'Moneyball' Approach Reduces Crime In New York City 218
HughPickens.com writes The NYT reports that NY County District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.'s most significant initiative has been to transform, through the use of data, the way district attorneys fight crime. "The question I had when I came in was, Do we sit on our hands waiting for crime to tick up, or can we do something to drive crime lower?" says Vance. "I wanted to develop what I call intelligence-driven prosecution." When Vance became DA in 2009, it was glaringly evident that assistant D.A.s fielding the 105,000-plus cases a year in Manhattan seldom had enough information to make nuanced decisions about bail, charges, pleas or sentences. They were narrowly focused on the facts of cases in front of them, not on the people committing the crimes. They couldn't quickly sort minor delinquents from irredeemably bad apples. They didn't know what havoc defendants might be wreaking in other boroughs.
Vance divided Manhattan's 22 police precincts into five areas and assigned a senior assistant D.A. and an analyst to map the crime in each area. CSU staff members met with patrol officers, detectives and Police Department field intelligence officers and asked police commanders to submit a list of each precinct's 25 worst offenders — so-called crime drivers, whose "incapacitation by the criminal-justice system would have a positive impact on the community's safety." Seeded with these initial cases, the CSU built a searchable database that now includes more than 9,000 chronic offenders (PDF), virtually all of whom have criminal records. A large percentage are recidivists who have been repeatedly convicted of grand larceny, one of the top index crimes in Manhattan, but the list also includes active gang members, people whom the D.A. considers "uncooperative witnesses," and a fluctuating number of violent "priority targets," which currently stands at 81. "These are people we want to know about if they are arrested," says Kerry Chicon. "We are constantly adding, deleting, editing and updating the intelligence in the Arrest Alert System. If someone gets out of a gang, or goes to prison for a long time, or moves out of the city or the state, or ages out of being a focus for us, or dies, we edit the system accordingly — we do that all the time.""It's the 'Moneyball' approach to crime," says Chauncey Parker. "The tool is data; the benefit, public safety and justice — whom are we going to put in jail? If you have 10 guys dealing drugs, which one do you focus on? The assistant district attorneys know the rap sheets, they have the police statements like before, but now they know if you lift the left sleeve you'll find a gang tattoo and if you look you'll see a scar where the defendant was once shot in the ankle. Some of the defendants are often surprised we know so much about them."
Mobile police stations (Score:3)
I would guess there's relatively little crime within a block of the police station. Police should create a mobile platform and move the police stations to where the crime happens every few weeks or months.
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How? Huge balloons anchored to the station building?
Lift off like a terran barracks and plunk down where needed to churn out cops?
Re:Mobile police stations (Score:4, Interesting)
What might work in high-density cities in similar to what you see in Japanese cities - small police offices on corners within a certain spread of city blocks, so there's at least one officer on call for any given neighborhood. I live by a police substation in my city, and I can attest that it has made me more diligent about avoiding minor traffic offenses, and it likely helps their response time (I live in what is admittedly not a very good neighborhood).
Re:Mobile police stations (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to live in an apartment complex where one of the other buildings had one of it's rooms converted into a mini police station. It eas great! Very quiet, nothing ever happened. The place had a bad past (the reason for the station) and a horrible reputation. we couldn't even get anyone to deliver pizza there! After I was there for a few years the city cut back the police force in order to spend money on it's parks.The mini station was closed. Immediately the car break-ins started! We moved out at the end of that lease. They did make the parks pretty nice though...
Re: Mobile police stations (Score:2)
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2-3 specially outfitted RVs that can all park in the highest crime area. Add a couple cars.
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The NYPD has more than 34,000 uniforms and 8,800 cars across 77 precincts. Shifting even 1/3rd of a precinct into a mobile base would take a wee bit more than a couple RVs and some street side parking. Then you add in increased utility bills since RVs have a fraction of the insulation and much less thermal mass inside. And RV replacement bills from broken walls and whatnot (even the external walls are thin, and not exactly easy to repair).
