bttp011
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2015–2022
1:30 · 140K views · Feb 21, 2011
A two-minute scene from The Wire in which Baltimore police brass pressure subordinates to fix the crime statistics. It dramatizes how metrics and incentives distort policing.
Used as a shorthand illustration of juking the stats and Goodhart-style metric gaming.
3 comments from Hacker News
David Simon is a national treasure. The Wire had lots of scenes on how metrics & incentives screwed up Baltimore city. Here is a great scene talking about metrics/stats from The Wire - this video Article also refers to Martin Malley's ambition to be Maryland's governor that really screwed up the incentives and cooking of the books. "How do you reward cops? Two ways: promotion and cash. That's what rewards a cop. If you want to pay overtime pay for having police fill the jails with loitering arrests or simple drug possession or failure to yield, if you want to spend your municipal treasure rewarding that, well the cop who’s going to court 7 or 8 days a month — and court is always overtime pay — you're going to damn near double your salary every month. On the other hand, the guy who actually goes to his post and investigates who's burglarizing the homes, at the end of the month maybe he’s made one arrest. It may be the right arrest and one that makes his post safer, but he's going to court one day and he's out in two hours. So you fail to reward the cop who actually does police work. But worse, it’s time to make new sergeants or lieutenants, and so you look at the computer and say: Who's doing the most work? And they say, man, this guy had 80 arrests last month, and this other guy’s only got one. Who do you think gets made sergeant? And then who trains the next generation of cops in how not to do police work? I’ve just described for you the culture of the Baltimore police departme
> No, they generally do the latter, and generally well. Minor quibble, but I don't find a 50% clearance rate on murders to be good. [0] I also don't put much faith in the accuracy of many (most) police departments numbers as they "Juke the Stats" [1] [0] [LINK] [1] this video
> Now watch governments do the same. They've already been doing that for ages: crime rate, gdp, employment, inflation. Here is a clip from my favourite show that highlights this: this video