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Comment by focusgroup0 | Hacker News Reader

In my neighborhood (a Criminal Justice Reform Zone), the catch and release of repeat criminals caused a surge in break ins. The citizens organized and funded the installation of Flock LPRs. Several criminals have been caught as a result, and crime is now down.

So the impetus is twofold:

- Funding provided by programs such as Operation Stonegarden and other grants

- Activists agitate for Criminal Justice Reform --> Surge in crime --> The People clamor for Enhanced Security Measures and DIY

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> the catch and release of repeat criminals caused a surge in break ins

> Several criminals have been caught

The actual difference here is that the second "caught" isn't followed by "and released". The camera didn't do it.

My street has repeat offenders who come and steal from cars nightly. The cops know who they are and have arrested them multiple times, with them immediately being released AFAIK. A million cameras wouldn't change this.

The community got together, worked on a solution, that solution lead to arrests. A politically savvy prosecutor would not easily dismiss an organized community with proven ability to drive results.

So yes, the camera didn't do it, but it helped.

> that solution lead to arrests

There were already arrests. You can't have "catch and release" if there's no "catch".

Cameras with good software work great for that, however the data should NOT be freely accessible outside of the city/jurisdiction they surveil. That's the issue with Flock vs any other AI camera/database product.

There is a trend towards less personal accountability and more centralized prevention. Instead of properly dealing with people who misuse sharp knives, we are making all knives duller.

The city I used to live in trialed flock cameras for car theft. They caught more car thefts in January of the trial year than the previous year’s total.

This is not exactly an unbiased forum to discuss this matter since Flock is a YC backed program, but what do you think will happen in short order? Maybe that car thieves will simply slap on fake license plates to get out of the area?

What you’re left with then, is nothing but the tyrannical and even treasonous mass surveillance program to know where you go and when all your life, even when you leave your tracking device phone behind and use a tracking device free vehicle.

Nobody cares that Flock is a YC company. I'd be surprised if most YC batch members even realized off the top of their head that Flock is YC. YC companies get criticized all the time on HN, including by people who have done YC.

We started hoping that car thefts would be a pressure point for a lot of violent crime (which tends to be committed from stolen cars --- this is the Kia problem). But we caught more innocent drivers with stale entries on the Illinois LEADS hotlist than actual stolen cars. When we OK'd the system after its pilot, it was on the condition that we no longer curb cars based on stolen car reports at all --- we'd only curb them based on stolen license plates (which have no innocent explanation).

Maybe other states are different for this, but in Chicagoland, unless you don't care about disproportionately harming Black motorists, using Flock for stolen car enforcement was a flop.

The lesson I keep getting from your experiences is that LEADS needs an overhaul.

It turns out other states do have flags for things like "extraditable warrant" vs. just failure to appear warrants (something mentioned in previous discussions), and perhaps something could be done about the LEADS system if attention was given to it. It seems like fixing one's data sources is a great approach vs. tossing the baby out with the bathwater — unless of course that's the intention all along, as it is with many opposed to state-owned surveillance of this nature.

When you fix LEADS, let me know, and I'll be happy to revisit.

Don't improve anything until you can fix everything! No incremental improvements allowed!

I have no idea what this has to say with anything that I said. Did you see me saying "no, don't fix LEADS"?

> Criminal Justice Reform --> Surge in crime

That's a big assumption considering crime rates are already at lows

>In my neighborhood (a Criminal Justice Reform Zone), the catch and release of repeat criminals caused a surge in break ins.

But suddenly adding cameras that resulted in catching more people fixed the issue? Surely if the catch and release was the issue, that wouldn't make a difference.

That doesn't validate the causal claim quoted above.

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