Boston Marathon and CCTV - Are we learning yet?

Minutes after the Boston Marathon bombing 7 months and 6 days ago
photo Aaron Tang, Wikimedia Commons 

I enjoy watching the fictional TV cop show NCIS where Gibbs and the gang use omni-present CCTV to catch crooks doing crime. What fun! What fantasy! I hated watching the Boston Marathon bombing where CCTV caught the real act, live.


For years I've been writing about CCTV in public places in the United States and in Britain. Never shy to adopt barely-studied methods elsewhere, Canada's now in on the act. Yesterday's Leader-Post reports that "downtown Regina will be protected by 33 closed circuit (CCTV) cameras" during the upcoming Canadian Grey cup football championship game.

Let's see if I remember… 



Seven months and 6 days ago the radicalized Tsarnaev brothers carried pressure cooker bombs in backpacks in plain view of CCTV along the route of the Boston Marathon. An hour after police swept the area for explosives, they blew up their bombs killing and injuring bystanders. The whole horrible thing was caught live on CCTV. 


For a decade UK has led the world with thousands of CCTV in public places. Now a recent UK government study tells us 80% of CCTV images are ineffective and that "cameras are mostly used to trap motorists rather than catch criminals."

I'm glad cops use CCTV to catch crooks after the fact. But keeping the Grey Cup festival safe? All I see here is journalistic Alzheimer's.

Bad week for predictive policing - PredPol nightmare

Big data to the rescue - Does it work?

Last week was a very bad week for predictive policing, at least one version of it. It comes in the form of an article in the San Francisco Weekly News by investigative journalists Darwin Bond-Graham and Ali Winston. Their exposé, All Tomorrow's Crimes, reported on one company - PredPol - as it markets its computer software to police departments across the county.

It reads like a PR nightmare for PredPol.

It starts innocent enough: "PredPol, short for predictive policing, is riding this wave of techno-mania and capitalizing on the belief... that there's a killer app for everything, including crime-fighting."

I have written on this topic for years. My main worry has been cost and reliability. A year ago I wrote on the predictive model by IBM that Memphis Police call Blue Crush. Two years ago I wrote  The Precog Paradox and three years ago Solving the City With Math.

And now there is a killer app for predicting crime? 

But then the SF Weekly News article takes a darker turn:

"PredPol has required police departments that sign on to refer the company to other law enforcement agencies, and to appear in flashy press conferences, endorsing the software as a crime-reducer — despite the fact that its effectiveness hasn't yet been proven."

Ouch!

I have no idea if any of that is true. But it does show that too many police executives and press outlets are not doing their homework. Where is critical thinking when you need it?

A MEASURED RESPONSE

A year ago a police executive posted on this blog. He is a critical thinker who we need more of in police leadership. This is what he said:

"I sat through a presentation yesterday involving an algorithm-based program that attempts to predict future crime… It could very well be one piece of the problem-solving puzzle. It's something that should not be dismissed. 

It doesn't take the place of a human crime analyst. It doesn't eliminate the need for problem solving. And it doesn't reduce the importance of collaborating with others. It's not cheap, and it could very well tempt agencies to divert funds away from more effective crime reduction strategies…

…only time will tell."

With this news article, it seems it has.

Below is a Ted Talk with a presenter whom the SF Weekly article identifies as a PredPol "lobbyist". It gives you an idea of the PredPol message.

The Washington/BC murder mystery

Is more security cutting crime rates?

I cautiously stepped into a glass chamber at a recent security trade show to test a unique anti-burglary device. At the simulated moment of alarm activation I was blasted by a non-toxic, non-staining fog blanketing the chamber. I could see nothing. It's supposed to scare off burglars who cannot see their way to the loot. Devices like burglar foggers supposedly contributed to crime declines. So I'm told.

My last blog, Line on a Map, asked why the murder rate is so different in Washington State versus British Columbia (2.9 versus 1.5 per 100,000 - a ratio of 2:1).

The answer to that is buried somewhere in falling crime rates; falling under liberal and conservative governments, falling in peacetime and war. Until recently, falling like a stone in all but a few places.

Criminologists have multiple theories. Few agree.

Some say it is better security devices like burglar fogging or just more private security generally.

Unfortunately, while more security might explain some of that, the "better security devices" theory cannot explain declines in domestic violence, sexual assaults, and schoolyard bullying. Few of those victims are protected by better technical devices. Yet those rates too are also falling.

MORE COPS, MORE PRISON

Some say it is more police per capita, new policing tactics like Compstat, stop-and-frisk, or stricter prison sentences?

During the 1990s, the first crime decline decade, those were American tactics. Canada had no changes in sentencing, no Compstat, no stop-and-frisk, and no more cops. Crime in Canada dropped just the same.

OLD FOLKS

Aging population? That works better than other theories since older populations span most countries with crime declines. Since young males dominate prisons and court dockets, when they decline as a proportion of the whole population, crime drops. So the theory goes.

Yet none of that explains the Washington/BC gap until you factor that it is murder that is higher in Washington; property crime, especially burglary and theft, are not.

HANDGUNS

Then factor that most Washington murders involve handguns, in abundance in US cities and scarcer in Canada. True, crooks can always get guns on both sides and responsible gun owners don't leave their guns unsecured (gun rights folks…chill)!