No, I think structural anchors, massive ballons, and fusion powered t
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Centralizing police around other police seems counterproductive and inefficient. If police are going to protect and serve citizens, they should be distributed near the citizens. If they're going to catch criminals or patrol to deter criminals, they should be distributed near the crime areas.
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Congratulations, you've just invented the TARDIS.
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I would guess there's relatively little crime within a block of the police station. Police should create a mobile platform and move the police stations to where the crime happens every few weeks or months.
Well, you'd be wrong.
My mom once tested out how fast the car could go (when she was a teen) nearby a police station because she figured they wouldn't be looking there. Things have changed a little since, but most likely it's still the case that they tend to turn a blind eye around the station because of the (incorrect) bias that "no would be dumb enough to commit crimes near the station".
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Rochester NY once had a sex shop owner murdered in his store that was only a few hundred feet from a police station. The city's solution? Shut down the station. Proximity to the police isn't always a guarantee of safety.
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Most big cities have police RVs that they use as mobile command posts.
Here is one that my home town has...
https://www.ldvusa.com/vehicle... [ldvusa.com]
Re:Mobile police stations (Score:5, Funny)
Not for crime. Police cars just give out traffic tickets.
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Police cars give out traffic tickets because crimes have been committed.
Where I live, a traffic ticket is neither a felony nor a misdemeanor (since you'd be entitled to a trial by jury for either of those!), it's an odd sort of administrative tax.
But, yeah, the only time you see police cars around me is giving traffic tickets, or coming by hours after a crime to do the paperwork. When I lived in a bad area, you would see cops walking the apartment complex at night, and thus being a helpful deterrent, or at least being close enough to respond rapidly. But of course those guys
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Because driving past a high crime area on the way to give out traffic tickets is the same as having an outpost there for a few weeks?
Actually what reduced crime (Score:5, Interesting)
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Actually what reduced the crime was the Cosby Show. Since that show came out crime stats have gotten better and better.
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Re:Actually what reduced crime (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, what really reduced crime was legalized abortion.
From "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime [uchicago.edu]," by John J. Donohue III and Steven D. Levitt, appearing in the The Quarterly Journal of Economics:
If that is correct, still either the Cosby Show or banning leaded gasoline could have accounted for up to a 50% of the drop in crime.
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And street crime went down since then with a very strong correlation to the timeframes of removing leaded fuel.
Re:Actually what reduced crime (Score:5, Insightful)
And street crime went down since then with a very strong correlation to the timeframes of removing leaded fuel.
The correlation was actually much stronger than that. Crime rates jumped in response and proportion 18 years after the introduction of leaded gasoline and it's adoption/usage rate - the more used, the bigger the crime jump. It also tracked with it's removal. Areas that removed leaded gasoline two years later than others experienced the drop in crime two years later than the control areas.
Areas with little to no usage of leaded didn't experience the jump at all.
It's hard to imagine a bigger red flag.
Leaded gasoline reduction (Score:2)
You need to check your timeline - I was born late '70s and I remember the transition, so sure as heck I was affected.
But you are correct - the drop in crime should be leveling off soon(if not already). Now we're into the tougher ways to further reduce crime. One thing that the massive jump in crime did was really exercise our law enforcement abilities.
Heck, I even remember my grandfather using an adapter so he could use the (cheaper) leaded gasoline in his unleaded car. I know now that it ruined the cata
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Well, we could always bring it back temporarily just to see if crime goes up or not.
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Results? (Score:2)
I glossed through the lengthy article and didn't see if the DA's "Moneyball" approach is working, and to what extent if it is.
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I glossed through the lengthy article and didn't see if the DA's "Moneyball" approach is working, and to what extent if it is.
The article just touched on this, but major crime statistics have been going down around the country, for reasons that aren't too clear.
