California City Bans Predictive Policing In US First (reuters.com) 140
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: As officials mull steps to tackle police brutality and racism, California's Santa Cruz has become the first U.S. city to ban predictive policing, which digital rights experts said could spark similar moves across the country. "Understanding how predictive policing and facial recognition can be disportionately biased against people of color, we officially banned the use of these technologies in the city of Santa Cruz," Mayor Justin Cummings said on Wednesday. His administration will work with the police to "help eliminate racism in policing", the seaside city's first male African-American mayor said on his Facebook page, following a vote on Tuesday evening.
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. But critics says it reinforces racist patterns of policing -- low-income, ethnic minority neighborhoods have historically been overpoliced so the data shows them as crime hotspots, leading to the deployment of more police to those areas.
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. But critics says it reinforces racist patterns of policing -- low-income, ethnic minority neighborhoods have historically been overpoliced so the data shows them as crime hotspots, leading to the deployment of more police to those areas.
Policing based on need (Score:5, Insightful)
Places with high crime rates aren't that way because the police are there, they are that way because criminals are there.
When the police are pulled out of the high crime areas, they'll then be accused of ignoring crime in minority areas, letting the criminals victimize the innocent.
Re: (Score:1)
Places with high crime rates aren't that way because the police are there, they are that way because criminals are there.
Exactly. So we need to send in more police to beat the law into them so they learn to respect their white mast... oh wait.
Re: (Score:2)
Even in high crime areas, the majority of the residents aren't criminals. Sending more police to high crime areas is the way to minimize total crimes. This protects non-criminals in high crime areas.
This obvious truth is far beyond the understanding of race-baiters and other Democrats. Even if they did understand, they wouldn't care.
Re: (Score:2)
If it seems that obvious, it might be because it is simplistic and wrong.
Childishly simple-minded, even.
What if some of the cops are "bad apples?" And what if 100% of the cops protect the "bad apples?" Is is still automatically true that increasing policing protects "non-criminals?"
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No, you have more officers on patrol there, it's maths. The greater the need, the more officers, else response times balloon out. Police are meant to be your first responder, get there the fastest, heart attack, someone drowning, a fire, the police are meant to get there first and render assistance and ensure follow up specialists get full access. Not just chasing shop lifters, bailing up bank robbers, catching prowlers.
Police are not your problem, junk yard law enforcers filling quotas with negligible tra
Re: (Score:2)
And yet, the cities with these problems are left wing all the way down. Explain, please.
Re: (Score:2)
Who suggests pulling the police out of high crime areas without improving social services to lower crime?
It's just poverty & the Drug war actually (Score:2)
Where I am there's slums right up the street. Tons of drugs, crime, you name it. Never spills over to my neck of the woods. Why? Because when it does (for example, if one of them goes a
Re: It's just poverty & the Drug war actually (Score:2)
John Stewart said it best: Police are a boarder patrol between two American"
Sure, or to put it a bit more accurately, police are the thin blue line standing between civil society and the agents of chaos.
Re: (Score:2)
You pulled that right out yer ass.
Re: (Score:3)
Places with high crime rates aren't that way because the police are there, they are that way because criminals are there.
If the police are there they will detect more crime and maybe cause some when they start knocking heads together or arresting people over bullshit like carrying a small amount of weed. Then the stats go up and even more cops pile in. Congrats you created a crime ridden ghetto.
Turns out effective policing is just a small part of reducing crime and improving life for people. Fixing the problems that lead to crime is usually far more effective than having a crackdown. Using statistics to direct police operatio
Re: (Score:2)
It would help to reduce crime first, by declaring victimless crimes no longer to be a crime, e.g. the production, sales and use of marijuana and other harmless drugs. That would reduce crime and police brutality in an instant. True some criminals would move to other fields, I've even seen people justify this senseless prohibition kind of as a deflection policy to prevent criminals focussing on more severe activities (an insane logic if you ask me, in that case I would propose to make milk illegal, that will
Re:Policing based on need (Score:5, Funny)
This is Slashdot. We're not interested in real girls or sex, much less going out in public with a girl. You want to impress me, challenge me in DnD.
