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The Police Data Accessibility Project

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Re: The Police Data Accessibility Project

#81

Post by jacobush »

primitivesuave wrote: post #46
nradov wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unfortunate reality is that parking tickets are just a cost of doing business in any dense city. When you have appointments to keep you simply can't circle the block until a parking space opens up. But that means businesses have to charge customers enough to cover the ticket cost, and then actually pay the tickets rather than letting them accumulate.

As someone who has probably lost a day of each year roaming San Francisco looking for parking, I wholeheartedly agree with you that punitive measures are the only way to keep people from occupying limited parking spaces beyond certain limits. However, my qualm is with arbitrary citations like street sweeping, missing front license plates (some cars only have one on the back), and numerous other petty citations that t…

Just another way the poor pay a higher "tax" percentage wise compared to more affluent.

Re: The Police Data Accessibility Project

#82

Post by jacobush »

policeinsight wrote: post #56

I work for a company that provides software and hardware for police agencies across America. I have been trying to think of ways to help. Some thoughts: 1. Publicly track the FOIA status of video evidence at a given agency 2. Verify the authenticity of videos floating around on the internet 3. Create a way for citizens to verify the identities of officers in an area who use our technology 4. Put out a public portal o…

Wow, that's interesting. You are not at all afraid that your customers will find out and choose another vendor which is not so keen on keeping them accountable?

Or are you going after mayors (or whatever) more set on reform?

Re: The Police Data Accessibility Project

#83

Post by petrocrat »

chaps wrote: post #67
dogman144 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copy and pasting from a related reply within the group: ``` 1) There's been no decision on redactions. We're still standing up proj mgmt tools after 1000 members in 4 days, much less "this will be in it, this will be in it" 2) Someone else, not the owner, was largely advocating for police inclusion b/c of the impact of the data. Again, no decision made here about "no cops/yes cops" 3) Law professor is the legal lead,…

1: Your scraper must be anonymizing data that it gathers, removing identifiable information to prevent disclosure of names of arresting officers or cited citizens. https://github.com/Police-Data-Accessibility-Project/Police-... 5: It's still an SEO tactic that should raise flags. Here are the names of the past posters if anyone wants to dig: Matt Meadows: https://web.archive.org/web/20191118214540/https://lawsuit.o..…

Why must officer names be anonymized? They are public servants and they are obligated to provide name and badge numbers during the course of their duty.

(Anonymizing citizens that were arrested/cited makes sense, of course)

Re: The Police Data Accessibility Project

#84

Post by mcny »

dantheman wrote: post #80
jimbob45 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time for some great ideas! --------------- - Eliminate civil forfeiture, an archaic part of the policing process - Remove the sentencing discrepancies between crack and powdered cocaine, which needlessly exacerbate the racial welfare gap (Biden erote this law btw) - Ensure all cops wear bodycams at all time so that their integrity can never be called into question without evidence. - Implement a UBI so that impoveris…

How about instead of spending trillions of dollars we don't have on UBI we actually do something that will make a difference: 1. End the war on drugs 2. Fire bad cops 3. End Qualified Immunity 4. End Civil Asset Forfeiture 5. Collect stats on every-time police force is used

It isn’t an either or. We can do both. That being said, I think firing bad cops isn’t enough. There must be criminal charges and convictions.

Personally, I’m amazed that we don’t keep publicly accessible logs of every time a police patrol car turns its lights and/or sirens on.

Firing bad cops should be swift and purposeful. I think any police officer who leaves their reflective vest on the dashboard of a private car or otherwise signals that the car belongs to a police officer, should be fired immediately with no pension. I don’t think we can do that today because the police unions are just too powerful.

Re: The Police Data Accessibility Project

#85

Post by jacobush »

primitivesuave wrote: post #30
ReactiveJelly wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's difficult to anonymize anything involving locations and times

My concern was primarily that license plate numbers are included in the data, which I used to track vehicles across multiple citations. The license plate is also included in the towing dataset as well as the escheatment data published by SFMTA which links license plates to the name of the owner.

