urbanSTL

STLrainbow wrote:

jsbru wrote: I'm in favor of stop and frisk. There should be oversight to ensure it's not dealt out in a racially disparate or unconstitutional manner, but criminals in this city need to be put on notice that this is not some sort of anarchic playground.

just curious what that would look like.

Yeah, I'm not sure how you go about stopping and frisking in a non-prejudiced manner. It's inherently prejudiced unless you just randomly stop and frisk people—including, for example, rich white people—which will never happen. One of the reasons that I like Persistent Surveillance Systems' method (see the links that I provided above) is that the video is anonymous (i.e. cars and people are featureless pixels) until effort is put forth to extract more information (e.g. a car involved in a crime is tracked to it's destination). In other words, there's a layer of anonymity that makes it more difficult to discriminate.

Random stops without probable cause are unconstitutional, I think.

Yes. You need reasonable suspicion to stop and probable cause to search. That's the key to doing it in a constitutional manner and in a non-prejudicial manner. Focus on the behavior.

From what I've observed, there's plenty of reasonable suspicion to stop based on the sheer number of traffic violations I see: speeding 25+ mph over the limit through city streets, expired or no tags, running red lights/stop signs, window tint violations, etc.

One of the main reasons I bike commute far less here than in other areas I have lived is because the streets are filled with people who will not follow even the most basic traffic laws. I was almost killed on my bike at the Olive & Jefferson intersection when, halfway through my green light heading eastbound on Olive, someone waiting at the red light southbound on Jefferson decided to bypass waiting traffic, use the left turn lane to get ahead of them, and then simply speed through the red light. They missed me by about a dozen feet, but they obviously weren't considering the fact that someone might be biking through.

We absolutely can and should tackle crime before, during, and after it happens. The question is what we want that to look like. Do we want targeted areas where street level cameras are deployed, or do we want an eye in the sky as the article mentions in Baltimore? I'm in favor of option 1, not so much option 2.

As to stop and frisk, the system of training, oversight, and reporting must be airtight. As humans, we all harbor bias, whether that be conscious or not, which affects the way we behave toward and interact with others. Broken windows policing has shown mixed results at best. In my opinion, prevention dollars should be focused more towards diversion programs, not trying to stop something right before it happens.
There is a balance between all of these tactics that should be struck, but there are pieces that have greater efficacy than others. We should invest in those that have shown sustainable and data-driven results without compromising constitutional rights.

I'm willing to give the constitutional version a try here:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2 ... al-version

The latest Murder Capital article being circulated on social media by Fox2 has caught the eye on my brother in law from Chicago... Does anyone have a link to a great article that sums up why these rankings are BS and do not necessarily compare cities equally due to city boundaries etc and of course why Chicago is never on the list? I know NextSTL has a bunch but I am not sure which to choose. Thanks!

andrewarkills wrote:We absolutely can and should tackle crime before, during, and after it happens. The question is what we want that to look like. Do we want targeted areas where street level cameras are deployed, or do we want an eye in the sky as the article mentions in Baltimore? I'm in favor of option 1, not so much option 2.

I favor option 2 because you get way more coverage with way less infrastructure. Why do you favor option 1?

urban_dilettante wrote:

andrewarkills wrote:We absolutely can and should tackle crime before, during, and after it happens. The question is what we want that to look like. Do we want targeted areas where street level cameras are deployed, or do we want an eye in the sky as the article mentions in Baltimore? I'm in favor of option 1, not so much option 2.

I favor option 2 because you get way more coverage with way less infrastructure. Why do you favor option 1?

There is an argument to be made that blanket coverage, 24/7 surveillance amounts to a huge privacy intrusion. You move beyond merely monitoring public spaces and towards a system where anyone's movements can be tracked 24/7. I would like to know a lot more about how that data is retained, who has access to it, when and why they have access to it, etc. before I would feel even remotely comfortable with that.
Without significant oversight and controls, it feels very "Big Brother".

I don't think it's a privacy intrusion since it's only looking at what is outside already and open to the public. Unless the camera is somehow positioned so that it can see in windows, I don't think it raises any constitutional concerns, at least.

