The Push to ‘Predict’ Police Shootings

When employers surveil workers, it’s usually to cut costs and ensure efficiency—checking when people are clocking in and leaving, whether they’re hitting sales goals, and so on. But for police, operating efficiently is a matter of life and death, law and order. Their bosses, and the communities they serve, want to know whether they’re potentially violating someone’s rights. In the event of a shooting, they want to know how it happened. Now they have more insight than ever.

Thanks to new machine-learning tools, researchers and police departments can use behavioral data to find