot of things, in terms of gathering evidence, that are substantive and meaningful police work. All you have to do to make a drug arrest is go in a guy’s pocket. You don’t even need probable cause anymore in Baltimore. The guy who solves a rape or a robbery or a murder, he has one arrest stat. He’s going to court one day. The guy who has forty, fifty, sixty drug arrests, even though they’re meaningless arrests, even though there’s no place to put them in the Maryland prison system, he’s going to go to court forty, fifty, sixty times. Ultimately, when it comes time to promote somebody, they look at the police computer. They’ll look and they’ll say, “This guy made forty arrests last month. You only made one. He’s the sergeant” or “That’s the lieutenant.” The guys who basically play the stat game, they get promoted….
__
The people most affected by this are black and brown and poor. It’s the abandoned inner cores of our urban areas. As we said before, economically, we don’t need those people; the American economy doesn’t need them. So as long as they stay in their ghettos and they only kill each other, we’re willing to pay for a police presence to keep them out of our America. And to let them fight over scraps, which is what the drug war, effectively, is. Since we basically have become a market-based culture, that’s what we know, and it’s what’s led us to this sad denouement. I think we’re going to follow market-based logic right to the bitter end.
Read the whole thing, you will not regret it.
"Serious" Superluminar
Thanks for posting that it’s an interesting read. I do question the “all stats are meaningless” line though. I think you have to be really careful in designing and implementing the measurement system you use, and preventing abuse/fixing, but stats can still be a valuable tool if done right.
Brandon
Wow, that’s intense. Particularly since its a dreary day as I make my way on the Bolt bus from DC to NY. Free wifi, yay!
PurpleGirl
OT (sort of)
Rick Santorum vs. Langston Hughes
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/04/santorum-backs-away-from-campaign-slogan-when-told-it-was-lifted-from-langston-hughes.php
Salon article about Santorum’s response to Salon question about using the words “Make America America Again” as part of his new slogan. And as of this morning, it’s still on his website.
Omnes Omnibus
@ “Serious” Superluminar: I think the problem is that, for statistics to be useful, one has to know the subject the statistics are about and understand statistics. If both conditions are not met, it is easy to bamboozle someone with trends and percentages. Besides 84.3% of statistics are made up on the spot; 73% of the population knows that.
PurpleGirl
On the post topic: I agree with David Simon that the war on (some) drug (users) has been a problem for law enforcement. It has warped budgets and resource uses.
locanicole
I don’t usually comment, but I’ve worked in law enforcement for 25 years and the games that are played with statistics and the lives that are (casually) ruined by drug arrests is just horrific. And when you move up the food chain, so to speak, meaning the Courts, the manipulation of statistics in regards to convictions is even more ridiculous;but it does win elections. This all plays into the basic economics of society and the further impoverishment of the very people we are supposed to be “serving and protecting”.
Don K
And the same dynamic works in the interactions among police, prosecutors, and judges. Assistant Prosecutors want to be slated by the party to run for Prosecutors, who want to become Attorney General, who want to become Governor. Local judges want to be elected become county judges, then appeals court judges and state supreme court judges.
So when the police fixate on a suspect and either make up evidence or supress exculpatory evidence, they won’t get called on it by either prosecutors or judges. The prosecutors just want a good conviction rate (statistics again), whatever it takes, and judges don’t want to be known as soft on crime. And challenging the police will lose them the support of the FOP and/or the State Police union at election time. So the fixation on statistics leads to some poor schlmiel getting railroaded into a murder conviction and spending 14 years on death row, with no recourse against anyone for restitution, and no punishment against anyone if the railroading is found out.
Fwiffo
One criticism:
The rates of the commission of those crimes has been on a long term decline. Crime rates generally, are much lower than they were in the late 1980s.
Roger Moore
I think you left of the “The war on your neighbors AKA the War on Drugs” tag.
Omnes Omnibus
@Fwiffo: Again, here is where fun with statistics comes into play. Do they mean arrest rates overall wrt those crimes, in which case the fact that crime rates are lower matters, or do they mean arrest rates wrt to the number of those crimes actually committed?
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Omnes Omnibus: Statistics is a rigorous mathematical discipline that can be abused, like any discipline. There is a whole text about how to lie with statistics.
The problem is that America for the most part expects the invisible hand of the market to deliver social justice.
This is a myth.
