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March 2019
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LAPD Watchdog Says Department's Data-Based Policing Is Producing Nothing But Wasted Time And Rights Violations

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The Los Angeles Police Department has just received some bad news from its oversight. It's probably good news for the policed -- many of whom are being disproportionately targeted thanks to biased input data -- but the LAPD can't be pleased that its reliance on expensive, mostly-automated tools hasn't produced worthwhile results.The department relies on a handful of tech tools to aid in its policing, but it doesn't appear to be helping. It has CompStat -- a holdover from the early 2000's when Bill Bratton still ran the department. To that framework, it has added LASER -- a nifty acronym that stands for "Los Angeles' Strategic Extraction and Restoration." The program with the reverse engineered nickname actually relies on input from human analysts to determine where officers should be deployed. But this reliance on data-driven policing isn't making the city any safer, despite LASER's focus on violent crime.Here's what the LAPD's human analysts put together for the department's patrol officers.

In perhaps the most contentious strategy, each of the department’s 21 geographic areas used data to compile lists or “bulletins” of people calculated to be among the top 12 “chronic offenders.”The program assigns people points based on prior criminal histories, such as arrest records, gang affiliation, probation and parole status and recent police contacts.
This strategy received some public blow-back, resulting in the department abandoning it last August. Nothing of value was lost.
[Inspector General Mark] Smith examined data collected prior to the suspension.He found 44 percent of chronic offenders had either zero or one arrest for violent crimes. About half had no arrest for gun-related crimes.
So much for curbing violent crime. All it did was create a loop where cops targeted nonviolent offenders, resulting in another arrest/detention that added more points to the person's LASER record, resulting in even more targeting and, inevitably, more interactions with police officers. It's a feedback loop no one can escape.To make things worse, officers had the power to place people into this damaging loop by "nominating" them for targeting with LASER. The point-based system that was supposed to limit this targeting to just the worst of worst street criminals could be bypassed. Nominated citizens would find themselves rising up the ranks on the LASER lists, racking up points simply by officers performing stops based on faulty inputs.And while the tech is supposedly improving, the quality of policing isn't. CompStat has had nearly a 20-year run in LA, but its results are negligible. Predictive policing -- which has its own bias issues -- isn't doing any better.
Like the other program, Smith found discrepancies with the data collection and could not draw conclusions to “meaningfully evaluate” the program’s overall effectiveness to reduce crime, the report said.
Unfortunately, the report recommends the LAPD stay the course. The LAPD is supposed to spend more time "reviewing" the data that isn't producing results and tailor its outputs with an eye on Constitutional rights. As it stands now, the LAPD is allowing databases to conjure up reasonable suspicion for stops. That can't keep happening. But the way forward can't be more of the same, only at a slightly slower pace.

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posted at: 12:00am on 29-Mar-2019
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Australian Prosecutors Trying To Throw Reporters In Jail For Accurately Reporting On Cardinal George Pell's Conviction

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As we've covered over the past few months, Australian courts put an absolutely ridiculous gag order on anyone trying to report about the conviction of Cardinal George Pell, the former CFO of the Vatican (often described as the 3rd most powerful person in the Vatican). Pell was convicted of sexually molesting choir boys in Australia in the 1990s. This is obviously quite newsworthy, but the courts used what's known as a "suppression order" in Australia to bar anyone from revealing the information. The reasoning was that there was still another trial for Pell over different accusations, and knowing he was convicted for one might somehow unfairly influence a jury. Of course, in the US we've long dealt with this through a process of vetting potential jurors on their familiarity, and then simply barring just that juror pool from doing any further research on the issue -- and that system works mostly fine, without keeping the public in the dark about important news, and without stifling a free press.Eventually the suppression order was lifted, after prosecutors decided to drop the second trial (which, at the very least, suggests that all this fuss to protect the sanctity of said second trial was silly all along). And, yet, prosecutors then sent out a bunch of threatening letters to journalists -- most of whom did not report publicly on the case, but who did complain about the suppression order.And now, to show just how far Australian prosecutors will go to spit on free speech and a free press, they are now seeking jail time for members of the media over this whole mess:

Australian prosecutors are seeking jail and fines for dozens of journalists and media outlets for alleged contempt of court over their coverage of Cardinal George Pell's child sex abuse trial last year, a court summons showed on Tuesday.The Director of Public Prosecutions in Victoria has asked the state's Supreme Court to send journalists to jail or impose fines for breaching a suppression order on coverage of the trial, aiding and abetting overseas media's contempt of court, and scandalizing the court.
The only things "scandalizing" here are (1) George Pell's actions for which he was convicted, and (2) the prosecutors now going after journalists for their free speech.Apparently there will be a hearing on April 15th for 23 journalists and 13 media organizations. It appears that it includes some of the top media organizations in Australia (The Age, Australian Financial Review, News Corp, etc.) and some fairly prominent journalists, including Michael Stutchbury, the editor-in-chief of the Australian Financial Review.One hopes that prosecutors would come to their senses earlier, but now we have to hope a judge has more sense about this. Unfortunately, given other free speech cases in Australia over the years, I have little faith that this will end up well. Australia is making quite a name for itself as a country that believes in heavy handed censorship, and is against free speech.

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posted at: 12:00am on 29-Mar-2019
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