There are definitely techniques that could be used to modify this. over sampling of cases when dealing with unbalanced class problems is one technique. No reason to throw out the baby with the bath water
Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first
421–430 of 643 posts
Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first
#422Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not like cops can pull you over for simple possession of weed in your glove box. They pull people over for a traffic infraction and then find the weed, illegal gun, etc.
I once looked up the arrest records in my local area. The number one reason for arrest was "driving without a license." (with no other infractions listed). I'm not saying that this was racial profiling, but I'm not denying that people with Hispanic last names accounted for the vast majority of these arrests. I am at least implying that it is a little suspicious and maybe requires a little more nuance and closer inspe…
Does your area allow undocumented immigrants to get driver licenses?
Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first
#423Earlier quoted context omitted.
But how does the level of policing in an area affect murder rates? I don't know the answer, but from statistics I've seen, it seems pretty clear that police are not exactly great at solving murders.
Are you seriously claiming that the presence of police increases the murder rate? Or are you actually asking to know by what mechanisms policing can prevent murders? Once you are talking about solving a murder, clearly that one was not prevented. It may draw detectives to the neighborhood looking for clues. It's pretty hard to argue that the causality runs from these detectives to the murder though.
> Are you seriously claiming that the presence of police increases the murder rate?
No, I'm not, and I didn't say anything remotely suggesting that.
Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first
#424Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that, in general, you're going to have biased training data (with a bias that's difficult to measure) and so inherently policing recommendations will be biased. This is particularly problematic when it comes to arrests for crimes that are inherently 'selective' in their enforcement. Eg; drug-related crimes, public intoxication, loitering, trespassing. But the fact is... violent (fatal and nonfatal) crimes do…
I think you make a good point about the need for law enforcement in high-crime areas, though I disagree strongly that the only solution to that problem is a police force as currently constituted in the US. I think it's worth pointing out that police often has abysmal clearance rates and response times and often do not provide effective relief from the real problems you outline. However, what I wanted to raise was thi…
> > the fact is... violent (fatal and nonfatal) crimes do happen at a much higher rate in poor neighborhoods
> I think this statement is worth examining.
Are you trying to suggest that there are a large number of unreported, undiscovered murders in more affluent areas? Because that's one of the the kinds of violent crime that we're pretty sure happen disproportionately in poor or black communities. (you're more likely to be murdered if you're poor, and more likely to be murdered if you're black, with IIRC the richest 20% of blacks still being murdered more often than the poorest 20% of non-hispanic whites)
Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first
#425Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like to bring Then Now up everytime precrime comes up. Until it goes off the rails in the end, its one of my favorite articles of all time. The paragraphs I yanked below, dont do its craziness justice. https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7... "But the oddest is STATIC-99. It's a way of predicting whether sex offenders are likely to commit crimes again after they have been released. In America…
The options here are having the judge make the decision based on their gut feeling or they can make it based on data. It's really hard for me to believe that gut feeling is better than data.
And if you want to use that argument for a parole hearing that's... I can accept that as an argument. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I understand the reasons someone might have for holding that position.
We're talking about holding people after their sentence is done. That's not ok.
Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first
#426Earlier quoted context omitted.
>What the fuck is calling the police going to do to prevent violence after a gang has done a drive by shooting? To find the criminals that did that and put them in prison to prevent them from doing that again?
But the original argument is talking about worrying response times, not conviction rates!
Crimes often leave evidence of which much is time sensitive. Responding in a timely manner to crimes are often critical to finding the perpetrators.
Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first
#427Earlier quoted context omitted.
The report you linked to is astonishing, not just for the violence committed against someone who, at the time he was questioned, was not in violation of the law, but also for the degree of force used considering the crime being investigated. To wit: > wrongly detained him after identifying him as a suspect in a panhandling case. Slammed to the ground for being suspected of panhandling? (To my mind, panhandling is aki…
Wait until you hear about Elijiah McClain, who was tackled then choked/injected with ketamine until he went into cardiac arrest and was eventually pronounced brain-dead. He had 911 called on him for walking while 'looking sketchy'. https://www.nytimes.com/article/who-was-elijah-mcclain.html
The Elijah McClain case makes me very sad; not only for everything listed in the article, but also because he was a skinny, nerdy kid like most of my friends (and many of this site's readers, I imagine).
Just a regular guy going about his business, and he is murdered (and I don't use that term lightly) by the very people sworn to "protect and serve" him.
Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first
#428Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course if the law is bad, the solution isn't to dismantle law enforcement, it's to fix the law.
How do you deal with police forces ignoring policy and performing as they deem fit all while protecting themselves?
Burn qualified immunity to the ground and salt the earth. This would be the simplest way to keep police accountable for their behavior. It would also imply a massive change in how policing is done (demilitarization), so that's two big wins.
We can lay a lot of the rotten police problem in the USA, and the world, at the fact that the accountability just isn't there.
Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first
#429> 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…
You are talking about theory, GP is talking about the actual computer systems that police have today. And in fact GP already made good suggestions for bridging the gap:
> far stricter processes should be in place, more similar to getting approval for a new airplane or medicine
Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first
#430Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we want to stop neighborhood gang violence in the long term, we need to work on why people join gangs, and what they are fighting over. We can't do that with police, who generally don't come into the situation until after it's too late and things have gone wrong. But if most of our money is going to the police, then what resources are available to do the longer-term work on gangs and neighborhoods? In software dev…
Talking with police is interesting. I talked policing with a police officer who had worked in New Zealand, the UK and Australia. These are countries that are relatively close in culture and the differences in policing described by the officer were striking. A lot of this was in relation to what the police role was and how other services cooperated (or didn’t). It would be great to have a description of system differe…
Could you expand on that? I'm really curious about what the differences were.