WaterGirl
@Fwiffo:
Right. But even though there are fewer crimes, it seems like the arrest rate would be based on the percentage of crimes committed, not the number of crimes committed.
Edit: I see Omnes had the same question.
@Omnes Omnibus:
Thanks for a laugh so early in the day!
joe from Lowell
Although it bypassed Baltimore (and a lot of other cities), there has been an ongoing urban renaissance in the United States over the past 20 or so years. Look at NYC, or Boston, or Washington, or Los Angeles.
Why have some cities been able to break out of the 60s-80s era decline, and other haven’t? OK OK, the Great Lakes is still in the midst of the out-migration of its industry, but why can Washington, Philadelpia, and New York see such progress, but Baltimore not? Pittsburgh has seen great progress, but not Ohio’s C-cities.
I just don’t find answers having to do with better people or better leadership compelling, but what is it?
SiubhanDuinne
Npr’s Wait Wait don’t tell me is about to have David Simon as guest on Not My Job segment.
David Fud
@ Serious Superluminar: The stats are meaningless because the measured behaviors are skewed due to the fact that they are measured… a sort of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty principle of statistics. No argument about statistics being a valuable tool, but it would be naive to think that the tool doesn’t cut the way those in authority want it to cut or that they respond to make it cut better for those in power.
@ Fwiffo: arrest rates for committed crimes is not linked to the decline of the crime rate. That criticism doesn’t make sense given his statement. Specifically, if 200 murders happened in 2009, and 100 arrests were made, that is a 50% arrest rate. If 100 murders happened in 2010, and 25 arrests were made, that is a 25% arrest rate.
This was an amazing article. Thanks for sharing it!
Scott P.
This seems to completely gloss over the fact that crime rates have consistently fallen over the last thirty years, even in the inner cities.
This seems cut from the doom-and-gloom school of liberalism. I.e. “the (world, country, rich people, right wing, government) is conspiring against us, we’re all going to hell, damn all you (Republicans, rich people, dog owners.)”
Chad N Freude
Podcasts and vodcasts of the entire Bill Moyers Journal series are available online via iTunes or directly from the Journal archives.
WaterGirl
@SiubhanDuinne: Thanks for the heads up! I only listen to that via podcast, long after it’s over.
How do I listen live? I went to the npr website but didn’t see how to listen to Wait, Wait… in particular.
Anastasius
That’s the harshest I’ve ever seen someone put it about not needing 10-15% of the population but I guess it makes sense. There’s really an abandoned segment of people.
Thanks for the link, very interesting view points.
Omnes Omnibus
@Scott P.: The fact that crime rates have been falling does not necessarily mean that police departments have not been damaged by both the War on Drugs ™ and an obsession with statistics.
Corpsicle
@Scott P.: Your comment seems cut from the “Know nothing at all about maths” school of conservatism.
James E Powell
When Simon said all the statistics are meaningless, I understood it in the sense of all statistics released by government agencies and corporations are meaningless because they will only generate and publish statistics that make them look good.
James E Powell
@Scott P.:
Crime rates have fallen because the population has fallen.
Chad N Freude
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
I assume you’re talking about the classic popularization “How To Lie With Statistics”.
Omnes Omnibus
@James E Powell:Not necessarily to make themselves look good but to achieve results that they want. Looking good could be one, but stats can also be manipulated to show, for example, increasing danger in order to justify larger budgets.
WyldPirate
Sounds like fucking academia, too.
Publish a bunch of ‘effing papers in some obscure journal using techniques worked out in disciplines nearly 30 years ago and tell no story–get promoted. Publish two papers in a mature discipline where the standards for publication in a top-notch journal are excruciatingly high and get a grant or two funded= no promotion and hit the street.
Bean-counters in administration are the same everywhere…
Chad N Freude
The link @24 fails. Try this.
Cermet
@Fwiffo: And as this person has just shown, for a reason that has zero to do with a real decrease but one that has to do with police not taking the time to solve any case. Now if reported crime has gone down, then you have a real decrease. Of course, it is both but how much of which is the real question.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Chad N Freude: yes.
ty for linking it.
Omnes Omnibus
@WyldPirate: As far as I know, tenure decisions tend to take the quality of the journal in which one is published into account. As a result, a few publications in top tier journals will carry more weight than a large number of publications in lower tier ones. Perhaps this varies by discipline and university.
