police | THE BLACK LADDER

By: Dr. Samori Swygert

We are at the dawn of a new era in law enforcement. There is an expansive and proliferating trend that grants unprecedented authorities and capabilities to our police. This year we’ve witnessed the supreme court ruling, that authorizes cops to take and warehouse the DNA of individuals that have been arrested (more so for “serious crimes”) in a database.

We’ve seen the re-implementation of STOP and FRISK policing on the public. We’ve seen the New York State Senate pass a bill that Okays the arrest of a citizen that annoys, and even harasses a cop, with a punishment of up to 4 years in jail and a felony conviction on their criminal record.

I posted an article that discussed how a new gunshot recognition system records the video, photo, biometric facial scan, and audio of individuals once a shot is fired in the city. We’ve seen the use of license plate scanners mounted on police patrol cars to identify the status of the car, and identify the respected driver.

Police departments across the country have now added a new tool in their crime fighting efforts. This is called PREDICTIVE POLICING, and the company developing the program is known as PredPol. This system is currently in use in California, Washington, South Carolina, Arizona, Tennessee, Illinois, and even the United Kingdom.

The system is data driven, and uses the information from prior crimes, and current crimes. The company has specific modeling algorithms that compiles: date, time, type of crime, geographic location and other data parameters. Statistical analysis allows the system to generate the probability of a certain type of crime in a specific location and time. These locations and time stamps are referred to as HOTSPOTS. The hotspots are then marked on maps of the city for police to patrol and do reconnaissance work if they are not involved in an active pursuit.

Many police departments like the system because it grants a virtual or real time circumstance where they can exercise proactive interventions of criminal activity. The software is accessible on their cellphones and laptops. Pete Cribbin, Assistant Chief of Tacoma, Washington Police Department, was quoted as saying “we have had several successes of catching the offender ‘red-handed’ and making arrests.” The police departments like the PredPol system also because it conserves monetary resources. They’ve not had to hire more officers and waste time on general patrols, because they have hotspots and projected potential crime scenes based on data analytics.

My Thoughts

This seems a bit like the movie Minority Report to me, where you are almost anticipating and forecasting behavior. I understand data driven software models, but this seems a bit much! The articles I read said that the developer did not design this to profile individuals. However, I have numerous questions. Who inputs the data? How do you remove or compensate for bias or prejudice of the data user? Won’t you eventually develop a profile if you implement this in Hotspot? For instance, if you set this up in a highly populated African American community that is plagued with unemployment, drugs, and crime, won’t you eventually say that police should look for a black male, on this date and time,. And find someone that fits the description a computer generated? They just have to add race to their parameter (I’m sure they have, but just haven’t disclosed it in the articles I’ve read), and you will have a racially based system of patrol. This can turn unwitting innocent citizens into potential suspects by just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This really makes me believe that this is tied to a guaranteed 90% occupancy of private prisons. The police departments and states can furnish this data, and crime statistics to bolster their support for the construction of more private prisons. When you can predict, forecast, anticipate, and project crimes that have yet to crystallize, you are walking on thin ice. The system can generate the hotspot, but when the officer arrives and encounters a potential suspect, the imperfect human factor gets introduced into the equation, and that’s the wild card! Thus, we must also factor in several components such as: police and community relations, race relations, financial incentives, influence of elicit and illegal drugs or alcohol in the patrolmen, dirty cops, quotas, and the psychological state/condition of the officer on duty. We can find ourselves in a situation where officers are trying to make arrests to fit the data generated by the system, or “make the ends justify the means”! This can result in thousands of Trayvon Martins, Sean Bells, and Amadou Diallos (innocent men targeted).

There are also things that the system can’t account for such as: people’s morals, values, ethics, religious principles, moments of clarity, character, and standards that may abort an individual’s involvement in a crime.

