fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
What are we supposed to do when we see things like this?
By: Matthew Spira
Tags: Politics, Police, Current Events, Justice, Criminal Ju

If you liked this story, I invite you to peruse my publication: The Daily Kerfuffle.

“A celebration of American culture and politics. Because the world needs more hot takes about American culture and politics. Obviously.”

And if you like poetry, I also humbly offer my poetry publication:

I also have a poetry collection available for sale on Amazon:

WHY POETRY

We live in an age of entrenched

political loyalties, suppurating anger,

a frenzied media saturating us

with unrelenting sensationalism.

What poetry reminds us of,

sometimes with just whispers,

is the beauty that does exist

in the world and in ourselves

when we slow down enough

to see, hear, and feel it.
The case for social work budget increase
By: Ryan Glenn
Tags: Harm Reduction, Police, Black Lives Mater, Social Work, Defundthepolice

Cops don’t prevent crime. When we see a police cruiser speeding down residential streets, they are not going to prevent a crime, they are preventing it from going further. They arrive aggressive, sirens blaring, radios chattering, possible weapons drawn, and shouting. In almost every case they serve to escalate a situation. The fundamental purpose of police is to serve and protect. We are not served anything more than papers, and the protection goes to the to no one.

Yet we continue to raise our police budgets to afford riot gear, armored cars, and in some cases even tanks. They get more weapons to use against the public, that so far have only been used against folks protesting against police murders. What restaurant has been tear gassed for defying a governors order? What anti-mask protestor has been shoved to ground causing brain damage?

The Lenco BearCat G3 has option controls for battering rams, winches and even surviving a chemical weapons attack. With military-grade armor and the ability to take repeated hits from bullets up to .50 caliber, it’s most frequently used by police as a rolling shield.Lenco

Overwhelming it feels cops have made a separation from the public. Out to defend their own and those who fly a thin blue flag. While all of this is happening, social work continues on quietly and with lower pay. AmeriCorps makes half the pay of armed military yet they are risking their lives in emergency response now. Social workers continue to work front lines while getting hazard pay cut, because that’s just another day on the job. They deal with domestic violence, addiction, arson, food resources, housing help, and so much more without question. Anyone who asks gets help because we no longer have time to ask who you are. There are too many of you coming for help now.

But cops will continue to try and scare you. Use racist terms like outside factors from Chicago, St. Louis, Ferguson, New Orleans. They will continue to instill fear in order to preserve property. Social workers and front line workers of all kinds are continuing to risk their lives everyday. Not from behind the wheel of a private car, but in the faces of the public. Every essential worker has risked more, been yelled at more, degrated more, and ignored more.

We cannot continue like this. We cannot spend money on fear.Especially fear of things that are not even happening. Illegal immigrants are not flooding to my town. We have to stop spending money on a fear of what is not happening and start spending on what is actually happening now.A food, housing, and addiction crisis the size of which is so impossible we ignore it.
Indictment filed in Ashtabula County rape cold case
By: Jaden Jefferson
Tags: Crime, Police, Law, News, Local

Indictment filed in Ashtabula County rape cold case

Crime scene tape.

CONNEAUT, Ohio — Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, Ashtabula County Prosecutor Cecilia Cooper and Conneaut Police Chief Michael Colby Thursday announced an indictment in a 16-year-old rape case.

Joshua Dale Gurto, 41, of Conneaut, was indicted Wednesday by an Ashtabula County grand jury in a 2004 sexual assault. Gurto was charged with two counts of aggravated burglary, felonies of the first degree; one count of rape, a felony of the first degree; and one count of felonious assault, a felony of the second degree.

“This indictment is exactly why we created the Cold Case Unit — the application of today’s crime-fighting technology on old cases can lead to long-due justice,” Yost said. “BCI’s Cold Case Unit, along with our law enforcement partners and prosecutors, are going to keep the bad guys up at night: your sins will find you out.”

A recent review of the case by the Conneaut Police Department and the Bureau of Criminal Investigation’s Cold Case Unit led to the resubmission of evidence from the 2004 sexual assault.

“This case is a great example of how much we can accomplish when we work together,” said Prosecutor Cecilia Cooper. “Victims of cold cases should never give up hope.”

BCI’s Cold Case Unit works alongside local law enforcement to apply the latest forensic technologies and investigative resources to unsolved homicides and sexual assaults. In this case, evidence had been originally located by Chief Colby’s late K9 partner, Nik, but forensic testing in 2004 was inconclusive. Old-fashioned police work, combined with further DNA analysis, was able to match the offender’s DNA profile to Gurto.

Gurto also was previously indicted in the 2017 rape and murder of a 1-year-old victim.

