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Pasco, Florida’s predictive policing system monitors and harasses residents
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- srtjstjsj 6y agoFlamebait editorialized title. Article is about Pasco County.
- aeontech 6y ago@dang, is there a chance the title could be de-clickbaited?
- sneak 6y agoDirectly from the webpage: > Pasco’s sheriff created a futuristic program to stop crime before it happens. > It monitors and harasses families across the county. I think the submitted title is an accurate condensation of the webpage’s header.
- aeontech 6y agoThe current title is accurate - the original title was flamebaity “Florida is a Police State”
- alistairSH 6y agoWhy, the title is literally what the system is doing?
- non-entity 6y agoIt is now, orginally the story was submitted with a title along the lines of "Florida is a police state".
- stordoff 6y agoGoogle Cache shows the original title was "Florida Is a Police State".
- vonmoltke 6y agoThe new title implies "Pasco" is the name of a statewide system, rather than the county where a system has been deployed.
- MariuszGalus 6y agohome sweet home
- sakebomb 6y agoHere is the main header rather than the baited title: Pasco’s sheriff created a futuristic program to stop crime before it happens. It monitors and harasses families across the county.
- bergstromm466 6y ago> Pasco’s sheriff created a futuristic program to stop crime before it happens. That title would not be critical at all. This is about surveillance tech and systemic oppression. I think the title is very fitting. "As they make checks, deputies feed information back into the system, not just on the people they target, but on family members, friends and anyone else in the target’s orbit. In the past two years alone, two of the nation’s largest law enforcement agencies have scrapped similar programs following public outcries and reports documenting serious flaws." and "Criminal justice experts said they were stunned by the agency’s practices. They compared the tactics to child abuse, mafia harassment and surveillance that could be expected under an authoritarian regime."
- mc32 6y agoI agree it’s state surveillance and would say systemic harassment and intimidation but I don’t see the oppression angle.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoEven if "police state" is an appropriate characterization, it's surely wrong for the title to say that all of Florida is subject to this one county's program.
- gwbas1c 6y agoThis is a great article; it just needs a better title on Hacker News.
- Shengbo 6y agoHalfway into the article it started reminding me of the informant networks of the USSR. Officers peeping through windows, feeding data into the system about the target's friends and family while also fining them for any unrelated arbitrary misdemeanor. This is not what crime prevention looks like in a democracy.
- jacobush 6y agoExcept this surveillance machine is even more stupid. The USSR was at least ostensibly protecting its power structure from internal opposition. These floridian police are basically grooming kids to become criminals by giving them records and harassing their families until they fall unto hardship.
- HarryHirsch 6y agoThese floridian police are basically grooming kids to become criminals What if that was the point? The system is making work to justify its continued existence. The police aren't working for you, they are working for the sheriff, and these interest do not match.
- non-entity 6y agoThis is a sherrif too, so they're elected, not neccesarily by any sort of experience or merit. Nobody likes to hear it, but I'm willing to bet this person has been in office for a while. Tough on crime is popular among "model citizen" voters even if it utilizes dystopic tactics.
- baq 6y agowhat if people who could run against this guy in an election turned out to have high risk pasco profiles?
- pchristensen 6y agoTheir grass might be 1/4" too long, or they might not have numbers on their mailbox (examples of justification for police harassment from the article).
- bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y agoLove the initiative. This is what bottom-up innovation looks like.
- okennedy 6y ago> The Sheriff’s Office said its program was designed to reduce bias in policing by using objective data. Data is no more objective than the people collecting or analyzing it.
- giantg2 6y agoThis is very true. The first lesson in any data science program covers the explict and implicit biases as well as the difference between correlation and causation. It seems the people involved in this system dont even have this basic knowledge.
- pchristensen 6y agoChoosing which data to include and how to weigh it is all the editorial control you need.
- dawg- 6y agoWe are reaping what we have sown. Science turned into the new state religion and now authoritarians are misusing it believing they can do no harm because God (erm, Science rather) is on their side
- elliekelly 6y agoThis is just absolutely stunning. I simply cannot believe this is happening in a democratic country.
- wizzwizz4 6y agoIt's not. Many of the people who are targeted lose voting privileges.
