BART crime rise: Should crime information be released even if it may support "stereotypes"? (Please read)

Yes, report it honestly. Facts are facts, no matter how people want to spin them.

Not telling the truth and not releasing the honest numbers = Fake News.

Keep people ignorant about danger so you wouldn’t seem.“offensive”. Seems legit.

BART has gotten so bad in the last ten years (I am a daily rider since 1980) that using BART to discuss anything is pointless. Of course it is bad policy, it comes from BART!

BART places safety second to avoidance of demonstrations. The BART police don’t patrol the cars, they don’t patrol stations in Oakland and San Francisco, they mostly spend time ticketing parking violations.

I agree that security in the Bart system is laughable. But there are so many bad aspects to Bart, that I could bitch about em through the rest of the night. I don’t know if the system is just overtaxed or wtf is going on. There is a radio program on the local public radio staion at this very moment discussing the growth in criminal incidents on the BART. The blurb from the system’s spokesman amounted to “hey, crime’s up everywhere. Why should we be any different?”

Reporting definately should be honest and complete.
Profiling by statistics should not be impaired by the problematic results of profiling by panic or prejudice. Profiling is an honest tool, when used properly, with caution.

Absolutely.
#JusticeForChoirboys

It’s unbelievably stupid (I’m referring to the man’s statement, not your question). It should go without saying that all crime statistics should be reported honestly.

BART should release the videos and post them to a youtube channel so everyone can see the perps and decide for themselves.
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I hope all riders with phones have a “Locate my stolen phone” app installed and turned on..

BART’s information policy is no different than most urban school boards, the national news, and a pretty big chunk of the Federal Bureaucracy.
Why should they be expected to be any different? They are merely conforming to an established standard.

The only thing BART cares about is knuckling under to the BART unions and milking taxpayers and fare payers for more money to line their pockets. BART will cut corners as much as they can until they get negative press and only then well they react.

This is an example of the dark side of political correctness. It is PC gone bad. Personally, I would want to know the danger zones and what to look out for in reference to my own protection, even if it means publishing the characteristics and behaviours of the perps—especially if I were new in town and wasn’t aware of the socio-economic problems in Oakland and certain sections of San Francisco. Oakland was just another blue collar town next to a university town the last time I was in the Bay Area.

I get @Sneki2‘s remark in that she sees how ridiculous the BART policy is.

I also think @LuckyGuy has a viable solution: Report the danger without racial identifiers, but place the BART vids on YT, local news and other popular media so people will be informed of the danger and can see for themselves what to look out for—although this doesn’t help blind people who live alone who are one of our most vulnerable segments of society.

On a related note, one of the problems with “posting the vids” is that BART put dummy cameras into the cars many years ago, and only after they got caught did they actually install cameras. And no one has seen an actual video yet from any of the new cameras.

^^Thank you for making my point.

@DominicY How quickly we call racist! This IS what I don’t like about politically correct. If it’s blacks, Asians, native Americans why do we beat around the bush?!! Let’s please tell it like it is.

We had a shooting in my state where the news reported the shooter as “other than white”! If that isn’t the dumbest description I don’t know what would be. Somewhere along the line we completely buried “common sense”!

And (as an aside I am confident I will be called out for this “insensitive” comment.) and as an unfortunate result of this type of reporting/non reporting more people will be affected by this criminal behavior.

If we’re going to aim for objective reporting the race or religion of the attackers should only be mentioned if it is relevant to the crime. If the perpetrators happen to be black this should only be mentioned if the attacks were racist in nature. If the attackers were Christians this need only be mentioned if there was a religious motive for the crime. On the other hand where the attacks occurred is relevant as people may want to be extra careful on these routes or avoid travelling on them altogether.

^^Bullshit. If the description of the perps along with all other known facts in order to help people to identify the danger as best they can in a specific circumstance, then IT IS RELEVANT. To not openly publish this information in full is being grossly irresponsible to the public.