Indictments are criminal allegations. Defendants are presumed innocent unless proved guilty in a court of law.
A Genius Robs a Bank
Tags: McDonalds, Police, Money, Crime, Banking

A Genius Robs a Bank

Mohamed_hanssan/Pixabay

When I lived in Louisville, Kentucky, I would often take my laptop to the local McDonald’s to have breakfast or lunch and write. One day, as I sat writing, a group of policemen came in and started going around from table to table talking to people. One of them came to my table and asked me if I’d seen a woman wearing a black shirt eating lunch. I replied no, thinking that was strange.

The next day, I went to McDonald's again to eat and write. As I paid for my meal, I asked the cashier what the police were all about the day before. The girl told me that a woman robbed the bank next door, casually walked over to McDonald’s, ordered her meal, and sat down to eat it. After she finished, she went outside and got into the get-a-way car that drove away slowly.

That’s what I call the perfect bank robbery. I have no idea if they ever caught her.
FALSE: This resignation letter from Uganda’s Police spokesperson is fake
Tags: Police, Uganda

FALSE: This resignation letter from Uganda’s Police spokesperson is fake

The Police Force has distanced itself from the letter and Commissioner of Police Enanga continued with his duties on 14th December when the letter was circulated. PesaCheck Follow Dec 16, 2020 · 3 min read

A letter posted on Facebook with a claim that Uganda Police spokesperson Fred Enanga has tendered in his resignation is FALSE.

The letter, which is dated December 14, 2020 and addressed to the Inspector General of Police, Okoth Ochola, claims that Commissioner of Police (CP) Enanga has resigned and will be accepting a position in a private practice office.

Additionally, the letter has been signed off by both the police spokesman and IGP Ochola.

However, the header of the resignation letter appears to be fabricated as it does not look like the regular Uganda Police Force’s documents as seen in this press release.

Additionally, the police dismissed reports that the institution’s spokesperson had resigned, further branding the letter fake.

Further, on the same day the letter circulated online, CP Enanga continued his duties, holding the weekly media address on the general security situation in the country at the Uganda Media Center, contrary to the claim he has resigned.

CP Fred Enanga told PesaCheck on the phone that the letter was false and that he is carrying out his duties normally.

PesaCheck has looked into a letter posted on Facebook with a claim that Uganda Police spokesperson Fred Enanga has tendered in his resignation and finds it to be FALSE.
TPD, U.S. Marshals need help locating violent fugitive
By: Jaden Jefferson
Tags: Crime, Police, News, Assault, Local

TPD, U.S. Marshals need help locating violent fugitive

28-year-old Markeith Douglas. (Toledo Police Department)

TOLEDO, Ohio — The United States Marshals Service, Northern Ohio Violent Fugitive Task Force, and the Toledo Police Department are asking for public assistance in the location and arrest of 28-year-old Markeith Douglas. Douglas is wanted by TPD for rape with a gun and the Lucas County Sheriff’s Office for dangerous drugs.

TPD, U.S. Marshals need help locating violent fugitive

The NOVFTF has checked several locations in the Toledo area and have not located Douglas. To date, the NOVFTF has received no credible information which could result in the location of Douglas. His last known address is in the 4400 block of Foxchapel in Toledo, Ohio. It is believed he is still in the Toledo metro area. Douglas’ charges call for nationwide extradition, which means the NOVFTF and TPD will go anywhere in the country to arrest him.

Douglas is 6’02” and 165 lbs. He has a tattoo over his right eye and down the right side of his face. Anyone with any information on his location is urged to contact the NOVFTF at 1-866-492-6833 or the Toledo U.S. Marshals office at 419–259–6286. Toledo Crime Stoppers can also be contacted at 419-255-1111. Tipsters can remain anonymous and may be eligible for a cash reward.
National Police Association Supporting The Police
Tags: Law Enforcement, National Police Assoc, Police, National Police, Npa

Everything-PR.com

The National Police Association is a non-profit organization founded to educate the supporters of law enforcement in how they can help police departments accomplish their goals. The organization is solely supported through the contributions of other organizations and individuals.

The National Police Association is working to bring national and local attention to all of the positive services that are provided form the law enforcement providers at every turn, as well as to build public support for different actions through legal filings, articles authored by law enforcement experts, radio public service announcements as well as the NPA podcast.

With plenty of different individuals in the political system all around the country, including mayors, special interest activist, citizen review commissions, and many more, that are looking to oversee law enforcement, as their way to advance their own interests or the interest of their political allies, the NPA works against all of them by using the law.

Read the whole article at

National Police Association Supporting The Police — PR News (everything-pr.com)
The National Police Association Asks for the Help of the Public
Tags: Law Enforcement, National Police Assn, Police, National Police, Npa

National Police Association

The not-for-profit National Police Association recently created and released a public service campaign to raise awareness about the need for public assistance to be offered to law enforcement officers that appear to be in a struggle while they are in the process of completing an arrest. Public citizens that are witness to this type of incident are urged to not film the struggle, but to immediately use their mobile device to call 9–1–1 for professional law enforcement backup to arrive on the scene as quickly as possible.