Re: Policing based on need (Score:2)
The answer to bad data is to put more effort into the gathering and vetting process to ensure you get good data. Instead these idiots want to throw out the whole model.
And they have the nerve to call republicans "anti-science". Hypocrites.
Data does not support "Police Brutality & Raci (Score:1, Informative)
90% of black men getting killed in a violent manner is by other black men.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-t... [fbi.gov]
Why does the Democrat/left BLM think it’s OK to lump all Police in with a bad cop in Minneapolis but objects to lumping all protesters in with rioters, looters & arsonists?
If the Democrat/left/BLM believe there should be no police then who should enforce the law? What happens when a person assaults or robs or murders someone. Who will they go for protection? Gangs? The army, The Mafia? Privat
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If they got what they claim they want they'd end up literally up against a wall.
I don't know exactly what you mean by up against a wall. But following the Covid pandemic and now the push back on the police, the gun stores are swamped by first time purchasers. Many of them Democrats. Not so much a militia conquest but everyone is becoming a 'Roof Korean'.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The militias form after your "Roof Korean" phase (which, if you notice, aren't lone wolves but groups of relatives/neighbors, i.e., proto-millita). Assuming continued defensive action is necessary it soon becomes obvious that banding together into militia-like groups is more efficient than every-man-for-himself.
I get that people seem to have this notion of militias as a bunch of right wing kooks stockpiling ordinance and running around in the woods but none of that is intrinsic to the concept of militias.
Re:Data does not support "Police Brutality & R (Score:5, Insightful)
And 81% of all murders of white people is by other white people. Homicide is largely intra-racial. Your point?
And "Defund the police" doesn't mean "Abolish the police". If it did, they'd say that.
Defund the police means "divesting funds from police departments and reallocating them to non-policing forms of public safety and community support, such as social services, youth services, housing, education, and other community resources. "
Today, police takes up a gigantic part of city budgets that has grown utterly out of control over the past decades. Their responsibilties have inflated as well, as they've had to take over the jobs of many of these other forms of public safety and community support *as they were defunded to increase police budgets*.
Thus we get heavily armed military style cops doing jobs that an unarmed civil servant could do at a fraction of the cost.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
And "Defund the police" doesn't mean "Abolish the police". If it did, they'd say that.
Well, they're pretty much saying exactly that.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/m... [cbsnews.com]
Five council members who declared their intent to "end" the Minneapolis Police Department earlier this month have authored an ordinance to amend the city charter. They include Jeremiah Ellison, Alondra Cano, Cam Gordon, Steve Fletcher and Council President Lisa Bender. The ordinance will be introduced Friday.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, they're pretty much saying exactly that.
You can't comprehend tense. That is a spectacular level of stupid for somebody visiting a website for nerds.
In defund, the verb is talking about taking some of their money away. It is an action that takes place at a particular point in time. It reduces their size. And an important presumptive part of this is then giving the money to other people with a different mandate, to better serve the needs of the community. For example, spending more money on homeless services instead of having the police chase them
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
The very next paragraph from your link:
The charter states there has to be a police department. The proposed amendment replaces that with "a department of community safety and violence prevention" that will take "a holistic, public-health-oriented approach." It also provides for a law enforcement division with licensed officers.
Re: (Score:2)
'The proposed amendment replaces that with "a department of community safety and violence prevention" that will take "a holistic, public-health-oriented approach."
It also provides for a law enforcement division with licensed officers.'
Re: (Score:2)
They want to replace the police with a better one. At some point, some organizations are so infected, that healing them is hopeless and replacement is the better option. Noone ever proposed to not have a police force at all. You seem to want to misunderstand.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'd look up the definition of "defund" before I accused others of redefining it. Here, let me help:
defund
[ dee-fuhnd ]
verb (used with object)
to withdraw financial support from, especially as an instrument of legislative control: Many university programs were defunded by the recent government cutbacks.
to deplete the financial resources of: The cost of the lawsuit defunded the company's operating budget.
