LOS ANGELES – The Los Angeles Police Department announced it would be ending its use of PredPol’s predictive policing tool. The company uses artificial intelligence to predict crime, but critics claim it’s “fundamentally flawed.”
An LAPD memo dated April 15 quoted Police Chief Michel R. Moore saying that the police department would stop using the software, effective immediately, reported BuzzFeed. The reason given is not due to concerns that activists have raised but because of financial constraints due to COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
“The city’s financial crisis, coupled with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, has resulted in the immediate freeze of new contractual agreements and ‘belt-tightening’ instructions by the Mayor to all city departments for all further expenditures,” the memo said. “Therefore, the Department will immediately discontinue the use of PredPol and its associated reports.”