Geographically, crime has been going down as much in NYC as anywhere else, so all these approaches didn't make any difference.
Over time, the crime rate has been going down in NYC as these approaches come and go, so all these approaches didn't make any difference.
well & good (Score:2)
Less crime is great, but these methods presuppose that the DA & the police are working so closely together as to be indistinguishable. If that's a desirable arrangement, we still need someone who is willing to prosecute police misconduct.
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Operational analysis needed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Operational analysis needed (Score:4, Interesting)
While your analogy is a good one. I think you are drawing the wrong conclusions.
Basically in 1990 they started talking to each other. Each of the 5 cities that consist of new york has its own DA. They never shared any data. So you could have someone in and out of all the different systems. Basically a repeat offender. He could get away with it because he could game the system a bit by just shifting his act a few blocks and lay low from the other group. Even if they were picked up by the same system the DA office was swamped and just went by the case notes. Instead of picking them out and saying 'what is wrong'. One example they gave was a dude they gave 3-4 chances. He kept doing the same thing. They eventually did not plea him out.
They went after the people who are repeat offenders. Not the guy who just got busted for jay walking. The jay walker would get a ticket and maybe pumped for some info depending on tattoos cloths and where he lived.
Where as before they had mountains of evidence but nothing putting the whole puzzle together.
They were looking to lower the massive basically petty larceny crimes. One example was from a different city where 70% of the crimes were committed by 1-2% of the population. By figuring out the key players in that 1-2% you can disrupt the crime flow.
It was so bad I lived in a small tiny town in the midwest. *I* knew how notorious crime in NY was and how seedy times square was. I have never stepped foot there. Yet I knew about it. That is how bad it was. Apparently now it is more like a jacked up tourist trap.
is focusing on the incompetent criminals
Perhaps. But as a cop once told a friend of mine. "Ever go fishing? Well you cant catch them all but I got you" They could not even tell the difference between a petty one time guy from a thug who had bounced in and out 20 times. The arrest rate will be the same either way for the 'top shelf' guys. If you can remove the noise the big guys start to stand out.
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True.. but it's hard to focus on the people you don' t know about. Getting rid of known repeat offenders would at least be an improvement.
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I think you've got a good point -- except that we're not talking about people getting arrested here; we're talking about known repeat-offenders (most of them have repeat convictions). The idea here is to spend less time on the "repeat" portion and just put these guys away, so that all of that time they were wasting in the courts and for police on the beat can be spent looking at the cases they currently can't handle appropriately due to volume caused by repeat offenders.
So it'd be more like a study that tr
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Not exactly true. Crime is a numbers game. Criminals get away with it far more frequently than they get caught. But sooner or later, everyone gets caught. The careless ones get caught more often, that is true. But even the 'good' ones roll the dice every time they break the law.
Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
The database contains "more than 9,000 chronic offenders" which include "uncooperative witnesses"? Does anyone else worry about this?
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But ... it is your civic duty to assist law enforcement in any capacity you can, at all times.
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. You're either with us or you're with the terrorists.
Papers, please, comrade.
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The database contains "more than 9,000 chronic offenders" which include "uncooperative witnesses"? Does anyone else worry about this?
Yes, but compared that to the fact that so many of these prosecutions can only identify "the State" as a victim (aka victimless "crimes") and that 97% of them take a plea due to charge stacking and prosecutorial belligerence, when many of the accused are actually innocent, the harassment of witnesses is so minor next to the shredding of the sixth amendment.
If the DA's really w
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I noticed that they also included this:
Why in hell are they including people with no criminal records in a list of "chronic offenders"? Don't we have some sort of presumption of innocence in our legal system?
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Not really. Gang A shoots at Gang B. Gangster B1 gets hit. Gangsters B2 through B12 refuse to help police because snitches get stitches. Therefore they are likely involved with the gang, or sympathetic to the gang.