The public service campaign was very clear that citizens should not standby and film an officer in danger. What has become apparent to the leaders of the National Police Association and to many law enforcement officers across the nation is that there is a trend growing that shows more and more citizens choosing to try and capture the incidents on film, most likely in advance of using it on their social media. With most citizens attempting to record these incidents, it directly impacts a police officer’s ability to resolve the incident without hurting anyone or getting hurt themselves and reflects a lack of desire to assist when an officer is struggling to complete their duties. This lack of assistance has become a dangerous model of behavior with the National Police Association citing many moments reported where people are choosing to film incidents on cell phones instead of calling 9–1–1.

Read the Full Article on the National Police Association…

ABOUT National Police Association

The National Police Association is a 501(C)3 non-profit organization founded to educate supporters of law enforcement on how to help police departments accomplish their goals. The National Police Association is supported solely through the contributions of individuals and organizations. Donations are tax-deductible

The National Police Association works to bring national and local attention to the anti-police efforts challenging effective law enforcement at every turn and to build public support for needed actions through TV and radio public service announcements, legal filings, articles authored for the NPA by law enforcement experts, and our podcast. Follow the efforts of the NPA more closely on their website nationalpolice.org.
Criminal Justice Reform: Perspective, Discernment, And Error Prevention In Policing.
By: Samantha Clarke
Tags: Police, Criminal Justice Reform, Science, Law, Philosophy

When You’ve Experienced Injustice And Been Made A Living Statistic, You Learn What Real Justice Should Look Like.

As a victim of crime myself, let me start off by stating this: I’m all for giving people the benefit of the doubt. I do give people an honest chance to prove who they truly are before judging.

I even operate several times under the premise I may be mistaken, before making a final determination of character based on repeated action.

Violence and crime victimization have taught me one thing: things are not always as they appear, and neither are people always truly who you think they are. — S.L. Clarke

The only way to tell who someone really is? By listening to their words, observing their actions, then understanding intent behind knowledge of facts.

To do so with minimal bias, while using discretion justifiably warranted…is to perfect the art of good judgment.
Unpopular opinion:. As opposed to general thought , I don’t…
By: Hichem Abbassi
Tags: Internet, World, Covid 19, Police

COVID-19 & the e-migration don’t mix..

As opposed to general thought , I don’t think that the health crisis that the world has seen up to day is helping the international society becoming more connected and closer than ever..

Actually I believe is that a lot of people that weren’t “supposed” to be active like , for the whole day joined -forcibly- what I call :the internet project (“the world is a small village”), in response to social isolation and to help out with personal pyschological issues that the internet helped creating and sustaining since the e-boom of 2006 which saw massive people’s “interest and action” through social media up until now.

Forcing people to get involved online (instead of limiting themselves to casual “liesure” industries that “live and prosper” online such as netflix “or worse”) is only contributing to the hidden agenda that is “organically disturbing internal peace” in non-american societies in particular (since most online services are under US jurisdiction) , while at the same time providing financial support to these already fully grown and tentacular information hubs and funnels.

Sad truth is , “the world is a small village” was also something hypercapitalism had to “weaponize” , turning it into a deadly and dangerous environnement in which “psychology” replaces guns and “religious propagenda” replaces information exchange for the greater good of ALL.

Nowadays,the world is quickly drifting from a peacful and restricted village to an all-inclusive megalopolis ,and a society that’s greater than the population of europe and africa ( and south america ) combined…

What’s more interesting here is that internet is litterally borderless by desing: everyone can go anywhere with the click of a button and that’s instoppable no matter how harsh measures can get to stop it from “opening” closed doors..needless to recall the hacking of the pantagon (by people looking to prove aliens exist , we’re not talking about military actions here) or the hillary maildump , in the world of imaginary “friendship of the peoples” everything , EVERYTHING is possible..with little or no repercussions over real life.

Another very powerful (AKA dangerous) notion is that there are people in real life whom “travel” isn’t restricted by VISA or anything similar (as opposed to the rest of the world) , so combining this superpower with internet would immensly benefit the people holding “the blue passport” over any others.

To conclude , internet was a very good idea , but something that you can’t police won’t be a good idea for long..
Apologies Unwarranted
Tags: Regret, Parenting, Police, Poetry, Family

TV blaring, screaming

about the latest shooting, robbery, or fire.

Bad news all around.

The lines on your face grow

deeper, weary, tired,

steeling your blazing blue eyes,

you look at me

mouth moving with effort

to produce sound,

An apology.

“I’m sorry I was a bad father.”

