Published on: Saturday, March 13, 2021
Pasco County, Florida punishes residents for hypothetical crimes that they have not committed. The sheriff calls it “predictive policing,” and if his algorithm predicts you might fall into a life of crime, deputies will make sure that you do: surveilling and harassing people (and their relatives and friends) with repeated visits to their homes without warrant, repeated citations for minor code violations, warrantless stops and seizures, and arrests over pretextual and insignificant infractions—all these things and more “to make life miserable” (in the words of a former deputy).
On Wednesday, four Pasco County residents filed a federal lawsuit in Tampa to put a stop to the program (article available here).