'Predictive policing': Law enforcement revolution or just new spin on old biases? Depends who you ask

In a city with a long history oflaw-enforcement friction, activists and the Los Angeles Police Department are squaringoff again. The latest crime-fighting controversy isn't over issues like police brutality, corruptionor gangs it's all about data.

And the ways police are using it.

Activists at a public meeting with the Los Angeles Police Commission this summer held up signs reading: "Data Driven Evidence Based Policing = Pseudoscience," and"Crime Data is Racist." It's an example of how the community has been put on edge bytheLAPD'suse of anelaborate datacollection centre, a shadowydata analysis firm calledPalantir, and predictive algorithms to try to get a jump on crime.

"We're trying to get better about where to put scarce police resources to prevent crime from happening in the first place," says Deputy Chief Sean Malinowski, who was at the meetingto defendthe use of dataanalyticsto help guide policingactivity.

"Implicit bias is something theLAPDhas been struggling with," counters Jamie Garcia, of the StopLAPDSpying Coalition, a tiny community group which monitors theLAPD.

"The data they're using is the data that's collected by law enforcement," Garcia adds, saying that as a result it's inherentlyflawed.

Los Angeles isn't the only place where concerns are flaring over how citizens' datais collected and used by law-enforcement authorities.

Police forces across the U.S. are increasingly adopting the same approach as theLAPD: employing sophisticated algorithms to predict crime in the hopethey can prevent it. Chicago, New York City andPhiladelphia use similar predictive programs and face similarquestions from the communities they are policing, and even legal challenges over where the information is coming from and how police are using it.

Canadian police forces are very aware of what their U.S. counterparts are doing, but they are wary of jumping in with both feet due to concerns over civil liberties issues.

Thinking inside the box

Sergeant Dave Rich checks a printout of a map of Los Angeles that has problem areas marked in red boxes. He tucks the paper underhis car's visor, throws his "black and white"into gear and pulls out of the Los Angeles Police Department's Rampart Division headquarters, heading for one of the red boxeson Sunset Boulevard.

Instead of an old-fashionedLAPDcrime analyst creating that map and the red boxes,it'sa computer algorithm which has identified the problem areas on the map or predicted future problem areas, to be precise.

The sophisticated program is calledPredPol, short for predictive policing, and it's used to varying degrees by 50 police forces across the United States. The genesis of the program came from acollaboration betweenLAPDdeputy chief Sean Malinowski and CanadianJeffBrantingham, an anthropology professor at UCLA.

"Driving through areas that have been identified as problematic, sometimes you just get flagged down,"Rich says. "You can roll right into a robbery in progress."

TheLAPD'sPredPolsoftware program produces updated, predictiveproperty crime maps at 1:30 a.m. each day,which are handed out to officers on the morning shift. The maps areupdated later in the day for subsequent shifts.

PredPol uses several years of crime reports to predict where police patrols should concentrate their efforts.

"This area across the street from us right here has been identified as a problem," Rich says, driving through the 1300 block ofWilshireBlvd near the downtown core'sMacArthurPark.

"The officers are encouraged to spend their available time here doing proactive policing, as well as just being a visible deterrent to crime," says Rich, as he drives into the area indicated by one of the map's boxes. The cruiser's movements are monitored remotely.

"It will also be documented that we passed through this area for X-amount of time, and that will also get uploaded into the system. So they [theLAPD] can identify specifically how much time was actually spent within this particular box."

SarahBrayne, a Canadian sociologist,spent two years inside theLAPDstudying its use of predictive policing. She saystheLAPDhas been using predictive policing since 2012,and crunching data on a wide range of activities from "where to allocate your resources, where to put your cars, where to put your personnel, to helping investigators solve a crime. And even for some risk management, like tracking police themselves, for performance reviews and different accountability reasons."

Still, data-driven systems aresomething relatively new toLAPDculture,Captain JeffNoltesays.

"Algorithms don't sound that sexy, right?" saysNolte. "LAPDhas a culture ofsome of the movies you seeof great detectives using intuition to solve crime and do all these things that people think are sexy. Then here comesPredPoland other data-driven systems."

It has been a challenge to get all the officers to buy in.

... Very few people can define or explain what an algorithm is. They say things like, 'Oh, it's just witchcraft.'- SarahBrayne, sociologist

"On a lot of myride-alongsI would ask the cops to define an algorithm, and very few people can define or explain what an algorithm is,"Braynesays."So they say things like, 'Oh, it's just witchcraft.'"

