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Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

reuters.com

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Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#211

Post by socalnate1 »

WrongThinkerNo5 wrote: post #182

With what seems to be nothing but criticism of policing policies, I would love to know what the ideal or even acceptable policing policies are, presuming that any policing will be accepted. The most simple minded can be critics, but what is the alternative? What happens when the lawless mob and criminals want to break and enter your home and take your things and burn down your life? It's easy enough when it's the "ot…

"What happens when the lawless mob and criminals want to break and enter your home and take your things and burn down your life?"

Uhm what? Is this a common problem in your life?

If this question is asked seriously, here is a serious answer:

https://theweek.com/articles/918143/what-america-learn-from-...

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#212

Post by lostapathy »

godelski wrote: post #155
throwawaygh wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Obviously we aren't doing that here IDK. one year olds were added to CalGang database. People were added to the CalGang with no supporting evidence. The database was used to direct police resources and also for background checks for job applicants . So, you're entered into the database as a one year old (or a ten year old, or a 30 year old but for no good reason). Now you can't get a job. Predictably, you turn to w…

I meant specifically arresting people before they committed a crime. There is a fine line between that and putting someone under watch, but I think Minority Report was pointing out that this line might as well not exist. Personally, I think putting someone under watch before they have committed a crime or there is reasonable suspicion that the person is about to commit a crime is unconstitutional. I do not think stat…

Everybody commits minor infractions of the law regularly. Putting someone under watch, by a cop who needs to report that he enforced something, is going to ensure they get picked up sooner or later.

There's a saying to the effect that a good cop can find a reason to pull any car over if he follows it for just a couple minutes.

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#213

Post by coffeemaniac »

tootie wrote: post #185
riazrizvi wrote: post #63

> Used by police across the United States for almost a decade, predictive policing relies on algorithms to interpret police records, analyzing arrest or parole data to send officers to target chronic offenders, or identifying places where crime may occur. The promise of the software made in a sales pitch or on the website, is a far cry from the reality of what such software delivers. That's fine when it's business, t…

NYC has used analytics since 1993 and it's widely credited as contributing to the incredible drop in crime. I don't buy for a second that ending these kind of programs will help anything. Certainly we can decrease brutality by sending police into areas with no conflicts but that defeats the whole purpose of policing. We need effective and aggressive law enforcement as much as ever. We need to root out the worst abuse…

Crime has decreased everywhere since then (not just NYC) while the US prison population has increased 500% over the past 40 years.

> Certainly we can decrease brutality by sending police into areas with no conflicts but that defeats the whole purpose of policing.

Thanks for pointing out very clearly what you believe to be the purpose of policing. For a lot of cops as well, brutality is the goal. What we're seeing right now is Americans re-aligning those priorities.

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#214

Post by iguy »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #174
UnpossibleJim wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no problem with that, but why aren't these types of statistical models and curve analysis being used to deploy drive by patrols? Some of this seems like throwing out the baby with the bath water, does it not? While I agree that it's way too soon for this sort of granularity, is it too soon to have 10 block, increased presence of troubled areas helped by statistical analysis?

If crime being caught by a drive-by patrol is a significant way in which crime is being caught, to me that screams "victimless crimes". I break victimless laws all the time, sometimes with my police officer friends and neighbors present, sometimes on private property miles from any public roads. I never seem to get busted for it. So if 10-block patrols of "troubled areas" really saw an increase in enforcement action,…

If what you describe was the pattern, then the regions with lots of observed "victimless crimes" would be uncorrelated with the regions with lots of serious crimes (e.g. from counting bullet holes down at the morgue, or from ShotSpotter). That's great, this theory makes a testable prediction. It's falsifiable.

That said, I agree that the smart use of such predictions should be sensitive to this. Try to predict where & when the murders will happen, use that to direct patrols (and searches for potential murder weapons). Rather than predicting something simpler like "total number of offences including parking tickets" for the sake of chasing numbers.

(Both of these comments are describing where to put patrols, i.e. where to spend a limited resource to best effect. Prediction applied to human individuals is a very different story, and much scarier.)

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#215

Post by wizzwizz4 »

fsckboy wrote: post #102
riazrizvi wrote: post #63

> Used by police across the United States for almost a decade, predictive policing relies on algorithms to interpret police records, analyzing arrest or parole data to send officers to target chronic offenders, or identifying places where crime may occur. The promise of the software made in a sales pitch or on the website, is a far cry from the reality of what such software delivers. That's fine when it's business, t…

> This is a premature application of software. maybe, but you have no idea yourself so your fear does not carry enough weight to carry that statement. It's basically like you are saying "it's too early to try Bayesian policing" when in fact Bayesian policing might be a great idea, and it was a great idea 10 years ago too. Conditional probability, if there have been a lot of rapes in a 2 block radius, do you think it…

Ideal Bayesian decision theory, the one that beats every single other possible statistical method, is uncomputable in this universe. It's not a silver bullet.

