Pasco, Florida’s predictive policing system monitors and harasses residents
“Last summer, the Sheriff’s Office announced plans to begin keeping tabs on people who have been repeatedly committed to psychiatric hospitals.”<p>People are going to die because of that.<p>There is a close friend of mine who, if unlucky enough to live in that hellhole, would have her life made miserable by this. She’s a nurse who’s never committed a crime in her life. She’s also bipolar, suicidal, deals with major depression, and has a less-than-supportive family, so she’s been committed a few times. Being harassed by hyperzealous cops who think they’re fighting terrorists is exactly the sort of thing that could push her over the edge.<p>I think—and hope—that this is what does them in. It should never have gotten to this point, but they can wave around terms like “reduced crime” and as long as it’s just the bad guys who are being targeted, no one cares.<p>But I suspect there will be a point soon enough where the sheriff here will find himself answering questions about why his department drove to suicide a mentally ill person with no criminal record, and I hope to god the resulting consequences put an end to this un-American madness, here and everywhere else.