4 ms·

There's a lot of upcoming uses of technology and law enforcement that concern me (crowd control, non-lethal weapons, drones, cctv, etc). However, on first glanc

There's a lot of upcoming uses of technology and law enforcement that concern me (crowd control, non-lethal weapons, drones, cctv, etc). However, on first glance, this one seems great. I could see an algorithm come up with a lot of interesting correlations that make sense in hindsight but might not have been thought of ahead of time. For example, maybe a particular stretch of bars the weekend after payday are more likely to have confrontations just after closing time. Or maybe certain neighborhoods are more vulnerable to robberies during a specific holiday. Or maybe specific set of sports teams pitted against each other leads to conflict outside the game. Using police to passively deter crime rather than punish it seems like a win-win.

ricardobeat 14y ago
The "lose" part is that officers in the area are predisposed to seeing suspicious activity where there could be none. There should be strict rules for the use of this information, but it's hard to prevent or stop human nature.
rmc 14y ago
Police have been doing that for as long as there's been police. They are more likely to have police outside a bar at midnight on a Friday night than 2pm on a Tuesday. They are just doing it better now.
- noahc 14y ago
  I'm not sure I'm willing to make this argument yet, but I think there is at least something to stand on to say, "Yeah, but they can be too efficient." Perhaps, not in the case of this example. But think about GPS tracking. Before if you wanted to follow someone around you usually had to dedicate at least 4 people 24/7 to watching them. Now, just use GPS and your good to go. It's not so much about watching the good guys, but in my view it's about not having to make the choice to allocate resources. Is this person really worth taking 8 guys (4 per 12 hour shift) off of another case/patrol, etc to watch one person. That probably prevented a lot of abuse. Now, you slap a tracker on their car and come back in two weeks and pick it up and all the data is there.
  - Retric 14y ago
    I think it might be reasonable argument. Suppose you have an upper class neighborhood that tends to collect a lot of noise complaints on the weekend. In theory sending a cop there might make an algorithm that's trying to minimize response times happy, but the reason cops tend to be stationed else-ware is to better respond to serious crimes because the station is 2 minutes away in case of a serious issues so there are better places to send cops to cover a full county. Sort of how a lot of algorithms made bad risk assessments because they had a poor understanding of what happens during a significant downturn in the housing market.
  - csharpminor 14y ago
    This something that I've been grappling with because it's tremendously difficult to discuss on the policy side of the police system. It's really difficult to make the argument that justice is attained more frequently when there are inefficiencies within the police system, especially when local, state, and federal governments are looking to cut costs.
mistercow 14y ago
While this certainly doesn't bother me in terms of violating civil rights or anything like that, I do think the concept is potentially flawed. It gives the police hot spots for where to send their cops, but if a criminal got access to it, or can build a similar predictive model, then they would have a very good idea of where the cops would be at any given time. In theory this works out a lot like the old halting problem proof, but in practice we may not see such an arms race.
- anothermachine 14y ago
  Do you think random police proximity is a factor in stopping premeditated crimes? Moving police around will have a much greater effect on non-premeditated "mob" misbehavior than on criminal masterminds.
  - mistercow 14y ago
    >Do you think random police proximity is a factor in stopping premeditated crimes? Yes. It may not be a dominating factor, but yes, it is a factor.

ricardobeat 14y ago

The "lose" part is that officers in the area are predisposed to seeing suspicious activity where there could be none. There should be strict rules for the use of this information, but it's hard to prevent or stop human nature.

rmc 14y ago

Police have been doing that for as long as there's been police. They are more likely to have police outside a bar at midnight on a Friday night than 2pm on a Tuesday. They are just doing it better now.

noahc 14y ago
I'm not sure I'm willing to make this argument yet, but I think there is at least something to stand on to say, "Yeah, but they can be too efficient." Perhaps, not in the case of this example. But think about GPS tracking. Before if you wanted to follow someone around you usually had to dedicate at least 4 people 24/7 to watching them. Now, just use GPS and your good to go. It's not so much about watching the good guys, but in my view it's about not having to make the choice to allocate resources. Is this person really worth taking 8 guys (4 per 12 hour shift) off of another case/patrol, etc to watch one person. That probably prevented a lot of abuse. Now, you slap a tracker on their car and come back in two weeks and pick it up and all the data is there.
- Retric 14y ago
  I think it might be reasonable argument. Suppose you have an upper class neighborhood that tends to collect a lot of noise complaints on the weekend. In theory sending a cop there might make an algorithm that's trying to minimize response times happy, but the reason cops tend to be stationed else-ware is to better respond to serious crimes because the station is 2 minutes away in case of a serious issues so there are better places to send cops to cover a full county. Sort of how a lot of algorithms made bad risk assessments because they had a poor understanding of what happens during a significant downturn in the housing market.
- csharpminor 14y ago
  This something that I've been grappling with because it's tremendously difficult to discuss on the policy side of the police system. It's really difficult to make the argument that justice is attained more frequently when there are inefficiencies within the police system, especially when local, state, and federal governments are looking to cut costs.

mistercow 14y ago

While this certainly doesn't bother me in terms of violating civil rights or anything like that, I do think the concept is potentially flawed. It gives the police hot spots for where to send their cops, but if a criminal got access to it, or can build a similar predictive model, then they would have a very good idea of where the cops would be at any given time. In theory this works out a lot like the old halting problem proof, but in practice we may not see such an arms race.

anothermachine 14y ago
Do you think random police proximity is a factor in stopping premeditated crimes? Moving police around will have a much greater effect on non-premeditated "mob" misbehavior than on criminal masterminds.
- mistercow 14y ago
  >Do you think random police proximity is a factor in stopping premeditated crimes? Yes. It may not be a dominating factor, but yes, it is a factor.