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Santa Cruz Tests Predictive Policing Program
The police department of Santa Cruz, California is testing a new method for apprehending criminals: beating them to the crime scene. No, they haven't harnessed a group of pre-cogs; they're relying on a computer program that analyzes past crime statistics.
"Based on models for predicting aftershocks from earthquakes, it generates projections about which areas and windows of time are at highest risk for future crimes by analyzing and detecting patterns in years of past crime data. The projections are recalibrated daily, as new crimes occur and updated data is fed into the program. ... For the Santa Cruz trial, eight years of crime data were fed into the computer program, which breaks Santa Cruz into squares of approximately 500 feet by 500 feet. ... Officers are given a list of the 10 highest-probability 'hot spots' of the day at roll call. They check those areas during times that they are not out on service calls. Before the program started, they made such 'pass through' checks based on hunches or experience of where crimes were likely to occur."
It's nice to see police working within the rules for once instead of bending them until they break.
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
*Facepalm*
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
Chick getting arrested in the picture for the article reeks of Santa Cruz. Makes me want to yell at her to get a job.
- Holy crap, I've got MOD points! Who thought that was a good idea.
Precogs!
It is kind of interesting on one level because it doesn't violate anyone's civil rights nor do anything odious. That much said, I am no fan of proactive policing. Proactive policing usually means law abiding citizens get harassed for walking through a "known" crime area even though they have no criminal intent. And please spare me the tired old line that only criminals go through bad areas and if you are in a bad area you must be up to something. Having been in law enforcement myself, cops are really rarely out to help which is why they call it "law enforcement" versus "peace officer." If you want proactive policing, hire private security.
Anything which replaces officer "hunches" with something more probabilistically sound* is fine by me.
*given the very low predictive value of their hunches and the high potential for 'hunches' to obfuscate prejudice or patterns of harassment in their investigations("my gut told me hassling this poor neighbourhood for the eighth time this month might turn up some crimes"), a dice roll would be sound enough for my purposes. Can you come up with an even more accurate model than pure randomness? bonus!
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
before they commit the crime.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2015923589_whitecentershooting17m.html
The police were already here for this one. They were just one block away. And they didn't feel any collars after the gun went off.
I guess it could have been a lot worse if the police were nowhere near...
"No, they haven't harnessed a group of pre-cogs..."
Having grown up in Santa Cruz, I'm a little surprised.
I think we call that, "intent". ;)
set out the taze bot in these areas.
...Good! I wish to report a robbery.
Wiggum: [bored] A robbery, right. Thanks for the report. [hangs up]
That's _another_ one, Lou...723 Evergreen Terrace.
[Looks at a map with the robbery locations marked on it]
Well, there doesn't seem to be any pattern yet, but if I take
this one and move it here...and I move these over here...hello!
It _almost_ looks like an arrow!
Lou: Hey, look, Chief: it's pointing right at this police station.
Wiggum: Let's get out of here!
Somehow I don't think you'd get any successful prosecutions if you did that. Additionally, you'd discredit any possible hot-spot monitoring program for the same reasons.
This only works if you let the perpetrator actually become a perpetrator. If you stop them before they've provided evidence of an intent to commit or evidence in the commission, you'll get thrown out of court, and if you do it way too much and catch too much public attention, you'll have other law enforcement entities investigating you, probably for civil rights violations.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Trustafarians don't need jobs. Lives possibly but not jobs.
Ooh! Did I just write the plot for Oceans N+1?
There's been a lot of scam artists in the crime and terrorism prediction business. One has to be careful. They get slick fast-talkers who convince not-so-bright managers, who are often poorly-educated ex-cops, that they have a wiz-bang contraption. They often use doctored data from other agencies they've allegedly tested it on.
Now all we need is for it to target the criminals
before they commit the crime.
What ever happened to innocent till proven guilty? There not criminals even if they have a "record" until they have committed a crime.
Now, this would require the common street thug to be smart enough to think this up, let alone implement it...but
Wouldn't you pretty much have a schedule where cops are going to be knowing this info? More importantly, wouldn't you pretty much have a schedule where the cops will NOT be?
This is actually not a security theater thing.