Re: (Score:2)
You're missing the statistical point. That's 10% less than the black community for intra racial killing. And ethnicity of "white" is a much larger cohort, by a factor of about 4-5. Numerically, that gives a shocking disparity of killing. Per capita, this means that a person with black skin is about 5-6 times more likely to kill someone than any other racial grouping.
This, of course, leads to the increased violent engagement by the police (who are thrown into the middle of violent crime and respond, in t
Re: (Score:1)
The result of the United States' disproportionate military expenditures is greater worldwide freedom. Spending money on the military makes more military to protect America's freedom. It's a good thing.
Government spending more on poverty produces more poverty. It's not a good thing.
Government housing for the poor results in poor housing.
Government funding of health care is evil, as are those who promote it.
There is a good argument to be made for housing of the truly mentally deranged. It's difficult to do we
Re: (Score:2)
The result of the United States' disproportionate military expenditures is greater worldwide freedom.
You are being sarcastic?
Government spending more on poverty produces more poverty. It's not a good thing.
Government housing for the poor results in poor housing.
Still not quite sure you are serious, but lets assume so. It sounds like you have observed local failures in these areas, but not looked further than your own backyard to see how other countries have managed these things successfully.
Government funding of health care is evil, as are those who promote it.
OK, it should be clear now, as not even the most right-wing nutjob would go that far. But Poe's law still applies.
I see where you are headed:
Government spending more on wars produces more wars. It's not a good thing.
Re: (Score:2)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0... [nytimes.com]
The "does not mean abolish" came about because of the media taking orders from the DNC that they did not want the truth to be broadcasted.
Re: (Score:2)
Some few activists mean that, yes. The large majority doesn't.
The only leadership position Mariame Kaba (who wrote the article you linked) has is leader of the small organization she founded, Project NIA.
She's hardly anywhere even remotely close to a leadership position of the movement as a whole.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And 81% of all murders of white people is by other white people. Homicide is largely intra-racial. Your point?
And "Defund the police" doesn't mean "Abolish the police". If it did, they'd say that. Defund the police means "divesting funds from police departments and reallocating them to non-policing forms of public safety and community support, such as social services, youth services, housing, education, and other community resources. "
Today, police takes up a gigantic part of city budgets that has grown utterly out of control over the past decades. Their responsibilties have inflated as well, as they've had to take over the jobs of many of these other forms of public safety and community support *as they were defunded to increase police budgets*. Thus we get heavily armed military style cops doing jobs that an unarmed civil servant could do at a fraction of the cost.
If you don't like how city departments like police departments are run, then vote against those who really run them. Oh yeah, that would be Democrats. Are they the ones who are systematically racist?
Re: (Score:2)
It might actually be the police union that is running the departments right now. Pro tip: They're not Democrats.
Adjust for income & racial disparity goes away (Score:2)
That's by no means clear for homicide (Score:2)
Which is what AC is talking about. Take a look at Table 1 in this study, [nih.gov] or Table 6 in this study, [uchicago.edu] and give us your explanation.
Alternately, cite some studies that support you position. Oh wait...you don't do that, do you? I guess we'll never know because you're so afraid of someone shouting "Fake News!" at you.
No high crime rates in donut shops (Score:2)
So the police should stake them out.
Wow they must love police brutality (Score:1)
If people block all attempts to modernize policing, what they will get is more of the policing they already have.
I thought we didn't want that? Yet there seems to be a race to lock in the police being exactly what they are today, with no changes...
Re: (Score:2)
If people block all attempts to modernize policing, what they will get is more of the policing they already have.
They have modern police. Every technology we've introduced and every attempt to modernise has turned the police into more of a shitshow. Be that giving them surplus military gear, facial recognition which can't tell two black people apart because they are black, technology to report offenses so the police know where to send the heavy handed SWAT team, or just profiling for criminals leading to more focus on more criminals being charged with ever more crime further reducing their abilities to get jobs and be
Not true, technology is a tool (Score:1)
Every technology we've introduced and every attempt to modernise has turned the police into more of a shitshow.
