For the record: they prevented essentially nothing in our muni. We're 4.5 square miles sandwiched between the Austin neighborhood of Chicago (our neighbor to the east; many know it by its reputation) one side and Maywood/Broadview/Melrose Park on the other, directly off I-290; the broader geographic area we're in is high crime.
We ran a pilot with the cameras in hot spots (the entrances to the village from I-290, etc).
Just on stolen cars alone, roughly half the flags our PD reacted to turned out to be bogus. In Illinois, Flock runs off the Illinois LEADS database (the "hotlist"). As it turns out: LEADS is stale as fuck: cars are listed stolen in LEADS long after they're returned. And, of course, the demography of owners of stolen cars is sharply biased towards Black and Latino owners (statistically, they live in poorer, higher-crime areas), which meant that Flock was consistently requesting the our PD pull over innocent Black drivers.
We recently kicked Flock out (again: I'm not thrilled about this; long story) over the objections of our PD (who wanted to keep the cameras as essentially a better form of closed-circuit investigatory cameras; they'd essentially stopped responding to Flock alerts over a year ago). In making a case for the cameras, our PD was unable to present a single compelling case of the cameras making a difference for us. What they did manage to do was enforce a bunch of failure-to-appear warrants for neighboring munis; mostly, what Flock did to our PD was turn them into debt collectors.
Whatever else you think about the importance of people showing up to court for their speeding tickets, this wasn't a good use our sworn officers' time.
I don't care. The world is a dangerous place, we make it safer by promoting freedom and education and goodwill and faith in people, not by growing the police state. We do know for a fact however that in the near future anything "think of the children" or "just looking for criminals" ultimately gets turned against all of us as the government grows and grows without limit, our rights will become fewer and fewer with the encroachment. It's not "panic" or "exaggeration" it has happened all through history of nation-states.
tptacek|4 months ago
We ran a pilot with the cameras in hot spots (the entrances to the village from I-290, etc).
Just on stolen cars alone, roughly half the flags our PD reacted to turned out to be bogus. In Illinois, Flock runs off the Illinois LEADS database (the "hotlist"). As it turns out: LEADS is stale as fuck: cars are listed stolen in LEADS long after they're returned. And, of course, the demography of owners of stolen cars is sharply biased towards Black and Latino owners (statistically, they live in poorer, higher-crime areas), which meant that Flock was consistently requesting the our PD pull over innocent Black drivers.
We recently kicked Flock out (again: I'm not thrilled about this; long story) over the objections of our PD (who wanted to keep the cameras as essentially a better form of closed-circuit investigatory cameras; they'd essentially stopped responding to Flock alerts over a year ago). In making a case for the cameras, our PD was unable to present a single compelling case of the cameras making a difference for us. What they did manage to do was enforce a bunch of failure-to-appear warrants for neighboring munis; mostly, what Flock did to our PD was turn them into debt collectors.
Whatever else you think about the importance of people showing up to court for their speeding tickets, this wasn't a good use our sworn officers' time.
SoftTalker|4 months ago
Is this related to rental companies reporting cars as "stolen" if they are an hour overdue on their scheduled return?
squigz|4 months ago
saubeidl|4 months ago
EasyMark|4 months ago