- dillondoyle 6y agoFlorida is heinous. Statewide voted overwhelmingly to restore rights to returning citizens in a constitutional amendment. Then, Republicans who control the state leg & Gov. DeSantis passed a poll-tax which virtually excludes 1 million or more citizens who served their time from voting. It's disgusting. It's being litigated but it's too late for this election.... They passed the law a couple weeks before a previous election the timing was on purpose. There is no statewide easy system/paperwork for most of these citizens to even know how much they owe in ridiculous court fees etc. Let alone it seems a vast majority can't afford to pay if they are able to ever find out. It's indentured servitude to a criminal system (i'm calling the state the criminal in that sentence). I feel so hopeless about our country. I work in politics. I used to feel optimistic and good about the work we/I have accomplished and making incremental progress. But over the last two years I've grown this close to completely giving up - which feels disgusting. I hate that we've strayed this far. It feels intentional and as someone with a relatively large amount of power I feel virtually powerless.
- wizzwizz4 6y agoIf you can, start a blog. Don't put sensational stuff on it, just… write your thoughts. The laws going on, how you feel about it, that kind of thing. If you can provide more transparency to your citizens, even if it's just a public diary… either it'll help solve the problems, or it'll help the revolution start a day earlier. (Which depends entirely on whether the people we've trusted with power start using it for the things we gave them the power to do.)
- 6y ago
- kaydub 6y agoTo everyone saying the title was sensationalized and that it's only one county in Florida, I welcome you to come visit my state. This kind of stuff is widespread in Florida. Sheriff Gualtieri, Grady Judd, Billy Woods, Darryl Daniels, ex Sheriff Mike Scott, Ric Bradshaw, and I could go on and on and on. Look across the vast swaths of rural land in the landlocked parts of Florida and you'll find the only industry are prisons and policing.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- BrianOnHN 6y agoI'm not sure why this is downvoted. It's absolutely correct. https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/501771-florida-police-group-offers-to-hire-officers-who-resigned-were-fired-amid-protests https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/501771-florida-poli... Furthermore, there are a startling amount of startups that sell these technologies to the police. They love testing on Floridians. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/technology/clearview-privacy-facial-recognition.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/technology/clearview-priv... Edit: I probably just increased my points— +1 for reading the article, and +2 for posting this comment.
- dang 6y agoThe title you submitted ("Florida is a police state") badly broke the HN guideline against editorializing in titles: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." Accounts that do that eventually lose submission privileges, so please don't do that. If you want to offer your interpretation of the article or the facts, that's totally fine, but do it in the comments, so your view is on a level playing field with everyone else's. On HN, being the one to submit a story doesn't confer any special rights over it. This is important because titles have by far the biggest influence. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Puts 6y agoDon't miss the disturbing bodycam footage that's linked from within the article: https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/investigations/police-pasco-sheriff-targeted/body-cam-footage/ https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/investigations/p...
- tomatotomato37 6y agoCan I say this is probably the best presentation of journalism I've seen in a while. It's long form, they have an entire multi-paragraph section on how they retrieved and processed all the date after the footer, and they release the footage. I feel like most news sources at this point would have just a single edited shocker video and then told us to trust them that they have hundreds more hours of police abuse.
- dylan604 6y agoAny time your webpage hijacks scrolling to the point it needs to be stated multiple times to scroll down, something is wrong. Yes, it is a good write up, and the video provided is good corroboration. I just don't understand how something so basic like scrolling is deemed as improved by taking it over with javascript.
- metalliqaz 6y agoI'm browsing with Firefox and uBlock Origin. I didn't have that issue. I agree it's bullshit and a gross perversion of the web.
- dylan604 6y agoLooks like the link has changed. It is now pointing to a different news outlet altogether.
- jcomis 6y agoThese cops are straight up gangsters.
- goodluckchuck 6y agoIt's odd how their poster-boy was arrested for stealing a motorized bicycle out of someone's carport. That's far from murder, but not exactly an indicator that the teen is headed on the right path. Seems to be exactly the kind of person who may need some guidance. Then the author conspicuously leaves out important information. They say targets are selected based on information about their family, but doesn't go into the teen's parent's criminal history. If his father's in prison and his mom has a serious record, and now he's heading down the same path.. that's relevant and necessary information. It also says the police visited his house 20+ times and they often stop at people's houses without a warrant... but they don't actually say that the police stopped at his house 20+ times without a warrant/reason. They just hope the reader will assume that. Definitely casting the story in the light they want to cast it in, and omitting exculpatory evidence.
