Pasco, Florida’s predictive policing system monitors and harasses residents
tampabay.com
tampabay.com
People are going to die because of that.
There is a close friend of mine who, if unlucky enough to live in that hellhole, would have her life made miserable by this. She’s a nurse who’s never committed a crime in her life. She’s also bipolar, suicidal, deals with major depression, and has a less-than-supportive family, so she’s been committed a few times. Being harassed by hyperzealous cops who think they’re fighting terrorists is exactly the sort of thing that could push her over the edge.
I think—and hope—that this is what does them in. It should never have gotten to this point, but they can wave around terms like “reduced crime” and as long as it’s just the bad guys who are being targeted, no one cares.
But I suspect there will be a point soon enough where the sheriff here will find himself answering questions about why his department drove to suicide a mentally ill person with no criminal record, and I hope to god the resulting consequences put an end to this un-American madness, here and everywhere else.
There have never been any systemic changes implemented as a result of these lawsuits. If the case goes 'well', the department will pay restitution to surviving family members, but damages for police negligence are tightly capped in Florida, and the department will frequently attribute full blame to the individual officer in question rather than give the impression of general negligence or training problems, which are some of the very narrow means of avoiding the damages cap and making them actually take notice. My impression is that most departments in central Florida treat these cases as the cost of doing business, which is extremely depressing and also indicative of how the cops down there actually feel and act, unfortunately.
I guess I’m still somewhat stuck on the naive notion that directing public attention to horrific abuses of power results in change.
It's all on video:
https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2020/09/02/d...
Ok, yes I know I'm completely ignorant of how the US works. The thing that scares me that your society is infecious, and I never want to see this in my part of the world.
The general population can be extremely cruel and heartless if the consequences are hidden from them. And they specifically reward people that hide the costs and consequences of these actions.
Pasco's demographic is heavily retiree and red voting - especially on the west side, where Nocco is based. I can affirm that is how our voting blocs think.
Of note, we're also one of the whitest counties in America.
source: 30 year Pasco resident
I'm a 30y Pasco resident and (historically) a Nocco apologist.
I'm also consistently critical of police mistreatment of citizens and have often exampled Nocco as an example of a better-sherrif-than-most. You can imagine my feelings as I'm sorting thru this TBT article.
I have 2 things to bring up. First is that Nocco replaced Bob White, who unexpectedly retired mid-term. White was a awful sheriff, obsessed with budgets. He fired older experienced officers (& was sued), replacing them with fresh academy graduates. The result was terrible deputy judgment for complex situations & officers shaking with rage during totally routine traffic stops. I suspect White was forced out of office. At least I hope that's how it happened.
Under Nocco's tenure all of that got better. In the first 6 months he twice returned sizable funds to the county. There were a handful of actions he took that I held up as an example of what a good sheriff might look like (in contrast to Grady Judd, in nearby Polk county).
I strongly believe the path to better police lies thru better police chiefs. Nocco's tenure likely helped me form that opinion. He made bad choices as well but my overall assessment was positive.
-- Have to run out. I'll be back to append my 2nd point.
My 2nd point is that Nocco must have worked at hiding this predictive policing program from us. I've never heard a word about it. The PCSO is a mid sized police dept & it's common for locals to know any number of deputies and staff there. I worked in law for 2 years right by the PSCO West Op Ctr and I never caught wind of the program. There is one county commissioner I trust and I'm more than a little curious if that person knew.
To my point: Nocco did not proactively disclose this to the community. Beyond that, it's likely he fought to conceal it's existence. Purposefully hiding this ethically questionable program (for years) is beyond unacceptable; it's a betrayal. And the program itself is a soft model of what's wrong with American policing. Segmenting the population into friends and enemies is a profoundly dark and dangerous mindset to adopt.
In no way is this okay for us.
Which ultimately leaves me with a quandary. If Nocco every runs up against a R challenger, there's a strong chance that his opponent will be groomed & wholly owned by shady local political/business interests. I've seen a previous sheriff act as a defacto arm of local businesses. I even once had a client who had influence in that sheriff's dept. I'm not aware of any corrupt behavior but the obviousness of the influence was unsettling.
