Police Data

Despite guidance from California Attorney General Rob Bonta, quite a few California police departments are sharing automated license plate reader (ALPR) data with out-of-state law enforcement agencies. ALPR systems, like the one that Los Altos is installing from Flock Safety, take pictures of every car going by, digitize their license plate, and record their presence. Police say this helps identify stolen vehicles, which are often used in crimes -- in principle, this should reduce crime, although the evidence that it actually works is very thin. This is a problem if someone from an abortion-restricted state travels to California for reproductive health care. By law , (AB 1242) police in California cannot assist out-of-state law enforcement in prosecuting people for coming here for an abortion. And by law (SB 34) California police cannot share any ALPR data with out-of-state agencies, according to our AG.  And  yet 71 police agencies did just that, and dozens still do. Many ...

 Last year the Los Altos City Council approved the installation of automated license plate readers (ALPRs) from a company called Flock Safety. While the efficacy of ALPRs as a crime-fighting tool has proven very difficult to see (for example,  this  and this show little statistical evidence for improvement), a new problem has come to light: It seems that Flock tends to be pretty casual about the rules. Two articles came out recently that call Flock's carefulness into question.  First, a Forbes article  (more reporting here ) found that Flock frequently put up cameras without regard to permitting or traffic safety considerations. "[I]n its rush to install surveillance cameras in the absence of clear regulatory frameworks, Flock repeatedly broke the law in at least five states. In two, state agencies have banned Flock staff from installing new cameras," Forbes correspondents Thomas Brewster and Cyrus Farivar report. Apparently, in the Silicon Valley tradition of ...

It was really great to open the Town Crier and see some actual crime data plotted out for all to see. Critical reporting on crime data is vital for all of us to know what's going on, so we can make good choices. Unfortunately, Los Altos Hills city manager Peter Pirnejad came to some incorrect conclusions from the data. We took a look at some of these claims back in October. In particular, it still seems that he is claiming it is impossible to know if preventative measures have been effective, which is hogwash of course. Now Pirnejad is saying that crime is down this year, and that it's probably because of the increased funding they've put on policing.  Spoiler: it seems like LAH has increased funding by at least $100k with no discernable impact on burglary. The city manager's main point is summarized in the graph in the article, which I'll reproduce here: credit: Christina Casillas, Town Crier There are a couple of things going on here. First of all, the data is p...

One afternoon on a remote work day, you are sitting at home, looking out the window before getting back to work on that TPS report that's due Monday. Outside, you see someone walking slowly down the street -- someone you don't recognize. "Who is that guy? What's he doing here?" you think to yourself. And maybe, "He seems suspicious. I think I'm going to call the police." It's important that we all work together to keep our communities safe. But sometimes, our natural tendencies can end up making our communities hostile and unsafe for innocent people.  "Bias by proxy" is an effect that can happen if the police get called for "suspicious people," and those calls are biased by race. If a Black man walking down the street is perceived as suspicious, and someone calls the cops to check up on him, then innocent Black people are going to get stopped and questioned by the police. Even if the police aren't biased, there will be bia...