- sophacles 6y agoI think you missed the part where the kid hasn't gotten in trouble since. It seems to me that they are harassing the kid because they feel a need to harass someone and at least with this kid, the bootlickers have a past mistake to point at as "good reason". (scare quotes because the kid got in trouble once, then didn't anymore, not actually a bad path, just a bad choice once - therefore not even a remotely accurate reason. unless you love that boot flavor that is).
- zentiggr 6y agoIt sounds an awful lot more like you're trying to find any sliver of "this isn't so bad" and "but they didn't tell ALL the facts so BIAS" when the report goes over many many other stories in detail and shows how many of them are worse than your cherry picked poster boy example. This department, this sheriff, and everyone associated with the data entry for this whole program need to be removed from any law enforcement / security positions anywhere, and really should be required to see a therapist themselves for agreeing to contribute to this kind of harassment against others.
- anigbrowl 6y agoDefinitely casting the story in the light they want to cast it in, and omitting exculpatory evidence. Ironically, a good summary of what the article is about.
- mattdeboard 6y agoInstitutionalized & normalized patterns of emotional abuse. This sheriff is running his department like an abusive & controlling spouse/father.
- tobltobs 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- csilverman 6y ago“Last summer, the Sheriff’s Office announced plans to begin keeping tabs on people who have been repeatedly committed to psychiatric hospitals.” People are going to die because of that. There is a close friend of mine who, if unlucky enough to live in that hellhole, would have her life made miserable by this. She’s a nurse who’s never committed a crime in her life. She’s also bipolar, suicidal, deals with major depression, and has a less-than-supportive family, so she’s been committed a few times. Being harassed by hyperzealous cops who think they’re fighting terrorists is exactly the sort of thing that could push her over the edge. I think—and hope—that this is what does them in. It should never have gotten to this point, but they can wave around terms like “reduced crime” and as long as it’s just the bad guys who are being targeted, no one cares. But I suspect there will be a point soon enough where the sheriff here will find himself answering questions about why his department drove to suicide a mentally ill person with no criminal record, and I hope to god the resulting consequences put an end to this un-American madness, here and everywhere else.
- pradn 6y agoIt's important to note that, in America, any police enforcement comes with a chance of death or injury. When we make little laws (jaywalking or whatnot), we should be careful to keep this in mind.
- dragonsky67 6y agoI'm just amazed that you can declare this and nobody makes any comment. How is this not a completely outragious statement? What type of society can tolorate the police being a net risk to the people they are ostensibly there to protect. Ok, yes I know I'm completely ignorant of how the US works. The thing that scares me that your society is infecious, and I never want to see this in my part of the world.
- pigscantfly 6y agoI hate to be the bearer of bad news, but my father has been practicing civil rights law in central Florida for several decades now, and he's brought multiple lawsuits against police departments there which are very similar to the situation you're describing. In one instance, a young mother with anorexia and mental health issues died after a 300-pound corrections officer sat on her to 'calm her down' until she asphyxiated in her jail cell with multiple broken ribs. This was all recorded on video. She'd been arrested for something along the lines of making a disturbance related to her psychological problems. There have never been any systemic changes implemented as a result of these lawsuits. If the case goes 'well', the department will pay restitution to surviving family members, but damages for police negligence are tightly capped in Florida, and the department will frequently attribute full blame to the individual officer in question rather than give the impression of general negligence or training problems, which are some of the very narrow means of avoiding the damages cap and making them actually take notice. My impression is that most departments in central Florida treat these cases as the cost of doing business, which is extremely depressing and also indicative of how the cops down there actually feel and act, unfortunately.
- kristopolous 6y agoEvery time I read these, it's just horrible science and bad math "The Sheriff’s Office said its program was designed to reduce bias in policing by using objective data. And it provided statistics showing a decline in burglaries, larcenies and auto thefts since the program began in 2011." Oh really? Where's your control? What did you control for? What were the other factors? Perhaps it's the same as everywhere else. Maybe people feel more intimidated so they don't report crime. These measurements are self reported and after more intimidation and fear perhaps there's less self reporting... It's unqualified people making incompetent assessments and unilaterally dictating public policy with gobs of taxpayer money to do it. Just atrocious
- pchristensen 6y agoThe article says the 7 surrounding counties experienced similar drops in property crime, and Pasco (the subject of the article) was the only one where violent crime increased.
