• agitatedpotato@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    The terrifying part to me is that cops across the nation have a long history of seeing that the tech they want to use is unreliable and based on junky science, but they still push it through anyway. Aren’t police dogs about as reliable as a coin-flip when their handlers aren’t nipping at their neck to get them to jump at anything? They don’t care if it’s right as long as they can use it to justify their behavior, so they make it policy.

    • yeather@lemmy.ca
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      2 years ago

      Only the drug dogs are ineffective. Bloodhounds and tracking dogs have been a staple of hunting down people, and German retrievers can take a man down effectively as well.

      • brianorca@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        When they are trained with incentives for finding something, instead of incentives to be correct, then they will find something. Same is true for man or beast.

  • MiddleWeigh@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    The current state of policing doesn’t deserve to have access to this kinda shit. Hopefully it never will tbh.

  • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    People may see this as a “see, AI isn’t that good”. We all need to rail against these kinds of programs to the point they are made illegal. Because there are examples around the world of being able to track people with facial recognition (and even by the way someone walks with their face entirely covered 0_0)

    I see this as the new Orleans police dep hired a inept contractor (or did an inept job in house).

    Around the world, we must fight against all inappropriate data harvesting.

    • Misconduct@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      With all the laws trying to put women into basically servitude I’m definitely on team rail against. There are a lot of types of “criminals” that need to be able to get away from law enforcement these days unfortunately. Honestly I’d prefer they just keep being inept for now lol

  • SangriaFerret@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Tbf, NOPD don’t arrest many people anyway. There’s a massive cop shortage, only 944 officers for a city of 364,000 with skyrocketing crime rates. Moreover, they’ve been operating under a consent decree by the DOJ since 2012. They’re overworked, underpaid and under the thumb of the feds so in response they simply don’t do shit.

    • TurtleJoe@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      The cops in my city were under a DOJ consent decree for like 20 years, and it didn’t make them any less effective. They’re actually worse now, because they actively don’t give a fuck.

    • karlthemailman@sh.itjust.works
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      2 years ago

      Serious question, what is the right number of officers for a city that size? 1 officer per 400 people or so doesn’t sound very low to me.

      • SangriaFerret@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        NOPD’s stated goal is 1600, a ratio of 1:227 persons.

        The actual ratio is 1:385

        Cleveland, similar in size to New Orleans, has a ratio 1:310. They also state that they are suffering from a serious police shortage.

        By comparison:

        NYC has a ratio of 1:166

        Chicago 1:180

        • Corhen@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          1:100 seems insane. I live in a community of 10,000 people, and we don’t have anything close to 100 people working in the RCMP. MAYBE 20-30, including support

          • Mike@lemmy.ca
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            2 years ago

            Just checked our major urban centre in Canada, and it’s around 1:450. As a comparison, that makes New Orleans (1:385) pretty well staffed.

            Would be cool to find data covering major urban centres across the world for comparisons.

  • quicksand@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    When I walk into the building I work at there is a disclaimer that they are using facial recognition. I don’t know if this is reality or a scare tactic, but based on the industry I would assume they’re just using it for free AI training

  • MisterEspinacas@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    I mean, law enforcement occasionally uses polygraph tests in their investigations even though that type of “evidence” isn’t admissible in court and, to be honest, what kind of scientific credibility does a piece of technology like a polygraph even have? They’ll use whatever they can get their hands on even if it’s questionable. Some police forces probably even have a psychic consultant or something. It scares me.

    • Soggy@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      They’ll use it especially if it’s questionable, like handwriting analysis, because the goal is arrests not correct arrests. Trumped up, flimsy, circumstantial “evidence” is the best kind when you don’t actually want to do your job.

      • MisterEspinacas@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Yeah, it goes along with the low standards that define probable cause. Policing, just like a lot of professions, is subject to bean counting when bean counting is not appropriate. Voters love to see statistics that flaunt “more arrests.” Funny how people love numbers without really understanding what the numbers mean.

  • P03 Locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 years ago

    So, why not just write-off the technology as unreliable and move on? Even with the atrocious false positive rate, you would have still expected more than 15 hits in 9 months. This tech has got to be expensive and even the potential ROI on this, if it ever works at all, is very not worth it.

  • _number8_@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    if you think it’s good that cops have more tech you are the dumbest fucking hog imaginable