Anguish carves lines deep into your face,

years of absence

missed birthdays

bedtime stories

lazy Sundays

first steps

first words

all in the name of an oath to

“protect and serve”.
What If?
By: Peter Graves Roberts
Tags: Murder, Domestic Violence, Police, North Carolina, Violence Against Women

What If?

You were laying naked in your bathtub. You could hear voices but couldn’t respond. You’d lost enough blood over the past twelve, or twenty-four, or forty-eight hours — nobody really knows, that your organs were beginning to shut down for want of the oxygen that blood once carried.

Photo by LOGAN WEAVER on Unsplash

You heard your boyfriend say:

“Uh, my friend. She’s laying in the tub. She won’t wake up. I think she fell last night. I’m not sure. There’s blood coming from her nose so I can’t get her to wake up,”

You wanted to scream, but you couldn’t make a sound.

Moments later you heard the sirens, then heavy boots on the steps leading to your front door. Firemen carefully removed you from the tub and lay your unclothed body on your bathroom floor. All you knew then was pain. Tears welled in the corners of your eyes as the EMTs began to work on you.

“I’ve got a pulse, can you get a clear shot at her airway,” said one voice.

“I can’t get past her teeth,” said another. “Her jaw won’t move, can’t get the blade far enough — “

You felt something cold and metallic bump the back of your throat and you gagged.

“Gag reflex. Attempting nasal route,” he continued. “Nasal is a negative, going with BVM.”

Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash

The voices grew faint as rescue workers placed a mask over your mouth. For the moment it wasn’t so hard to breathe again.

“Alright, we need to get this woman ready for transport asap. Is the board ready?” asked a faceless voice.

You moaned out loudly as workers from the fire department rolled you slightly to your side to slide a board under.

“She’s in pain. Definitely responsive to that,” one of them said. “Evaluate for possible head and neck trauma. Keith, get the C collar.”

One of the men on the scene fitted you with a cervical neck brace and they secured you to a wooden board.
New Issue of Surveillance & Society
By: Torin Monahan
Tags: Police, Surveillance Studies, Surveillance, Indigenous Cinema, Drones

Cover image: Terril Calder, SNIP, 2016. (Reprinted with permission.) This film is discussed by Joshua Miner in his article in this issue.

In case you missed it, the latest (December) issue of Surveillance & Society is filled with an exciting collection of articles on topics as diverse as professional drone use, Indigenous surveillance cinema, informant memoirs, covert police surveillance, Tor users, police use of visual data, and workplace surveillance. Check it out.

///

Articles

Aerial Politics of Visibility: Actors, Spaces, and Drivers of Professional Drone Usage in Switzerland (Dennis Pauschinger, Francisco R. Klauser) [PDF]

Indigenous Surveillance Cinema: Indian Education and the Truant On-Screen (Joshua Miner) [PDF]

The I’s of the Informant: Memoirs of Surveillance Society (Piotr M. Szpunar) [PDF]

Hiding in Plain Sight: Directed Surveillance as a Bodily Practice (Johanne Yttri Dahl, Dag Svanaes) [PDF]

Tor and the City: MSA-Level Correlates of Interest in Anonymous Web Browsing (Andrew M. Lindner, Gina Pryciak, Jamie Elsner) [PDF]

How to Govern Visibility?: Legitimizations and Contestations of Visual Data Practices after the 2017 G20 Summit in Hamburg (Rebecca Venema) [PDF]

The Implications of Digital Employee Monitoring and People Analytics for Power Relations in the Workplace (Ivan Manokha) [PDF]

Book Reviews

Review of Bader, Baker, Day, and Gordon’s Fear Itself: The Causes and Consequences of Fear in America (Cierra Robson) [PDF]

Review of Kapadia’s Insurgent Aesthetics: Security and the Queer Life of the Forever War (Robert Heynen) [PDF]Review of Fan’s Camera Power: Proof, Policing, Privacy, and Audiovisual Big Data (Benjamin Faveri) [PDF]

Review of Lippert, Walby, Warren, and Palmer’s National Security, Surveillance and Terror: Canada and Australia in Comparative Perspective (Colleen Bell, Leora Diakuw, Thelma NaahSabie) [PDF]

Review of Molitorisz’s Net Privacy: How We Can Be Free in an Age of Surveillance (Deborah Komarnisky) [PDF]
The Largest Snitch List on The Internet Anyone Can Contribute To
Tags: Prison, Snitches, Police, Snitching, Jail

The largest snitch list on the internet is one that anyone can contribute to. Have you ever had the misfortune of going about your daily life only to find yourself confronted by a police officer? Maybe you get a ticket, maybe you go to jail, maybe you post bail, or maybe you don’t. In the worst case scenario you find yourself behind bars wonder how you got there. You know you broke the law or maybe you didn’t but they insist they have something on you. Then eventually your lawyer comes to see you with discovery and there it is. Proof of how the cops zeroed in on you. Proof that somebody you know told on you. What can you do about it? Legally, not much, but recently a service has launched to help you warn others before they too share your fate.