Nonetheless, it'd be pretty bad if the info got leaked. Imagine you're planning a heist.... I'd rather rob a bank on some hidden corner noone ever robbed than one that got hit last week and now everybody is on full alert.
Maybe the info could go a step further, and get you the data where people robbed and didn't get caught. Or banks where nobody ever got shot during a heist, for whatever reason.
Actually, I think I that info could be more valuable to crooks than to cops.
Keep in mind this is Santa Cruz where they at least used to allow vagrants to urinate on the sidewalks.
My way of looking at this is that they are more likely intending to *DETER* criminal activity by having law enforcement patrol through known hotspots with the intention of lowering arrests while not having to increase the number of officers patrolling the beat. There's two methods to deterring crime: prosecution and prevention. The latter should be preferred over the former in all but the most heinous of crimes.
Ah ha! Let's arrest the minorities before the crimes happen this time!
Have been doing this for years. Sending out ambulances to areas at certain times.
So how many small crimes would you have to commit in other areas to reduce the police coverage in your targeted area before you commit the big crime at the real target?
wouldn't it just be easier to hack into the system and see where it is directing officers, and go break the law away from them? Or better yet, feed the computer false info, so it predicts crimes in areas you want the police to be when you are doing your big heist.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
“The worst-case scenario is that it doesn’t work and we’re no worse off”
No, the worse case scenario is that criminality adapts and becomes not only harder to combat because criminals are motivated to think outside of the box, but also harder to avoid (i.e. by avoiding high-crime areas because criminals now know to cover larger areas). In this scenario, crime may go down slightly as the less resourceful criminals get swept up, but crime also becomes a more widespread problem as criminals attempt to avoid the expected patterns.
I wonder if they've looked at predicting how this will play out with the new program in place -- they have the basic problem that they're affecting what they're observing, and thus will change what will happen.
If the algorithms predict crimes in certain areas, you'll end up with officers in the area, likely preventing a crime before it even happens. That is, the potential criminal will notice the police presence and decide its not a good time. Thus there would be some feedback from the prediction method back onto itself.
I can think of three ways it could go:
1. Predictable "waves" that roll across the city
2. Predictable but chaotic patterns reminiscent of a complex cellular automata or fractal
3. The software nullifies itself.
Anyone have any other thoughts or know if they've studied this problem?
In other news, when it comes to choosing mutual funds, past performance is a great predictor of future returns!
Are you adequate?
I don't mean to go quantum physics on police work, but this is slashdot. As soon as the police insert themselves into the equation, the social dynamics will change and eventually invalidate their predictions. It will take a while, especially when compared to the orbit of an electron, but it will happen. If they are good, their model will adapt, but it may not work as well in such a dynamic feedback loop.
Yeah man! We just need to hack the Gibson and reverse the polarity on the mainframe firewall in order to drop a logic bomb through the backdoor. Alternatively, paying street-kids to commit petty thefts in areas away from your target area is much much simpler than "hack into the system" and/or "feed the computer false info".
Thanks Jean and Fred (cue fake smiles and laughs all around)...
Well today we sure did have some isolated crimestorms dotted around the metro with scattered crimebursts in the outlying areas. Your forecast for tomorrow is a 40% chance of crime in the downtown area with a peak of 80% occurring around 4th and Vine. Out in the suburbs, we're looking at a 10% chance of domestic disputes, 40% chance of mom scoring some weed from the high school pimp, and about an 80% chance of teenage drinking as we head toward the weekend. This is all about normal for this time of year, so get out there and don't forget your umbrella! ...and the forecasts will be just as accurate as the regular weather...
What ever happened to innocent till proven guilty?
Still a basis of modern law, AFAIK. But that doesn't mean the police can't keep an eye on people they have reason to believe are likely to break the law... at least when those people are out in public.
There not criminals even if they have a "record" until they have committed a crime.
From Mirriam-Webster: Criminal (noun): one who has committed a crime.
If a person has a "record" (we'll assume for the moment they were justly convicted), then they are a criminal, because they have committed a crime.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
So we can project the future of crime. Great. Now let's project it's past, and fix the causes.
Just FYI, that's not the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. You're thinking of wave function collapse, in which the act of measuring a particle determines its state. Heisenberg uncertainty is a mathematical proof that shows that the uncertainty in a particle's location and the uncertainty of its momentum have a non-zero product. It also applies to other pairs of properties, such as energy and time.
