An automated policing program got this man shot twice

[Nevilledog]

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George Joseph
@georgejoseph94
Chicago PD identified residents most likely to shoot/or be shot via a secret algorithm. To “deter” this “at-risk” man, they surveilled him constantly—causing neighbors to think he was a snitch. He was shot twice—the very outcome this was supposed to stop.

An automated policing program got this man shot twice
The Chicago PD made a “heat list” to predict people involved with violent crimes — and instead, it caused them.
theverge.com
6:28 AM · May 26, 2021

https://www.theverge.com/22444020/chicago-pd-predictive-policing-heat-list

ROBERT MCDANIEL’S TROUBLES began with a knock on the door. It was a weekday in mid-2013, as he made lunch in the crowded three-bedroom house where he lives with his grandmother and several of his adult siblings.

When he went to answer the door, McDaniel discovered not one person, but a cohort of visitors: two police officers in uniform, a neighbor working with the police, and a muscular guy in shorts and a T-shirt sporting short, graying hair.

Police officers weren’t a new sight for McDaniel. They often drove down his tree-lined street in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago making stops and arrests. Out of the 775 homicides tracked by the Chicago Sun-Times in 2020, 72 of them happened in Austin. That’s almost 10 percent of the city’s murder rate, in a region that takes up just 3 percent of its total area. The City of Chicago puts out a “heat map” of where gun crimes occur, with areas of moderate shooting numbers shaded in blue or green. Red splotches represent large numbers — and hottest concentrations — of shootings. On the map, Austin is the color of a fire engine.

Still, this visit from authorities caught McDaniel off guard: at that point in time, he had nothing remotely violent on his criminal record — just arrests for marijuana-related offenses and street gambling. And despite two officers showing up at his front door with the cohort, neither of them, nor anyone else in the cohort, accused McDaniel of breaking the law. They were not there to arrest him. No one was there to investigate a crime. They just wanted to talk.

*snip*

[Thomas Hurt]

1. I guess algorithm crime is the path to thought crime...

[WhiskeyGrinder]

2. K&R.

FTP and all their works.

[Solly Mack]

3. K&R

[ecstatic]

4. Very interesting. k&r.

I'm glad they ended that ridiculous program.

[Laffy Kat]

5. How is such a program constitutional?

[FBaggins]

6. Sounds like the algorithm was correct

Of course... if you live in a neighborhood where suspicion of being a snitch will get your shot, it doesn’t take much of an algorithm to predict that you’re at risk.

Sounds to me like the problem isn’t the algorithm... but rather what the authorities chose to do with the information.

[TigressDem]

7. Gives a NEW/OLD meaning to the Holy f-ing minority report nt

[Iggo]

8. PreCrime?

Fucking morons.