Can you bucket the data? Anyway, someone knowledgeable should contact you

Re: The Police Data Accessibility Project

#86

Post by junon »

ericwood wrote: post #48
linsomniac wrote: post #3

Someone told me the other day that they had investigated the Minneapolis police blotter, after the reporting that the majority of people arrested were from out of state. That investigation turned up that the blotter didn't agree, and shortly after it was revealed the police issued an apology. Denver made a similar report, but have not made their arrest records public, for some reason...

Denver also, as of last year, encrypts its police channels, which makes any sort of outsider oversight impossible.

This is a Good Thing. Remember the Boston bomber?

I don't have a solution, but making all police communications public in real-time only puts innocent people at risk.

Re: The Police Data Accessibility Project

#87

Post by junon »

primitivesuave wrote: post #40
runawaybottle wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any protocol to have masked data similar to healthcare data?

I am actually the cofounder of a healthcare company that works with sensitive patient data (vitals, symptom reports, messaging between patients and doctors, lab results, etc). In the process I have found that even HIPAA is not a protocol, it is a largely unspecific set of guidelines for how patient data should be stored and transmitted. If we were to publish a dataset with anonymized patient information (e.g. the Fra…

> In the process I have found that even HIPAA is not a protocol, it is a largely unspecific set of guidelines for how patient data should be stored and transmitted.

Former HIPAA security officer here; to be abundandly clear, there _are_ very specific guidelines for which information must be anonymized.

I don't think you were saying the alternative, just sounded a little like "anything goes" which is definitely not the case.

As for your point about guidelines, that's entirely true - last time I read the section about encryption, it just specified "state of the art encryption" which is... a poor way to specify that.

Re: The Police Data Accessibility Project

#88

Post by runawaybottle »

jacobush wrote: post #82
policeinsight wrote: post #56

I work for a company that provides software and hardware for police agencies across America. I have been trying to think of ways to help. Some thoughts: 1. Publicly track the FOIA status of video evidence at a given agency 2. Verify the authenticity of videos floating around on the internet 3. Create a way for citizens to verify the identities of officers in an area who use our technology 4. Put out a public portal o…

Wow, that's interesting. You are not at all afraid that your customers will find out and choose another vendor which is not so keen on keeping them accountable? Or are you going after mayors (or whatever) more set on reform?

It wouldn’t be a concern if these protests lead to a public mandate at the federal level to require all precincts to adhere to these capabilities by end of 2021.

In other words, the old way is being deprecated, and you cops need to upgrade to v2 or game over.

Need some intelligent leadership to pull this off, but it seems we lack this. We have sincere people that are providing emotional leadership, but I’m seeing very little in the realm of pragmatic and competent leadership.

No draft bills, or even a consensus list of demands by leading figures with forward thinking initiatives yet. Not good, we’re on the cusp of letting another actionable moment blow past us again.

Re: The Police Data Accessibility Project

#89

Post by jhauris »

alasdair_ wrote: post #77
tristor wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the end, the political polarization is such that those who own lots of guns tend to be the same demographics who revere police/military/order and are currently in the camp that overlooks / detests the protesters, saying their complaints are overblown. I'm steeped deep in gun culture in Texas, most of my friends online are in gun culture. We are all universally outraged by what happened to George Floyd and to oth…

>The reason CHL holders are the demographic with the lowest crime rate in the US, and why most gun owners own many guns (which are expensive, by the way) is because as a cohort we are people who uphold order, make prudent financial and life decisions, and take our responsibilities seriously (because of course, we regularly handle deadly weapons). I agree with almost everything you said. Just one small point - I suspe…

In many states the only criteria is "can legally own a gun" (so not a felon). I think it's more a matter of contientiousness; people who bother getting the permit (where required) are affirmatively demonstrating the wish to follow the law.

Re: The Police Data Accessibility Project

#90

Post by genghisjahn »

thephyber wrote: post #61
genghisjahn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a link to this or is the some one that told you, like, totes trustworthy?

A number of news organizations (local Fox affiliate, CNN, CBS[1]) verified with the county jail intake database that the first statements of the mayors were inaccurate. Both mayors retracted when contradictory evidence was presented by media. [1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minnesota-officials-say-most-pe...

Awesome! Thank you. I think we're all a little skeptical of things that easily fit the narrative we want to be true(or not). Having a source helps a lot.
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