People get the two confused all the time, probably because the one that's more useful to talk about doesn't have a cool sounding name (that I know of).
Urban campers will just take their thieving further from their camp sights once they realize they are bringing heat down on themselves.
Until then the cops have a statistical homeless camp locator.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This only works assuming that you can correlate the past with the future; this is highly unlikely. Although crime is generally not uniformly spread over spacetime, or even space or time individually, the autocorrelation function with itself over all time is unlikely to yield anything useful. Unless you're lucky -- like you might be on a hunch.
It seems that all this program does is say "gee, this place had a couple gangbangers caught on Tuesday. Maybe on Wednesday, the others are smart enough to try a different shitty area of town."
I'm a person who's very skeptical of the police; the nature of the job these days breeds a culture that is very much in opposition to their stated mission. Anyone who disdainfully refers to the citizens of his town as "civilians" is likely a traitor, to us and to the enormous responsibility and latitude we give them. In short, I think they're mostly dirty pigs with a chip on the shoulder, plus a minority who actually deserve to be called "officer" - who are some of the bravest, most decent people in the world. Not many of them stay that way, though.
That's just the disclaimer leading up to this: This could be a wonderful thing if they don't abuse it (I know, I know). IF they're really looking to post extra patrols in places where old ladies are commonly mugged at a certain hour, or in front of a bar where brawls frequently pour out into the street, or even (though I am anti-prohibition altogether) on a block where there's a lot of meth being sold.
Of course, this is going to be just as useful to them when they're dealing with a bunch of geeks who want to protest their shutdown of cellphone service/twitter/etc...
As soon as the police insert themselves into the equation, the social dynamics will change and eventually invalidate their predictions.
Hopefully the form of the changes will be fewer people committing crimes, because it's harder to get away with crimes after the program is in place.
Remember, the police system doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be effective enough to deter your average potential criminal. It's not like people have an an infinitely large incentive to commit crimes at all costs; they choose to commit a crime, or not, based largely on risk and cost-benefit analysis.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
in high school, you find out about the womens rights topless parade.
and you go.. once.. then discover the disturbing truth about 98% of the women willing to march topless.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
SELECT grid_id FROM streets WHERE streetname LIKE 'Martin L%';
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
So now that officers are going out to the top ten hot spots more often, there will probably be more arrests in those areas. As this new data gets fed into the computer system, it will reinforce and magnify certain preexisting selection criteria.
The computer analysis will always be confirmed to be correct.
I'm sure you've committed multiple crimes today
So do you think we should investigate based on exit polls or will the morning after the election be soon enough?
Yes, but there's a difference between "being a criminal" and "being a criminal due for prosecution". It's not a crime to "be a criminal".
A person who committed a crime, served their time, and is now free is a "criminal" by your dictionary definition, but is a law-abiding, free citizen by the law's definition, until such time as they choose to commit another crime.
Police departments already tried to do this, as noted with the hunch thing. The cops would go around and show presence in areas to try and deter crime (they also do things like park their cars in mall parking lots when they do paperwork). Well and good but of course it is all based on what humans feel is correct. while there's some validity to that since we do notice patterns, better to have a computer work it out, if possible.
Supposing the algorithm is tuned well, it could really do good. The patrols will go in areas where they are most needed. Also presumably a good model that is given new data daily (as this one is) will notice when things change and thus change patrols. Humans may be much slower to react.
Have to see what the actual stats are on it, but I think it could be a real win long term for law enforcement.
predicting white collar crime on Wall Street. Cops the world over do this already - it's why you don't see cops cruising suburbs but you do see them on those streets where you can spend $50 and get high and laid in 20 minutes. I'd love to see them police Wall Street this way, though. That would change instantly change my opinion on minimum sentencing :-)
The Luddites were ahead of their time.
Minority Report!
and totally get it now that I've read this. I got pulled over by a Sheriff last month who was three cars ahead of me and pulled off the road to get in front of my truck. I hadn't broken any laws and the Cop told me he pulled me over because I have a full beard and fitted a description of someone he was looking for.
