LOGAN – Utah State University organized a recent public safety conference on campus to explore ways to improve security for students. It drew leaders from colleges across the state.
The focus of the event was USU introducing its “predictive policing” model, an apparent response to charges in recent years that the school has fallen short in its response to sexual assaults.
Three years ago the U.S. Department of Justice studied USU’s handling of sex abuse complaints and significant failures were reported.
The new model is the work of Erik Christensen, a USU executive who oversees the university police department, and Blair Barfuss who was named the school’s police chief in July, 2022.
USU police decided to test their new investigative model by mapping multiple reports of individuals smelling marijuana on campus. They finally narrowed it down, not around the campus student housing, but to a research lab that was studying, growing, harvesting and composting the plant on campus. Families of skunks living on the edges of campus were also implicated.
Similar success was reported using an algorithm to accurately predict the number of police needed to be on duty at large campus events and putting data analysis to work to project the number of campus crimes that would happen over given periods of time.
Sounds like a waste of time and money…or perhaps this is the most “taxpayer-friendly” portion of the symposium that could be published? Predictive policing by definition is based upon algorithmic models designed to flag, or predict when a crime will most likely be committed, and by whom. The potential “suspects” are profiled based on the institution’s vast treasure trove of psychological, and geospatial tracking data which we unwittingly (and unconstitutionally) provide to government entities via our phones of course. This sounds like a cross between Minority Report’s Pre-Crime Division and 1984. Welcome to The Brave New World. “A population that would give up it’s freedom in exchange for security deserves neither.”
“Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.” Benjamin Franklin