SiubhanDuinne
@WaterGirl: it airs on my local NPR station at 11 am each Saturday. Easiest to check your station’s s hedule to see what day/time they broadcast WWDTM (assuming they do — it may not be carried on all affiliates).
gelfling545
@”Serious” superluminar
Sure statistics can be used with good effect if you can have confidence in the data behind them. In this case Officer X made a large number arrests with corresponding convictions tells the reader nothing about the value to society of the arrests made making the numbers useless for all practical purposes. It could mean that Officer X is efficient & competent or it could mean it’s time for him to be looked at by the internmal affairs dept.
HRA
@WyldPirate:
Totally agree. My favorite is publishing a bibliography.
piratedan
well how does this play into the legalization of those moral crimes (or amoral) like drugs, prostitution, et al… would a reduced focus on those crimes (and government regulation of said same) allow more times for accident investigation and other crimes, like assault, rape and murder?
joe from Lowell
@James E Powell:
1. That doesn’t actually make sense, because we’re talking about rates – that is, crimes per 100,000 people.
2. The cities that have seen the biggest drops in population, like Detroit, have seen the smallest drops, or actual increases, in crime rates.
Karl
It’s a shame that Simon and Moyers are as much a part of the problem as the things they’re talking about.
Simon at one point says Clinton “worked to the Center so he wouldn’t be called a leftist by the Republicans,” or something like that.
That’s a grievous error. Clinton’s path was his preferred path, not a reactionary path. Same with Obama. They aren’t forced by the Evil Rethuglicans to change a noble game plan. There IS NO NOBLE GAME PLAN. It’s a gigantic ruse, the supposed tension between Elephants and Donkeys. Why else would there be continuity of policy and personnel from Clinton to Dubya to Obama? Why else?
As to the impact of “drug crimes” on copper promotion and in observing the point of “drug crimes” being to corral and contain Stupid NonWhite Poor People, Simon’s on the money for sure.
But the larger analysis, the awkward excuse-making for Democrats… that’s pure bullshit. What can a person expect from a pair of gents (Moyers and Simon) who are wealthy thanks to careers built on Limited Hangouts?
WyldPirate
@Omnes Omnibus:
And you utter the magical phrase, OO….
What preceded the magical phrase is the ideal. From what I’ve observed, the ideal is clearly not met.
Of course much of my experience is at a university that is striving to make itself a place the football team can be proud of. How else can one explain a 50% increase in the athletics budget in 5 years on the backs of students via fees and a concomitant decrease in general funding at the same university by 25%?
Perhaps I delude myself with statistics, though.
The students are getting what they want like the rest of our society—“bread and circuses”.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Fwiffo: I’m not sure that’s really a criticism. My read of that (I read the article) is that the institutions in question (police, courts, city hall) are using the drug war to plump up the stats so they can get more money, since the need for their more traditional services is in long term decline.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@WyldPirate:
well…it IS market-based selection.
;)
Villago Delenda Est
The intense desire to turn EVERYTHING into something that can be measured with numbers is pervasive. Obviously, in business, this is easy. But outside of pure bean-counting, it becomes much more problematic. Quality doesn’t seem to matter much when tallying up arrest stats, or test stats, or much of anything.
Relying on “the numbers” also is a way to depersonalize the entire process…to get around the fact that you’re messing with the lives of human beings with these sorts of judgements. It makes “management” of people easier if you do it in a depersonalized, distanced way via a spreadsheet. “It’s not that I think you suck, Jones, but the numbers don’t lie”. Except when they do, which is all the fucking time.
polyorchnid octopunch
@James E Powell: Total innumeracy. The rate means “crime per person”, and the change in the number of persons alone won’t affect that. Only the proportion of people in a population doing crimes will change that.
Villago Delenda Est
@joe from Lowell:
Crime rates have fallen because the demographic of the population most likely to commit a crime has fallen.
As was noted in our discussions of “Nixonland”, crime seemed to be totally out of control in the 60’s because the demographic most likely to commit crimes was swollen…the teens to thirty set. More people in that demographic…more crime. As the giant guinea pig in the python has moved on, the crime rates have dropped. Fewer people in the prime criminal demographic…less crime.
But you’d never know that from watching the local TV news. If it bleeds, it leads. Most people take their cues on what to be fearful of from the TV news every night.
WyldPirate
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
That “Invisible Hand” must be laughing its ass off as it fists the students AND picks their pockets while the grand-poohbahs in admin urge treating the students as “customers”.
Fuck B-schools everywhere….
