Part of the argument of the "abolish the police" movement is that putting cars in high-crime neighborhoods becomes as self fulfilling prophecy. More police mean more crimes, even for slight infractions that someone in a lower crime neighborhood (read: white and middle class) would likely get away with.

I think the issues here are much more nuanced than rhetoric can encompass, but the problem with preventative policing strategies is that they seem to find a way to justify themselves, making them ultimately self defeating and that perhaps preventative policing should be replaced with other preventative measures.

Somehow a neighborhood gets the label "High Crime".

If the label is created due to the sum of reports from community and reports from officers, we could remove the officer generated reports to create a less biased label.

So you’re saying the presence of police cars makes someone more likely to steal my bike? Someone is more likely to commit an armed robbery in front of the cops?

Unless you are talking about speeding tickets, these are really bad arguments. Which is to be expected from anyone who thinks “abolish the police” will improve anybody’s life who isn’t named El Chapo.

>More police mean more crimes, even for slight infractions //

That's not a given, unless you send the police in to arrest people for 'slight infractions'. It's not a necessary outcome.

I think the policing problems of the US may not be applicable to Canadian cities such as Vancouver (referenced in the article as being tracked using https://geodash.vpd.ca) since the vast majority of crimes in Vancouver are property crimes, and thus likely citizen-reported.

That being said it does feel like violent crime is increasing here, as the COVID pandemic has exacerbated the already-ongoing opioid public health emergency.

I would assume the algorithm predicts the actual type of crime, or at least category (e.g. violent versus theft versus moving violation). Then it's still up to the department which crimes to target (which I really hope would be the crimes with victims).

I’m not referencing persecution, but surveillance. I’ll admit that it is a gray area. But dubious or outright false criteria are used all the time until a court orders the police to stop.

As for “putting more patrol cars in high-crime neighborhoods,” that is somewhat different IMO because a high-crime neighborhood actually commits more crime (assuming accurate reporting). But, for example, “plays violent video games,” is a meaningless statistic with no correlation to reality.