{"id":6525,"date":"2012-01-11T08:10:35","date_gmt":"2012-01-11T00:05:05","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-01-10T22:00:58","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=6525","title":{"rendered":"The Independent: “LAPD’s sci-fi solution to real crime: Predicting where felons might strike is being made easier with a computer calculation”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Independent: LAPD’s sci-fi solution to real crime: Predicting where felons might strike is being made easier with a computer calculation<\/a> by Guy Adams:<\/p>\n

Sergeant John Gomperz slows his black-and-white patrol vehicle to a crawl as he enters the parking lot of one of the shopping malls that litter the Los Angeles northern suburbs. For the next 15 minutes, he drives up and down, past McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and a row of fast-food outlets. Then he pauses at the entrance of the electronics store Best Buy, and scans the horizon.<\/p>\n

We’re looking for people he considers “suspicious”. These include lone, predatory males; youths cruising around on bicycles; and anyone who happens to be sporting gangland tattoos. “I’m trying to be highly visible,” he explains. “Just because we don’t see them doesn’t mean they can’t see us.”<\/p>\n

Eventually, after smiling at a few shoppers, waving to a casual acquaintance, and making a final lap of the car-park, Gomperz looks at his watch, winds up the window, and drives off. Job done, he announces.<\/p>\n

To a casual observer, it might seem a waste of a quarter of an hour of valuable police time. But the way the sergeant sees things, the long, slow tour of a seemingly normal parking lot is one of the most important things he’s done all day.<\/p>\n

That’s how things roll in the brave new world of computerised “predictive policing”, a hi-tech crime-busting technique which Gomperz is helping to pioneer and which, has the potential to revolutionise modern law enforcement.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

It also has legal complications. Under the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, police officers are forbidden from stopping a suspect without “reasonable suspicion” that they are committing a crime. No one yet knows whether simply being in a geographic box identified by a computer programme represents reasonable suspicion.<\/p>\n

“What happens if officers turn up at a 500ft x 500ft area, on the look out for burglaries, see a guy with a black bag, search him and find it contains stolen goods?” wonders Andrew Ferguson, an assistant professor of Law at the University of the District of Colombia. “If that case goes to court, there will be the question of whether it was reasonable for the officer to suspect he was committing a crime.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is quite settled that being in a high-crime area is not reasonable sucision. Is Mr. Ferguson suggesting that a computer algorithm takes the place of the police officer’s objective observations and can<\/em> show reasonable suspicion from presence alone? I don’t think so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6525\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}