Maude
@WyldPirate:
It is the same with scientific research. Used to be scientists did research. Then the standard was changed to publish a certain number of papers. Ruins research.
hitchhiker
Oh, you might be surprised. Where I work there’s an ongoing effort to shuffle things around in such a way it seems like one department is more productive or efficient than another, and I’ve sat through many directors meetings where the guy with the finance spreadsheets cannot explain his own data.
Mostly people assume that it’s just too hard to understand all that complicated math and let themselves be bamboozled. It’s pretty hilarious for me — a math major and former teacher — to watch the silly 6 Sigma people confuse themselves.
I love that David Simon interview; when I first listened to the podcast I’d never seen The Wire. Netflix could not send me those DVDs fast enough. What a brilliant, brilliant achievement.
JGabriel
Mostly OT, but amusing: Last night — while writing about how the GOP, like Paul the Apostle, went from denial of the Ryan budget to mainstreaming and embracing it — Josh Marshall quoted an e-mail from read JZ:
Someone needs to tell Josh and his readers that there is no Peak Wingnut. Peak Wingnut is a lie.
.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Anastasius:
its long been understood by members of those groups, that this is the case.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@JGabriel: well….It seems to be exponential right now….i think we have reached the knee of the curve and from now until the election the slope is asymptotic to 1….going full frontal vertical rise towards aleph nought.
;)
The Sheriff's A Ni-
For more of what Simon’s talking about, look up the Anthony Sowell case here in Cleveland. Over a dozen women go missing, nobody cares since they’re all prostitutes / crackheads / what have you… right up until their bodies are found in and around Sowell’s home.
Since then, anything about the Sowell trials have been getting top press, the local paper’s been going ‘hoocoodanode’ over and over about all the forgotten women, and instead of calling it the Sowell case there seems to be a pattern to calling the Imperial Avenue case as if the street itself was to blame.
WyldPirate
@Maude:
Maude, science is the “model” I observed and reached my conclusions from. I couldn’t agree more.
Roger Moore
@joe from Lowell:
Just a guess, but I think the big difference is what the cities do. The cities that have floundered the worst are ones that were built around heavy industry, which has been flailing in terms of employment and moving to less union friendly areas. The ones that have been doing well are ones that were well positioned to build into newer high-tech industry as well as traditional areas like media, education, and trade. Pittsburgh is the obvious exception, and it succeeded because its heavy industry cratered earlier than the others, giving it time to come up with a redevelopment plan.
JGabriel
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
Hmm, that sounds like a fair description of the rise (or collapse?) into wingularity. Though I suspect the levels of stupidity and crazy needed to reach the wingularity may require an even higher order of transfinity than aleph-null to represent them.
.
joe from Lowell
@Villago Delenda Est:
That may certainly be a contributing factor, but it wouldn’t explain the difference in the degree of change in different places.
Also, rates of violent crime and murder continued to rise for about three decades after the 60s ended.
OzoneR
@joe from Lowell:
what they have to offer. New York, Washington and Philadelphia have industries that bring people in. Baltimore does not.
joe from Lowell
Useful yearly crime data here.
OzoneR
This is the same explanation as to why you get speeding tickets in traffic and parking tickets when your meter is not expired.
Who can prove it? It’s your word against the cops.
joe from Lowell
@OzoneR:
But this just pushes the question back: why not? What’s different about Baltimore and Philly, that Philly has new industries coming in and Baltimore doesn’t?
joe from Lowell
BTW, the next time you come across some conservative or libertarian mouthing off about the causes of urban decline and the wonders of union-bashing and conservative economic policy as the salvation, ask them for an example of a city that revitalized itself that way. Just one.
Because there aren’t any. Not a single one. There are plenty of examples of declining cities that were saved through liberal, big-government policy, and not a single declining urban core that has ever turned itself around by praying to the market fairies. Not in this country, not in any country. None.
Marc
@WyldPirate:
Odd. Because that isn’t the dynamic here. My department has people who publish a lot, and get cited a lot, and get a lot of grants. The university supports us (in part because we make them look good.) But I can look at other departments in the same university, or ones in the same field and other universities, and see serious negative feedback cycles. If you get a critical mass of incompetents /mediocrities then they hire people who make them look good. Talented folks are more likely to seek the same (with the risk of prima donnas who destroy morale, or people who fizzle out with age.)