Someone Will Tell on You!

The Police Informant Database at CopBlaster.com is a user generated collection of data profiling over 10,000 informants, witnesses, jailhouse rats, security guards, and everyday cop callers. Many of the names are provided by users like you that sign up for a free membership and fill out a form that lets you name names, upload paperwork, pictures, and tell your story complete with embedded videos and a map to their location. A well written article with their name in the title is likely to show up whenever people Google them and when they see it they will know to keep their mouths shut around them without letting them see or know what they are doing.

More than just accusations posted by people online. Most of the snitches named on the site at this time actually came from government records. This past spring advocacy groups fighting stay at home orders used public records requests to acquire unredacted data submitted to government agencies through online forms setup to solicit tips about social distancing violations. The Coronavirus Snitch Lists were parsed into posts and are also available in PDF and Excel formats.
Ideas in the Wild: How Author Janelle Perez Aims To Put An End To Gender Discrimination
By: Zach Obront
Tags: Police, Business, Authors, Discrimination, Books

What happened that made you decide to write the book? What was the exact moment you realized these ideas needed to get out there?

I decided to write this book about my experience because I so deeply feel that I was discriminated against based on my gender and marital status. The exact moment I realized I needed to share my story was immediately following my termination, but I decided not to do so at the time because I wanted my job back. When that did not happen and I pursued this as a legal matter I decided to respect the court process, a decision I deeply regret.

I knew as soon as I pursued this as a legal matter that my law enforcement career was over for good. I wish I shared immediately. I was bursting at the seams wanting to share my story and I really knew that it was just a matter of time. Here we are, the time is now.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned going through the journey you share in the book?

The biggest lesson I have learned is that you stand strong and do not tolerate discrimination under any circumstance. It seems much easier said than done though. I stood up for myself and lost my job. Oh my gosh, writing the book was such a scary process to be so vulnerable and put so many personal details about my life, but it was necessary. It was necessary to understand the whole story. It was so important for me to stay true to what I believed happened.

I was beyond the point of saying that I was wrong for making personal choices in regards to my personal life outside of the workplace. I was made to feel like I was crazy, totally wrong about my beliefs on being discriminated against. I just had to find my strength and say, “No, what happened was not right.” I will not be bullied. I will not be silenced. I am a strong, fierce woman, and I will stand up for myself and others. Discrimination is not right and cannot win.

How will you apply this lesson in your life moving forward?

I am hellbent on making a difference. I am sharing my story because I truly believe that collectively, people who are discriminated against need to stand up and say, “We won’t tolerate this anymore.” And people in power need to start listening and taking action.

I am just one of many people who have suffered a job loss because of what I believe to be discriminatory reasons. I am here to advocate for change, listen to those with similar experiences, and to share my story with whomever wants to or needs to hear it.
Talking to Myself, #3: Time Travel
By: Zach Zwagil
Tags: Police, Police Brutality, Baltimore

I get paid to be a time traveler, a revisionist historian, and a royal pain in the ass.

That is to say, I get paid to watch, analyze, and scrutinize police body cam footage.

I watch the way police talk — to citizens and about citizens. I watch the way they talk to each other. I watch the way they investigate. I watch the way they build official stories. I watch the way they choose who to arrest and who not to arrest. And I watch the way they talk about Baltimore.

And so when Barack Obama and Joe Biden, nationally, and Nick Mosby, locally, felt it appropriate to use the convenience of the post-election period to profess their strategic disagreement with (read: self-important politically-motivated hitjob of) “Defund The Police”,

I thought about that time when…

…I watched police open fire on and strike a child through oncoming traffic.

…I watched police fabricate an entire story to justify a police-involved shooting.

…I watched police convince a 13-year-old to sign away her rights without an attorney or guardian present.

…I watched police openly mock the career aspirations of detained children.

…I watched police tell each other that they’ll speak when the cameras are off, saying, “I know how to play the game.”

…I watched police directly misrepresent witness statements in order to suit an official story.

…I watched police construct an official story before conducting any interviews.

…I watched police yell at family members seeking basic information about their detained brother.

…I watched police tell a minor during an interrogation that he won’t need a lawyer.

…I watched police break into and occupy the living room of a home for several hours without a warrant.

…I watched police chase a teenager because his hands were in his coat pockets. It was winter and he was walking home.

…I watched police tell detained children that their mothers are no good.

…I watched police outwardly disregard the dissenting opinions of other police challenging official accounts.

…I watched police turn their body cams off only to turn them back on moments later to “find” drugs.

The expected response to this argument goes something like, “But you’re leaving out the times in which police acted properly.” And those people are correct. I am leaving that out. I leave it out for the same reason you don’t take note when your car operates as advertised. You take note when it doesn’t. Doing your job with the bare minimum of expected basic human decency is not noteworthy.