More recently, there has been an overt attempt to replace an ethical elected official with a groomed, inexperienced lackey. It was an unsuccessful attempt, thankfully, but it shows that that both the machinery and desire are in place.
I could wind up with a choice to vote for Nocco or the local chamber's sock puppet. At the moment, I'm not clear what I'd do.
If what you say about community involvement and general transparency is true then maybe Nocco is still redeemable. With your involvement at the local level it sounds like some additional oversight is the best solution.
Since Nocco has proven he can't be trusted to run the department with the current amount of oversight I think additional community oversight of all police spending is a reasonable solution.
This solves the problem regardless of who happens to be Sheriff, even if that does turn out to be a local business puppet.
Pasco: “Make their lives miserable until they move or sue.”
Stasi: "The security service's goal was to use Zersetzung to 'switch off' regime opponents. After months and even years of Zersetzung a victim's domestic problems grew so large, so debilitating, and so psychologically burdensome that they would lose the will to struggle against the East German state." [1]
These floridian police are basically grooming kids to become criminals by giving them records and harassing their families until they fall unto hardship.
What if that was the point? The system is making work to justify its continued existence. The police aren't working for you, they are working for the sheriff, and these interest do not match.
Nobody likes to hear it, but I'm willing to bet this person has been in office for a while. Tough on crime is popular among "model citizen" voters even if it utilizes dystopic tactics.
what if the point was never public health but increasing overall corruption?
they knew prohibitions increase corruption after the alcohol prohibition... so why not?
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/nixon-adviser-ehrlichman-ant...
This is why, for instance, the FBI does it so much.
https://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-is-manufacturing-terrori...
This is a conscience effort.
Plausible deniability.
"It wasn't us(the federal government), it was them(the local government)."
In the end, still protecting the power structure, just more effectively. So many protectors that accountability becomes next to impossible.
Ladies and gentleman, what we have here is:
Decentralized power structure protection!
Legislation is the consensus algorithm,
Attorneys & Judges are the miners.
Edit: Criminals are the energy/electricity,
And the police are the power company that harness and distribute that energy.
This. How can you expect these kids to grow up and be productive members of society [0] when you make it all but impossible to get a decent job later!?
[0] Which I'm sure they would claim is a goal.
It's probably a very effective way to weaponise "three strikes" too.
So rather than asking “why does the government do this”, ask “how does this help the police”, since that’s the part of the government doing that.
It was not, most of the time they were harassing outliers, not people who wanted to make a regime change. Some examples: Religious people, people who listened to western music, men who had long hair (you were assumed to be a fan of the western hippie culture), people with noble ancestry if they did not show support for the communist party,..
https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2020/investigations/p...
Data is no more objective than the people collecting or analyzing it.
The first lesson in any data science program covers the explict and implicit biases as well as the difference between correlation and causation. It seems the people involved in this system dont even have this basic knowledge.
Then, Republicans who control the state leg & Gov. DeSantis passed a poll-tax which virtually excludes 1 million or more citizens who served their time from voting. It's disgusting. It's being litigated but it's too late for this election.... They passed the law a couple weeks before a previous election the timing was on purpose.
There is no statewide easy system/paperwork for most of these citizens to even know how much they owe in ridiculous court fees etc. Let alone it seems a vast majority can't afford to pay if they are able to ever find out. It's indentured servitude to a criminal system (i'm calling the state the criminal in that sentence).
I feel so hopeless about our country. I work in politics. I used to feel optimistic and good about the work we/I have accomplished and making incremental progress. But over the last two years I've grown this close to completely giving up - which feels disgusting. I hate that we've strayed this far. It feels intentional and as someone with a relatively large amount of power I feel virtually powerless.
If you can provide more transparency to your citizens, even if it's just a public diary… either it'll help solve the problems, or it'll help the revolution start a day earlier. (Which depends entirely on whether the people we've trusted with power start using it for the things we gave them the power to do.)
The defining aspect of democracy isn't really elections, it's how much power the average person has and how equitable that distribution is.