But does it work?

"It's too early to say if it does lead to more effective policing," says Brayne.

"But I think it has the potential to, yes, because there is the efficiency aspect of it.From where you are allocating resources to where crime is occurring, as opposed to your biased perceptions of where it is occurring."

Pinpointing suspects

AtRampart headquarters, CaptainNolteis oneof those who has bought in. There are still no hard stats available, but anecdotallyhesaysthat whenever he can deploy officers to cover off the boxes outlined on the daily maps, property crime in the community is reduced.

NoltestressesthatPredPoldoesn't pump out information about individual suspects, it's just a location-based type of predictive policing.

"It's focusing on a geographic area.PredPolhas no information on suspects."

He adds that the system,"is no different than the police radios telling us where to go," emphasizing that, "It's not telling us what to do."

But PredPol is just one of the police systems that community watchdogs like Garcia are concerned about.

The Rampart division of theLAPDuses another program to pinpointindividuals who are at risk of committing crimes in the future. This is known as person-based predictive policing.

Critics call itprofiling.

The program is called Los Angeles Strategic Extraction and Restoration (LASER). At the moment itgeneratesa list of approximately 20 "chronic offenders" that is updated monthly.

LAPDdocuments show how LASER gives people specific scores, which increase with each police encounter.

You get five points if you are a gang member. Five points if you are on parole or probation. Five point for arrests with a handgun. And one point for every "quality" police contact in the past two years, which includes what theLAPDcalls "Field Interviews."

In Canada, field interviews are called "carding," referring to the cards police use to record information about the people they have stopped even when there are no grounds to think they've committed an offence.

Data on individuals is written down by hand and later entered into the LAPDdatabase. It includes "descent," which refers torace.

On the chronic offender bulletinthere are names, addresses, scores ranging from sixto 28, dates of birth and gang affiliations (Crazy Riders, Wanderers,18thStreet, and so on).

The police try to track down the people on the bulletinand hand-deliver an "At Risk Behaviour" letter to each one if they can find them.

The letter is signed by the Chief of Police and CaptainNolte. It says the recipient has a "propensity to engage in at-risk behaviour" and that the purpose of the letter"is to encourage you to refrain from this behaviour in the future."

"Law enforcement respects you and and knows you have the ability to make choices. We want you to make the choices that are right, legal and moral," it adds.

The letter encourages the recipients to reach out to a list of local service providers, such as Home Boy, which offers "hope, training and support to formerly gang-involved and previously incarcerated men and women" in Los Angeles.

Officers are given instructions to contact the offenders on the list every month "to check their status" and to remind them to use the community services. They are also encouraged to door-knock on adjacent residences to "spark interest and gather info."

'Pretty frightening'

Some community groups are concerned about the kind of data going into thealgorithms, and how it's gathered. Jamie Garcia at the StopLAPDSpying Coalition calls predictiveanalytics"pretty frightening."

"It's basically policing as it has always been," she said. "It's trying to convince communities that by using data, by driving algorithms and risk assessments with data, that somehow policing is becoming more effective, efficient and fair. I think that is really problematic, because it is trying to mask policinghow it has always been, which is impacting the black and brown communities."

Noltecounters that, sayingthe suspect-pool only reflects the community.

"WithPredPolor LASER, these are all data that has been reported by the victims and witnesses. It's nothing we are creating and pushing out. But I do understand that how we use it and how we execute it is critical."

SarahBraynesees police data collection only growing over the next five to 10 years, while concerns mount and the lawprotecting citizens' rights and privacy scrambles to catch up.

"All of the new surveillance technologiesthe tools that can collect data on all of us, not just people with police contactthat technology is moving so much faster than the laws and regulations. And as such, it is part of this legal and regulatory wild west,"Braynesays.

For a city like Los Angeles, at the forefront of using data to fight crime, it likely means more situations such as the public Police Commission meeting this summer, where activists are pitted against police.

At that meeting, Michel Moore, the new Los Angeles police chief, acknowledged that the data was imperfect and supported an inspector general review. But in the meantime, systems like PredPol and LASER are in daily use.

"We've seen that here in Los Angeles, that when that trust is violated you see civil unrest,"Noltesays.

"We have learned from our past. You know, we're not perfect, but we're definitely a lot better than we were."

- With files from KimBrunhuberand MatthewBraga