Recklessly firing on citizens, actively covering up misconduct, misrepresenting evidence, invading private property, coercing children, degrading children, and creating official stories out of thin air is noteworthy.

If Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Nick Mosby don’t think such an organization is worth disinvesting from, maybe they’d like to inform the rest of us on what levels of unconstitutionality and brutality they would like citizens to endure before they’re comfortable taking a stand.

Until then, this existential nightmare will continue to play out and my job will continue to exist.
“Guide to Policing in San Francisco”
By: Bex H
Tags: Volunteering, Police, San Francisco, Defundthepolice, Government

A new reference by and for LWVSF volunteers.

There is now a Guide to Policing in San Francisco for anyone who needs a reference to help them to better understand local policing.

I joined the League of Women Voters of San Francisco (LWVSF) Police Observer Corps because I am interested in police reform. Observing government meetings is an excellent way to learn how to shape our community. The League offers free training to anyone who wants it on how to observe public meetings, publishes educational materials about policing, and now League volunteers have this Guide to Policing in San Francisco.

Policing is a very technical field. There are many different agencies, institutions, and officials connected to the police. They use unique vocabulary and cryptic abbreviations. Knowing about federal, state and local legislation is necessary as well. I have been observing for a few years now, and I still regularly hear unfamiliar references. I couldn’t find a guide anywhere to explain the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) and its policies.

The goal of this guide is to help our volunteers gain a basic understanding of the SFPD and related public safety topics. It is by no means comprehensive. It is intended to be a living document, updated to include information and new developments. Now, especially, policing is constantly evolving.

LWVSF’s goal is for all San Franciscans to understand and help shape policing practices. Please use our volunteer Policing in San Francisco guide. We welcome your feedback at education@lwvsf.org because we plan to officially publish the sections you find most useful (like our Police in San Francisco FAQ) in the future.

— Bex H, observer
Such a profoundly moving story.
By: Chira Lois
Tags: Women, Harrassment, Police, Racism, African American

Such a profoundly moving story. Appreciate those who stepped up to help this lady as they could have been harmed by the police just for sitting outside at night.
Talking with my Asian-American parent about Black Lives Matter
By: Olivia Ling
Tags: Asian American, Police, Blm, Racism, Allyship

She had a hard time understanding the purpose of it, as police are meant to protect people. Naturally, this point was turned on its head, and I talked about how the police were also theoretically supposed to protect Black people. I brought up George Floyd and how the police had nearly nine minutes to change their behavior and give him a chance to breathe and at a chance to live. The police had nine minutes of opportunity to troubleshoot the situation and find other ways to deescalate the situation. But those nine minutes were squandered.

I brought up Breonna Taylor and how someone who was devoted to helping others and in the group of first responders could be shot dead by another first responder. I thought about all the calls I took as an EMT in high school and college. At the agencies I worked in, it was frequent for both EMS and police to show up to the scene, working together side-by-side. I thought about how many times a police officer had helped me, a petite feminine woman, when an opioid overdose patient was administered Narcan with subsequent agitated and violent withdrawal and how these officers used their physical strength and training to protect me while I tended to the patients.

I also thought about all the dispatches we received and how frequently we were given directions to the wrong location or descriptions of the wrong person in need of medical attention. I thought about how easy it was for miscommunication to unravel and become unwieldy. I thought about how this could have applied to Breonna and countless other lives and how seemingly mundane miscommunications could result in the death of someone who took no part in that well-intended game of telephone.

I thought about Walter Wallace Jr. and how he did not deserve to die because of a mental illness he did not have autonomy over and how this unintended agitation was interpreted as a threat to the police. He was perceived as a threat that was so great in the eyes of the officers that it was enough reason for them to warrant shooting him.

I thought about the number of patients I’ve encountered who had mental illnesses and how they had been brought to interact with the healthcare system while in the handcuffs of the police. I thought about a “frequent flyer,” a derogatory industry term, in my hometown, a Black woman who had schizophrenia and gained a reputation among the local police, EMS, and hospitals as being “unstable” and “aggressive” even though this was not always the case.

I thought about how it shouldn’t have to matter what someone has done in the eyes of a police officer. Whether or not a person gets to live should not be determined by the hands of someone else. Having a spotless background and having a young life dedicated to service should not even have to be a part of the narrative to convince someone of a stranger’s humanity. But I kept these thoughts of justified humanity to myself.
How to use multiple fields as label on a bar chart in Tableau
By: Yomisola Adegeye
Tags: Data Visualization, Tableau, Tableau Public, Data Analysis

Recently, I created a visualization in tableau that uses a bar chart to represent multiple information across several fields. The bar chart was supposed to work in such a way that selecting a field changes information on the bar chart and updates the bar labels to show the correct data.