You can safely assume that the police can tell the difference between "someone afraid to testify due to fear of retaliation" versus "uncooperative witnesses".
Re: Wait, what? (Score:3)
Because life is not a TV and people who deal with the public for a living, especially detectives and trained investigators, know how to read people.
Chronic offenders without a record? (Score:3)
9,000 chronic offenders (PDF), virtually all of whom have criminal records
How can you be a chronic offender and NOT have a record?
Re:Chronic offenders without a record? (Score:4, Informative)
Don't get caught?
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So the idea is that there are records in the system about them, but the phrase "criminal record" means specifically that they've been arrested, tried, and found guilty?
That makes sense, but seems like it could/should be phrased better. Maybe something like 9,000 chronic offenders (PDF), virtually all of whom have criminal conviction records.
There's a house in our neighborhood that kinda goes in this category. The residents are low-level ne'er-do-well types. They run a bicycle theft ring but haven't been
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Someone in the next comment thread mentioned Wall Street...
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9,000 chronic offenders (PDF), virtually all of whom have criminal records
How can you be a chronic offender and NOT have a record?
There are some chronic offenders with juvie records, as opposed to criminal records.
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Guilty by association. Usually gang members who are not hard core / have not been charged with a crime before... yet always seem to be nearby when things are happening. See the above comments about 'uncooperative witnesses'. While freedom of speech protects a person's right to throw up gang signs and tell an officer to go fuck themselves, and dress just like the gangsters who are dealing drugs and breaking into apartments... we do have a system that still vaguely upholds the ideal of 'innocent until prov
Yo, let's cut the bullcrap. . . . (Score:3)
I call bullcrap on this!
I have always said this was a good idea (Score:2)
Putting police officers inside giant plastic bubbles and then tilting the whole of Manhattan Island to help them collect bananas is clearly the best approach to fighting crime.
Why this wasn't done years ago is beyond me.
Re:A tech gloss over racial profiling? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would very much like to know the racial makeup of that list. Given it came from the police themselves, it certainly leads to questions about how such individuals end up on those lists.
Put the fucking race card away.
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Seriously. Even if the list is racially biased, why assume that that's because of racial bias in compiling the list?
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That probably isn't the only reason. I'd be willing to bet that the jail's population has a higher percentage of blacks than the city's population.
Re:A tech gloss over racial profiling? (Score:5, Insightful)
But why do you have to assume they were put there based on race?
Because the NYPD has a long history of racism, and not all of it is in the distant past. The "stop-and-frisk" policy targeted 80% black and Hispanic men in a city where they make up about 25% of the population. The stops were not based on any sort of probably cause, but just on the way people looked and dressed. That didn't stop until last year, and then it was only because of a court order. NYPD policies should be presumed to be racist until proven otherwise.
Re:A tech gloss over racial profiling? (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you do when 80% of the crimes are coming from a population represented by 20% of the people? Do you focus on the 80% that commit 20% or the 20% that commit 80%?
I'm not saying that is the case, but in places like Chicago, where the chances of you being killed are somewhere along those lines. And the victims, are equally represented (80% Black). It isn't racism to prosecute people who kill black people.
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Do you focus on the 80% that commit 20% or the 20% that commit 80%?
You don't focus on any group because of their race. Blacks do commit a disproportionate number of crimes. If the police used racial profiling, that would almost certainly make law enforcement more efficient. IT IS STILL WRONG. "Efficient law enforcement" is not a higher priority than "free and fair society".
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"Efficient law enforcement" is not a higher priority than "free and fair society".
Racial profiling does not take away from a free and fair society though.
Well, it depends exactly what you mean by racial profiling since the term encompasses so many possible actions. Going around harassing black people "just in case" is counter to a free and fair society. But making law enforcement more efficient by looking at factors like race, sex, age, wealth, hairstyle, clothing, gang affiliation, etc is fine.
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Going around harassing black people "just in case" is counter to a free and fair society.
