zlacker

>>pseudo+(OP)
This doesn't seem to make sense. By more accurately predicting where crimes will occur, the police departments can reduce the amount of patrols needed.

>>koheri+9e
Except this is not how it works. We are not accurately predicting where crimes will occur, but maximizing the amounts of arrests.

Indeed, sending a police patrol will only catch the kind of crime that happens in socio-economically disadvantaged communities, which in turn contributes to skewing the data to suggest that more crimes there, which leads to more policing, which leads to more crime, and so on.

Meanwhile, wage theft, over twice the size of all other kinds of theft put together, keeps growing year after year.

Police patrols should be entirely reactive, and not proactive. Proactive policing does not work.

>>sudosy+Zh
The 'proactive' is just driving or walking around a neighborhood. It isn't (necessarily) doing things like stop and frisk or just going around accosting random people on the street.

>>oh_sig+Mj
It's not just driving or walking around a neighbourhood, it's doing your best to find the maximum amount of crime. Otherwise, you wouldn't need mathematical models in order to optimize the "efficacity" of the operation.

The vast majority of crime where police should be involved are crimes where the victim can call the police later. For those that don't fit this criteria, either police patrols are already ineffective (targeted assassinations, for example), or the police isn't being called because the victim thinks it will make the situation worse. Which in many cases is true, and I think fixing that problem would be a good step to take.

>>sudosy+tl
In the town where I grew up the most common non-traffic emergency calls were calls of injury of which the most serious were cardiac distress. The police used mathematical models to position two SUV patrols at opposite sides of town where each contained some manner electric cardio medical device for rapid response to heart attacks.

>>austin+An
Sure, this is also done in my city. Except that isn't the responsibility of police, but that of the EMS service/paramedics/firefighters. If the police are doing that in your town I also think that's problematic, because many people won't call if they know the police are going to come for injuries.

>>sudosy+Zo
> because many people won't call if they know the police are going to come for injuries.

That is not what occurred in practice and there is no data to suggest this would ever be a probable outcome. At any rate people don’t have a choice on who responds if the call is to 911.

>>austin+As
In my city if there is a 911 call for a medical emergency you will get the firefighters or the ambulance faster, and depending on the emergency might not get police at all.

In any case, if you are giving anyone defibrillators and locating them to minimize response time to cardiac incidents, it would be absurd to give it to the police.