@Espiritus_Corvus I could not have said it better!

This is the thing about America’s racial problem: In the case of our Black citizens, it’s a socio-economic problem with deep roots in slavery and racism. We’ve made a lot of headway from our beginnings in the 1600s up to the 1970s when we decided to not address the racial part of it.

At about that time, black and white racism began traveling a two way street, but this has been discounted by many on the basis that the discriminated cannot be discriminating. This is denial on a monstrous level and has created an enormous amount of national anger, because it is simply not true. We have been at a dead standstill ever since. No progress.

This is the deal: You are not going to ever properly diagnose a disease by ignoring any of its most glaring characteristics, and therefore, you will have an incredibly difficult time finding prognosis, and the possibility for a solution is severely crippled.

The problem will eventually be solved generations from now when we are all brown. But who the fuck wants to wait that long?

Crime navigation apps based on live crowdsourcing are an existing solution to this problem. The apps work like Waze while being crime-avoidance oriented. Check out Redzone. I’m sure you will see Bart related crime reports on the app. If you live in NYC, you can use an app called Citizen

Waze started to implement this feature too, however, it is currently only rolled out in Brazil.

@maxomite An app will do no good because BART police won’t publish. And anecdotal reports are dismissed out of hand.

Let us remember that BART police consider themselves real police and get pensions just like real police. I have ridden BART since it was built and I have never. Once. Seen a police on a train.

@zenvelo Live crowdsourcing means data is supplied by the participating community members, not just government reporting. It’s live crime reporting which is then documented and displayed as a crime report on the map. It certainly isn’t dismissed as anecdotal. Millions of people use it. The live crowdsourcing app Waze has over 50 million active users. The entire appeal is the live reporting. The dedicated crime-avoidance apps are based on the same principal.

If Bart crime is really on the rise, the app’s crime map will reflect it, even if Bart underreported. It works really well. I haven’t accidently entered a bad/poor neighborhood since these apps were released. The app’s live crowdsourcing helps you navigate around the garbage.

Think of these apps as getting it directly from the horse’s mouth instead of a third-party. It’s like viewing Trump’s tweets directly instead of having some quack on TV interpreting, underreporting, and reporting to you what Trump was really trying to say.

Out of curiosity, I took NYC’s active crime map and compared it to Citizen’s live crime reports. The reflection was accurate. Good news is it might not be a cross-country issue.

@Espiritus_Corvus A description is called for if it would help identify an assailant but otherwise the race or religion isn’t relevant and shouldn’t be reported in specific cases. We don’t want to identify ‘the danger’. We want to identify the culprit.

I want as much identification as possible when it comes to crimes. I want to know what to look out for.

Correct, @flutherother. We want to identify the culprit or culprits as specifically as possible. And skin color, along with eye color, size, shape, behaviour, accent, etc., are all BIG identifiers. Each characteristic that can be described will help people to identify the danger. To hold any identifier back, is totally irresponsible.

When it comes to identifying a suspect I agree that skin colour is relevant and should be given but it isn’t a big identifier and something more specific would be more useful. Releasing information on all characteristics in all crimes would simply be confusing even if it were practicable.

You are wrong. How in the world is it confusing to give out accurate information? I think you are digging really deep to defend the indefensible.

Did you ever notice how many perps wear ball caps or hoddies. That’s because the politically correct descriptions is “He was wearing a ball cap” (which was ditched in a nearby trash can or folded up and put in his pocket.) making the description worthless.

Saying “He was a tall/short, white/black, male/female, about 20/30/40 years old, with a tattoo of rapper DrDre/50 cent/WilI’mdum/his name, on his neck/arm/forehead/ ” is much more useful. It’s fact, not opinion.

Post the photos.

The truth should be told. If one group commits more crimes, we should be aware of it. It is not racist just to give objective facts. Some studies show which groups commit the most crimes, and everyone must be aware of it.