Until the courts stopped them last year, this is exactly what the NYPD was doing.
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So, if 80 of witnessed murders are reported to have been committed by a perpetrator with SkinColorA and 20 were reported to have been committed by a perpetrator with SkinColorB, the police should ignore 60 of the first group of murders in order to remain balanced? What a load of shit!
I guess we could also make a similar claim that a small town northern US city (that generally have single digit black populations) should not allow something like 90% of their white students to attend school in order to remain
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As someone said - what percentage of crime is committed by blacks?
Further, even if you don't believe that look at this map...
http://www.nydailynews.com/new... [nydailynews.com]
Then do man ethnic overlay. Except for midtown, it strongly correlates with race, and if you stop and frisk in high crime neighborhoods, on even a proportional basis to the neighborhood, you will end up with a minority bias/ MOST crime in NYC is in minority neighborhoods...
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Re:A tech gloss over racial profiling? (Score:4, Insightful)
The bad actors in Ferguson are simply reinforcing the stereotypes they are trying to knock down. They are the ones responsible for the stereotypes of lawless thugs committing crimes of opportunities.
And when you see HUNDREDS of people committing crimes in a community, it paints a picture of that community. In this case, the cannot live down their own reputation.
IF I were a black person in Ferguson, I would be PISSED off, but not at the Police, but at the fucktards rioting. The problem is, everyone is too fucking busy excusing bad behavior and committing crimes, and nobody is talking about the dead witness (black) in a burnt out car. THAT is what people should be protesting.
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or maybe the "innocent" guy was killed in the act of committing a felony assault on someone known to be armed with a handgun. I guess that would qualify as a guy was killed just for being an idiot.
Re:A tech gloss over racial profiling? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think you're missing the point
I think the GP's point is that they are "accurately" gathering information on a biased slice of the population.
Re:A tech gloss over racial profiling? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A tech gloss over racial profiling? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well the second paragraph of the summary makes it pretty clear it isn't just a database of "people who look like they could be criminals". They are repeat offenders of serious crimes. I don't really even get what you mean by "biased slice of the population". Yeah it's biased, because they have to include bad guys in the list. Otherwise what do you mean? Data isn't racist, which was my original point. I'm assuming unless they are the most bigotted people on the planet and somehow programmed that into their algorithm, their lists include a pretty fair percentage of each race, according to their relative rates of committing the crimes they are singling out as important.
His point is that the police may be racially profiling to begin with. If they are more suspicious of black people, more likely to arrest a black person to begin with, then the data base is going to be artificially skewed towards information about black people. There may be plenty of white people that are doing the exact same thing without ever being caught because they aren't getting stop and frisked and found to be in possession of drugs, for instance.
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That argument is a slippery slope. Say the data is racist. The algorithm is not racist, so what sense does it make to attack the algorithm while ignoring the data?
Even if the results of the algorithm are racially skewed, is the result worse than the status quo? I seriously doubt it. Remember that the problem this algorithm is trying to solve is not whether there is racial bias, but whether crime can be prevented by targeting repeat offenders.
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Even if they are completely racist in their arrests, so what? The strategy of the system is to identify serious repeat offenders and take them off of the streets.
If there is a corresponding decrease in crime, it is mostly safe to say that the strategy is effective. If five years from now there is a negligible decrease or an increase in crime, we can start having a serious discussion about the merits of the system.
The article gives a couple of good examples of how the system has been used. Here is one exa
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The sad truth is it's all related to the 80/20 rule or the Pareto principle [wikipedia.org], 80% of the crimes are committed by 20% of the people; 64% of the crime is commited by 4% (.8^2/.2^2) and 51% is commited by 0.8% (.8^3/.2^3). If you can the correct people off the street, the results are amazing, if you waste your time on the wrong people, the results is futility. With the numbers they're achieving, they are hitting some of the correct people, and race is a red herring.
