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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'm losing my nerve," Benny said mournfully. "Six times this past year we've flicked into flash crowds, and three times I threw away everything I had because it looked like the cops had time to put us under riot control. Once I was right. Twice I was wrong. That's just not good enough." He braced himself. "I think I'll quit." There, he'd said it.
A hole in space. Larry Niven.
Are the police going to share the location information?
I might want to watch. Cops live!
liqbase
I don't really tend to think in terms of the police having the job of preventing crime. I think there job should be to apprehend criminals who are involved in or have committed a crime. That said, I guess it is good if they have tools that better help them to schedule and plan enforcement. Like anything, it can be taken too far. I would think that what would separate 'good' data mining from 'bad' data mining would be transparency and over site in the process.
On a side note - I'm willing to bet that if someone had asked most street cops in that area - they wouldn't have needed software or data mining tools to tell you that cash checking places in bad parts of town, on pay days were areas of higher crime.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
They probably are, but they can't admit it, because without hard data to back it up they get criticized for "profiling".
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
Actually, in many places they do. Beat cops and homicide cops often have somewhat amicable relationships with drug gangs so that they have informants when violent crimes happen. Narcotics cops are another issue, but they don't walk beats and it's rarely useful to arrest low-level players who are selling at street corners.
I really liked Jello Biafra's notion that communities could vote for the policemen who would walk their beat. In a country like the US with such a low voter participation rate, I don't think it could really work though.