People's movements are already tracked 24/7, with far more precision, by their cell phone apps, etc. Facebook mobile and Google are huge privacy invaders in this regard--and Facebook mobile, at least, doesn't even counter-balance itself with some sort of useful purpose for society.

jsbru wrote:People's movements are already tracked 24/7, with far more precision, by their cell phone apps, etc. Facebook mobile and Google are huge privacy invaders in this regard--and Facebook mobile, at least, doesn't even counter-balance itself with some sort of useful purpose for society.

The key difference is that we voluntarily (and contractually, by clicking "I agree") allow a private company to track our location data.

With overhead surveillance, that data is collected, without agreement, by a government entity.

I go back and forth. I feel like someone under hypothetical 24/7 surveillance nowadays still has more privacy than an average small-towner a hundred years ago.

andrewarkills wrote:

urban_dilettante wrote:

andrewarkills wrote:We absolutely can and should tackle crime before, during, and after it happens. The question is what we want that to look like. Do we want targeted areas where street level cameras are deployed, or do we want an eye in the sky as the article mentions in Baltimore? I'm in favor of option 1, not so much option 2.

I favor option 2 because you get way more coverage with way less infrastructure. Why do you favor option 1?

There is an argument to be made that blanket coverage, 24/7 surveillance amounts to a huge privacy intrusion. You move beyond merely monitoring public spaces and towards a system where anyone's movements can be tracked 24/7. I would like to know a lot more about how that data is retained, who has access to it, when and why they have access to it, etc. before I would feel even remotely comfortable with that.
Without significant oversight and controls, it feels very "Big Brother".

In the Radiolab episode that I linked above they talk about the level of detail that the camera can pick up from 10,000 ft. It's not much. They can't read license plates or see faces. People are a pixel. Cars are a few pixels—enough to make out the color. It only works in conjunction with witnesses on the ground. In one example, some guy robbed a house and loaded the stuff into a white truck. A neighbor reported it to the police and indicated the white truck. The high-time-resolution surveillance video was then used to pinpoint the white pixel corresponding to the truck at the time and location reported by the neighbor and track it to its destination. So at least in this form we're not talking about peering into people's windows. I agree there are risks—as with any technology—and I'm certainly for restrictions and oversight, but I think this could be a game-changing tool for St. Louis, especially in terms of tracking drug activity (listen to the part about Juarez).

I'm not sure what I think of it, but it seems less intrusive, less expensive, and potentially more effective than the silly cameras at stoplights we already have. The latter have thus far been relatively ineffective more or less anywhere I've heard about because the field of view is quite narrow and the odds are small that they're actually pointed in the right way to be useful. But they're subject to a lot of abuse, as controllers can (and reportedly do) use them to watch passersby they consider attractive. Frankly, we're all already recorded by satelite photography anyway. If the city wants to use aerial photography to track and prosecute crime . . . so be it. It troubles me less than spoofing a cell tower, or reading my mail without my consent or court oversight. The very fact that anyone can legally do it already (and many folks do) as long as they're above a certain altitude makes it less troublesome. I'm not going to say I like it, but . . . eh . . . I'm not outraged at it. As long as it's not the helicopter constantly flying in tiny little circles at three grand during any public event. That gets annoying for noise reasons alone. Keep it above ten and I see little problem. Keep it above thirty and I see less still. Drop it in geosynchronous orbit and . . . (We won't discuss the payload costs.)

There's always a way to abuse something and as technology changes so do our concerns. I won't say that this could never be a problem, but right now I'm inclined to think it might be a useful tool.

This Hidden Brain podcast episode from this week on broken windows policing, and it's efficacy, is a good listen as we discuss what works, what doesn't, and why.

andrewarkills wrote:

urban_dilettante wrote:

andrewarkills wrote:We absolutely can and should tackle crime before, during, and after it happens. The question is what we want that to look like. Do we want targeted areas where street level cameras are deployed, or do we want an eye in the sky as the article mentions in Baltimore? I'm in favor of option 1, not so much option 2.

I favor option 2 because you get way more coverage with way less infrastructure. Why do you favor option 1?

There is an argument to be made that blanket coverage, 24/7 surveillance amounts to a huge privacy intrusion. You move beyond merely monitoring public spaces and towards a system where anyone's movements can be tracked 24/7. I would like to know a lot more about how that data is retained, who has access to it, when and why they have access to it, etc. before I would feel even remotely comfortable with that.
Without significant oversight and controls, it feels very "Big Brother".