- kristopolous 6y agoYes, thank you to the journalists for not letting that slide. We should probably be doing more than just claiming the reasoning is faulty and invalid on some websites though
- rootsudo 6y ago"The Pasco Sheriff’s Office won a $95,000 federal grant to upgrade its computer systems and hired a small team of civilian analysts. " I joke, but somehow I think this means a Google Maps license and 3 analysts to copy/paste reports.
- nlbrown 6y agoWhere are the "good guys" fighting against this sort of oppression? Are they relegated to coding encrypted messaging apps or is there a strong network of technologists who are working on legal ways to foil these types of systems?
- BrianOnHN 6y agoFor one, developers can gain some morality and stop working for these companies. There will always be someone to replace them, but you'll certainly slow down the progress.
- panax 6y agoThey're getting harassed too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mEpdfPJq6w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mEpdfPJq6w https://mclynasforsheriff.com/pcso-corruption/ https://mclynasforsheriff.com/pcso-corruption/
- dawg- 6y agoThe best answer is to make this kind of thing illegal. The technological shift has outpaced our legal framework for privacy and ownership of our information is not yet a fully protected human right. Support people who are advocating for legal change. Electronic Privacy Information Center - lobbyist group based on DC Electronic Freedom Foundation - Bay Area roots ACLU - obviously
- platetone 6y agotop notch original photography in that article.
- sandworm101 6y agoIn all honesty, in such situations where persons have become the target of focused policing, it may be time to move cities. Or even move states. Being "in the system" is not a crime but if cops are poking around your house on a weekly/daily basis an incident is inevitable. The time to move is prior to that moment. This may look like defeat. It is. At the larger scale this would mean cops are running certain people out of town. That is evil. But at the scale of an individual or family, particularly when mental health is an issue, what is best is to not be involved in an escalating situation. Pull up stakes and move somewhere with less oppressive policies.
- ericwood 6y agoMoving is expensive, and leaving a city means leaving behind existing support networks (friends, family, etc.). I'd imagine many people don't have that kind of mobility and moving is simply not an option.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoMLK had a quote about injustice that seems highly relevant to this kind of thing. I would prefer to fight the fires where they start. There are half a dozen states barreling toward a cliff because a generation of Californian's were told "just leave if you don't like it" (and if you don't like that example I could just as easily come up with an East coast one). Price out a condo in Denver if you don't believe me.
- artofgo 6y agoCould you expand on what you mean exactly by your barreling quote?
- pchristensen 6y agoI assume they meant "barreling towards the exact same problems and policies that make California an unlivable hellhole today." That's usually the context when people talk about Californians migrating to other Western states.
- oh_sigh 6y agoShould there be a law that you can't use unrelated laws or violations in order to compel otherwise legal behavior?
- michaelcampbell 6y agoSomething along these lines graced HN's front page recently, but I'll repeat my comment from there: Read "Weapons of Math Destruction" by Cathy O'Neil. Truly frightening.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jdechko 6y agoI was thinking this sounded a lot like Minority Report. Then the article said that this was designed to be exactly like Minority Report. Talk about missing the moral of the story. It’s like reading the Lorax and coming away with the idea that the environment should be exploited for profit.
- pchristensen 6y agoAlso, in Minority Report, they stopped violent crime in the act - the person had gotten to the point where they were actually going to commit it. This article is about messing up the lives of suspects and their families to "prevent" them from committing unknown, undisclosed crimes at some point in the future.
- cameronsr 6y ago"...Strategic Targeted Area Response teams, or STAR teams..." Welcome to Raccoon City (Florida)...
- 8bitsrule 6y agoPosted article sez: "Then it sends deputies to find and interrogate anyone whose name appears, often without probable cause, a search warrant or evidence of a specific crime.... They mostly grilled him about his friends..." A Law Professor Explains Why You Should Never Talk to Police https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mvkgnp/law-professor-police-interrogation-law-constitution-survival https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mvkgnp/law-professor-poli... "you are legally obligated to tell the cop your name and what you're doing at that very moment. Other than that, Duane says, you should fall back on four short words: "I want a lawyer."