You’re right: there is no difference; they both don’t work and are unethical. The idea that someone may commit a crime based on things they are doing is abhorrent. It runs against the idea of innocent until proven guilty.
It’s the same idea as “violent video games cause violent people;” It’s not true. If you play an online FPS like COD, should we be watching you more closely because you may end up shooting up some place?
EDIT: previously said “guilty until proven innocent”
You aren't contributing honestly. The police systems work, but they have problems. And again, don't view Canadian policing with an American lens.
Toronto, for example, has an independent division of police called the SIU, Special Investigations Unit. Any time an officer is involved in a violent altercation, the SIU is onsite and investigating. Not perfect, but better. They also have a mental health unit that responds to non-violent calls where people are in distress. Again, not perfect, but better. Toronto and Vancouver both operate safe injection sites. Toronto recently put up hundreds of homeless people into vacant apartments to get them off the street.
All this to say, I don't see these programs in the US. You guys aren't even trying to improve your Police. Don't view canadian police with an American lens.
I'm not sure you want to look at the SIU as some paragon of justice holding police to account. The SIU is not a division of the police, being under the purview of the provincial government, but it sure is staffed by a whole lot of former police (nearly all white too) who seem to have no problem finding other police innocent of any wrongdoing. The most recent stats I read were that 97% of cases are cleared without charges and you can count on 1 hand the number of cops who actually went to jail over their 30 year existence. Their "mental health unit" didn't do much to save Regis Korchinski-Paquet, and the feckless SIU wasn't much better in investigating. They also don't deserve any credit for the current investigation of Ejaz Choudry's murder, another person with mental health problems being "assisted" by police while in distress.
Absolutely police systems work, as long as you're not on the side that's being policed.
As someone who experience with both Canadian and US police, I think the differences are less than they appear. Especially when you take into account Canada has 1/10th the US population (so you’d expect 1/10th of the incidents).
I’ve had several friends who have been tuned up by either the RCMP or provincial police. Sure, you’re less likely to get shot than in the US, but my anecdotal experience suggests there are plenty of bad apples in Canada.
Hell, they are still trying to clean up the RCMP. You see some pretty egregious behavior in the small town detatchments.
Nope, they're not the same, but I've lived on both sides of the border and see a high degree of similarity. Out West, we don't have much of a black population. The issues with policing here are stark when comparing indigenous to non-indigenous populations. We had an analogous incident to Trayvon Martin a few years back; white dude murdered an indigenous dude, was tried by at white jury and got off scott free: it's not just the police, it's also the broader culture that has seen indigenous peoples as vermin since first contact. We have police shooting to kill instead of de-escalating. Even in Vancouver, I see cops treating white arrestees with dignity and respect whereas I see them pinning black and indigenous people to the ground as their first move -- almost every single interaction that I've witnessed. Toronto had a program very similar, and with similar impact, to NYC's stop and frisk program. White criminals go largely unmolested, while even middle class black and indigenous people get harrassed on the regular.
Militarized cops carrying long guns and wearing body armor show up to nonviolent oil protests and do what they can to escalate the scene. Liberals were outspoken against declaring nonviolent oil protests an act of terrorism until they got in power, and then the story was "we don't want to take this enforcement tool from the police." Generational trauma from the residential schools, a "soft genocide," remains unaddressed to this day and white citizenry doesn't seem to understand why folks want to topple statues of John Macdonald. The medical system is still forcably sterilizing and removing children from indigenous women.
The main difference is that the genocide in canada was largely effective; the black population in the US wasn't eradicated to the same degree, so the racialized politics aren't as visible here.
We need to remove a bunch of duties from police, and hand them to social services, mental health care workers, and unarmed bylaws enforcement. Just like the US. That will free the police up to investigate actual crimes, and work to improve the lives of people who are shat on by our society.
> Even in Vancouver, I see cops treating white arrestees with dignity and respect whereas I see them pinning black and indigenous people to the ground as their first move -- almost every single interaction that I've witnessed.
This is nothing but an anecdote; you don't know the whole situation in these cases, you're probably just walking by, you don't know what happened beforehand, you don't know what level of threat these individuals posed. It's also almost certainly a case of bias confirmation, you're paying attention to the demographics during an arrest and chalking up datapoints when you see what you're looking for. Are you everywhere in the city? Do you have a representative sample of policing? Not even close.
You're just looking to see this happening, and nowhere in your mind does it possibly occur to you that these perps might have been disrespectful, might have fought back, might be "known to police" already as a troublemaker that's causing yet again another incident despite living in a city with nothing but programs and handouts and tolerance for the antics of the homeless.
