Police discrimination to prevent crime - okay or not?

[Loppan Torkel]

http://online.wsj.com/article/APabcd06f6b9464445a24b6c44d4842601.html

NEW YORK — At Columbia University and elsewhere, the fear that the New York Police Department might secretly be infiltrating Muslim student's lives has spread beyond them to others who find the reported tactics "disgusting," as one teenager put it.

The NYPD surveillance of Muslims on a dozen college campuses in the Northeast is a surprising and disappointing violation, students said Saturday in reaction to Associated Press reports that revealed the intelligence-gathering at Columbia and elsewhere.

"If this is happening to innocent Muslim students, who's next?" asked freshman Dina Morris, 18, of Amherst, Mass. "I'm the child of an immigrant, and I was just blown away by the news; it's disgusting."

Documents obtained by the AP show that the NYPD used undercover officers and informants to infiltrate Muslim student groups. An officer even went whitewater rafting with students and reported on how many times they prayed and what they discussed. Police also trawled college websites and blogs, compiling daily reports on the activities of Muslim students and academics.

It was all part of the NYPD's efforts to keep tabs on Muslims throughout the region as part of the department's anti-terrorism efforts. Police built databases of where Muslims lived and worked, where they prayed, even where they watched sports.

Most good citizens want a low crime rate. They wouldn't want to be the victim of fraud, corruption, violence, terror acts, etc. Neither would most want to be the subject of discrimination.

Most nations have a law enforcement agency whose job it is to prevent crime. If we presume the NYPD not are racist pigs but actually are trying to do their job in preventing or gathering information about would be extremists - is this kind of infiltration of Muslim students okay in your mind?

 

[LucyDuke]

It's pretty embarrassing. But we don't even need to talk about whether it's okay, unless someone can show that it's worth what it costs.

 

[Tee Kay]

The only case it is okay for police to discriminate against people (by which I mean keeping surveillance, etc, the sort of stuff in the article) is if they actually have or are suspected to have done something illegal or suspicious.

And even then, innocence until proven guilty.

It seems that in the case of Muslims, it's "guilty until proven Non-Muslims".

Spying on innocent civilians for no other reason than that they happen to identify with a certain religion, race, gender or age group is not only a breach of trust and human rights, but also counterproductive. Treat people like good citizens, and most of the time you get good citizens. Treat people like criminals, and... you get the idea.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

It's pretty embarrassing. But we don't even need to talk about whether it's okay, unless someone can show that it's worth what it costs.

At least as a short term strategy, I'm pretty sure it's more cost effective to focus the efforts where and when the crime takes place and thereby discriminate against the groups with a higher crime rate. Males are a more prone to violence and rape in a population, poverty is a factor contributing to theft, etc. The taxpayers money is more efficiently spent if groups of people are specifically targeted than if not.

 

[Ayn Rand]

Well, discrimination seems to be okay when it comes to handing out University placements in favour of certain groups.

So I wonder - is it inconsistent to want that, but to complain about targeted policing? Or vice versa.

 

[Tee Kay]

There's a fine line between "put more police in high-crime-rates area" and "secretly spying on everyday activities of any high school dropouts".

 

[Winner]

Muslims, especially young male Muslims, are a high-risk group with regard to possible terrorist acts, so it makes sense to keep an eye on them. They are, on the other hand, much less likely to steal canned pork in supermarkets, so if the police were looking for such shoplifters, it would be a waste of effort to look among them.

It's simple common sense. If some age/ethnic/religious/other group is statistically more likely to commit a certain type of crime, it should be watched more closely by the police. By watched over, I don't mean harassed, so all you PC multikulti types can breathe again.

Spying on innocent civilians for no other reason than that they happen to identify with a certain religion, race, gender or age group is not only a breach of trust and human rights,

Neither trust nor human rights are involved here.

but also counterproductive. Treat people like good citizens, and most of the time you get good citizens. Treat people like criminals, and... you get the idea.

How charmingly naive. Also, nice touch there trying to blame crime on the government.

 

[lovett]

In principle, I think this is perfectly fine.

