Given the prevailing notion that algorithmic policing would create “feedback loops,” our expectation was to find Skid Row - the area around the star marked on the map - to be laden with PredPol hotspots. The star on each map designates the location of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, which is located in Skid Row. PredPol hotspot maps from 2015 (left) and 2018 (right). ![]() The Coalition analyzed these records and created density maps to visualize where hotspots occurred over time. On November 8th, 2018, LAPD released hotspot maps of Central Division from June 21st to December 31st, 2015, and another from March through June, 2018. Biased crime data, collected from already hyper-policed communities, is fed into the algorithm, so the algorithm would necessarily determine that crime is occurring most in these same hyper-policed areas where the data was invented. The dominant critique of Predpol is that this form of data-driven policing creates harmful feedback loops. Data-driven policing programs like PredPol claim to be more objective, less-biased forms of policing because they focus on place/property and not “people,” conveniently forgetting that location functions as a proxy for race and class in a place as violently segregated as Los Angeles. The proprietary algorithm outputs 500x500 square foot boxes or “hotspots” - maps used to direct LAPD officers to patrol areas where crime is supposedly most likely to occur. Predpol purports to “predict” crime by using an algorithm to process historical crime data. This records request was part of a broader strategy to expose harm in the community and ultimately dismantle Predpol. On Jthe Stop LAPD Spying Coalition filed a public records request for LAPD’s PredPol hotspot maps of its Central Division, a division that includes the community of Skid Row. The Algorithmic Ecology is a call to action! We go beyond the fog of these claims to outline the broader ecology of PredPol, paying attention to the ideologies that underpin their rationalist, racist logics, and the institutions that operationalize technologies like Predpol for domination and control. The PredPol platform claims to be scalable across such disparate contexts (war zones and domestic neighborhoods in different cities) through its “neutral” and “efficient” data-driven approach. Central to our story is Predpol, an algorithmic, “predictive,” policing technology that was forged for the battle fronts of Iraq and Afghanistan and then unleashed on the streets of Los Angeles. Under Broken Windows policing, activities like sitting, jaywalking, resting, sleeping, or tossing a cigarette are enough to earn a ticket which, if left unpaid, can lead to jail time. A community where Broken Windows policing programs like the Safer Cities Initiative (now known as RESET) and city municipal codes like 56.11 and 41.18D regularly criminalize daily life. We ground the story of the Algorithmic Ecology in Skid Row, a community on the east side of downtown Los Angeles and home to the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition. Thinking through the ecology informs our resistance, and our journey toward abolition of all policing - data-driven and otherwise. The Algorithmic Ecology ultimately serves as a roadmap to lay bare PredPol’s intent to cause harm to Black, Brown, Migrant, and poor people, just like all policing programs and technologies before it. ![]() It is a story of a land grab, of displacement and banishment, and of the continuing violence of settler-colonialism and white supremacy. It is a story of how land and bodies are contained, controlled, and criminalized. The Algorithmic Ecology of Predpol is a story of how race and poverty are policed in the United States. The Algorithmic Ecology has served the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition as an essential tool for understanding and communicating our fight against the pseudoscientific PredPol program in Los Angeles. The Algorithmic Ecology is also a reminder: We must critically examine what lurks beneath “scientific,” data-driven policing, and we must go beyond technology-centered critiques of algorithms and “dirty data.” This model decenters the algorithm itself, looks at the different actors that shape the algorithm, and illustrates whose interests the algorithm serves, with the ultimate goal of dismantling the actors creating algorithmic harm. The Algorithmic Ecology is both a framework and an organizing tool that can be critically applied to any algorithm. By telling the story of our fight against Predpol, a predictive policing technology, we are introducing an abolitionist model for analyzing algorithms: The Algorithmic Ecology. In an increasingly policed and surveilled world, algorithms have become critical sites of power, struggle and resistance. The Algorithmic Ecology: An Abolitionist Tool for Organizing Against Algorithmsīy the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition and Free Radicals
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