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#216

Post by hckr_news »

onetimeusename wrote: post #204
bhntr3 wrote: post #184

The problem with predictive policing is in the name. Inference (ML) predicts the future from the past. If the past is racist, then inference will create a racist future. Since racism is systemic[1], especially when it comes to policing, predictive policing is actively working against an anti-racist future. There may be statistical ways to factor out systemic racism. There are two reasons I don't think that works: 1.…

What is the claim when data is said to include systemic racism and bias? Is it that race data does indeed predict higher crime but that biased policing causes the crime rate to be misreported as higher because police only focus their attention on certain areas? Is it that police actually cause crime due to racist beliefs so that they must in some way entice crimes to be committed? Is it that crimes are equal between…

Let’s start by not using software to police people. Is this China?

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#217

Post by TallGuyShort »

whatshisface wrote: post #207
TallGuyShort wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If crime being caught by a drive-by patrol is a significant way in which crime is being caught, to me that screams "victimless crimes". I break victimless laws all the time, sometimes with my police officer friends and neighbors present, sometimes on private property miles from any public roads. I never seem to get busted for it. So if 10-block patrols of "troubled areas" really saw an increase in enforcement action,…

Of course if the law is bad, the solution isn't to dismantle law enforcement, it's to fix the law.

I'm all for that. But systemically we tend to oppose that too. You do that long enough, eventually the ones on the bottom start pulling down statues. But the problem is both. We have victimless laws, and we have law enforcement departments with histories of covering for their own people when they break the law, or exploiting loopholes to railroad people.

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#218

Post by godelski »

wongarsu wrote: post #175
godelski wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the purpose of movies and stories is to make these events relatable. You're supposed to draw parallels. You don't have to show a black person to convince white people that minorities are being repressed. In fact, it is probably more convincing if on screen you are showing white people being oppressed because then they are going to more identify with that character. Of course, we are supposed to analyze these…

In fact I would argue this is one of the great strengths of SciFi as a genre: you can transport present day problems into a foreign setting, allowing the viewer to engage with the core problem without getting distracted by race or nationality

Exactly! This is why The Orville is a better Star Trek than the official reboot. Sci-Fi was always about exploring ethical dilemmas in current society. Just portraying them as either a different species (representing a some subgroup in our society) or potential outcomes of policies if they were to be abused. I mean, if you think Blade Runner/Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (and Altered Carbon) is just a gritty Sci-Fi Film Noir, then you missed half of the movie which was about socio-economic status and struggles (specifically Blade Runner is critical of Reganomics).

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#219

Post by AnimalMuppet »

jxramos wrote: post #77
narrator wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This preference for ideology instead of data reminds me of weird stuff that would happen with science in the Soviet Union. You had things in the Soviet Union like Lysenkoism[1] where a kook got power and explained his science in ideological terms and his theories, unsupported by data, were adopted and defended to the detriment of agricultural production. Workers adopted the theories because people were so afraid of c…

> Joseph Stalin supported the campaign. More than 3,000 mainstream biologists were dismissed or imprisoned, and numerous scientists were executed in the campaign to suppress scientific opponents. Wow, so what sort of rationale can we make of this? Is the logic, "Stalin supports bunk science theory", "other scientists critique said theory", "therefore they indirectly critique Stalin and reduce his legitimacy/credibili…

When you get a paranoid murderous psychopath like Stalin in power, "rationale" may be stretching it.

But I think it went something like this. Marx was "scientific" - Marx had created a "science" of economics and sociology, and it was the official truth of the USSR. If some crank could show that his crackpot theory of agriculture was the logical consequence of Marxism's established truth, then it too had to be the official truth of the USSR. The science was settled; all that was left was for everyone to fall in line and implement it. Anyone who opposed that was both unscientific and unpatriotic.

Except the science was objectively wrong, and implementing it resulted in disaster.

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#220

Post by kansface »

astrophysician wrote: post #144
fsckboy wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a premature application of software. maybe, but you have no idea yourself so your fear does not carry enough weight to carry that statement. It's basically like you are saying "it's too early to try Bayesian policing" when in fact Bayesian policing might be a great idea, and it was a great idea 10 years ago too. Conditional probability, if there have been a lot of rapes in a 2 block radius, do you think it…

Yea but you're ignoring biases in the data that are difficult or impossible to disentangle from the underlying effects. What happens when you see an area with 50% higher violent crime rate? Is that because there are a large number of crimes? Or is it because it's a neighborhood that is disproportionately targeted by police? How do you even attempt to control for that? It's not that Bayesian stats can't help or can't…

> Or is it because it's a neighborhood that is disproportionately targeted by police?

I'd guess violent crime mostly "comes from" people calling 911, not from officers stumbling into rapes/mugging/murders/home invasions.

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