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It's an unrelated issue, though. If the goal is to improve crime statistics, then you go with the data you have. This is not exactly the same as lowering the actual rate of crime. Separate problem, separate solution.
GIGO [wikipedia.org]. There's not much point in making a modern optimized statistical science of acting on bad data.
Re:A tech gloss over racial profiling? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the likelihood of arrest and conviction are affected by racism, as seems to be the case in the US, then any data derived from said arrests is also going to reflect that same racism. Garbage in, garbage out.
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Even if you assume racism is involved at various steps of the process, it's hardly "garbage" data.
Then there's the possibility that areas with racist law enforcement genuinely have more crime, either due to people committing crimes in protest, or due to cops becoming racist due to the criminals who they interact with. In that case the "racist" data is completely valid in helping predict future crime levels.
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Since they've achieved a 50% drop in crime, it's obviously not GIGO.
Re:A tech gloss over racial profiling? (Score:5, Informative)
Well the second paragraph of the summary makes it pretty clear it isn't just a database of "people who look like they could be criminals". They are repeat offenders of serious crimes. I don't really even get what you mean by "biased slice of the population". Yeah it's biased, because they have to include bad guys in the list. Otherwise what do you mean? Data isn't racist, which was my original point. I'm assuming unless they are the most bigotted people on the planet and somehow programmed that into their algorithm, their lists include a pretty fair percentage of each race, according to their relative rates of committing the crimes they are singling out as important.
Well the whole story makes it clear that it is a database of "people who look like they could be criminals". One kid got in because he was wearing a red shirt. They're convicted of trivial crimes, like jaywalking. And a disproportionate number of black people are arrested for jaywalking.
A disproportionate number of black people are also arrested for small-time pot possession charges, after the cops illegally search them, even though the pot usage in NYC is the same for blacks and whites. So if black people and white people use drugs in equal proportions, and the DA prosecutes 10 times as many black people as white for drug offenses, that would make it racist, wouldn't it?
The story also says that they put people in the database, with no chance to defend themselves, based on the claims that those people are "gang members" or "troublemakers," by anonymous informants, who are themselves arrested for small-time crimes. Can you give me a definition of a "gang member" that is consistent with the Bill of Rights?
FTA:
the list also includes active gang members, people whom the D.A. considers “uncooperative witnesses,” and a fluctuating number of violent “priority targets,”
“When prosecutors begin to compile databases and start doing so-called ‘smart prosecutions,’ you have to ask who is getting in the databases, what are the criteria and where are the outside checks?” says Steven Zeidman, director of the criminal-defense clinic at the CUNY School of Law. “More than a thousand people are arrested in N.Y.C. each day, and the overwhelming and disproportionate number of them are people of color arrested for ‘broken windows’ type offenses like riding a bike on the sidewalk or jaywalking. I was in court with a kid arrested for jaywalking; the arresting officer was from the gang unit, and he stopped the kid because he was wearing a red shirt that, according to the police, happened to be a gang color. He wasn’t in a gang, but he’s probably now in a database.”
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Preface: To simplify, I'm aware there are more racial and ethnic choices than black and white.
A disproportionate number of black people are also arrested for small-time pot possession charges, after the cops illegally search them, even though the pot usage in NYC is the same for blacks and whites. So if black people and white people use drugs in equal proportions, and the DA prosecutes 10 times as many black people as white for drug offenses, that would make it racist, wouldn't it?
The DA would be racist if, when brought forth an equal number of arrests for possession, chose to prosecute one race more than another based only on (or aided by) the color of their skin.
If cases brought to the DA included more repeat offenders for possession for one race than another, it wouldn't be racist to charge them.
If cases brought to the DA included those known to be in gangs, it wouldn't be racist to char
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Preface: To simplify, I'm aware there are more racial and ethnic choices than black and white.