The Officer ran my info and came back telling me I was clean. He then asked if he could take my picture in case he found the perp he was looking for. Being a stand-up citizen I agreed and let him take my picture. I then told him "I hope you find your guy" and left the scene.
I've never been pulled over in this county with such a bullshit excuse but complied because the Officer was cordial and I wanted to support him in his quest because where I live has a lot of transients going back and forth.
I wonder now.. Did I get profiled by his computer, or his Officer's "hunch"?
The article doesn't go into it, but is the earthquake aftershock prediction actually any good? I haven't heard about it and the article doesn't mention anything about the accuracy.
As long as they're targeting times and places, not people (individuals or groups), this is totally reasonable. In small towns with townie cops on the beat for years, the cops know where and when the crime "hotspots" are. But they're subjective, and are easily turned into just harassing people (and the neighborhoods they live or hang out in). Indeed, bad cops say that's what they're doing, when they're really just racists or settling some old grudge (often against totally different people), or just on a power trip - sweating kids at the local makeout spot, or busting harmless potheads.
But if there's statistical fact directing the police to places and times that actually do have higher crime rates, that's totally legit. Those are places and times that need more policing. And doing it scientifically means replacing the corrupt selection of pressure points with targets appropriate to the need.
The key to keeping the cops honest here is opening the selection system for review. Probably not simply public access to either the specific rules, process, data or target schedule, because that would undo the useful self-organized pattern recognized by police into new patterns criminals adapt to evade the pattern recognition. But the system and its operation should be reviewed by an independent group. Which should be judges, because sending cops somewhere without probable cause but rather probable correlation , is closely related to the search and seizure warrants that require judges to be convinced of probable cause to make them reasonable. If not, then it won't take long for a defendant to convince a judge that the cops singled them out without probable cause, either by some kind of association profiling or just a personal dislike. Which will get their case thrown out, and likely others - that were legit.
--
make install -not war
It's called community policing and has been around for years. My former employer was providing this data in the form of daily report to be discussed during roll call - that was 6 years ago at least.
Maybe adding some predictive analysis will help...maybe just monitoring SMS transmissions and social web sites would be more effective - especially if you have someone on the inside who is getting those messages. Even more effective would be sending deceptive messages to those groups to DIRECT them to where the police are.
It doesn't seem like a good way to generate revenue. Why would any police department want this?
I bet the doughnut shop is ripe for potential crimes. Better go check it out!
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
So is this the Santa Cruz Operation?
Error 404 - Sig Not Found
Blasphemer! Infidel! YOU are the criminal! DIE!
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
*squeeekily* erases that from the dictionary of jurisprudence and schedules anyone who disagrees with retroactive abortions!
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Reading your comment I was heavily reminded of The Big Bang Theory! :)
Ooh! Ooh!
Bettor Cop: There were a rash of crimes around Broadway and Seabright! I'm placing my bet on Broadway and Seabright!
Crime Dealer: Oh sorry! The next crime happened over on Center and Church! YOU LOSE!
Bettor Cop: Damn! That sucks!
Victim: You're telling ME asshole!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Election? Election! What fucking election? I say we kill the accused because we are GOVERNMENT GODS!
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
If the intent is to prevent crimes, you don't need to arrest someone, only to, *IF* they were planning to commit a crime, discourage them. Discourage them for awhile, and they'll form a different habit patten, and no crimes occurred.
FWIW, this is a one sentence summary of an analysis of New York's, apparently working, crime reduction strategy. My summary of an article from a recent Scientific American. Is it working? Apparently statistics from several sources say that it is.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
That's the goal. The whole purported reason for putting traffic cameras at intersections with lots of crashes is to make people more cautious to reduce the crashes.
Or is the argument just, "why fight crime when you can never eradicate it?"
Hmmm. Seems like Wikipedia got that wrong as well:
I read that to mean by interactively observing a particle's velocity (i.e., "pinging," it with a measurement device) one necessarily changes that particle's behavior in such a way that does not allow one to accurately predict that (or any other) particle's future location. Models based on thousands of years of stored historical data won't help one accurately predict the next location of any particle in real time.