In academe at least it’s the departmental culture that is key, followed by the university and discipline cultures in order of importance.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@JGabriel:
haha, you are correct. While a single wingnut yet exists there can be no Peak Wingularity.
JD Rhoades
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
The problem is that America for the most part expects the invisible hand of the market to deliver social justice.
This is a myth.
Mention “social justice” to the majority of Americans and they’ll laugh in your face at the very concept. The majority of Americans have just stopped giving a shit about anyone but themselves and (maybe) their immediate family.
James E Powell
@Villago Delenda Est:
Although this is not what I said, above, it’s what I meant.
Dennis SGMM
@joe from Lowell:
I can speak a bit to the urban renaissance in downtown Los Angeles because I was working there when it got rolling.
Roger Moore @50 summed it up well: Los Angeles stopped being relaint on manufacturing back in the Fifties. The core of LA’s renaissance is the business district. It still provides a lot of good jobs in banking, finance, trade, law, and technology. At beginning of the 2000s some real estate developers took a chance and bought a number of unused white elephant buildings and partitioned them into fairly affordable, spacious lofts. The opportunity to live within walking distance, or a short bus ride, from where you worked led to a significant movement of professional people into the downtown area. A side benefit to living downtown is that they have easy access to museums, theaters, the Walt Disney Concert Hall and Staples Center.
A sure sign of how much things were changing is the fact that one of the big chains built the first downtown supermarket in living memory.
The only negative aspect of the renaissance is that it didn’t spread very much to the neighborhoods that surround the business district. Drive a few blocks in almost any direction from downtown and you’ll find the same old poverty, high crime and despair.
James E Powell
@joe from Lowell:
During the 2010 campaign season, I had several arguments along these lines with friends & relatives in my beloved home state of Ohio. Their response was that there had not been enough tax cuts for the rich, corporate welfare, and draconian social policies.
Joel
@James E Powell: Crime rates are tabulated on a per capita basis.
I’m kind of in the middle here; anecdotally, it feels like Simon has a point about arrest rates (I believe he’s discussing the percentage of violent crimes that are solved, not the gross number arrests). On the other hand, he really does gloss over the decrease in violent crime rates in most parts of the country. There is some reason to be optimistic.
On the schools, I think he illustrates the biggest flaw with education reformers without naming them explicitly. They create a lot of incentive to massage the numbers and massage they will, even if actual education isn’t happening.
jwb
@Marc: The usual formula is that A people hire A people; B people hire C people. A simplification, to be sure, which doesn’t account for the high degree of inherent randomness in the hiring process, but it does work as a rule of thumb.
joe from Lowell
@Dennis SGMM: Is the history of LA’s decline in manufacturing notably different from that of Baltimore, or St. Louis, or NYC itself? I’ve seen no reason to believe so. Everywhere saw industrial output peak in the 50s or 60s.* Some cities were able to replace it, and some weren’t.
*Lowell, being built and maintained as a single-industry town quite early in American history, and adopting a very basic industry (textiles) actually saw its industry start to decline in the 20s, as the mills were closed to move to John Edwards’ neck of the woods. That mill that his daddy worked in was probably built to replace one in New England.
OzoneR
@joe from Lowell:
yeah
Philadelphia has Comcast and a few insurance companies, it also has its history, and a suburban housing market that’s become too pricey pushing people back into the city itself. Also, a rising Hispanic population.
Baltimore proper doesn’t have anything, but suburban Baltimore does, which brings people out there. It’s also close to Washington D.C. which is a more desirable place to live at the moment.
joe from Lowell
@James E Powell:
Hit ’em with “Ah, so True Capitalism hasn’t failed. It’s just that True Capitalism has never been tried.” Maybe work in the word “comrade” if you don’t think they’ll get the reference.
(Can you tell I’ve had this argument before?)
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@JD Rhoades:
well…i think people are better than that, really. Its just that the freemarket fucktards own the narrative, and no can concieve of an alternative.
As a social justice combat ninja i am trying to do my small part to change that.
;)
joe from Lowell
@OzoneR:
To be more precise, Philadelphia got Comcast. There is a reason why Comcast went there and not to some other city.
Baltimore doesn’t?
This just means that the Philadelphia metro-region economy is growing, while that In Baltimore isn’t, which brings us back to “why?”
OzoneR
@James E Powell:
I heard this too…poor people in urban America would make something of themselves if not for Medicaid and welfare. Those are really racists programs, they tell me, because we created them because we don’t have any faith/don’t want black people (they use the n word here) to make something of themselves.
