Category: Skepticism

Peelian Policing Principles

I think Barron introduced me to these in one if his posts. Sir Robert Peel, who helped organize the London Metropolitan Police and later served as prime minister, set out principles for ethical policing. These are what I use to help me judge police actions and culture.

1. To prevent crime and disorder, as an alternative to their repression by military force and severity of legal punishment.

2. To recognise always that the power of the police to fulfil their functions and duties is dependent on public approval of their existence, actions and behaviour and on their ability to secure and maintain public respect.

3. To recognise always that to secure and maintain the respect and approval of the public means also the securing of the willing co-operation of the public in the task of securing observance of laws.

4. To recognise always that the extent to which the co-operation of the public can be secured diminishes proportionately the necessity of the use of physical force and compulsion for achieving police objectives.

5. To seek and preserve public favour, not by pandering to public opinion; but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy, and without regard to the justice or injustice of the substance of individual laws, by ready offering of individual service and friendship to all members of the public without regard to their wealth or social standing, by ready exercise of courtesy and friendly good humour; and by ready offering of individual sacrifice in protecting and preserving life.

6. To use physical force only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient to obtain public co-operation to an extent necessary to secure observance of law or to restore order, and to use only the minimum degree of physical force which is necessary on any particular occasion for achieving a police objective.

7. To maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

8. To recognise always the need for strict adherence to police-executive functions, and to refrain from even seeming to usurp the powers of the judiciary of avenging individuals or the State, and of authoritatively judging guilt and punishing the guilty.

9. To recognise always that the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, and not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with them.

Lifted from Wikipedia

Mother Teresa – Hitch Was Right

Christopher Hitchens was excoriated for his book The Missionary Position, which debunked the popular view of Mother Teresa as a symbol of altruism.

Canadian researchers have substantiated Hitch.

I despise frauds. Especially those who use the suffering of others to defraud. They taint the concept of charity, which in my opinion, is an important and vital piece of human society. (A point that steered me away from Objectivist dogma).

I could also bash the Catholic Church for their rush to make Mother Teresa a saint, but well, that’s kind of like bashing a rattlesnake for being poisonous.

Friday Quote – Tim Minchin

Alternative medicine, by definition, has either not been proved to work or proved not to work. Do you know what they call alternative medicine that’s been proved to work? Medicine.

Tim Minchin, Storm

Here’s where that quote came from:

Friday Quote – George Orwell

Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.

George Orwell

Maybe this should be explained to the major networks (including Fox) that this applies to members of their same ideological bent.

It’s Scary That You Actually Believe What You’re Saying

One of Slate’s writers did a cute little animated video on why we shouldn’t worry about the debt.

I’m sorry to tell you this, but the government can’t indefinitely print money (ask the Weimar Republic) and our inflation rate is missing two key indicators (food and energy). You’re also missing something in the neighborhood of $200 trillion in unfunded obligations (Social Security, Medicare, federal pensions).

Update: Reason has a better article on what’s wrong with the video.

Slate, please go talk to a real economist and try again.

Kevin Trudeau Goes to Jail!

As a skeptic, big wins are often few and far between, which makes those big wins so much sweeter.

From the HuffPo:

U.S. District Judge Ronald Guzman blasted the 50-year-old Trudeau before the sentencing, saying that for decades he “steadfastly attempted to cheat others for his own personal gain.” Guzman called Trudeau “deceitful to the core.”Minutes before, Trudeau apologized to the court and said he was a changed man. Trudeau has been jailed since November, when jurors convicted him of criminal contempt for defying a 2004 court order barring him from running false ads about the book. Despite the order, Trudeau aired the infomercials at least 32,000 times, according to prosecutors.

There were anecdotal reports of the infomercial running even when Trudeau was being sentenced.

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Friday Quote – William Blum

No matter how paranoid or conspiracy minded you are, what the government is doing is worse this you imagine.

William Blum, former State Dept. Worker

My brother was telling me yesterday about discussions surrounding the security hole found in Apple’s iOS which necessitated the emergency patch, and that’s there’s been some discussion about whether the NSA might have turned an Apple employee or infiltrated Apple. Two years ago, this would have been tin-foil hat territory. Now, it seems scarily possible.

Even Our Own Narratives May Be Flawed

How many of us have heard the story of Kitty Genovese, who was raped and murdered outside her apartment building while thirty-eight of her neighbors just watched and did nothing? I know I’ve heard it repeated by bloggers and authors. Yeah, not so much.

Across the street, a man named Robert Mozer heard Genovese from his apartment. Looking out his seventh-floor window, he saw a man and a woman, sensed an ­altercation — he couldn’t see exactly what was happening — and yelled out his window, “Leave that girl alone!”

Moseley [the man convicted of Genovese’s rape and murder] later testified that Mozer’s action “frightened” him, sending him back to his car. At this point, Genovese was still alive, her wounds nonfatal.
Fourteen-year-old Michael Hoffman, who lived in the same building as Mozer, also heard the commotion. He looked out his window and told his father, Samuel, what he saw. Samuel called the police, and after three or four minutes on hold, he reached a police dispatcher. He related that a woman “got beat up and was staggering around,” and gave them the location.

Other neighbors heard something as well, but it wasn’t always clear what. Some looked out the window to see Moseley scurrying away, or Genovese, having stood up, now walking slowly down the block, leaning against a building. From their vantage point, it wasn’t obvious that she was wounded. Others who looked didn’t see her at all, as Genovese walked around a corner, trying to make her way home at 82-70 Austin St.

But the police did not respond to Samuel Hoffman’s call, and Moseley, seeing no help was imminent, returned. He hunted down Genovese — who had made it to a vestibule in her building before collapsing — stabbed her several more times, then raped her.

Word of the attack spread though the building. A woman named Sophie Farrar, all of 4-foot-11, rushed to the vestibule, risking her life in the process. For all she knew, the attacker might have still been there. As luck would have it, he was not, and Farrar hugged and cradled the bloodied Genovese, who was struggling for breath.

Despite the attempts of various neighbors to help, Moseley’s final stab wounds proved fatal, and Farrar did her best to comfort Genovese in the nightmarish ­final minutes of her life.

So, some people did try to help, some were unsure of what was going on, and some were the scumbags we’ve always thought when hearing the story. Also, the police didn’t respond.

What are the lessons we can learn?

1. Some people will always be willing to help (a little like yelling down to a lot like rushing into a dangerous situation to help)

2. Most people need some convincing or directing to help. These are your bystanders that if you give them direction will help in a situation.

3. There are always some scumbags who will not help or will try to take advantage of a bad situation. I will never forget Michael Bane talking about friends of his who returned to their NY apartments after evacuating due to the attack on the WTC and finding their homes looted. All we can do is limit these people’s influence on events (although I wouldn’t shed many tears if they were pounded into the ground).

4. Official help may not be coming. They may be dealing with other emergencies, be hamstrung by bureaucratic rules, or just not give a damn about your emergency. This comes back to the first question of preparedness – What’s Your Plan?

Narratives are rarely as simple as they are made to be. Nothing with humans ever is. Just believing in the bystander effect will ignore the good people trying to help, not stop the bad trying to interfere, and forget that sometimes help isn’t coming. We are much better served by basing our plans on reality than stories that conform to our biases.