Also, from the Wikipedia article (quoting Max Born from his Nobel Laureate speech):
IANAP (I am not a physicist), but I've worked with many of them over the years (in speech and handwriting recognition). "Observing" data recorded from human speakers and writers can help build and train HMMs used to predict the most likely future utterance or letter in real time (based on what's been said or written leading up to that utterance or letter in real time). But this works because the measuring device does not slug the subject it's observing in the mouth or break the subject's knuckle with every measurement it makes. Still, we would often reference the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in our brainstorming sessions ("I wonder if the fact that they know they're being recorded will change the way they speak/write? And, if so, in what way and by how might that affect our recognition accuracy?" type of reflection). I don't recall any of them using the Heisenberg uncertainty principle as meaning what you say it means. Their understandings were more in line with the Wikipedia entry.
Of course, if you can find a reference that refutes Wikipedia's definition or supports your own (or both), please provide a link in your reply. I am eager to read it. I'm quite comfortable with learning I've been wrong since that's how I get to be right more often in the future. ;-)
One "Aw, Shit!" is worth 100 "Ata boys!"
All the gamblers would be rich. lol This beg the question how many officers could they hire if they did not throw away all that cash?
Obviously you live in a privileged neighborhood.
You want less interaction with cops. If you can get them to take police reports of stolen goods, then I guess you might have a use for them (cops around here won't even write shit up so that it could go into a predictive pattern, much less dust for prints so crooks could get caught later).
98% of the cops* who've stopped me (68 stops) has bullshited about the law, lied, or mis-represented stuff (no, officer, you had a green light, I had a walk sign, since that's a bike path, so no I could not have run a red - I went back and filmed that on video, traffic light ill-designed).
Every single cop incident that's led to court stuff has had the cop lying to the prosecutor's office (most of those were dismissed). And, since I got the clue then, I started carrying video. Every cop I've had on the stand since then has committed perjury. Now, I've not been smart enough to learn that their civil liability expires a *lot* quicker than a civilian's liability (since I was busy learning the law and how to defend myself in court). And perjury is purely a criminal violation (no civil liability), so when the cops refuse to investigate each other (Hi, internal affairs), there's nothing you can do about it.
* I had one rookie who didn't fuck shit up. Dunno what was the matter with him, had another rookie who would've been fine until he falsified the police report at his shift-commander's direction.
Which leads me to the conclusion that, of the cops who stop me, only rookies aren't corrupt. There may be a bias however - perhaps there are actually good cops out there who follow the law, see that I'm following the law, and thus don't hassle me. Could be. But that's not my experience of law enforcement, and I don't know how you'd prove that to me.
Any interaction you have with the police gives them the chance to throw you in jail. They can lie, perjure, plant evidence, destroy evidence, selectively investigate and report facts, and lots of other fun stuff. ANY interaction you have with cops is not something you want.
America is a fascist police state. With more goons per-capita than communist Russia. And more people behind bars than any country (or two or three combined), including dictatorships. You can be forced to tell a police officer your name, and jailed for up to 24 hrs for telling him your name, any time you're out on the street*. You better have video evidence (and hope they don't destroy it) if you want to prove any facts about what happened before a court. And hope you get a judge who happens to follow the rules of criminal procedure.
* Of course that's illegal, but can you afford to purchase justice? There's no money in such a case, and a lot of bad will, so the opportunity for a contingency fee is nil.
Best cop story from my state? Guy who blew away a burglar breaking into his house didn't ask if the burglar was an off-duty officer. Unsurprisingly, the citizen was murdered a year or so later. And guess what? There are no leads in that case. I'm sure it's being investigated with all the thoroughness that the police can muster. :)
Now that I think about it, I wonder if you can get insurance for that? That would definitely be a time to change your name, move to a different state, and change your name again.
Two statistics majors went on a police ride-along to see how the new crime prediction model was working. They went to the first predicted location on 200th st., but there was no crime. Then they went to the second second predicted location on 100th st, but again no crime. Just when they were about to admit defeat, a call came in about a crime on 150th st and they both yelled "we did it!"
Daniel
We put all our officers in these ten spots, and in these ten spots, our officers found crimes! The new prediction system must be working like a charm!
This only allows prediction based on past crimes that are known to Law Enforcement. That means the successful criminals who commit crimes without them being noticed (like crimes that no one reports, drug dealing, prostitution, etc) will have even less of a chance of having police run across them.