The prima facie problem is one of equality and equal respect. Treating certain people differently on the basis of some group of which they are a part seems like a violation of the norm of equal treatment. In this case, it seems like a violation of the states duty to show equal respect to all its citizens; by targeting some citizens it is disrespecting them.

But I do not think that is actually the case. Equal treatment does not, after all, demand that we treat everyone exactly the same. Helping disadvantaged groups and providing things like disability allowances naturally aren't treating everyone the same. They constitute precisely treating the disabled ad disadvantaged differently. Nonetheless, they do count as treating everyone the same in an important way; they count as enabling everyone to live lives of equal value and thus treat everyone the same in terms of their value as persons.

So there mere fact that there is disequal treatment does not mean we are violating our norms of equal treatment. The same could be argued regarding respect; we do not disrespect the undisabled when we give the disabled allowances.

Obviously, this case is different; it is not the helping of a certain group but the targeting of a certain group. However, I do not think it obvious that that makes a significant difference. If said group is more likely to be criminal in whatever way, this simply constitutes treating that group as equal with respect to their likelihood to engage in criminal activities. That doesn't mean we need to treat them as exactly equal; we can treat those more likely to be criminal in a different way to those less likely to be so without violating equality.

This is why we can allow 'incapacitation' to feature in our criminal justice system. We can make the assessment that a murderer or rapist is likely to re-offend and thus argue that they should be imprisoned on these grounds, to protect wider society. That is treating these individuals differently, but not in a manner that violates equality in a worrying way.

My argument here is that, in principle, if a certain group is more likely to commit a crime that group can be legitimately focused on in order to prevent said crime. We ca focus police forces in high-crime areas, for instance. We can do this without violating norms of equal treatment nor of respect, because we are treating everyone as equal in respect to their a priori likelihood to commit crime.

Of course, I have said nothing about practice. In practice, methods of the kind outlined in the OP are probably ineffective and almost certainly turn out to be disrespectful.

 

[Tee Kay]

Muslims, especially young male Muslims, are a high-risk group with regard to possible terrorist acts

Yes... high risk...

By watched over, I don't mean harassed, so all you PC multikulti types can breathe again.

This has nothing to do with multiculturalism; it does have everything to do with the principle of equality before the law that is so hyped about by the West. Even if you're in favour of an aggressive assimilationist policy, I don't see how you can support a policy based on panic/sensationalism that constantly reinforces ghettoisation and the mentality of Otherness among the very people you want to assimilate as much as possible into the wider society.

Neither trust nor human rights are involved here.

Oh secretly spying on people who you pretend to be your friends is no breach of trust at all...

How charmingly naive. Also, nice touch there trying to blame crime on the government.

Statistics on rehabilitation and crime rates seem to agree with me.

And yeah, I'm totally blaming crime on the government, at least partially; or are you saying that the way people run a society has absolutely no effect on crime rates...?

 

[attackfighter]

Only sissy boy *******ites would be opposed to this. In fact they're also the only ones who would think there's a choice in the matter. "******* raydars off the chart here, cap'n, wait sir they might actually tolerate *******s here, what is this strange land where *******s control everything?" "Amerika sir, Amerika". Welcome to Amerika, you can check out but you can never leave, except in a body bag.
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[Tee Kay]

Oh such a delightfully informative post. Those are really hard to come by these days.

edit: good post by lovett. I agree with almost everything you said. This particular case is different though; the police is targeting a too broad group that doesn't really have a high crime rate (unless the police gets all their statistics from JihadWatch) to justify targeting that group in the first place.

 

[Old Hippy]

There's a fine line between "put more police in high-crime-rates area" and "secretly spying on everyday activities of any high school dropouts".

reminds me of south Australia... when all those drop outs formed the Government and wanted to see their files kept on them by the Special Branch... the files were remarkably up to date, even if often wrong

 

[Loppan Torkel]

Oh such a delightfully informative post. Those are really hard to come by these days.

edit: good post by lovett. I agree with almost everything you said. This particular case is different though; the police is targeting a too broad group that doesn't really have a high crime rate (unless the police gets all their statistics from JihadWatch) to justify targeting that group in the first place.

