As Predictive Policing Grows, New York City Must Be More Open about Crime Data and Algorithms
Crime data tends to be one of the most-requested datasets across the United States, with inbound demand from media, residents and social justice advocates.
In the near future, the predictive algorithms that indicate to law enforcement which areas or individuals to target may well be the subject of Freedom of Information requests from journalists as well, as a panel discussion on “algorithmic accountability” at the Tow Center [video] explored last Thursday.
In that context, New York City is going to be one of the world’s test beds for the efficacy of data-driven “predictive policing.” In many ways, it already is — but what happens next, under a new administration, is very much in question.
The trouble is that the city isn’t being particularly open with its residents about the current state of crime data. The New York City Police Department routinely denies Freedom of Information Law requests, as Conor Skelding documented at the MuckRock blog today.
City governments are also susceptible to putting too much trust in the ideology of data, an issue that Ingrid Burrington flagged for TechPresident last Friday (the emphasis is mine):
CompStat is all about having more regular meetings, lots of communication, focusing on results — honestly, it kind of sounds like a startup. And of course, the intended application of the “Stat” model is generally toward things people like. We like having less crime, we like governments that are more efficient and communicative, we like Google aesthetics and drag-and-drop charts. But case studies of CompStat have suggested those principles are often at odds with other entrenched beliefs inherent to policing — beliefs in necessary hierarchies, in necessary authoritarianism, in accountability for some but not all, in citizens as adversaries.
Numbers don’t lie, but humans do — and methodologies for collecting and analyzing data can occlude realities. In the case of CompStat, what’s occluded in the public narrative are all the other contributing factors that led to a decline in crime during the Guiliani administration. Furthermore, whistleblowers like Adrian Schoolcraft demonstrated that in the 81st precinct, CompStat became an end in itself seeking better numbers, not better neighborhoods — from completely fabricated stop-and-frisks in order to push numbers up to arbitrary arrests for “blocking the sidewalk” (i.e. congregating on it).
The problem is that, just like in award-winning HBO series “The Wire,” crime stats are juked in New York City. As Ryan Jacobs reported at Mother Jones, this issue is not limited to Gotham City:
In March, the Village Voice obtained an internal NYPD report that it says confirmed the 81st Precinct had discouraged people from filing reports and cited “many other instances…where crime reports were missing, had been misclassified, altered, rejected, or not even entered into the computer system that tracks crime reports.”
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently published an investigation that revealed hundreds of violent crimes were misclassified by the Milwaukee Police Department as less serious crimes that were not reported to the FBI. In one instance, the aggravated beating of two-year-old boy Karmari Curtis, which landed him in intensive care for six days, was downgraded to a “simple assault,” a category reserved for a slap or shove.
Unfortunately, in a troubling move that highlights a divide between the aspirations of Mayor Bloomberg’s geek squad and the people making policy in the Big Apple, the New York City Police Department has ordered precincts to deny journalists access to crime reports. That’s neither in line with the the city council’s commitments to open city government nor the public interest, which is substantially informed by media reporting on such data.
Commenting upon his choice of Bill Bratton as the city’s new police commissioner, New York City Mayor-Elect Bill de Blasio said that he believes “repairing relations between police and the community they serve is the key to making our city even safer.” If so, their efforts must go beyond reforming “stop-and-frisk.”
As Skelding observed at MuckRock, the incoming mayor has a record that could lead one to believe that this is an issue he’ll take up once he enters City Hall.
“The dismal transparency record of NYPD has not gone unnoticed,” wrote Skelding. “As public advocate, mayor-elect Bill de Blasio published a report grading all city agencies on their responsiveness to public records requests. He gave the NYPD an F. With de Blasio’s swearing in just weeks away, open government advocates and the press eagerly await reforms in NYPD toward disclosure.”
If that’s true, de Blasio should make a public commitment to directing the NYPD to release both crime data and the methodology that law enforcement uses to analyze it to make decisions to the public immediately upon taking up office.
In her post, Burrington suggested what that might look like:
Perhaps if the NYPD is asked to make all of its data public — not just curated CompStat numbers, not just court-ordered stop-and-frisk data, but literally everything in granular detail — the metrics can be used to maintain and not obfuscate accountability. Perhaps if the deBlasio administration and the progressive cheerleaders of open data are willing to think of civic data not merely as apps, but as an instrument for holding those in power accountable, especially the police, the narrative of data-driven policy can become genuinely people-powered policy.
The public have a right to know how they are being governed , from what is being done in their names and communities to how the data that represent those communities is being gathered, stored, published and used.
Denying government watchdogs and media that inform the public access to crime data will not serve de Blasio’s stated goal nor the public interest.
[Image Credit: New York Times interactive crime map of New York City]
Alexander Howard is a Tow Fellow working on the Tow Center’s Data Journalism Project at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism. The Data Journalism Project is a project made possible by generous funding from both The Tow Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The Data Journalism Project includes a wide range of academic research, teaching, public engagement and development of best practices in the field of data and computational journalism. Follow Alexander Howard on Twitter @digiphile. To learn more about the Tow Center Fellowship Program, please contact the Tow Center’s Research Director Taylor Owen: taylor.owen@columbia.edu.