I had nine fields and I placed all the nine fields on the label marks card so that when a field is selected, the label for that field shows at the end of the bars.

Nine fields in the label pane

Placing nine fields into the label marks card made the result messy and I couldn’t understand why. In the past, I have only had to place a maximum of two fields in the label marks card.

Displaced labels

I searched the internet for about half an hour for a solution but to no avail. The only option I had left was to figure it out on my own. I tried several approaches during which I realized that the label marks card can only take a maximum of two fields, else the behavior becomes disproportionate as seen in the image above.

Placing a third field on the label marks card would disorder the labeling. So I thought of a way to merge the nine fields into one. I realized that I could achieve this by writing a conditional IF statement in VizQL which uses the current value of the [Measure Parameter] to determine which label is shown at the end of the bars. It also ensures that when the information displayed on the bar chart changes, the labels are updated accordingly and are aligned correctly.

The code used is shown below:

IF [Measure Parameter]='Drawn' THEN [Drawn]

ELSEIF [Measure Parameter]='Goal Difference' THEN [Goal Difference]

ELSEIF [Measure Parameter]='Goals Against' THEN [Goals Against]

ELSEIF [Measure Parameter]='Lost' THEN [Lost]

ELSEIF [Measure Parameter]='Goals For' THEN [Goals For]

ELSEIF [Measure Parameter]='Played' THEN [Played]

ELSEIF [Measure Parameter]='Points' THEN [Points]

ELSEIF [Measure Parameter]='Position' THEN [Position]

ELSEIF [Measure Parameter]='Won' THEN [Won]

END

In the code snippet shown above, the nine fields being toggled are: Drawn, Goal Difference, Goals Against, Lost, Goals, Played, Points, Position and Won.

Using the code above gave the desired result as seen below;

Well placed labels

I hope this helps someone out there.

Thank you for reading.
How to display Tableau visualizations on web pages?
By: Ali Shujjat
Tags: Data Visualization, Tableau, Javascript Api

Tableau is a great tool to help bring life to your visualizations. You can start using it today with the free version of the software, Tableau Public. However, your work will be made public on their website which allows you to host upto 10GB worth of files.

Now, if you’d like to reach a larger audience by displaying your worksheets or dashboards on a website, Tableau provides a JavaScript API to do just that. An example of this can be found at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology website.

To get started, first save your dashboard to Tableau Public.

Next, create an HTML webpage and add the following code of the JavaScript API from the Tableau Server that hosts your visualizations. In addition, create a div element in the page body where you’d like to insert the Tableau dashboard.

Your HTML file

Now, write a function in a JavaScript file to display the visualization.

Your JavaScript file

To display your own visualization, go to the worksheet or dashboard you’d like to show on Tableau Public. Click the share button on the bottom toolbar as shown circled below. Then proceed to copy the link highlighted in the rectangle below and paste it in your vizURL variable in your js file.

And that’s it, you’re all set! I implemented this for a personal project that you may view here. You can also use this to display multiple sheets following the videos Tableau has provided here.

Tableau provides a very simple JavaScript API that allows you to showcase your work beyond their own website and I hope this short walkthrough gave some insights to it.
#Viz5 Visualizing the Digital Gender Gap
By: Mehrnaz Siavoshi
Tags: Data Visualization, Tableau, Makeovermonday2020, Dataviz

TL,DR

The MakeoverMonday project links data visualizers and analysts to not-so-perfect visualizations across the internet to revitalize the visualizations and spark creativity. One visualization features on the site was created by Operation Fistula and explores internet access gender parity across the world with data from the 2020 Internet Index. The updated visualization can be found on Tableau.

Objective

Viz5 is a project developed by the United Nations in an effort to convert gender inequality data from numbers to visual stories. Data analysts and visualizers from around the world are encouraged to take the datasets and associated visualizations and renovate them to make these stories easier to understand and disseminate.

My goal in this project is to take a previously developed visualization from Viz5 and revamp it, making the trends easier to see. This data was originally linked by the MakeoverMonday project (Week 44). I have selected their mobile and internet access gender gap dashboard, which shows the parity in internet access between men and women in each country. A score of zero indicates no difference between the genders, while a negative score means more women have access than men and a positive score means women have less access than men.

This data is important to understand because in 2020, close to half of the world population is still offline. Most of these people are women in low or middle income countries. By helping this population gain access to the internet, their quality of life can be improved through better educational opportunities, expansions in work potential, and much more.

