Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings
The last 40 years of austerity politics in the US have starved the beast [0] so greatly that the only remaining public infrastructure that functions as it&#x27;s intended to is policing. For example, in the city of LA, 53% of the city&#x27;s unrestricted general fund budget went to the LAPD.<p>For everything else, there are parallel infrastructures for the haves - private education, private healthcare, privatized transit, etc. It&#x27;s something I&#x27;ve thought about a lot in the last few weeks.<p>On top of that, there is some research that suggests communities rate smaller police forces better than larger ones [1].<p>&gt; <i>To test this, Ostrom worked with the Indianapolis government and her students to measure the quality of policing. Surprisingly, against common assumptions, they found that the smaller the police force, the more positively residents evaluated the police services they got.</i><p>&gt; <i>&quot;Increasing the size of [the police force] consistently had a negative impact on the level of output generated as well as on efficiency of service provision… smaller police departments … consistently outperformed their better trained and better financed larger neighbors.”</i><p>&gt; <i>But why did this happen? To explain this, Elinor Ostrom argued that in small communities with small police forces, citizens are more active in community safety. Officers in smaller police forces also have more knowledge of the local area &amp; more trust from people.</i><p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Starve_the_beast" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Starve_the_beast</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;a_vansi&#x2F;status&#x2F;1270406823158468614" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;a_vansi&#x2F;status&#x2F;1270406823158468614</a>