The New York police department is always looking for ways to make the city safer by upgrading and reforming different methods, methods such as stop and frisk and surveillance camera. With new found technology the New York police department and Microsoft developed the Domain Awareness System, a new surveillance security. The Domain Awareness System uses the surveillance cameras place in the city, retrieves 911 calls and contain criminal data and complaint reports. The system can also detect radiation and read license plates. According to the article “Surveillance city? Microsoft, NYPD team on crime fight system”, Mayor Bloomberg announced in the conference that New York will be “receiving thirty percent of the revenues” when the Domain Awareness System get marketed to other places. Citizens may ask themselves what will New York City do with 30 percent of the revenues? New York has been known to have corruption in its police department. Although the system was developed to keep the city safer, the system can be used in favor of the officials. In the NYPD Tapes article we read how the stop and frisk technique is used to help officials meet their quotas. The stop and frisk technique is known to be mostly used on blacks and Latinos which raises the issue of racial profiling. The Domain Awareness System can also map crime statistics and as we learn statistics are not always accurate. Some complaints and crimes aren’t always reported; therefore the system would not be aware of crimes committed. The Domain Awareness System can very well help decrease and prevent crimes in New York City but there are always loopholes to every system.
The conference video can be watch on the web link.
I would really agree with the writer. There is a direct relation between the misrepresentation of statistics and illegal stop and frisk. And sometime people are being charged for felony’s which they never committed and they are being forced to accept that as one of our class fellow has described in the last class.
Most of the time these illegal and unjust stops, frisk cases occur because of the quota system introduced by NY City Police Department. These are usually based on racism and discrimination. The concept that one can control crimes with the significant number of quota and percentage arrested or caught by per cop to reduce crimes is foolishness.
Therefore, when cops are being forced and pressurized to get their quota done even there isn’t crime then become misrepresentation of crimes. That statistics then used to research and then making policies is the last step towards it. So there is the whole loop of false representation.
That’s whole system is involved in the misconception of crimes and how things led to fake results which are not the real and actual case,
I would have to agree that New York City “receiving thirty percent of the revenues” of this system, when it is used elsewhere does sound a little fishy and subject to possible corruption. Just sounds like another way in which Bloomberg, as well as the New York Police Department, is able to funnel money whenever and wherever they desire. However, I’m not so sure that the actual system itself would be a bad thing, as you imply – I think the system, if I understand it correctly, has the potential to do much more good than bad. As you state, this new system will use the existing cameras that the NYPD already has in place around the city. While the placement of some of those cameras may be subject to criticism and unjust motives, they are already erected and they serve the purpose of both catching video evidence of crimes being committed, as well as deterring people from committing crimes as a result of their presence. Combined with interactions from 9-1-1 calls, radiation detection, and the ability to focus on specific license plates, I’d say that this system has the ability to help the city immensely. The only potential flaw I see right now is that it can map out problem areas based on reported crimes and statistics – this, as we all should know from class, probably won’t be as effective as it can be, due to the deliberate manipulation of crime statistics. However, this is an ongoing problem within the NYPD, and not a result of the Domain Awareness System itself.