> nonviolent oil protests
Illegal trespassing, in many cases, and the show of force is to make it clear that there will be no violence, because none will be tolerated. If anything, it should help make it far more clear cut that there cannot be any pushback on these issues. It doesn't matter what your opinion is on the subject, it matters what has been decided by the government, and it's probably better that a protestor realizes that they have no hope of violent resistance rather than giving it a try.
> The main difference is that the genocide in canada was largely effective
Is this really how my fellow citizens view their own history? What an incredibly biased, anti-White narrative. No wonder folks like you want to deconstruct everything that is well-built, predictable, and good about our nation as we have it today: you view it all as an evil inheritance that was stolen, rather than a beautiful workable system hewn out of cruel nature.
> We need to remove a bunch of duties from police, and hand them to social services, mental health care workers, and unarmed bylaws enforcement.
I'll give you this: it might actually have a chance of working here, to some extent, because of how nonviolent people generally are and because we don't have a massively armed population.
Still, there will be incidents where these unarmed support officers are going to be physically overpowered, abused, beaten, even raped; there will be incidents when people get away who should be caught; and when it happens, we'll all just have to remember that that wouldn't have happened if sufficient force had been present.
> work to improve the lives of people who are shat on by our society.
One of the big dichotomies between people like you and people like me is that it never seems like your side is willing to admit to the large numbers of people in this position who themselves shit on society rather than the other way around. Again, we have as many opportunities for a leg up here as there have ever been, anywhere in the world.
In particular I think the Beothuk in particular might have opinions on this.
There is a good reason to have an honest reckoning with history and then move forward from there, not for the purposes of blame but rather to start with a sound basis in fact for making decisions about the future.
> It seems like perhaps there is a lot of Canadian history that you haven't reckoned with.
Perhaps instead it's simply that I am an adherent to the great Western tradition of the last two thousand years: namely, the sins of the father are not the sins of the son.
I see narratives like this as an attempt to bludgeon Canadians into accepting blame for the actions of others which are deliberately contextualized by "historians" to make them sound as evil as possible.
Great, there were some battles in the past. My ancestors, like everyone else's, fought battles for their existence from the dawn of time. How many subgroups were wiped out in Europe as they vied for dominance? Should I feel bad for them, too? Do you? Should people just be passive, do you think that will work game-theoretically in the long term?
> an honest reckoning with history
All "honest reckonings" that have come out in the last hundred years or so are used to demonize western people; small wonder that people are beginning to question whether it's really honesty, or an attempt to disenfranchise us within the nations we created and brought to greatness.
I think that if accepting the truth of what actually happened is viewed by you as being "bludgeon[ed] into accepting blame for the actions of others" is a problem with how you personalize the actions of others in the past that you view as part of your identity group as opposed to an attempt to blame you personally.
If I quote John A Macdonald saying ".. refusing food until the Indians are on the verge of starvation to reduce the expense" and then quote Mackenzie's response that he's not starving them enough - how is that offensive to you personally? It seems like it could only hurt you if you believe that you are on the "team" of the governments of that day - why would you think that? Let's all be on the team of justice and fairness and not take personal offense at the ignorance of the leaders of the past (or the present for that matter)!
> a problem with how you personalize the actions of others in the past that you view as part of your identity group as opposed to an attempt to blame you personally.
I can accept what happened, from the historical record, while denying that it needs to have massive historical relevance to current events, or that it implies any requirement of action. I can accept what happened without accepting that it is okay for it to be used as a method of attacking my identity group, none of the living population of which have committed such acts.
The fact that the deaths of these people will be brought up for hundreds of years with no path to redemption on the part of my identity group is a problem. What I take from this is that there is to be no "burying the hatchet", so to speak; that my children will also be blamed for this with the same severity that I am, as will my grandchildren, as will people in the year 2300.
It will NEVER stop being a bone of contention as long as it continues to have narrative power to attack my group; it will never stop having this power until it is simply denied its power and shrugged off as the actions of another century.
> If I quote John A Macdonald saying ".. refusing food until the Indians are on the verge of starvation to reduce the expense" and then quote Mackenzie's response that he's not starving them enough - how is that offensive to you personally?
It is offensive to me personally because quotes like this are not part of the mere study of history, but are brought up specifically to be used as a justification to literally behead the statues of the founders of my country. These statues, like all public art and memorials, are supposed to stand as historical artifacts and truths regardless of the actions these people committed. This justification to tear down statues in turn becomes one of the many steps on the road towards overthrowing my country and my culture entirely. One look at what is happening in the USA today is all it should take to make it clear that this is just the means to an end: once every statue is removed it will be on to the museums, and they're already working on the textbooks.