Not all life is cyber. Extra Income
Why is this news? Proactive policing is hardly new. Doing the predictive work on a computer isn't new either. (NYC was doing it back in the 70's.)
That's the goal. The whole purported reason for putting traffic cameras at intersections with lots of crashes is to make people more cautious to reduce the crashes..
Accidents increased. When they put up cameras to stop red light runners, people began to suddenly stop as the light turned yellow, only to get rear-ended in the process. That wasn't the goal.
when you are a drug addled looser who's only interest is getting wasted and forgetting what a failure they have made of themselves.
The two are related in that thought experiments related to changing something by measuring it led to the development of the Uncertainty Principle. However, it can be reached from other angles, including deriving it mathematically. It exists independent of any actual measurement. Even if you imagine an omniscient god thinking about the particle, it's impossible to know both the momentum and position simultaneously.
Hyperphysics has an excellent summary showing where the uncertainty arises without any measurements taking place.
As for Wikipedia's part, if you look at the talk page, you'll see what happened. The editors there are making a conscious effort to make the subject approachable. So they focus on "real world" applications, such as measurements affecting the outcome, and gloss over the talk of wave packets and derivations that show the uncertainty exists even without measurements. I don't disagree with their approach. Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia, not a text book. But you have to be careful when turning to it for advanced information.
(For the record, I am not a physicist, but I did take multiple courses in quantum mechanics in college before turning to a far more lucrative career in engineering. I'm also close friends with a particle physicist who gives me crap about turning to the dark side to this day.)
I know you're thinking that the goal was to get ticket revenues. Sometimes I suspect that myself. But the government would argue, perhaps truthfully, that getting rear-ended will at worst give you a bit of whiplash, whereas getting t-boned by some asshole running a red light can kill. Has there ever been a study on the rate of injuries before and after red light camera installation?
The program presents a paradox. If the program analyses rightly and crime has been prevented by the presence of police officers, how do they know that it was prevented because of the prediction? Is the absence of crime proof of rightness or proof of wrongness?
O this learning! What a thing it is - William Shakespeare
Hey Santa Cruz, I can predict some crime. Smart meter installations. Bankster transactions. It's time to leave the Black Bridge alone, quit harassing people looking for a little bud, and get your nazi asses obey your fucking oath, and go after the real criminals.
Thanks for reminding me of the talk page on Wikipedia. I have to get back into the habit of checking that out on a regular basis. Thanks, also, for the link. I'm always interested in broadening my understanding in all things scientific (although I'm an engineer by training and profession as well). Again, thanks for the post! :-)
One "Aw, Shit!" is worth 100 "Ata boys!"
Now all we need is for it to target the criminals
before they commit the crime.
What ever happened to innocent till proven guilty?
There not criminals even if they have a "record" until they have committed a crime.
Intent can be a crime. Or are you saying it's ok to buy the explosives, mix the bomb materials, rent the U-haul, driver it to Oklahoma, park it in front of a Federal building... and it's all perfectly legal and OK and we shouldn't arrest anybody until they actually set off the bomb? Yes, sometimes you can be found guilty of plotting to commit a crime.
But that has nothing at all to do with the story.
Intent can be a crime. Or are you saying it's ok to buy the explosives, mix the bomb materials, rent the U-haul, driver it to Oklahoma, park it in front of a Federal building... and it's all perfectly legal and OK and we shouldn't arrest anybody until they actually set off the bomb? Yes, sometimes you can be found guilty of plotting to commit a crime.
But that has nothing at all to do with the story.
If they were caught with the bomb then making a bomb would be the crime there and there would also be terrorism charges but I take your point.
What I was trying say to the parent poster was that life is not White and Black there are shades of Grey.
To me he came across as arguing for arbitrary arrest.
We still live in a democracy dont we?
I live in Santa Cruz and we've had a spike of thefts in our area. This afternoon there was a big commotion and the Santa Cruz police nabbed some folks who they say are behind several of those thefts. Of course it could be coincidence.
"California is testing a new method for apprehending criminals: beating them" - that's what I read. Have to be careful with such headlines...
