Some watchdogs worry that predictive policing leads to unlawful stops and searches.
Predictive policing, or the use of data and statistical analysis to determine when and where officers should patrol to thwart certain types of crimes, was hailed as one of Time Magazine’s Best Inventions of 2011. Yet not everyone is convinced that predictive policing is a good thing. Some watchdogs fear this technology creates issues with privacy, surveillance, and 4th Amendment rights.
Predictive Policing in LA
Of course, the basic concept of predictive policing is nothing new. Police have always taken note of “dangerous” locations within their beats where crimes seem to occur frequently and targeted those locations for extra attention. However, with infinitely more data at its disposal than a policeman could ever hope to hold in his head, a computer can provide a more detailed and more accurate prediction as to where a crime is likely to take place.
Over a third of the LAPD’s divisions are now using a predictive policing software named PredPol to track burglaries, vehicle break-ins, and car thefts. The system can predict the locations of crimes down to an area as small as 500 square feet, and in recent LAPD trials it proved twice as effective in predicting crime as other existing methods.
Potential Problems with Predictive Policing
There are several issues that make people nervous about predictive policing:
Privacy Violations: Predictive policing is another example of the large-scale government data collection efforts that have been making the public very nervous in recent years. The LAPD does have significant surveillance capabilities such as license-plate-readers on cop cars and access to over a thousand surveillance cameras.
Potential Bias in Data Collection: Predictive policing is only as accurate as the data fed into it. This means that if police tend to make more arrests in certain areas due to some racial or class bias, the predictive policing algorithm will predict more crimes in that area, reflecting and perpetuating the bias.
4th Amendment Violations: Predictive policing could lead to increased stops and searches in areas designated by the computer as ripe for criminal activity. But is this fair? For example, maybe an officer sees a man carrying a bag in an area where the algorithm predicted a crime. While a man with a bag is not suspicious in and of itself, in combination with the computer’s prediction an officer might find the situation suspicious and detain the main. Later, in court, how will the officer justify the stop and any related search that may have produced evidence of a crime? “A computer told me to do it?” Is this grounds for a reasonable search under the 4th Amendment?
It is quite possible that the use of predictive policing will result in more cases of people having their rights violated simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If you get arrested, be sure that your first call is to a skilled defense attorney like Dan E. Chambers, who will make looking into the circumstances of your arrest and the procedures followed during any searches or evidence-gathering a top priority.
