PUBLISHER'S NOTE: In a recent post, James Corbett, of the Corbett Report, warned about state-of-the-art police technology that may well be pseudoscience."Does this technology work, or is it all hype?, " Corbett asked. "After all, it wouldn’t be the first time that the public has been duped into believing that the crack CSI experts and their state-of-the-art technology can solve any crime through the power of science. In reality, more often than not the crime-detection technology of the past has turned out to be pseudoscience at best, and outright fraud at worst. And, of course, it has been used to put innocent people in jail, and risks severely individual and community privacy. Today's post is based on a recently released report by "The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition" which criticizes the scientific assumptions that underlie predictive policing for “pathologizing” individuals and entire neighborhoods - and says that the programs “enable the continuation of decades of discriminatory and racist policing under the apparent neutrality of objective data.
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY: "
Asking “how often do I see police in my area is like asking me how many times do I see a bird in the day,” said one resident. Asking “how often do I see police in my area is like asking me how many times do I see a bird in the day.”
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition criticizes the scientific assumptions that underlie predictive policing for “pathologizing” individuals and entire neighborhoods, and says that the programs “enable the continuation of decades of discriminatory and racist policing under the apparent neutrality of objective data.”
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STORY: "Aided by Palantir, the LAPD Uses Predictive Policing to Monitor Specific People and Neighborhoods," by reporter Maha Ahmed, published by The Intercept on May 11, 2018. (Maha Ahmed is a journalist based in Brooklyn and a fellow at The Intercept. Wikipedia informs us that "The Intercept is an online news publication dedicated to what it describes as "adversarial journalism".
GIST: "Police stops in Los Angeles are highly concentrated within just a small portion of the population, and the Los Angeles Police Department has been using targeted predictive policing technology that may exacerbate that focused scrutiny. That’s according to a report put out this week by the research and activist organization Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, which draws from the testimony of city residents and newly released police documents to paint a picture of a “racist feedback loop” where a “disproportionate amount of police resources are allocated to historically hyper-policed communities.” Survey results included in the report suggest that very few people in Los Angeles bear the brunt of most police interactions: 2 percent of residents who responded to the survey reported being stopped by police between 11 and 30 times a week or more, while 76 percent of respondents reported never being stopped at all. The 300 survey respondents were distributed across geography, race, age, and gender. In focus groups, people who lived in areas heavily targeted by police described a state of constant surveillance. Asking “how often do I see police in my area is like asking me how many times do I see a bird in the day,” said one resident. Asking “how often do I see police in my area is like asking me how many times do I see a bird in the day.” What’s more, the LAPD has been using technology from the data-mining firm Palantir that may amplify that concentration, as part of a predictive policing program that targets and surveils specific individuals within select neighborhoods based off their recent history with the criminal justice system.
Officers and analysts who work on Operation LASER, or Los Angeles
Strategic Extraction and Restoration, are tasked with maintaining an
ongoing list of community residents to monitor, by creating “Chronic
Offender Bulletins” for so-called persons of interest. Each of the 16
department divisions that currently use the program is required to
maintain a minimum of a dozen of these “bulletins,” which are intended
to help officers “identify the most active violent chronic offenders” in
a given geographical area. That identification process has two stages: an initial screening
phase, in which a “crime intelligence analyst” subjectively decides
whether the police records, like arrest reports and field interview
cards, associated with an individual are “relevant” enough to move them
to a “workup” phase. The “workup” involves software provided by Palantir
that pulls data on criminal history and affiliations, and from license
plate readers and social media networks, and uses it to create a
“chronic offender score” for the individual. Once someone is deemed a sufficient threat based off their score,
officers send them letters and are encouraged to knock on their doors to
let them know they’re being monitored. Officers are also instructed to
look out for opportunities to stop or arrest them (if they have a
warrant out). An October 2017 version of a checklist
that instructs analysts and officers on how to deal with chronic
offenders was among the documents that Stop LAPD Spying obtained through
a California Public Records Act request. (Stop LAPD Spying first
provided the documents to In Justice Today, which reported on them Tuesday.) “If they don’t get stopped, they stop being on the list,” said Dennis
Kato, an LAPD deputy chief, in an interview with The Intercept. In
other words, the only way for someone to get off a chronic offenders
list for an area is to not have any interactions with the police — a
sort of Catch-22 since the program is intended to flag individuals for
increased police attention. And if someone is removed from the list,
they aren’t notified. “I don’t think it’s an ideal system,” Kato said.