“To be offline today means to miss out on learning and earning, accessing valuable services, and participating in the democratic public debate. The digital divide… pushes women further to the margins of society” — World Wide Web Foundation, 2020

Original Visualization
【Tableau】資料視覺化與 Tableau 基礎圖表
By: Ntu Data Analytics Club
Tags: 社課精華, Tableau, Ntudac, Business Analysis, Data Analysis

Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more

Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore
Christmas Hits: Who’s In It to Win It?
By: Sem Janssen
Tags: Spotify, Christmas, Tableau, Music, Dataviz

In order to answer this question I turned towards the Spotify charts in the US. I wrote a script in Python 3 (via Jupyter Notebook) that automatically scrapes the daily US charts via the Spotify Charts website. After scraping the charts I was left with a data-set ranging from September 1st 2017 (the oldest publicly available date) until December 10th 2020 (the day I scraped the charts). Track title — Artist — Track URI — Chart Date — Christmas song

In total there were 1,137,100 data-point left to analyze, which left me with a problem… How to visualize all these data-points so one could understand this? I decided to work in Tableau with track name in columns and chart date in rows. Working with weeks (rows) instead of days showed something that made sense, while highlighting Christmas songs with a red color (how appropriate lol). I excluded the year 2020 since it’s hard to make assumptions about a whole year with data that does not cover 365 days.

Top artists.

When looking at the exact number of chart positions from 2017–2019 we get an interesting insight. Bing Crosby is the absolute #1 Christmas artist, when looking at chart positions. Michael Bublé can be considered the runner-up while Mariah Carey completes the overall top 3. But what about the new superstars? Analyzing all artists under 35 showed us two youngsters:

Ariana Grande: #190 chart appearances between 2017 and 2019.

Justin Bieber: #119 chart appearances between 2017 and 2019.

While they aren’t there yet, they are definitely in the race for the years to follow. Ariana Grande saw a massive increase of 1000% in chart appearance while Justin Bieber’s chart appearances have increased with 38% between 2017 and 2019.

Early birds.

How interesting would it be to know which artist is the first go-to to get you in the festive mood :)?

2017: Mariah Carey — All I Want For Christmas Is You. First chart appearance in week 44 (01–11–2017), highest debuting Christmas song.

2018: Mariah Carey — All I Want For Christmas Is You. First chart appearance in week 44 (01–11–2018), highest debuting Christmas song.

2019: Mariah Carey — All I Want For Christmas Is You. First chart appearance in week 44 (01–11–2019), highest debuting Christmas song.

2020: Mariah Carey — All I Want For Christmas Is You. First chart appearance in week 44 (01–11–2020), highest debuting Christmas song. *2020 WK44 data manually extracted*

Mariah Carey remains the queen of Christmas, but the competition for the early birds is heating up…

Hottest day of Christmas.

At last it seemed interesting to see on which day of Christmas the festive mood is the highest.

All in all we can conclude that the day before Christmas is increasingly becoming more popular the recent years and boxing day seems like a bad reminder that Christmas is almost over…
Navigare un report in Tableau: un confronto tra ieri e oggi
By: Greta Pelà
Tags: Tableau, Navigation Button, Tableau Desktop, Tableau Software

We believe that the key to understanding and interpreting data lies in the way it is displayed. This is why we help our customers to get the most out of their data by promoting this culture within the company.
Finding and Replacing in Tableau
By: Michel Burnett
Tags: Data Visualization, Tableau, Data

Quick guide to find and replace data in Tableau.

As many of you may know, datasets don’t always contain information in the format you may want. For example, maybe you are presenting a dashboard that has data coming from multiple multilingual sources and you need to change several reoccurring foreign language words into their English counterparts so you can present this dashboard to an English speaking client. Being able to find and replace is a simple way to tidy your data on the fly.

To do this we’re going to be using a “regular expression” as shown in this Tableau example. For this guide I’ll be using a supply chain company dataset available here: https://www.kaggle.com/shashwatwork/dataco-smart-supply-chain-for-big-data-analysis?select=DataCoSupplyChainDataset.csv . I will be replacing “UU. EE.” (a common Spanish abbreviation for the United-States) with “United States”.

The “REGEXP_REPLACE” has three parts to its formula. First you define which field the calculation applies to, then in quotations define what you want to find, and lastly in quotations define the replacement you want to use for it. Click “OK” and use this field in place of your original non-calculated field.

My new calculated field I’ve named “countries” is now displaying “EE. UU.” as “United States”. This method can have many different uses such as fixing typos, mismatches, language corrections and so on. I hope I was able to show you a new technique to use in Tableau to help with your data visualizations. Thanks for reading!
Hackathon Stories: Denny Bromley describes his Parameter/Set Action Hack
By: Robert Kosara
Tags: Tableau, Hackathons, Feature Engineering, Software Development, Software Engineering

Hacks are often simple and clever, but have you heard of a feature based on 50 lines of code? In the video below, Tableau’s Denny Bromley talks about his parameter actions hackathon, which also led to the set actions feature. Both combine existing features, parameters and our internal command system, to create customer features that are new and useful.

Also check out our previous video on Shahaf Nuriel’s search experience hackathon and read about hackathons at Tableau!