"The Sheriff’s Office said its program was designed to reduce bias in policing by using objective data. And it provided statistics showing a decline in burglaries, larcenies and auto thefts since the program began in 2011."
Oh really? Where's your control? What did you control for? What were the other factors?
Perhaps it's the same as everywhere else. Maybe people feel more intimidated so they don't report crime. These measurements are self reported and after more intimidation and fear perhaps there's less self reporting...
It's unqualified people making incompetent assessments and unilaterally dictating public policy with gobs of taxpayer money to do it. Just atrocious
There will always be someone to replace them, but you'll certainly slow down the progress.
Electronic Privacy Information Center - lobbyist group based on DC
Electronic Freedom Foundation - Bay Area roots
ACLU - obviously
This may look like defeat. It is. At the larger scale this would mean cops are running certain people out of town. That is evil. But at the scale of an individual or family, particularly when mental health is an issue, what is best is to not be involved in an escalating situation. Pull up stakes and move somewhere with less oppressive policies.
I would prefer to fight the fires where they start. There are half a dozen states barreling toward a cliff because a generation of Californian's were told "just leave if you don't like it" (and if you don't like that example I could just as easily come up with an East coast one). Price out a condo in Denver if you don't believe me.
I joke, but somehow I think this means a Google Maps license and 3 analysts to copy/paste reports.
This kind of stuff is widespread in Florida. Sheriff Gualtieri, Grady Judd, Billy Woods, Darryl Daniels, ex Sheriff Mike Scott, Ric Bradshaw, and I could go on and on and on.
Look across the vast swaths of rural land in the landlocked parts of Florida and you'll find the only industry are prisons and policing.
"Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."
Accounts that do that eventually lose submission privileges, so please don't do that. If you want to offer your interpretation of the article or the facts, that's totally fine, but do it in the comments, so your view is on a level playing field with everyone else's. On HN, being the one to submit a story doesn't confer any special rights over it. This is important because titles have by far the biggest influence.
Furthermore, there are a startling amount of startups that sell these technologies to the police. They love testing on Floridians. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/technology/clearview-priv...
Edit: I probably just increased my points— +1 for reading the article, and +2 for posting this comment.
A Law Professor Explains Why You Should Never Talk to Police https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mvkgnp/law-professor-poli...
"you are legally obligated to tell the cop your name and what you're doing at that very moment. Other than that, Duane says, you should fall back on four short words: "I want a lawyer."
It’s like reading the Lorax and coming away with the idea that the environment should be exploited for profit.
Welcome to Raccoon City (Florida)...
Article is about Pasco County.
> Pasco’s sheriff created a futuristic program to stop crime before it happens.
> It monitors and harasses families across the county.
I think the submitted title is an accurate condensation of the webpage’s header.
Pasco’s sheriff created a futuristic program to stop crime before it happens.
It monitors and harasses families across the county.
That title would not be critical at all. This is about surveillance tech and systemic oppression. I think the title is very fitting.
"As they make checks, deputies feed information back into the system, not just on the people they target, but on family members, friends and anyone else in the target’s orbit.
In the past two years alone, two of the nation’s largest law enforcement agencies have scrapped similar programs following public outcries and reports documenting serious flaws."
and
"Criminal justice experts said they were stunned by the agency’s practices. They compared the tactics to child abuse, mafia harassment and surveillance that could be expected under an authoritarian regime."
Then the author conspicuously leaves out important information. They say targets are selected based on information about their family, but doesn't go into the teen's parent's criminal history. If his father's in prison and his mom has a serious record, and now he's heading down the same path.. that's relevant and necessary information.
It also says the police visited his house 20+ times and they often stop at people's houses without a warrant... but they don't actually say that the police stopped at his house 20+ times without a warrant/reason. They just hope the reader will assume that.
Definitely casting the story in the light they want to cast it in, and omitting exculpatory evidence.
This department, this sheriff, and everyone associated with the data entry for this whole program need to be removed from any law enforcement / security positions anywhere, and really should be required to see a therapist themselves for agreeing to contribute to this kind of harassment against others.
Ironically, a good summary of what the article is about.