Can This Software Prevent Acts of Police Brutality?
ORANGE COUNTY, California -- In the 2002 science-fiction thriller "Minority Report," Tom Cruise plays a police captain named John Anderton. Anderton’s job is to predict crime. Using a giant touch-screen computer, he swipes left and right, and with a flick of his wrist, he can dispatch officers to a pinpointed location to nab would-be murderers and rapists before they act. By 2054 A.D., the year in which the movie is set, crime is all but eliminated.
The idea is pure fantasy, but what if you took that idea and flipped it around and applied it to the police. Instead of using technology to capture criminals before they commit a crime, what if software could be used by police departments to prevent acts of police brutality before they happen?
That idea is quickly becoming a reality.
On the fifth floor of the sheriff's office in Santa Ana, California, Lieutenant Christopher Corn, a 20-year veteran of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department (OCSD), laughs off the comparison to Tom Cruise in "Minority Report." Corn, who wears an ivy-green uniform with a gun holstered to his hip, presides over the department’s newly created software division to analyze officers’ “Personal History Index,” PHI for short, a sort of software tracking system for officers on the force.
“A lot of what we do, I’m not sure it would prevent, but it might identify people where it might happen,” he says. "
*Specifically, the system tracks seven metrics: Commendations, complaints, use of force, risk management, workers compensation claims, traffic collisions and internal affairs cases. Though the system logs a wide variety of metrics, "use of force" complaints are perhaps the most pertinent."
http://www.ibtimes.com/can-software-prevent-acts-police-brutality-2029630
