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Police Data-Mining Done Right
enharmonix writes "Courtesy of Bruce Schneier, it's nice to hear something good about data mining for a change: predicting and stopping crime. For example, police in Redmond, VA, 'started overlaying crime reports with other data, such as weather, traffic, sports events and paydays for large employers. The data was analyzed three times a day and something interesting emerged: Robberies spiked on paydays near cheque cashing storefronts in specific neighbourhoods. Other clusters also became apparent, and pretty soon police were deploying resources in advance and predicting where crime was most likely to occur.'"
I think thats just one thing that showed up on the radar. Something that someone may intuitively know may not be listened to by others without data to back it up. Things like they don't need to enforce traffic as much during foggy days because traffic is going slower already.
Crime is best prevented by the fear of getting caught and punished. If police increase their presence in areas and at times where and when crimes are likely to occur, there will be a deterrent effect. However, that is only the unavoidable side effect. Cops aren't trying to prevent crimes - they are trying to better focus their resources to catch criminals. It just so happens that the former is a pleasant result of the latter.
That was one example, probably selected because it doesn't give much away.
Still, I have to congratulate you. This just wouldn't be Slashdot if we didn't get somebody denigrating the accomplishment. It's very gratifying to know that I post to the same board as so many people who can do everything with merely a stray thought, if they ever actually felt like getting around to it.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
This is a case of feeding cop experience into a database and using that for pattern matching. That begs the obvious question of why cops weren't doing this sort of pattern matching in their heads already. If I can figure out that payday (or the day after) is not the greatest day to be in the bank due to the sudden surge of activity, robbers should be able to do the same as well as the cops.
What happened to hunches and intuition?
The point of data mining to to find the NON-OBVIOUS relationships.
There's even a data warehousing product named just that.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
you come to one undeniable conclusion:
cop work is one of the most criticized, and yet at the same time vital, aspects of modern life
almost all the comments here have some sort of negative thought or smarmy remark on an aspect of this story. and yet a cop is the first person these same people will call upon and depend upon if they are ever victimized or robbed. and what are the cops doing? no, what are they actually doing? i'm not asking your paranoid distrustful hollywood-addled alter ego, i'm asking your cognitive ability to look at and perceive the reality of actual police work
typical human shortsightedness and lack of gratitude
it must be so thankless being a cop. you're there to protect people, and all they can do is reflexively depart negativity at you
humanity sucks. you are all so ungrateful
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Crime is best prevented by the fear of getting caught and punished
Says who? AFAICT, crime is best prevented by some minimum amount of personal freedom, reasonable living conditions regarding food, shelter, and education for all, along with some participation in matters of society.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Not really. Jail time and such has almost no effect on changing criminal behaviour.
Possibly. Or maybe they are trying to prevent crimes.
The criminals are not worried about going to jail AFTER the crime is committed. But if there is a cop there at the moment they would have committed the crime, most criminals will not commit it.
Means
Motive
Opportunity
With a cop right there, the "opportunity" is removed. So no crime occurs. In general, the crime rate should go down because this isn't something that can easily be displaced. It seems to be tied to the area around a check cashing storefront. Increase the patrols in those areas and the crimes are not committed.
imho
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Do they really need to spend thousands of dollars analyzing data to determine there's more crime around check-cashing stores on paydays?
You know, when you get down to it, there's a lot of stuff that jumps out after the fact that says, "why the fuck didn't we notice that before?" But when you're doing the day to day work (in any field) you may ignore or not even know about what seems unbelievably obvious.
Just because this particular piece of information was the most prevalent in the story does not mean it's the only thing to come out of the reporting and it's certainly not the last thing that will be. Give it time. Data-mining's best fruits come from long term studies of data using a variety of methods.
f I can figure out that payday (or the day after) is not the greatest day to be in the bank due to the sudden surge of activity,
Whose payday? We can't post cops at all of the check cashing storefronts (not banks) all the time, so which stores see the most crime after which companies' paydays?
If you can answer these questions with nothing but hunches and intuition, I'd suggest the stock market, not law enforcement.
...sometimes, in order to hurt someone very badly, you have to tell that person terrible lies. - PA
Strategic and tactical placement of resources to maximize effect without resorting to profiling or harassing citizens is a good thing.
Now for all those computer/techie types, how many bugs or problems/issues seemed remarkably simple after you noticed/fixed them? How many times have you slapped your head and said "geeze, that was really simple."
Sometimes it just helps to have somebody checking up on your work, even if that "somebody" is an automated process or machine.
Strategic and tactical placement of resources to maximize effect without resorting to profiling or harassing citizens is a good thing.
What about cops walking a beat? That's right, walking down the same streets over and over everyday. Walking a beat means getting to know the locals and the particulars of a neighborhood in a way that doesn't happen in a squad car. Gangs don't hang out on a corner if once an hour a cops walks by a says hello, but the neighborhood kids still can hangout and could even end up viewing that cop as part of their neighborhood. From a squad car, no relationship is established and any stationary pack of teens can look like a gang to a biased eye. You don't have to profile when you actually know the people you see, but if you are just cruising along looking at a sea of nameless faces, then ethnicity and clothing style are about all you have to go on. Profiling is almost inevitable without establishing officers with good personal knowledge/relationship with the locals.
We are all just people.