Public Statements

Ethics & Safety United States Opposed perspective

Predictive policing does not belong in our neighborhoods

Opposed Posted by Anonymous Reading time ~ 2 min

This is community opinion, not fact. Moderated before publication.

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I grew up in a part of our city that has been heavily policed for decades, for reasons that have more to do with history than with crime rates. When I heard that our state was piloting predictive policing software, I wrote to my representative and I am writing here. I am opposed. These systems are trained on historical policing data, which is not a neutral record of crime. It is a record of where police went. Feeding that back into a model and calling the output a prediction launders a biased pattern as a scientific conclusion. I have read the vendor materials. I have read the independent critiques. I am not convinced the benefits exceed the harms, and the people who bear the harms are not the people making the purchasing decisions. I do not oppose every use of AI in public safety. I can imagine narrow, auditable, well-governed uses that could be helpful. This is not that. This is a product sold to departments under budget pressure, with evaluation left as an exercise for the community. I want my city council to require independent audits, community consultation with actual power to veto, and sunset clauses on any such contract. Absent that, I think we should walk away. A tool that gets the math wrong on someone's life is not a minor defect.
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