In Chicago, cops try a ‘guardian’ approach armed with new prediction methods

> As I publish this, it’s also coping with the consequences of a damning video showing a policeman shooting Laquan McDonald, a black teenager who did not seem to present a fatal threat.

Wouldn't it be more appropriate to say that they are coping with consequences of policemen shooting Laquan McDonald? Otherwise it seems like video is the problem, not that cop shot black teenager that didn't present a threat.

The technology used by the police seems to be nothing more than support for their program of targeted intervention. The system does not only identify potential perpetrators, but also their victims. Using data to identify people most in need of "concrete assistance in the form of social services, job training, childcare" just makes the process of doling out limited resources more efficient.

>> “I think this is state of the art for predictive policing,” Lewin says. >> How will this form of predictive policing be received?

Use of the word "predictive" here is utterly inaccurate because the police are not predicting anything, but rather identifying at-risk individuals. The inferential leap from "people with these n properties have historically been party to gun violence" to "prediction" is enormous. As soon as one mentions "prediction" and police in the same breath, it suggests Minority Report-style impingement on personal freedoms of some kind. The reason I stress this is because such a program might very well work to reduce gun violence, and labelling it as though it were the genesis of a Big Brother is not only disingenuous, but may also harm the program's legitimacy in the eyes of people who have the power to shut it down.

Targeted intervention to supply things that everyone in a 1st world country should have.

Minority Report - Hawkeye?