Predictive Policing - LE Revolution or Just a New Spin on Old Biases?

On October 3, 2018 the International Association of Crime Analysts posted a link to a CBC article "'Predictive policing': Law enforcement revolution or just new spin on old biases?"

LAPD is trying to predict crime through data analysis, and not everyone is happy about it
In a city with a long history of law-enforcement friction, activists and the Los Angeles Police Department are squaring off again. The latest crime-fighting controversy isn't over issues like police brutality, corruption or gangs — it's all about data. And the ways police are using it. 

Activists at a public meeting with the Los Angeles Police Commission this summer held up signs reading: "Data Driven Evidence Based Policing = Pseudoscience," and "Crime Data is Racist." It's an example of how the community has been put on edge by the LAPD's use of an elaborate data collection center, a shadowy data analysis firm called Palantir, and predictive algorithms to try to get a jump on crime.

Police forces across the U.S. are increasingly adopting the same approach as the LAPD: employing sophisticated algorithms to predict crime in the hope they can prevent it. Chicago, New York City and Philadelphia use similar predictive programs and face similar questions from the communities they are policing, and even legal challenges over where the information is coming from and how police are using it.

Canadian police forces are very aware of what their U.S. counterparts are doing, but they are wary of jumping in with both feet due to concerns over civil liberties issues.
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Predictive policing is a useful tool in reducing crime in a community. When used properly it helps to make communities safer and at the same time protects the civil liberties and privacy rights of those living in those communities.

What predictive policing does is look at events in a community, and use those events to predict future events. This could be as simple as looking at street patterns and citizen complaints of speeding to determine where traffic units should conduct speed enforcement, to more complex analysis of data to predict where major crimes will occur.

Predictive policing uses data that law enforcement collects as part of its routine functions. For years crime analysts have done this type of work by hand. Predictive policing software simply automates a lot of the data crunching, allowing the analyst to focus on analysis.

Is there a potential for misuse? Sure, almost anything can be misused - the biggest danger being that investigations can be structured to point in specific directions or at specific people by analyzing only select data points while ignoring others. But outside of deliberate investigate misconduct this is not going to happen.

So, is predictive policing a new revolution in law enforcement? No, crime analysts have been doing this for decades. Now it's just done faster with the aid of computers and automated mapping technology.