Posted on 12/03/2021 8:24:41 AM PST by yesthatjallen
The expansion of digital record keeping by police departments across the U.S. in the 1990s ushered in the era of data-driven policing. Huge metropolises like New York City crunched reams of crime and arrest data to find and target “hot spots” for extra policing. Researchers at the time found that this reduced crime without necessarily displacing it to other parts of the city—although some of the tactics used, such as stop-and-frisk, were ultimately criticized by a federal judge, among others, as civil rights abuses.
The next development in data-informed policing was ripped from the pages of science fiction: software that promised to take a jumble of local crime data and spit out accurate forecasts of where criminals are likely to strike next, promising to stop crime in its tracks. One of the first, and reportedly most widely used, is PredPol, its name an amalgamation of the words “predictive policing.” The software, derived from an algorithm used to predict earthquake aftershocks, was developed by professors at UCLA and released in 2011. By sending officers to patrol these algorithmically predicted hot spots, these programs promise they will deter illegal behavior.
But law enforcement critics had their own prediction: that the algorithms would send cops to patrol the same neighborhoods they say police always have, those populated by people of color. Because the software relies on past crime data, they said, it would reproduce police departments’ ingrained patterns and perpetuate racial injustice, covering it with a veneer of objective, data-driven science.
PredPol has repeatedly said those criticisms are off-base. The algorithm doesn’t incorporate race data, which, the company says, “eliminates the possibility for privacy or civil rights violations seen with other intelligence-led or predictive policing models.”
SNIP
(Excerpt) Read more at themarkup.org ...
Collecting data is driving crime in minority neighborhoods. To stop crime we need to stop collecting data.
Sounds like the software accurately predicted crimes and THAT IS RAYCISS!!!
I thought that was the definition of white privilege by not having to live where the crime is
How We Determined Crime - Prediction Software Disproportionately Targeted Low-Income, Black, and Latino Neighborhoods Where Most Crime Occurs.
Time to target white neighborhoods and bring them up to par with the other ‘communities of color’.
Because racism.
Actually, everything would work out if whites would only do their share.
How racist to use “past crime data” to determine where to patrol.
So, historic police procedure was cemented as accurate and reasonable by a scientific predictive system and that’s not fair nor just?
Really?
Fire start where there is fuel air and an ignition source. It’s logical, predictive and reasonable to assume monitoring such systems would reduce or eliminate catastrophic fire.
But, send the fire trucks to some other place because....
Which to me sounds like it worked.
No need to spend money on it then since the cops already know where the crimes are.
The key here is the unstated assumption that "use of drugs at similar rates" equates to similar rates of criminality, or of criminality which is detectable by the police.
The surveys may simply show that in certain cultures, drugs are used more responsibly than others, or the surveys may simply be wrong or badly designed.
Lock those neighborhoods out of the system, don’t collect data on them, and don’t respond to crimes.
Just use system on neighborhoods that don’t like crime.
Yep! It predicts more crime there BECAUSE THERE IS MORE CRIME THERE! My favorite oddball statistic: In Chicago, year after year, 80% or more of murder VICTIMS are blacks WITH CRIMINAL RECORDS! IIRC, last year it hit ALMOST 90%....
Hard to claim “racism” when 90% of the victims are blacks with criminal records killed by other black criminals! Of course, that doesn’t stop the race-baiters from CLAIMING it, and almost no one every publicizes WHO is being killed!
And yes, tragically, innocent black children DO get killed by black thug killers trying to kill another black thug.
I’ll bet if you use the same software for fisherman, you would find they go where the fish are most likely to be, instead of just trolling out to the middle of the lake and dropping a line.
I think the author has confused the words “disproportionately” and “proportionately”.
... because it tried to predict crime? A lot of sleaze goes on in McLean, VA or downtown Manhattan, but if you track shootings, you’re going to end up Anacostia, DC or the South Bronx.
Welllllll…imagine that…
Who says the law-abiding citizens in crime-infested neighborhoods don’t WANT more police protection?
One of the reasons some lefties are also very suspicious of facial recognition algorithms to predict/track crime is that it’s going to starkly show patterns no one wants to discuss.
Freegards
13% of the nation is black. 35% of all violent crime is perpetrated by black… 55% of gun charges …. You guess it….. black. The reason is crime watch is disproportionate is because….crime is disproportionate.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.