> Let's all be on the team of justice and fairness
As long as the old-stock, historical Canadian nation gets a seat at the table and gets to be represented for what it is, that's fine; I want justice as much as the next person. In fact, I am of the belief that we've got just about the best justice system in the world here, and I only want to see it improve. It is clear to me that for this to work, the improvement needs to come in a form that doesn't demonize White Canadians as genocidal people, or as inheriting the sin of genocide, as though we came across the nation and murdered everyone we saw with impunity. Such a thing could not be further from the truth.
> I can accept what happened, from the historical record, while denying that it needs to have massive historical relevance to current events, or that it implies any requirement of action.
Apply this logic to me walking up to you on the street and beating you and stealing all your money and two days later saying, "I acknowledge what happened, but I don't think it is relevant to today or implies any requirement of action to remedy."
Likewise apply this logic to me seizing all the property of your parents when you were an infant and then you as an adult approach me about this and I say, "I acknowledge what happened, but I don't think it is relevant to today or implies any requirement of action to remedy."
Likewise apply this logic to me seizing all the property of your grandparents when your father was an child and then you as an adult approach me about this and I say, "I acknowledge what happened, but I don't think it is relevant to today or implies any requirement of action to remedy."
Without worrying about why I might have done those things above when I did them or just how much responsibility I might have for the actions, the various mitigation or explanations, that an injustice occurred and that consideration should be given to righting it seems trivial to acknowledge. Just consideration, it doesn't even cost anything!
Just because it’s not the USA doesn’t mean it will turn out rosy. It does a lot of harm when everybody assumes that “bad things won’t happen here, so in this case it’s fine”
Part of the argument of the "abolish the police" movement is that putting cars in high-crime neighborhoods becomes as self fulfilling prophecy. More police mean more crimes, even for slight infractions that someone in a lower crime neighborhood (read: white and middle class) would likely get away with.
I think the issues here are much more nuanced than rhetoric can encompass, but the problem with preventative policing strategies is that they seem to find a way to justify themselves, making them ultimately self defeating and that perhaps preventative policing should be replaced with other preventative measures.
Somehow a neighborhood gets the label "High Crime".
If the label is created due to the sum of reports from community and reports from officers, we could remove the officer generated reports to create a less biased label.
So you’re saying the presence of police cars makes someone more likely to steal my bike? Someone is more likely to commit an armed robbery in front of the cops?
Unless you are talking about speeding tickets, these are really bad arguments. Which is to be expected from anyone who thinks “abolish the police” will improve anybody’s life who isn’t named El Chapo.
I think the policing problems of the US may not be applicable to Canadian cities such as Vancouver (referenced in the article as being tracked using https://geodash.vpd.ca) since the vast majority of crimes in Vancouver are property crimes, and thus likely citizen-reported.
That being said it does feel like violent crime is increasing here, as the COVID pandemic has exacerbated the already-ongoing opioid public health emergency.
I would assume the algorithm predicts the actual type of crime, or at least category (e.g. violent versus theft versus moving violation). Then it's still up to the department which crimes to target (which I really hope would be the crimes with victims).
I’m not referencing persecution, but surveillance. I’ll admit that it is a gray area. But dubious or outright false criteria are used all the time until a court orders the police to stop.
As for “putting more patrol cars in high-crime neighborhoods,” that is somewhat different IMO because a high-crime neighborhood actually commits more crime (assuming accurate reporting). But, for example, “plays violent video games,” is a meaningless statistic with no correlation to reality.
> The idea that someone may commit a crime based on things they are doing is abhorrent. It runs against the idea of innocent until proven guilty.
That's nonsense, it has nothing to do with the presumption of innocence, that only comes into play at a trial.
Law enforcement often looks at things that aren't crimes to predict crimes. An obvious example: people grooming minors online. It's totally legal to talk to a twelve-year-old on the internet. It's totally legal to meet twelve-year-olds you've talked to on the internet. But it's highly suspicious when you're 30, and if the police hears about it, they'll very much be interested in checking that out, even though you haven't committed any crimes yet.
It's a different question whether these systems look at things that are strong predictors of criminal activity or not.
I agree with the unethical part but I'm not so sure about the statement that they don't work. Check out this video [0] which talks about profiling at Ben Gurion airport.
The ship may have sailed, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t push back against further abuses of power. It’s easy to give more power to them, but much harder to remove it.
It’s the same idea as “violent video games cause violent people;” It’s not true. If you play an online FPS like COD, should we be watching you more closely because you may end up shooting up some place?
EDIT: previously said “guilty until proven innocent”