Cities Turn to Software to Predict When Police Will Go Rogue

There are no easy fixes for the Minneapolis Police Department. State lawmakers tried and failed last month to come up with a reform plan after four officers were charged in the death of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man; the city council is proceeding with a proposal to dismantle the department altogether.

Last month Police Chief Medaria Arradondo outlined his own ideas for change, which included working with an obscure technology firm named Benchmark Analytics. The company takes the idea of predictive policing—which uses algorithms to forecast where crimes will occur or who will commit them—and turns it on its head, using a computer model to predict which officers are most likely to be involved in misconduct.