Free Republic

The Pasco County Sheriff’s Office has admitted in a settlement agreement made public on Wednesday that its policy of keeping a list of people considered likely to commit future crimes and sending deputies to their homes violated the U.S. Constitution. As part of the settlement, the office will pay $105,000 to four Pasco County residents who were targeted by the law enforcement agency and is barred from implementing any similar program in the future. The program, dubbed “Intelligent Led Policing” by the Sheriff’s Office and “predictive policing” by its critics, first came to light in a series of reports by...

The Sheriff’s Office of Pasco County, Florida, harasses people in their homes using a method they call “predictive policing.” The program has unfolded like a dystopian nightmare for the Pasco residents it has ensnared, who have been subjected to near-constant police surveillance and harassment. The Sheriff'sOffice claims the program’s goal is to predict and prevent crime before it happens by targeting people they suspect may commit crimes in the future, dubbing the approach “intelligence-led policing.” This euphemism may make it seem like there’s thoughtfulness to the approach, but there’s nothing fair or smart about it. Using a crude computer-algorithm, the...

LASER is designed to inform officers where crimes are likely to occur and tracks ex-convicts and people they believe are most likely to commit crimes through technology, including cell phone trackers and license plate scanners. The PredPol -- short for "predictive policing" -- program analyzes data about when and where crimes have occurred to identify "hot spots" in the city where certain types of crimes are more likely to be committed on a given day. The Chronic Offender portion of the LASER program was suspended in August 2018, along with the use of the associated tracking database, according to the...