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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]She's three years too late to reimagine policing.    They've already dumped a ton of mandates on the department and the department is now struggling to stay afloat.  One of the results is increased violent crime.   The political leaders should try working WITH the police department rather than against it to help improve staffing and operations.    Quit treating them like public enemy number 1.  they are county employees too.  [/quote]

It would help if they were interested in reform. They are not. They do not have any interest whatsover in racial equity, they get offended if you even mention race. They need to buckle up and be ready to be partners but if they aren't the politicians are going to keep at it because the electorate demands it.[/quote]

DP here.

Have you actually watched any of the council meetings? The police have shown up, ready and willing to work. The council has thrown inaccurate data around, often blaming MCPD directly for the faults of policing everywhere. I’ve been nothing but impressed with the professionalism shown by police administration, who have to endure the unfounded hate being flung by members of the council.

Have you actually witnessed what the public wants? The latest public forum clearly demonstrated that the public wants MORE policing, which seemed to come as a surprise to council members.

The police aren’t the enemy. Perhaps if the council could work with them, the council could see that. [/quote]

We obviously have different perspectives on the same meetings. I find MCPD to be very dishonest and disingenuous. But that's not surprising since you don't think MCPD should be held accountable for anything. I mean, increased crime is happening everywhere, that must mean there is nothing MCPD can do about it. The opioid epidemic is everywhere so no point in MCPD doing anything about it. I'm surprised you think we should even fund MCPD since you think national problems can't be addressed locally.[/quote]

This isn’t worth continuing. Yes, we have differing perspectives. A person (MCPD, in this case) isn’t being dishonest simply because you disagree with their point. Also, nowhere did I say MCPD shouldn’t be held accountable. Nowhere. Please find that line and point it out to me. Why can’t a person support the police AND expect accountability? The two are not in opposition to each other. The rest of your post is just manufactured garbage that has nothing to do with my comment.

If you are going to address MCPD in the same disingenuous manner you just addressed me, then they have no hope. [/quote]

That's not why I think they are dishonest, but keep saying that to convince yourself everyone who disagrees with you is stupid and wrong.

And yes you said, "The council has thrown inaccurate data around, often blaming MCPD directly for the faults of policing everywhere."

That means you don't think MCPD should ever have to even discuss a problem if it is one of the "faults of policing everywhere". Please.[/quote]

Holy crap that is one insane (and completely wrong) interpretation of PP’s words. [/quote]

It is the logical conclusion, you just don't want to admit it. You don't believe racism is real, just say that[/quote]

I’m a DP and not the one you are replying to.

That is not a logical conclusion. And how did you make this gargantuan jump to whether racism is real? Where did that even come from? [/quote]

Because that is what it all comes down to. You don't want to talk about it so you wave your hands and say oh it's everywhere, that's not MCPD's fault and they can't solve it. Basically an excuse to do nothing because you don't think it is real and therefore don't see the point in doing anything about it.[/quote]

I’m the original PP who posted about the council. I’m so confused by your series of responses. Who says racism isn’t real, and who says there no point in addressing racism here in Montgomery County? You can’t point ANYWHERE on this thread to those comments. Your interpretation is absurd.

It’s this type of thinking that worries me about our council. Beliefs about policing shouldn’t be this binary. MCPD has been regarded as a model department for many years, often sending officers to be chiefs in other jurisdictions. It has been ahead of the curve on training initiatives. It’s okay to acknowledge the good that comes out of the department. Acknowledging the good doesn’t mean avoiding the work that still needs to be done, or refusing to admit when there is wrongdoing. It seems, however, that the council (and the poster above) equates ANY positive mention of police as somehow horrible. [/quote]

Then what is the point of saying "blaming MCPD directly for the faults of policing everywhere"? The issues here are real. You can deny it but don't pretend you're trying to deny these issues exist. [/quote]

Different poster here, but one who's absolutely had it with the simplistic attempt this county is making toward closing racial equity gaps.

The whole traffic study is comparing stops to census data, which is a widely discredited benchmark for a mobile population.   For a lot of reasons, which I'm happy to go into if someone cares.

But here's why the county's system sets its own departments up for failure.    We don't know the drivers of the disparities.  There are many.   Many of which are outside of the county department's control.  Any county department, including police.   Because the county departments are dealing with a population that has been impacted by systemic racism at every level.  Health care, income, wealth, education, environment, and the criminal justice system.   Police can't control any of those differences.

You can alter police engagement to try to close those gaps, but without extremely careful analysis of how it impacts actual community safety, you almost always end up hurting vulnerable communities more.     Police traffic enforcement plummeted from about 100,000 stops a year to about 36,000 a year.   And traffic fatalities went up.  Guess who they were?  They were disproportionately people of color.    I am sure their families are not interested in sacrificing more lives to reduce traffic stops.  [/quote]

Which benchmark do you recommend?[/quote]

The cheapest would be non-at-fault accident data.   Understanding no benchmark is perfect.  A good data analysis specifies both the strengths and the weaknesses of its methodology.  MoCo doesn't do that.

But Connecticut uses a sophisticated, multi step process.   What they describe below is what we are doing, and what's wrong with it.  We are bush league compared to them.

"The impetus for using multiple statistical tests to identify discrimination in the second phase
was an insight made by members of the advisory board that [b]most other jurisdictions typically
choose a single analytical method for evaluating disparities. The board observed that this choice
often divided stakeholders[/b] when one group did not agree with the results or assumptions of that
particular test, that is, racial disparities exist or not. Such an approach to analyzing traffic stop
records only served to further fracture the distrust between law enforcement and communities of
color."

http://computationaljusticelab.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/1745-9133.12528.pdf

And their actual reports.

https://www.ctrp3.org/analysis-reports/reports [/quote]
You said earlier that, "The whole traffic study is comparing stops to census data, which is a widely discredited benchmark for a mobile population." But the study you linked to references using census data as one of the data points so it is hardly widely discredited. It sounds more like census data has limitations, like any benchmark.[/quote]

Reread Phase II of the analysis they perform.[/quote]

Nowhere does it say or imply that using Census data is "widely discredited". It acknowledges both benefits and limitations of Census data.[/quote]

It says not to use it alone.  They perform multiple analyses with different benchmarks and compare.

"I" am saying it's widely discredited.

2.3.9 Types of Benchmarks
One of the most problematic aspects of stop data analysis is the construction of an accurate
benchmark or baseline. 9° The difficulty is in determining the population that is at-risk of being
stopped. This is sometimes called the "denominator problem." One recent study concluded that
racially biased policing cannot be "proven" because it is currently infeasible to accurately determine
who is eligible to be stopped. 9j This conclusion stemmed from the generally accepted belief that
measures of resident population (i.e., census data) are a poor indicator of the population at risk of being
stopped. One study verified this assertion by cross-checking census data with information gathered
from an observational study. 92
Several benchmarks for motor vehicle stops have been discussed in the literature and
implemented in studies of actual stop data. 93 These include census data, adjusted census data, data
collected by the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), data gathered from blind enforcement
mechanisms, data from observational studies, crime data, traffic accident data, and survey data. 
https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/215460NCJRS.pdf

The problem, however, is that that the demographic characteristics of the people living at any one location at ten year intervals has nothing to do with the driving population in a given place, nor who is breaking the law in any specific area. We use our vehicles to travel to places away from our homes, as people generally do not work, shop, or recreate in their homes. Several studies illustrate this well.
https://www.dolanconsultinggroup.com/news/racial-profiling-or-bad-research/

Back then, and even as this document
goes to press, most agencies were and still are conducting “census benchmarking.” In census benchmarking agencies compare
the demographic profile of the drivers stopped by police to the
demographic profile of the residents of the jurisdiction as determined by the U.S. Census. For a variety of reasons, such a comparison is of no scientific value for purposes of trying to measure racial bias in policing and, in fact, has very often resulted in
misleading and unsupported findings.
https://www.policeforum.org/assets/docs/Free_Online_Documents/Racially-Biased_Policing/by%20the%20numbers%20-%20a%20guide%20for%20analyzing%20race%20data%20from%20vehicle%20stops%202004.pdf

In spite of is accessibility, many researchers, law enforcement officials, and various other groups are
highly critical of the use of residential Census data as a benchmark in stops analyses. While there are
nuances to these critiques, they all center on one central argument: that residential population data does
not accurately reflect the driving population or population at risk of encountering law enforcement. For
example, many researchers argue that the residential population of a given area is an inappropriate
benchmark for the driving population because it cannot account for daily inflows and outflows of
individuals from the area under examination. These inflows and outflows can occur for numerous
reasons; whether they are caused by commuters entering a city for work on a daily basis, individuals
driving to an area for entertainment and shopping excursions, or the fact that the driving population in an
area sitting along a major interstate will likely be impacted by flow-through traffic. Relatedly, seasonal
population changes can also be problematic, whether driven by tourism during certain months or the
significant changes that some municipalities with universities experience when students return to campus
for classes.
https://www.oregon.gov/cjc/stop/Documents/Traffic_Stop_Research_Memo_Final_Draft-10-16-18.pdf [/quote]

What this tells me is that some people, particularly law enforcement officials, 9
Object to seeing census benchmarks because it doesn't "prove" bias. That's ridiculous, the purpose of a benchmark is not to prove bias.

None of this suggests that using it is "widely discredited" in fact it's clear it's still being used by many. [/quote]

How census benchmarking is done in Montgomery County

Black residents are 18% of the population
Black drivers are 31% of the population
No other analysis.

Then they conclude that since these numbers are disparate, there must be racism.   But association is not causation.    I can't stress that enough.   More

They don't take into account any confounding factors.  Location, age, number of miles driven, time of day, road conditions, license status, intoxication status, vehicle condition, etc.

So most people who don't understand how to work with data will believe what they want to believe.  Which is that police are the most significant or even sole driver of those disparate outcomes.

Why does this matter? 
1) Because if they don't understand the real drivers of disparities, they can't easily fix them.
2) If they just try to close the gap by modifying police operations, they risk significant unintended consequences.

And if they are going to hang onto association = causation, then they need to consider this:

Traffic enforcement has fallen by 2/3 since the pandemic, and traffic/pedestrian fatalities have increased.  That's one of the potential unintended consequences that the council needs to consider before they do something stupid like mess with traffic enforcement.

[/quote]

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