That is not wholly true, body cameras have been a big help.
Be that giving them surplus military gear
Now see THAT is a problem, but it is not a technology problem. All technology is a tool, and the choice was made to procure tools of violence instead of tools that would promote less violence. The story in question seeks to limit the ability of police to obtain a whole category of non-violent tool
I live in Santa Cruz (Score:2)
And it doesn't take a genius to predict there will be crime at the board walk. it's full of people from out of town.
Police can't target crime? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, so the police aren't allowed to put extra patrols in to high crime areas, and must instead patrol all areas equally.
End result, the poor neighbourhoods see their already high crime rates go up, and the rich neighbourhoods see their already low crime rates go down.
Great plan, if you happen to be rich and can afford this sort of virtue signalling.
No, because it doesn't help (Score:5, Interesting)
Broken Windows policing doesn't work nor was it ever intended to. I have another post on this thread explaining it's real purpose (to keep the poor in their place).
From a practical standpoint Broken Windows policing does is give everybody in the neighborhood a record for minor offenses they wouldn't have if they were better off financially. That record makes it harder for them to move up (as others have pointed out even getting arrested and then let go gets you an arrest record that can dog you for life, and it can be very difficult to get it expunged).
What we need is to end the drug war, treat drug addiction as a medical condition, replace armed policemen trained to kill with social workers trained to help (Canada has just had 2 people beat senses during wellness checks).
The reason we have so much police violence is we defunded social services in the 80s. Then we realized we needed them but cheapskates refused to pay for them. So Clinton give the States a ton of money to hire police officers and the States used those cops to do social services. The result? Men and women trained to kill and restrain doing things they should never have been doing in the first place.
At no point is time has any of this made you or anyone else safer. All it's done is hurt people and cost us money. The system is a failure. It's time to change it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: No, because it doesn't help (Score:3)
That's why extras patrols aren't the solution.
How could more boots in the ground fix the social problem of people willing to kill each other over $20 of crack. It endangers the lives of officers to treat a symptom of the real problem. Their tools are handcuffs, guns and words, and we aren't asking them to have polite conversation, so everything they get called to do is risky AF for all involved. It increases unnecessary interactions with the police, it lowers quality of life. If only license plate light
Re: (Score:3)
How about instead of sending police there send some people who can actually help?
If you have a problem with people selling drugs you can either try to arrest them all (which won't help much, it just drives the problems further underground and someone else will take their place) or you can help the drug addicts stop buying. Use capitalism and put them out of business.
We have tried the "send more cops" solution so many, many times and it never works. In fact in New York when the cops did their slowdown in res
Predictive Policing - The Minority Report? (Score:1)
You'd think ... (Score:2)
when white peoples' face have more contrast, have a wider variety of hair colours and eye colours, the bias would be against them! But no, you thought wrong.
Who knows, maybe the police is conspiring against technology, because they believe their detective work will one day be done by a machine?! They sure wouldn't be wrong, and now they've successfully sabotaged it, making the police into a future-proof job where one just needs to have a human, because only a human has got the fine sense, compassion and und
bad experience with fingerprint readers (Score:1)
There's a method for working this stuff out.. (Score:2)
It's called "Science". Much as though politicians hate, it, it'll give a remarkable picture of what is going on.
You think that the algorithm in predictive policing is wrong? Well, you show the flaw in the math and logic, and propose a better solution. Trial it, see how it works. You'll find more confounding factors that you missed, improve, and release a better model. If it performs more poorly than the model you've been bashing, then it was probably better than you evaluated it as being.
In some cities
Re: (Score:2)
No, moron, the purpose of police is supposed to be Justice.
Science is done by scientists. Cops don't even read. Add that up.
