How Police Departments Can Evaluate Threats by Using an Algorithm

Nextgov: When Tamir Rice was killed by police officers in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2014, some observers assigned a portion of the blame to a 911 dispatcher. She relayed a citizen’s concern that a black male was sitting on a park swing, pulling a gun from his waist band, and pointing it at people. But she failed to convey the caller’s observation that the male was “probably a juvenile” and that the gun was “probably fake.” Perhaps that information would have changed the behavior of the cop who shot to kill even as he stepped from his squad car. As it turned out, the gun was indeed a harmless toy, and Rice, the black male holding it, was just 12 years old.

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