There's more than just suspicion. Six cities were caught shortening yellow times to make up for falling camera revenues. And there are undoubtably more out there. Not only are red-light cameras money printing machines, but the companies that install/maintain them usually get a cut, too.
If you really want to cut down on injuries and accidents, you need to put a gap between one direction turning red and crossing traffic getting the green. You should also lengthen the yellow lights, and have a way of indicating how long it will be until the light changes (I like those crosswalk signs that count down; when they hit zero, you know the light will change to yellow). Don't design the system so that it works when people act perfectly correct; design it so it works even when they're tired, distracted, or dumb.
See, red light cameras don't deter people who blow through intersections well after the light changes and cause bad accidents. They nail the people who misjudged the light by a second or two, and taking the above steps (countdown timers and the delay before green) helps prevent the accidents they cause. Smarter and/or more responsive light programming would be nice, too; people will be less tempted to try and beat the known "bad lights" if they know they won't have to sit for an unusually long time.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
The local cop would know the likely places for action.
It may work temporarily, but I suspect that ultimately this will just physically displace where crimes occur, not really prevent them. Criminals will see the police presence in the targeted locations and then move to undefended locations.
Don't forget to delete your minority reports. Wouldn't want that to come back and bite you.
Now all we need is for it to target the criminals
before they commit the crime.
What ever happened to innocent till proven guilty?
There not criminals even if they have a "record" until they have committed a crime.
You're thinking of the writ of "Habius Corpus" (from the Latin "have a corpse") which essentially says you can't arrest someone without charging them, and you can't charge someone for a crime you can't prove happened. I believe it's part of the 4th (or maybe 5th) amendment in the US, but it has been suspended in times of war in the past (notably Lincon issued executive orders to that effect during the Civil war, and a lot of the inmates in Guantanamo would have to be released if the rules were deemed to apply to them).
If the program is successful enough, the source of data would dry up and stop working. :) I wonder where the equilibrium point will be?
Thank you ,
I knew what I meant just did not know the term.
Habeas corpus Corpus (Taken to mean in modern times) - "no person should be deprived of freedom without Due Process of Law."
So what happens when the high crime areas just happen to be the areas with a higher density of black or hispanic residents? (Sadly, this is the case in many Bay Area cities - the stats reflect this year after year after year)
The police department of Santa Cruz, California is testing a new method for apprehending criminals: beating them to the crime scene.
In Fullerton, California they tested a new method of beating them to death at the crime scene. Well, alleged crime scene.
If you liked committing petty theft on the 1500 block of Thomson, then we think you'll love....
Overall accidents increased in some areas, but the number of severe accidents dropped substantially. Minor accidents increased slightly, but they accounted for a larger percentage of total accidents. In many areas, that increase in minor accidents at red-light-camera intersections is expected to be temporary. In my city, for instance, by the second year minor accidents had fallen back to previous levels, but major accidents stayed down, and overall accident numbers had dropped, for camera-monitored intersections. The local media only reported on the "increases total accidents" part of the story the first year, and didn't say a thing at all after the second year, despite the traffic engineer explaining it to them clearly.
Urban campers will just take their thieving further from their camp sights once they realize they are bringing heat down on themselves...
Or wealthier and/or more politically connected areas see a crime committed close to home and assume it is because patrols are diverted from their area due to this program.
No, the assumption is that there is far more crime than cop coverage can impact.
You could double the number of cops, and probably double the number of arrests.
More watching just means more catching. And more watching in certain areas means more catching in those areas, and less coverage/catching in other areas.
Yes, the smart criminals will start figuring out where there's less coverage and migrate there. Yay for raising the bar on criminal activity! Put dumb criminals away, and quit accidentally stumbling onto the smart one's operations. Definitely move policing towards an automated system... who needs human pattern recognition / intuition?
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Ummm...Good for them? This doesn't seem that technologically advanced of an idea
CRIMINAL WITHOUT CONVICTION â" PROSECUTING THE UNCONVICTED ARRIVING ALIEN UNDER. SECTION 212(a)(2)(A) OF THE....
http://www.fletc.gov/training/programs/legal-division/the-informer/research-by-subject/miscellaneous/aliencriminalwithoutconviction.pdf
I know I have my citizenship papers around here somewhere.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty