LATimes: Frequent Fire (LAPD)

[DougCxx]

I don't know anything about being a police officer, can't comment on the nuts-and-bolts of things really. But this part I find humorous:

...The LAPD does not track frequent shooters. It does not even know who they are...

-Ummmm, yea,,, okay. Some very deep suspicion tells me that the police union does not want the department to formally identify frequent shooters....
~

 

[MP5]

Some very deep suspicion tells me that the police union does not want the department to formally identify frequent shooters....

I'm all for cops defending their lives, as well as taking out the bad guys when the situation warrants, but cops do need to be held to an extremely high standard, and the records of such shootings should be available to the public. Cops are an armed extension of the state, and I for one like to see the state reigned in as tightly as possible. I'm sure most cops are decent, well-meaning, brave folks who deal with lots of dangerous and depressing crap everday and get little thanks for it, but whenever you give a guy both a gun and a badge (authorization to act on the government's behalf), there's serious potential for abuse.

 

[Jeff Timm]

Well, casting a jaundiced eye across the stats, I suspect the high crime rates in LA LA Land are the result of most of the Police force running away instead of doing the job they were hired to do.

But, that's typical in Democrat occupied areas, from LA to Cincinnati.

Geoff
Who isn't amazed any more.

 

[sendec]

Possible explanation....

There are far more non-shootings, that being situations were shooting may be justified legally and by policy in which the officer doesnt fire, than actual shootings. There may also be a group of officers who shoot in these situations whereas others wil not, seeking "alternative conflict resolution."

I made it thru an entire career without shooting anyone, but there were many, many incidents in which it would have been legally and ethically justified, though the situation was resolved without deadly force. It is neither right or wrong, just differences in problem solving modalities

 

[iipalindromeii]

One distribution, or two?

Was pointed to this thread by a friend of mine, felt I had to respond. Sorry about the length of the post.

Pure chance could make this story. It's a classic case of a reporter being wowed by a standard distribution (previous discussion of teddy bears being apt), while not telling us what's important to know: one distribution, or two?

___X___
__XXX__
_XXXXX_
XXXXXXX

That's my best mock-up of a standard distribution. Now, we could have that, or we could have this:

___X______X___
__XXX____XXX__
_XXXXX__XXXXX_
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

ie two distributions. In the first case, what you'd have is just the effects of chance. In the second, there's obviously something different between the two populations (it's rarely so clear, but there are ways to quantify it). Could be anything from when they go on patrol, where they go on patrol, their time on the force, or dead girlfriends in the basement. There are other tests to determine if there is a set of things that put a person in one category or the other.

So, it's not a case of a hoplophobic slant, a need for good copy, or a hatred of the LAPD, it's just simple innumeracy. This particular one is about as common as being thrown by regression to the mean. I imagine since the reporter has put in the effort on research, he'd be interested in finding out the truth. I've sent the paper an email about it, maybe we'll get a followup story?

 

[Gifted]

I'd imagine there are other factors that tilt the probability scales, such as this: How often do SWAT teams rotate the point man? I'd imagine of all the people on the team, he's the most likely to shoot, and would therefore have a higher number of shootings than the others. If a person is on point alot, he'd be even more likely to have a large number of shootings.

 

[Andrew Rothman]

So, it's not a case of a hoplophobic slant, a need for good copy, or a hatred of the LAPD, it's just simple innumeracy.

This presumes that the fourth largest newspaper in the country does a very long, very politically charged statistics story without talking to a statistician.

I'm afraid that that is akin to believing that the Antis just don't understand that flash hiders and bayonet mounts don't make rifles more dangerous.

When people who should know better consistently act as if they don't, one must begin to suspect that it is indeed an act, with an accompanying ulterior motive.

 

[twency]

one must begin to suspect that it is indeed an act, with an accompanying ulterior motive.

Well, I'm willing to accept that it might just be gross negligence. Sort of like the legal standard, applicable to some crimes, that a person "knew or should have known" that he or she was committing the crime. I would concede the possibility in this case that the author may not have known, but certainly should have known, how misleading those numbers might be.

-twency
________________
Nothing is foolproof to a talented fool.

 

[Baba Louie]

Maybe someone could make a valid comparitive relationship between these men and women and, say, WWI and WWII Fighter Aces who racked up high scores while other pilots flew the same number of missions and maybe got one or two kills in the air.

So what we have here is an article that Some Cops ride TO the sound of guns and BG's and deal with them accordingly. Others, while still doing their jobs, have less eventful and thus maybe stressful, lives.

Personally, I'm glad our society still turns out such men and women warriors. I'd hate to think of the end result of our communities if we did not have such people working FOR us.

As un-THR as it may sound, I do believe that there are a lot of people (select criminal types) who need to be taken out of the gene pool as ill suited to live and breed in our close knit society. This is not a new lesson in civics.

It was an interesting read.