To: Mark Smith, Inspector General of the Los Angeles Police Department, Steven Soboroff, President Los Angeles Police Commission, Sandra Figueroa-Villa, Los Angeles Police Commissioner, Matthew Johnson, Vice-President Los Angeles Police Comm...
LAPD Must Rescind Predictive Policing programs PredPol and Operation LASER Immediately!
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We demand the immediate dismantlement and rescinding of the LAPD Predictive Policing programs, including PredPol and Operation LASER.
We demand that the Los Angeles Police Commission order a thorough audit of these programs by LAPD Inspector General Mark P. Smith to expose the human rights violations of our communities.
Why is this important?
To be delivered to the Los Angeles Police Commissioners and the Inspector General (listed above):
Angelenos demand that the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) immediately rescind its Predicting Policing programs. Consisting of a location-based tactic called PredPol and a person-based, location-based tactic called Operation LASER (Los Angeles Strategic Extraction and Restoration), these programs are targeting and criminalizing our communities resulting in the harassment, displacement, evictions, and possibly even the death of our community members.
Anchored in the war on terror, the architects of PredPol and Operation LASER are engaged in massive amounts of data collection and surveillance using pseudo-science to trace, track, monitor, stalk, criminalize, and target communities. Predictive Policing policing programs are continuing to expand nationwide and need to be dismantled.
Predictive Policing in Los Angeles
- PredPol guesses about future crimes and uses algorithms to create 500 X 500 ft hotspots in neighborhoods, essentially pathologizing whole communities and saturating these communities with police who presume crime will occur.
- Predpol is based on historic crime data that is rife with bias. This creates a feedback loop that amplifies the targeting of communities that have always been targeted by police.
- Another example of pseudo-science that drives PredPol is the claim by one of the the creators of Predpol - Jeff Brantingham, professor of anthropology at UCLA, who compares “criminal offenders with hunter-gatherers,” and states that “the behaviors a hunter-gatherer uses to choose a wildebeest versus a gazelle are the same calculations a criminal uses to choose a Honda versus a Lexus.”
- The creators of Operation LASER claim the program to be analogous to medical surgery, with the basic premise of targeting individuals with laser-like precision in the community, similar to how “a medical doctor uses modern technology to remove tumors.”
- LASER is a person-based predictive policing program in which individual community members who may have had previous contact with the law enforcement are presumed to be criminal.
- A Chronic Offender Bulletin, similar to a most wanted poster, is issued about the person. There is no way to contest the Bulletin which ultimately results in the creation of another secret list.
- LASER also creates LASER Zones where homes, business, and buildings are deemed criminal and LAPD "intervenes" by evicting and serving abatement notices to people and their families, effectively displacing them and making it impossible to rent again.