So in closing, we have STOP and FRISK, DNA extraction, Felony for harassment, Real Time gunshot audio, video, photo, and facial scan technology, license plate scanners, the NDAA, and now predictive policing under our law enforcement umbrella. This seems like the rise of the new state of the art American Police State to me. The strategies above seem to provide safety benefits, but they also have a duality of potential perversion and abuse of authority that was unaccounted for and not calculated into the system. We should definitely keep an eye on this, and query our local police departments and city council if they plan on implementing this. Okay be blessed!!! Next article………..TATTOO DATABASES

REFERENCES

by: Dr. Samori Swygert

In the wake of recent shootings the issue of gun control has become a hot topic. Gun control has maneuvered its way to center stage of American politics and mass media. The country has been divided by the viewpoints and beliefs of many organizations. The NRA (National Rifle Association), the Tea Party and many other groups advocate a pro-gun position, while many victim’s rights groups lobby for tougher gun control.

Urban inner-city gang violence, racially motivated homicides, crimes of passion, or mass shootings like Virginia Tech, Newton, and even domestic governmental attacks like shootings at Washington Navy Yard, and Fort Hood have captivated and paralyzed America.

However, a new crime fighting tool has emerged a little over a decade ago. A program called Shotspotter, originally developed by the Department of Defense, has cities nationwide opting in to implement this new technological strategy. This system employs the use of sound sensors placed on city streetlamps and buildings that detect and record the audio when a gunshot occurs. The data is transmitted over a secure Wi-Fi connection in 3 to 5 seconds from the location of incident, to a command center or police station. The alert registers in the station with a unique audio signature or acoustic fingerprint. The fingerprint denotes the time, location, and is accurate to within feet of the shots fired.

The system has even been upgraded to record photos, and video footage now. The company claims the system’s video component is adaptable to any video source and camera specifications. This enhancement allows authorities to record footage of escape routes, number of individuals at the scene, and a wide array of forensic evidence necessary to conduct a thorough investigation. This strategy is almost real time monitoring of a crime, and aids in the rapid life saving deployment of medical assistance, quick apprehension of criminals with reduction of unsolved cold cases. This also decreases the chances of mistaken identity, and tampering of the scene of the crime.

CURRENT USE

Currently Shotspotter is being used in over 73 cities in the U.S.. The published cities of note include: Seattle, Washington, Baltimore, Maryland, Gary, Indiana, Englewood, Chicago Lawn, Harrison and Grand Crossing portions of Chicago, Illinois, Hempstead, Roosevelt, and Uniondale, Long Island, New York, Newark, New Jersey, and Washington D.C..

The photo, and video upgrades added a tremendous edge to this system, but that’s not the tip of the iceberg!! The system will use Safety Dynamics’ camera that will direct a high resolution camera at the shooter’s face for facial recognition. The image is then ran through a biometric software database named, Face First Software, hosted by a company named, Airborne Biometric Group. This seeks to make a match with in prior records of individuals in their database. The software is said to create a profile for new shooters. Many of the faces compiled into their database are sourced from 3rd party affiliates such as Facebook, and dating sites.

I think that this has some applicable uses especially when we consider the number of homicides in Miami, Chicago, Detroit, New York, and other major cities. We are losing a large amount of our young brothers and sisters to senseless violence, and so much beautiful young potential has gone to waste. This does seem a little “big brotherish” in scope but I can see some good. This would also allow individuals to keep their guns for true home protection and self defense use, and not wanton criminal abuse of a firearm.

Furthermore, this can reduce cases of “my word against your word” police shootings of unarmed individuals. I think criminals and police alike, will think twice about how they conduct themselves knowing that they will be videotaped, photographed, recorded, and facially scanned when discharging a firearm. I wonder what would have been the outcome of Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo, Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, and countless other victims if the prosecution had video, photo, and audio evidence.

They have also developed a tattoo recognition database, but I will post that article with other new practices like this pre-crime system they have developed. Until next time, be blessed!!

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