Because, you know, Democrats created them for black people any everything.
OzoneR
@joe from Lowell:
Bsltimore has far less historical relevance than Philadelphia. They have Fort McHenry, not much else.
Also, colleges, that’s what keeps Boston afloat too…Philadelphia has universities; Temple, U of Penn, Drexel, La Salle, Holy Family. Villanova isn’t so far away.
Baltimore has Johns Hopkins and that’s about it.
so has Baltimore’s. The difference is the fastest growing region is south of the city and people are going into Washington instead of Baltimore because Washington has more to offer
joe from Lowell
@OzoneR:
Baltimore has far more history than most of the cities in the US. It has more than Pittsburgh, for instance, or Portland, ME, which have both seen significant revitalization.
That’s a good call. Colleges mean a stable base of employment and activity right in the city center, they mean cultural diversity and activity, and they mean educated people who can be hired or who can start their own businesses, even industries.
…which means that Baltimore’s metro area isn’t really growing, and only appears to be growing because it’s counted in the same MSA as Washington. The difference between housing prices around 695 vs. the Capital Beltway is striking.
Pamoya
I just want to point out that David Simon did in fact mention in that interview that violent crime is down.
“But we are the jailing-est country on the planet right now. Two million people in prison. We’re locking up less-violent people.”
That is true, even though the crime rate is declining, we are locking up more people.
“And again, not merely for violent offenders, because again, the rate of violent offenders is going down.”
David Simon is not saying that we have a violent crime problem, but that we have a putting people in jail problem, and it’s true. Despite crime rates dropping since the 90s, percentage of population in jail has risen. And this isn’t true just here in America, it is true in many (not all) parts of the world.
WyldPirate
@Marc:
I think you make a pretty reasonable argument, Marc.
The department I was in was infested with soul-crushing “leadership” that went from bad to worse during my time there while the university was much the same.
My quibble would be with the parts of two of your points WRT to discipline and department. Mine was a big, generalized department with a huge disparity in the relative “advanced” nature of the discipline (Biology). There was a lot of “apples and orange” comparisons in pubs and their relative quality v. quantity. Hard to compare a mechanistic description of a regulatory system in, say, drosophila with it’s associated mutant construction, protein purification/characterization, etc to some botany yahoo that sends out newly discovered satellite RNA for sequencing and manages to publish 10-15 papers on that nonsense that really tells no story whatsoever other than “hey, look what we found”.
I think judging the “degree of difficulty” of the work involved is often lost in some departments on tenure committees. It gets much worse when the decisions go up the “food chain” of tenure committees.
Maude
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
There have been numerous remains dug up in Long Island New York. They are still looking for more. It is along the beach and has people thrown for a loop.
I’m not sure if some of the victims were prostitutes or not.
Good old former NY gov. Patterson, who is trying to mke himself a name on talk radio, tried to come up with a clever name for the killer. Creep.
It is eerily like Ridgewood, know as the Green River Killer, the name because of where the victims were found.
sukabi
@Joel: what I got out of his talking about drug arrests vs murder, rape, robbery ect. was that it will take a significant amount of manpower, time, energy and smarts for an investigation into any of the “serious” crimes and taking days, weeks, months or longer to find and interview witnesses, collect evidence, find a suspect (if they aren’t caught holding the smoking gun, blood knife, ect) than it does for the low hanging drug arrests (the majority of the cases), because those arrests are usually a “stop and check pockets” kind of thing… grab a guy, check his pockets, arrest if they’re carrying drugs and you’re done. you could knock a couple of those out / day just by cruising known drug corners and grabbing the slowest guy leaving.
his argument was that the guys getting the promotions were the guys that went for the “easy arrest score”, not the guys that actually spent time investigating, following evidence and solving more involved crimes… ie, the lazy cops after a quick score get promoted, while their smarter, more dedicated, determined brothers get crapped on…. which in turn acts as a “corrupting” influence on the police department as a whole. You end up with a police force that will be focused on the “quick score” that generates the best stats, while the serious crimes of murder, rape, robbery, ect. don’t get the focus / manpower they need to solve… evidence gets collected and sits waiting for months or years for analysis because the budget isn’t there… meanwhile DA’s spend lots of time & money prosecuting the “easy score” drug busts.
OzoneR
@Pamoya:
which in the minds of most people, is why we don’t have a violent crime problem.