By early 2019, he says, the entire city of Los Angeles will be using the
LASER program. The report also highlights another predictive policing program
currently in use by the LAPD, called PredPol. Both Operation LASER and
PredPol are sponsored by the federal Bureau of Justice Assistance’s SMART Policing Initiative,
which aims to use “evidence-based, data-driven” policing strategies to
try and preempt and prevent crime. PredPol software, marketed by a
private company, relies on a
machine-learning algorithm much like the ones used by corporate giants
such as Facebook
and Amazon for advertising purposes. It’s a mathematical model that
inputs three variables: where a crime was committed, when it was
committed, and what type of crime it was. The model is used to calculate
“hot spots” throughout a given metropolitan area —150 square meter
areas where, theoretically, certain types of crimes are more likely to
be committed on a given day — which patrol officers use to plan out
their daily routes. Studies have already shown
that PredPol technology re-enforces racially biased policing patterns
and practices, but the technology remains in use by the LAPD and at
least 50 other law enforcement agencies around the country, according to
a PredPol spokesperson. The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition received October 2017 documents on
Operation LASER after filing a lawsuit against the police department in
February of this year, but is still waiting on more documents related to
the program, including its funding and data sources, according to Hamid
Khan, one of the coalition’s co-founders. “Predictive
policing programs … enable the continuation of decades of
discriminatory and racist policing under the apparent neutrality of
objective data.” Both programs draw on scientific disciplines: PredPol is adapted from
models that predict earthquake aftershocks, while the documents
obtained by the coalition indicate that the LAPD uses a series of
medical analogies to describe the functions and goals of Operation LASER
— from the very title of the program, to describing the amount of
visible police presence in an area as a “dosage,”
to calling repeat offenders “chronic.” The BJA, the federal bureau
which sponsors the local program, admits as much: Operation LASER “is
analogous to laser surgery, where a trained medical doctor uses modern
technology to remove tumors or improve eyesight,” according to a BJA report. The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition criticizes the scientific assumptions
that underlie predictive policing for “pathologizing” individuals and
entire neighborhoods, and says that the programs “enable the
continuation of decades of discriminatory and racist policing under the
apparent neutrality of objective data.” Unlike PredPol hot spots, so-called LASER zones are based off
geographical data, and are determined in part based on observations that
analysts make about a neighborhood and its residents. According to an LAPD document,
the analysts ask questions like, “What they were doing? Talking to
neighbors? Walking? Driving down the streets slowly? Playing chess in
the park? Or, are they dealing drugs on the street corner or just
hanging out?” The coalition’s community-based focus group results indicate that
residents, while not always aware of the details of police surveillance
in their communities, nonetheless have a sense that it is occurring. “I
feel like they already know who you are by the time they stop you or
give you a citation,” one resident said. “They already know your name
and who you are hanging out with.”
The entire story can be found at:
Access the Stop LAPD spying site 'about' section at: "The Stop LAPD spying coalition – Campaign to Rescind Special Order 1(1) is an alliance of different organizations (and, in our case, individuals), each with their own interests, mission and vision, that come together to collaborate and take collective action together toward a common goal(s). We reject all forms of police oppression and any policy that make us all suspects in the eyes of the State. Our vision is the dismantling of government-sanctioned spying and intelligence gathering, in all its multiple forms. Coming soon are more tools and venues for sharing information and strategies that can help all of us resist the domestic spying activities that increasingly violate our human rights."
https://stoplapdspying.org/about-slsc/
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/c