You recommend they switch to loonwatch, I suspect... You linked to the site showing Muslims are accounted for 0,04% of the terrorist acts. Do you have a percentage of the deaths in terrorist acts for the same period in the US?

 

[Traitorfish]

If we presume the NYPD not are racist pigs but actually are trying to do their job...

That's quite a suspension of disbelief you're asking us to work with.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

That's quite a suspension of disbelief you're asking us to work with.

It may be in jest.. ..but why wouldn't it be a reasonable premise for the thread? You live in Scotland.. Do you suspect a global police conspiracy or is this just a leftist general contempt for law enforcement?

I think there's more to discuss if we assume both the police and Muslims, in general, are people of reasonable moral standards.

 

[attackfighter]

Well basically with 1st world police you have two types of officers:

1) The ones who are not fat and go out on patrol.
2) The ones who are monstrously obese and basically just push papers and only go out for simple jobs (which they inevitably screw up).

Most people here have probably only committed minor offences and not major ones and so that would put them into contact with the screw up officers. So I can see why they attract so much disdain around here. If any of you committed a serious offence you would probably have more respect for law enforcement, because they would have sent their competent officers to kick your butts instead.

Oh and I find it funny that I was discriminated against in a thread about discrimination hahaha. Guess you can't stand having a handsome man like me around, making funny jokes about liberals? Oh well, your loss.
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[Traitorfish]

It may be in jest.. ..but why wouldn't it be a reasonable premise for the thread? You live in Scotland.. Do you suspect a global police conspiracy or is this just a leftist general contempt for law enforcement?

The reputation of the NYPD is not exactly stellar, in this regard. I don't know anything about global police conspiracies, but I wouldn't trust that particular troupe of state-sanctioned thugs as far as I can throw them.

 

[ruff_hi]

Well - if you carry this argument forward to its logical conclusion ... you end up here where everyone(!) is a unregistered sex offenders.

 

[downtown]

Muslims, especially young male Muslims, are a high-risk group with regard to possible terrorist acts, so it makes sense to keep an eye on them.

Sounds like pretty crappy police work there, if that is about as specific as they can get. Young, fairly affluent, white males with an affinity towards computer games also sounds like the ideal demographic for an American School Shooter. Would we be okay with the FBI following us?

I think this is stupid. First, as others point out in the article, you aren't going to find many potential terrorists in these groups...these are rich kid schools, and these muslim groups are pretty mainstream, filled with kids whose families have been in the US for more than a generation. Not as likely to fly to Somalia for training...

Second, it's a great way to turn somebody who previously trusted America into somebody who doesn't!

Third, it does fly in the face of that whole free association business. Today, it's Muslims (and some campus peace groups). Tomorrow, it could be Mormons, or Latinos, or Eastern Europeans, or anybody really.

If a kid joins a gang, follow him. If he does things substantially more suspicious than just the Muslim-Student Association at Yale, make a phone call. If he's just minding his own business, being a Muslim, you're making the problem worse.

 

[attackfighter]

Sounds like pretty crappy police work there, if that is about as specific as they can get. Young, fairly affluent, white males with an affinity towards computer games also sounds like the ideal demographic for an American School Shooter. Would we be okay with the FBI following us?

I think this is stupid. First, as others point out in the article, you aren't going to find many potential terrorists in these groups...these are rich kid schools, and these muslim groups are pretty mainstream, filled with kids whose families have been in the US for more than a generation. Not as likely to fly to Somalia for training...

Second, it's a great way to turn somebody who previously trusted America into somebody who doesn't!

Third, it does fly in the face of that whole free association business. Today, it's Muslims (and some campus peace groups). Tomorrow, it could be Mormons, or Latinos, or Eastern Europeans, or anybody really.

If a kid joins a gang, follow him. If he does things substantially more suspicious than just the Muslim-Student Association at Yale, make a phone call. If he's just minding his own business, being a Muslim, you're making the problem worse.

You completely miss the point as to why profiling is beneficial and necessary.