Still, there are just more handguns around. For example, when a burglar breaks into a Washington home with a 1 in 20 chance of finding a handgun versus a 1 in 500 chance in BC, that handgun gets into more abundant criminal circulation. It then shows up more frequently during robberies and assaults. More shootings result in a much higher murder ratio in Washington vs BC - in this case a ratio of 2:1.  Gun advocates who think more guns will protect them are in a burglar fog. Look north for proof that they won't.

Nothing - not demographics, per capita police, economics, nor security devices - explain that difference better than handgun availability.

It truly is that straightforward. Solving it, sadly, isn't.

A line on a map

Seattle and Vancouver on the Pacific west coast - dueling cities

Years ago a police chief told me he planned to hire a renowned criminologist to compare the murder rate in Vancouver to Seattle. He was tired of hearing Vancouver was so much safer. He knew there was a gang war in Vancouver and didn't believe the numbers. Both cities are similar in size, economic wealth, relative policing strength, and age demographics. They are only a 3 hour drive apart.

A murder gap? No way.

That criminologist never showed. Depending on whose version of the story you believe, either the data wasn't available, the criminologist wasn't available, or the study was done but unavailable for public view.

I have a simpler explanation for the Vancouver-Is-Worse-Than-Seattle theory.

It isn't!

Nor is BC versus Washington State. British Columbia has a population of 4.6 million; Washington State 6.9 million. In 2012 BC suffered 71 murders (1.5 murders per 100,000 people) while Washington State suffered 203 murders (2.9 per 100,000, twice that of BC).

On the U.S. side of the border lies majestic snow capped Mount Baker. The view is magnificent from both Vancouver and Seattle. For hundreds of miles beyond the border posts, BC and Washington are separated by only the 49th Parallel - nothing more than a line on a map.Yet if you view Mount Baker from the U.S. the stats suggest your risk of being murdered doubles.

Why?

Washington State has a history of innovative prevention programs.
The Office of Crime Victims Advocacy and Community Mobilization Program (defunded next year due to cutbacks) are considerably more advanced than what BC offers by comparison.

True, BC's CPTED is deeper (Washington lags considerably) and BC's Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers receive more advanced basic training called problem-based learning.

But can that explain the homicide gap?

Next blog: Why the difference?

The mysterious case of a walk in the mist

Today banks of fog rolled in one after the other formed by moist fall-time air blowing over cold ocean currents out in the Straight. Echoing through the quiet streets of our neighborhood, a maritime foghorn accompanied our walk through the mist, no doubt replacing the clop clop of horses hooves on cobblestones as Sherlock Holmes raced off to solve yet another murder mystery…

At least that's the image our misty walk conjured in my mind. In all, it was a magical evening for a seaport town.

Obviously none of this is possible unless walking is made easy, fun and safe. And walkability is not only important for activating streets and keeping crime in check, it's a very big deal for quality of life too.

In Walkable City author Jeff Speck describes how some cities kill walkability. In such places fog is just a roadway hazard. Those cities rob their citizens of the interesting or necessary places to walk - a grocery, park, coffee shop, playground, or a corner store.

We've seen plenty of micro examples on how to improve walkability: lifestyle malls,  bright paint, better designed laneways, or planting strips along sidewalks. Speck reminds us there are macro lessons too.

URBAN DENSITY

To Speck urban density holds the key to a better quality of life. Low density cities breed less healthy people because they walk less and accumulate more health related ailments. For example, he says 14 people die for every 100,000 residents in low density Tulsa, Oklahoma. It's 23 in Orlando. But in high density cities like New York and Portland it is only 3.

Crime doesn't correlate so neatly, yet the walkability links on the right of this blog show street activation makes a difference.

Check out Jeff Speck and the Walkable City on this Ted Talk.

It was a dark and foggy night in the future

"It was a dark and foggy night in the neighborhood where nothing really happens…so there goes that drama". Caption from photographer Celine Chamberlin's photo

There is a TV show worth seeing and a book worth reading.

The TV show because it is excellent. The book because I think it's wrong but I also think it is excellent. It's an intelligent counterpoint to the depressing malaise in the US body politic, an aspirin to the headache that passed for Congressional politics this past week.

Controversial author and professor in urban development, Joel Kotkin, uses the suburb to tell the story of America in 2050. The Next Hundred Million describes the suburbs of the future. To Kotkin they are a place of hope.

Says Amazon:

"Suburbia is the future, but not the wasteful lonely suburbia of the 1950s. Instead we must fashion a new kind of suburban landscape, one that selectively borrows the successful and vital elements of big city life and uses them to make more vibrant small cities."

Maybe.

But what will happen with the increasing number of suburban poor, spikes in suburban crime, and the class gentrification in American downtowns?

A new TV show called Continuum points in another direction.

This new cop thriller is a well-acted and brilliantly made Canadian sci-fi (with outstanding FX) filmed in Vancouver (Showcase network in Canada and the SyFy channel in the US and UK).

The Continuum storyline pushes Occupy Wall Street, government shutdowns, and corporate greed to a very different place than Kotkin.

Check them both out. Knowing different futures helps us choose more wisely.