Facts must not distress the narrative! (Score:2)
I guess the narrative is going to decree that the police are going to be prevented from policing the areas where crimes occur. Epic.
not possible (Score:2)
A bucolic town of Santa Cruz (Score:2)
A bucolic city of Santa Cruz known for mostly white rich population, hippie and surfer culture, a party school UC campus, and also a home to wealthy Silicone valley workers and entrepreneurs bans predictive policing. And this will change what?
Re: (Score:1)
I think your statistics are wrong, and your conclusions doubly so, but even if correct, whites are an order of magnitude more likely to commit securities fraud than African Americans. Does that mean everyone should assume that their white stockbrokers are going to cheat them?
It is inherently fundamentally wrong to judge individuals based on statistics, period. Good for Santa Cruz in saying so.
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Does that mean everyone should assume that their white stockbrokers are going to cheat them?
It means they should be looked at more carefully, or do you not agree? If not, why not?
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe, but no more so than if the stockbroker were any other race.
Re:Who could look at statistics over the years (Score:5, Insightful)
Does that mean everyone should assume that their white stockbrokers are going to cheat them?
Yes.
Re: (Score:2)
More than a non-white stockbroker, though? Because the reason there are an order of magnitude more cases of securities fraud against whites is because whites are an order of magnitude more likely to be holding or working with a large enough amount of stock to actually *commit* securities fraud meaningfully. So if your answer is yes, then you've made a classic logical blunder caused by looking at statistics in isolation, rather than in context.
Re: Who could look at statistics over the years (Score:2)
More than a non-white stockbroker, though? Because the reason there are an order of magnitude more cases of securities fraud against whites is because whites are an order of magnitude more likely to be holding or working with a large enough amount of stock to actually *commit* securities fraud meaningfully.
In that case your original claim was misleading. If you're now revising it to state that whites commit the securities fraud at the same rate based on their representation in that particular field, then no, it wouldn't make sense to be more suspicious of them. But in that case it has no relevance to the discussions about predictive policing and possible racial bias.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not sure I follow. If there weren't a wage gap between races, then there wouldn't be differences in crime statistics.
That sounds a lot like denying the antecedent to me.
Re: (Score:2)
There's a strong correlation between wages and violent crime rates. What am I missing?
Re: Who could look at statistics over the years (Score:2)
Not sure I follow. If there weren't a wage gap between races, then there wouldn't be differences in crime statistics. When you apply the same reasoning to both, you conclude that minorities are discriminated against in both cases, resulting in both effects.
Well first off, when people refer to the wage gap without context they are usullally talking about the gap between men and women, not between races.
More importantly, your conclusion is a complete non sequitur, and a perfect demonstration of what he was saying. Yelling "hurr descrimination" without controlling for all the varibles is just as asinine as yelling "blacks are more violent" without controlling for all the variables.
Re: (Score:2)
What variables would you like to control for? After controlling for all known variables other than their parents' wealth, African Americans make less money than Caucasians. It's pretty hard to find another plausible cause besides racism, whether now or in the past.
Re: Who could look at statistics over the years (Score:2)
"When we control for everything except for X, others still a difference, therefore the explanation is Y."
Perfect logic. A+ for you.
Re: (Score:2)
What you're apparently missing is that the reason for their ancestors' lack of money, if you go back enough hops, is that they were brought here as slaves and were not paid anything. Hence, racism.
Re: Who could look at statistics over the years (Score:2)
Gotcha, so theres no racism today, blacks are just poor because of the racism of a hundred plus years ago. Interesting theory. Not sure I buy it. How do you account for the fact that there was less economic disparity between blacks and whites in the 1950s than there is today?
Re: (Score:2)
No, I didn't say there's no racism today. I said the effect was a combination of racism today AND racism in the past.
Re: (Score:2)
Assertion w/o evidence.
Yes, fabrications are sometimes complicated.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem in both cases is that statistics are being used inappropriately to reach bad conclusions. Blacks aren't more violent than whites, but they are disproportionately less well off economically and more likely to have single-parent homes which do produce more crime regardless of skin color.