A disproportionate number of black people are also arrested for small-time pot possession charges, after the cops illegally search them, even though the pot usage in NYC is the same for blacks and whites. So if black people and white people use drugs in equal proportions, and the DA prosecutes 10 times as many black people as white for drug offenses, that would make it racist, wouldn't it?
The DA would be racist if, when brought forth an equal number of arrests for possession, chose to prosecute one race more than another based only on (or aided by) the color of their skin.
Are you conceding that a disproportionate number of black people are arrested for possession compared to white people? Because that was demonstrated in the testimony in the stop-and-frisk case before Judge Schendlin, which Slashdot wrote about.
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DA prosecution for possession =/= arrests for possession.
"Stop and Frisk" may be frisking a disproportionately high percentage of blacks, placing more of them in a position to be prosecuted -- but that has nothing to do with the DA's decision to prosecute (or not prosecute) an individual once the arrest has been made.
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You mean they are gathering data on people reported to have committed crimes? How dare the police and courts track such a thing.
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The underlying assumption is that the the accuracy of the data leads to lower crime. From what I've read, they are just better at tracking some criminals. To lower crime you'd have to be certain that new crimes were being committed by those criminals. But by focusing on a smaller population of criminals, this seems bound to pin crimes on the focus group rather than actually being a deterrent to more savvy criminals that have stayed out of focus.
Has it been demonstrated that crime rates are significantly lower as a result of this tracking?
No.
Just the opposite. When you compare crime rates in NYC with cities that don't have this tracking, they are identical. Crime has been going generally down nationwide, regardless of these programs.
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Why are you biased against the impartiality of the police force? Are you perhaps basing your opinion of a group on individual instances of behavior displayed by isolated members of that group?
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Why are you biased against the impartiality of the police force?
Because they have guns...
And the beauty of the Second Amendment of the U.S Constitution is that you do too.
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I would very much like to know the racial makeup of that list. Given it came from the police themselves, it certainly leads to questions about how such individuals end up on those lists.
1. The article links to a document that describes the system and how it works in detail.
2. The article and linked document describe the function of the lists as prioritization lists for prosecutors after arrest, not used by the police to target people for arrest. If you think about it, that's logical: the police do not need to help the city make a list of people to target for arrest. If the police are biased in targeting people for arrest, they can still stop and arrest those people whether they are on
Re:A tech gloss over racial profiling? (Score:5, Interesting)
In my opinion, that "problem" is caused by being stuck in a cycle. People who feel disenfranchised and unfairly profiled are less likely to follow the "rules" of a society they feel rejects them. Why would you want to follow the "rules" made by people you believe hate you?
Thus, they are more likely to commit crimes. (Job candidate profiling also means they are less likely to be employed, meaning they take more risk.) But being more likely to commit crimes means they are profiled even more, creating yet more disenfranchisement, and the cycle drills yet deeper, neither side blinking, and both sides saying, "the other guy should straiten up first, THEN I will straiten up also" = STALEMATE.
Politicians and pundits seem too eager to blame than solve the problem. If you can make a case that it's "the other guy's fault", then you escape "responsibility" to change yourself.
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Did you just not see yourself making the case that it's "the other guy's fault"?
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Just wait until you get mugged, little boy.
On that day, profiling just might start to make sense to you.
If I had a choice between getting mugged, and getting arrested by the cops on fake charges and charged with a felony, I'd rather get mugged. If I get arrested for a felony (like "assaulting" a cop), I'd have to spend thousands of dollars for a lawyer. They might set bail higher than I could afford, and I could stay in jail for months before I'm even convicted of anything (as a few New York Times stories showed). But I don't have to worry, because that mostly happens to people who are black.
After video camer
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If I had a choice between getting mugged, and getting arrested by the cops on fake charges and charged with a felony, I'd rather get mugged.
Pretty sure your chances of the former are higher.
Let's put it this way... would you rather experience an encounter of unknown outcome with a mugger, randomly selected from all muggings, or an encounter of unknown outcome with a cop, randomly selected from all encounters with cops?