You're in a public space. If you want to remain private then stay in your home. Public spaces should be monitored with surveillance.


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^Just because? To increase a feeling of security? For a set period of time? "All public space should be under surveillance" is a fairly open-ended position.

Permanently in order to ensure safety in the public space. The whole "big brother" argument is a selfish libertarian point of view that jeopardizes pubic safety. I want to go out in public but I don't want anyone to see me.

What are these people really worried about? Being caught on camera cheating on their wife? Buying drugs? Yeah, ok, I get it now.


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downtown2007 wrote:Permanently in order to ensure safety in the public space. The whole "big brother" argument is a selfish libertarian point of view that jeopardizes pubic safety. I want to go out in public but I don't want anyone to see me.

We do live in a country where we are guaranteed a reasonable amount of privacy (including having our movements tracked, even on a high level, where we are just a pixel on a screen), unless there is an urgent public safety need. I am not saying there is not room for these measures, just that we should have a conversation as a city before implementing.

downtown2007 wrote:What are these people really worried about? Being caught on camera cheating on their wife? Buying drugs? Yeah, ok, I get it now.

Yeah, that's not what I was talking about, nor had it crossed my mind. Not my concern here. That may drive some people to oppose it, but my primary concern is putting our society on a slippery slope to government having access to vast amounts of data on every person, criminal or not. That aspect of it just feels creepy to me.

Yeah, that's not what I was talking about, nor had it crossed my mind. Not my concern here. That may drive some people to oppose it, but my primary concern is putting our society on a slippery slope to government having access to vast amounts of data on every person, criminal or not. That aspect of it just feels creepy to me.

Not saying its a good thing, but don't they already have that? And companies like Facebook and Google have even more data. I thinks its more of a cliff that we have already fallen over.

I don't have a problem with cameras. I don't think they are going to prevent much, but they can certainly help solve crimes after they've happened.

pat wrote:Not saying its a good thing, but don't they already have that? And companies like Facebook and Google have even more data. I thinks its more of a cliff that we have already fallen over.

Facebook and Google have contractual relationships with us, allowing them to collect that data (granting permissions on your device, or accepting "Terms & Conditions" is entering into a contract).

This feels like it falls into some sort of fuzzy gray area that hasn't been legally explored. The cameras can't tell who you are, but they also can track movements as a particular data point. It has some value, but it should get a full public airing before we just find out that we've been on camera for weeks or months without our knowledge, like the people in Baltimore did.

pat wrote:I don't have a problem with cameras. I don't think they are going to prevent much, but they can certainly help solve crimes after they've happened.

Agreed. A piece of the puzzle, but not the magic missing piece.

andrewarkills wrote:^Just because? To increase a feeling of security? For a set period of time? "All public space should be under surveillance" is a fairly open-ended position.

downtown2007 wrote:Permanently in order to ensure safety in the public space. The whole "big brother" argument is a selfish libertarian point of view that jeopardizes pubic safety. I want to go out in public but I don't want anyone to see me.

I don't agree that surveillance should be permanent. I think the capacity to surveil should be permanent, but that it should only be used when the level of violent crime surpasses some tolerable threshold. If it is as effective as these stories suggest then, even when not in use, the capacity to use it would serve as a strong deterrent to criminal activity.

urban_dilettante wrote:

andrewarkills wrote:Yeah, that's not what I was talking about, nor had it crossed my mind. Not my concern here. That may drive some people to oppose it, but my primary concern is putting our society on a slippery slope to government having access to vast amounts of data on every person, criminal or not. That aspect of it just feels creepy to me.

Sure, I agree. BUT, I think you have to weigh the potential for a slippery slope against the reality that, right now, it's dangerous to walk around in most parts of the city after dark. And in some parts of the city it's not even safe to walk around in the middle of the afternoon.

That's fair. As STL tries to increase safety and build greater trust in the police, a process which potentially introduces this should definitely happen in the public eye, preferably with the opportunity for civil and open dialogue and public input.

^ Absolutely in the public eye.

Oh, a discussion is absolutely a good idea. Heck, a vote is even a good idea. An informed vote after a lengthy and robust public discussion.