They aren't born more violent, but everything you just said leads to the conclusion that the average black person living in the USA is more violent than the average white person.
Re: Who could look at statistics over the years (Score:2)
Blacks have been pigeonholed by liberal policies as victims. The more you call someone a victim, the more they believe it and the more they become one.
Yep, and a look at survey data shows this also. There's a recent survey carried out by Quinnepiac University which looked at a number of issues, but the relevant one here is the results of the survey question "Is being the victim of police brutality something you personally worry about". Only 13% of white respondents said they worried about it, while 74% of black and 32% of hispanic respondents worried about it. Those numbers are insane. There is nothing anywhere in the data to support that kind of disc
Re: (Score:2)
Also remember all the cases where the police get a call about a "suspicious" person in the neighborhood. 99 times out of 100 it's because it's a black person walking in a mostly white neighborhood, and the police will stop someone who looks black and agressively demand to know why they're there, even if the black person actually lives in the neighborhood. At this point, being questioned by the police while black is already a hazardous condition in and of itself, and any attempt to argue back with the poli
Re: (Score:2)
Not a bright idea regardless of race. You're aware it's more likely to get shot as a white, correct?
Re: Who could look at statistics over the years (Score:2)
He's completely wrong, and perpetuating a harmful myth.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I think your statistics are wrong, and your conclusions doubly so, but even if correct, whites are an order of magnitude more likely to commit securities fraud than African Americans. Does that mean everyone should assume that their white stockbrokers are going to cheat them?
Ummm.... If that's what the math says then, yes.
Re: (Score:2)
I think your statistics are wrong, and your conclusions doubly so, but even if correct, whites are an order of magnitude more likely to commit securities fraud than African Americans. Does that mean everyone should assume that their white stockbrokers are going to cheat them?
And if the # of white stockbrokers is TWO orders of magnitude higher than AA stockbrokers?
You have GOT, GOT, GOT, to account for representation in statistical samples.
Re: (Score:2)
No love poem ever found a cure for cancer, while a beautiful female face and jealousy were enough to launch 1000 ships and a 10 year war.
It is thinking and not feelings that has caused human beings to go from being naked apes living in a jungle to a species of individuals smart enough to be able to ask and answer questions about the universe.
What is wrong with the left can be summarized with this quote:
> It is inherently fundamentally wrong to judge individuals based on statistics, period. Good for Santa
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not saying they're racist. You don't have to be racist to make decisions that end up having racist outcomes. That's just one of many possible ways that such things can happen. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No, I'm not suggesting anything of the sort. You're reading what you want to read.
Re: (Score:2)
Even IQ-impacting things that have nothing to do with race - such as first-cousin marriage - is scorned. Even though if you overlay the world IQ map with the
Re: Who could look at statistics over the years (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
The richer you are, the more sophisticated it will be your crimes.
But i bet you're more likely to commit crimes if you was raised by a single mother, and that's probably the second worst thing that was done to the US black community (the worst being all the corporations packing and moving the jobs elsewhere, basically nuking the social mobility completely)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Here in rural Indiana those are definitely a place for the police to focus. And they do.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Who could look at statistics over the years (Score:2)
America has 4.25% of the world population and 25% of it's COVID deaths. What should the computer read into that, do you think........
It should conclude that America would be a good place to monitor more vigilantly and allocate extra resources to. I guess you're agreeing with the other guy, and disagreeing with the idea that predictive policing is racist?
Re: (Score:2)
America has 4.25% of the world population and 25% of it's COVID deaths. What should the computer read into that, do you think........
That's easy: America is the only country telling the truth!
(MAGA!)
Re: (Score:2)
America has 4.25% of the world population and 25% of it's COVID deaths. What should the computer read into that, do you think........
Americans are all obese and more likely to die of a sniffle.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh also, if we're going to have criminal governors like Cuomo forcing nursing homes to take COVID patients, KNOWING FULL WELL that the elderly are THE #1 risk group, resulting in 1,000s of additional deaths - yeah, that's also going to skew the stats JUST A LITTLE.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)