People see the guy with the weed as the guy who is going to break into their house, tie them to a chair and shoot them
OzoneR
@Pamoya:
which in the minds of most people, is why we don’t have a violent crime problem.
People see the guy with the weed as the guy who is going to break into their house, tie them to a chair and shoot them
OzoneR
@Maude:
so far, they were all prostitutes.
Believe me, if they weren’t, the New York media would let you KNOW about it. It’s been years since they’d been able to whip up the city into a frenzy over a serial killer.
KS in MA
Great link, thanks.
I was interested in what Simon said about the gutted newspaper business, and, esp. about the Internet being more suited to opinion/commentary than to the kind of serious local reporting that the MSM no longer does. What do you all think of that? Are there any local reporting websites that you think are good? If there aren’t, how do you think we might go about creating them?
sukabi
@OzoneR: they see it that way, because that’s how it’s being “sold”… cops, newspapers, tv shows, politicians all line up to sell that idea, and have been doing it since the 40’s … anyone up for a little Reefer Madness?
Roger Moore
@joe from Lowell:
And LA had existing, non-manufacturing industries that could grow to fill part of the space left when heavy manufacturing left, most notably Hollywood and international shipping. The same forces of internationalization that moved a lot of manufacturing to China helped Hollywood by opening up markets to our exported movies and TV shows. It also created a lot of new jobs moving around the goods we were importing from China. It’s probably also helpful that the big manufacturing sector in LA, Aerospace, is one of the industries where we’ve stayed most competitive.
I think you’ll find something similar with the SF Bay area (Silicon Valley, Port of Oakland), Seattle (Software, Port of Seattle), New York (Wall Street, Big Media, Port of New York), etc. I have no idea how much of the growth of “New Economy” businesses in those places was planned and how much was good luck, but the key point is they had something to fall back on when heavy manufacturing cratered.
Renie
On Long Island the first group found were prostitutes who solicted through Craigslist. But in the latest group (they have found ten so far) is a young child and, bones of a guy (or so they believe as of now). What is odd is that it is still not concerned a ‘panic’ type of serial killings. The local paper even had an interview with Joel Rifkin who killed prostitutes between 1989 and 1993 around here saying it wasn’t him who put those bodies there.
One a##hole said he wanted the case solved asap cause it ‘tainted’ his upscale Gilgo Beach neighborhood.
No one cares since the majority of these victims were prostitutes.
sparky
AL: thanks for the link to the original piece.
interesting here as most of the comments devolved into sideshow discussions. or maybe that’s just my bias. still i saw little to no comment on these remarks:
i’m inclined to agree with him on his last point.
OzoneR
@Renie:
people live there? I thought it was a sandbar with a highway on it?
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@sparky:
yes we are. Children are millage for the engines of the Market.
As are we all.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Renie:
Strangulation by hand is usually impulsive. None of the victims were garotted with a cord or wire for example. Its like he didn’t plan to kill them, but they failed some sort of test or pissed him off.
Phoebe
You’re welcome! My pleasure! I figured it would be up our collective tree. Or alley. My favorite aspect of The Wire was how it pantsed all institutions, including schools, but still had faith in — flawed — individual people fighting them or sneaking through them in the shadows. And that’s what gives ME hope, because I’m as cynical as that show.
And!
I, in turn, owe many thanks for that interview to…
Andrew Sullivan.
sukabi
@Phoebe: are you a Sully fan, or a fan of his flogging?
Phoebe
@sukabi: Flogging? You mean his links? He has a lot of good links. So: Both. I am a fan of his from way back, and the secret is: I’m okay with people being wrong sometimes (i.e. disagreeing with me), if I like them for stuff that is uniquely them. He has two books that are hundred proof, “Virtually Normal” (my intro to his product) and “Love Undetectable”, and he’s right about torture and a lot that’s important. Like the drug war. He’s a good egg, but he’s just wrong sometimes, including about big things. I don’t blame y’all for hating him, I get it, but I still like him.
Carol
@joe from Lowell: I think immigration has something to do with it. People have come from overseas, found themselves cheaper housing, and have created new neighborhoods. There are scads of ethnic restaurants, new urban enclaves due to the newcomers.
Newcomers see opportunity where natives have given up on the place. If the C cities of Ohio want to grow as well, it needs to embrace diversity more than they do.
NC Reggie
@ sparky yea I noticed the same thing too. Like 2 out of 93 comments focused on the last highlighted part of Simon’s interview.