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Computer to Monitor Cop Quality
In something so strange it could only happen in California, Los Angeles has built a computer system to monitor the police force for bad cops. The system, which costs $25 million, is supposed to monitor complaints and incidents for patterns. Read on for my opinion.
Ok. So the police in L.A. have had scandal after scandal. That much, we all can agree on. But can somebody tell me what a $25 million computer system is going to do? I mean, really going to do. I understand the correlating, reporting, data set analysis, etc. Heck, I could write some of that material. But why do I think that in 3 years this is just going to be a system that prints out useless reports?
From the article
Now, anyone whose conduct differs sharply from their peers' automatically gets flagged. That could mean a vice detective who fires significantly more shots than other investigators or anti-gang cops with a high number of excessive force complaints.Safeguards have been built in to catch abuse that might be widespread within certain peer groups.
If the system pinpoints unusual conduct, it triggers an electronic message to direct supervisors, who must take a second look. The notices also travel up the command chain to a deputy chief as an extra level of oversight. Managers can access the system anywhere in the department through an internal Web site
This sounds like a business intelligence system without the business, or intelligence. Just a bunch of pattern recognition hooked into a Byzantine chain of command. I'm sure there's some special provision for alerts to electrocute the chair of the police commissioner, or burn his coffee, if these critical items are unattended. This is classic -- make the tool make us do things we don't want to. Do you think these problems were caused by a lack of a tool? Or lack of proper supervision? And if the supervisors weren't working adequately before, is a computer system going to make them do it now?
Perhaps I am wrong -- been wrong before lots of times. But I think this was a great public relations gesture, a great bit of business for the contractors: heck, it probably has a cool-looking web interface that is the envy of all the other police departments. But it's not a solution. It's not even close. A signal that people want to fix the problem? Absolutely. Good luck to the LAPD.
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