But I don't have to worry, because that mostly happens to people who are black.
It happens mostly to people who commit serious crimes or are around people who commit serious crimes, not to people who are black. There is overlap of course.
Re:What are they doing with the data? (Score:5, Informative)
RTFA
they are using arrest records to determine priority in assigning cases and asking for bail. if you have a dozen arrests expect your case to get more attention than being arrested protesting one time
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RTFA
they are using arrest records to determine priority in assigning cases and asking for bail. if you have a dozen arrests expect your case to get more attention than being arrested protesting one time
They're also arresting people for minor crimes and pushing them to be informers. If some informer says that you're a troublemaker or a gang member, you go in the database, with no opportunity to defend yourself.
Once you're in the database, the cops harass you with jaywalking arrests and illegal stop and frisks, until you get a dozen arrests.
As the NYT wrote in another story, it's almost impossible to fight these false charges. The DA charges you with a felony that could give you years in jail, keeps you in
Re:Looks like you have been in jail before... (Score:5, Interesting)
I see on slashdot all the time about going back to doing honest detective work where you find out who is really causing trouble in the neighborhood rather throwing out a monitoring dragnet or throwing absurd punishments rather than trying to aim for reforming the person. I have a hard time complaining about this as long as there is monitoring that data is fair and collected/retained in an appropriate manner.
Why wouldn't you put additional resources to stopping an Al Capone over some kid who got caught as a rumrunner. Sounds like they are trying to apply common sense with collected data.
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The DA's job is to get re-elected.
That depends on where you live. The elected DA is only the one at the top of the DA's office. There are many attorney's under them that also receive the monitor "DA" whom are not elected; they do have to balance out cases against how the elected DA sets priorities, but they are more or less just regular attorney's working as prosecuters.
Again, it's all a matter of where you live. Not all areas even allow the top DA to be elected; while other areas have more of the chain in the election routine.
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Hey, don't blame Canada for that ... you guys have been openly ignoring your own Constitution pretty much daily for 13 years. You've probably been quietly ignoring it longer.
Stop and frisk? Border stops within 100 miles of the border? An AG who said Habeus Corpus wasn't a right? Secret courts? Warrantless wiretapping? Blanket surveillance? Parallel construction?
That shit is all on you,
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ignoring your own Constitution pretty much daily for 13 years.
Interesting how thirteen years ago a certain "terrorist" attack happened?
Coincidence?
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Oh, yah, that makes it all better. And it is really making us safer from the next attack!
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Bin Laden Playbook (Score:2)
This is what I refer to as the Bin Laden Playbook: he gave it to us on 9/11, and our political parties and their cronies (and future employers) in the Surveillance Industrial Complex have been profitably running
Re:That Name (Score:5, Informative)
Moneyball is a sports metaphor where you don't get the flashy big-name players that don't really do anything. You get the unknown, overlooked players for cheap that just know how to win. You do this by using different stats than are typically used by most other teams. For instance, the Oakland A's were big on on-base percentage and recently the LA Kings are big into Corsi (shots attempted differences when a player is on the ice, in other words, puck control).
The "Moneyball" aspect of this is that they are turning DA work on its head. Instead of spreading their resources way too thin and throwing huge sentences at minor drug possession, they are giving them minor plea deals and saving the big guns for the people who the communities are reporting are the troublemakers. By taking out the troublemakers, it reduces the pressure on others to join them in crime, so it results in less crime total.
This is fantastic and should be a model for other communities.
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I generally like this approach for the DA, however I do have a few concerns.
1. From the wording it sounds like they might be prioritizing some people who are merely uncooperative witnesses.
2. They are using a list of "offenders" that includes people which do not have a conviction. Legally speaking that should mean that such a person is not an offender.
3. Given the issues of racial profiling, and how they gather stats this is likely only improving the criminal outcomes in parts of society that are already ge
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V... [wikipedia.org]