Miranda Jimmy admits Red Indian crime backed up by data

VICE is upset that corrupt Edmonton Police Services will not use new technology to be gentler on the minorities who cause most of the crime in our city.

You know, I'd pay money to worry about the things VICE worries about. It seems a pretty nice life.

Police in Edmonton have partnered with a venture capitalist to fund tech entrepreneurs to come up with “solutions” to crime and social problems, using sensitive data collected from the healthcare system, social services, and police.

But as protests continue across the U.S. and Canada following the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis last week, activists are raising concerns that the project could entrench systemic racism and further marginalize people of colour and Indigenous peoples in Edmonton.

Edmonton Police Service Chief Dale McFee and Ashif Mawji, a venture capitalist and chair of the Edmonton Police Foundation, say the goal of the Community Solutions Accelerator (CSA) is to save public money by privately funding entrepreneurs to address tough problems such as addiction and homelessness.

McFee and Mawji say the accelerator will help businesses create products to be used by police and social services in the field, such as artificial intelligence software that could predict who will go missing, or an app that would let police do on-the-spot mental health evaluations. The CSA will then sell the products to other cities.

I hope they didn't spend a lot of money on this. Is this person a Red Indian girl? Then she's going to go missing. Is this person wearing any rainbow flag paraphernalia? Then they are mentally ill. See? It's easy and I just did it in 45 seconds for free (11 seconds of which were clicking the red underline because I forgot the "r" in the middle of "paraphernalia").

Activists and privacy experts say the accelerator, launched in February without much fanfare, will affect the lives of vulnerable communities without giving them a say in how their information is being used.

“We’re talking about police using this information without any responsibility to the people the (data) is talking about or impacting,” said Miranda Jimmy, co-founder of RISEdmonton, a group pursuing Indigenous reconciliation in the city.

“Policing has a history of treating Indigenous people and people of colour differently. Now they are arming themselves with information about people that can be skewed in favour of (police) and allow them to justify their actions.”

Hold on hold on hold on hold on hold on hold on hold on hold on hold on HOLD ON HOLD ON HOLD ON!!!!!!!!There are two separate schools of thought on "why police treat blacks and Red Indians differently". You might be dimly aware of them:

1. There's the far-left "reconciliation" activist view, made popular and increasingly mandatory by the violent black riots over the death of criminal George Floyd, that there's something called "systemic racism" which causes police forces from around the world -- many of whom are often facing budgetary pressures, and who have been bit by the "diversity and inclusion" disease causing huge numbers of racial minorities to be hired to join the force and be potential whistleblowers -- to spend huge amounts of time and energy and funding to "unfairly target" blacks and Red Indians.
2. There's the conservative view that regardless of the issues on the backend of society (and there's disagreement on what that is and how to fix it), the reality at the end of the line is that blacks and Red Indians are overwhelmingly more likely to be criminals and particularly violent criminals at that. Because a significant portion of the interactions between police and criminals are made up of minorities, and the proportion of the minority population that is also criminal can approach 1 in 3 (even more in urban areas), police will often have to be heavy handed in their approach. When the violent criminals who are willing to do anything to get away are in constant conflict with the police who are both there to stop them and also (rightly or wrongly, again there's disagreement about this topic) protect themselves and their collegues, there are going to be a large number of incidents and by virtue of the demographics that explains the difference.

I'm going to take a wild guess that Miranda Jimmy subscribes to the first theory and not the second. However, she admits that when police have better data (ie "armed with information", nice little verbiage there) that the information itself can be used to justify police action. As in, RISEdmonton is basically admitting that the second theory and not the first theory is correct. Which, of course, doesn't give with the rest of what she says:

“It's the systems of oppression, the racism and bias that exists in the targeting of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, people of colour) communities by law enforcement. It's the ongoing over representation of marginalized people in the justice system. It's the profiteering and benefiting from those who don't have the means to stand up for their own rights,” Jimmy said.

As per above though, if the data is correct (which Jimmy seems to take at face value) and cops still "target BIPOC" it means that they all deserved it. Which means that "over representation" doesn't exist: they are more or less properly represented, whatever their share of the general population. VICE has to admit that a little later...

A 2018 VICE investigation found that Black, Indigenous, people of colour were disproportionately represented in cannabis possession arrests in Edmonton. A CBC investigation in 2017 found Indigenous and Black people were far more likely to be subject to police street checks in the city, but those findings were later disputed by an independent report.

They want you to forget (despite far-left criminal Bashir Mohamed literally a sentence earlier referencing "poverty" as a consideration for some reason) that homeless and drifters in Edmonton are mostly these infamous (and ridiculously stupid acronym) "BIPOC" and therefore going to be subjected to more street checks (because they live on "the street") which will obviously cause more drug possession charges^†: the teenager with illegal drugs in his parents' basement is able to leave them under his bed next to his erotic photos of Jack Layton when he goes down to 7/11, a homeless Injun can't.

 ^† Let's not forget another key difference between the homeless and the rest of us, especially in Edmonton. For 3-5 months out of the year, these people would rather be in jail than out on the street braving -40 with downtown gusts of wind blowing up 105th Street. Bashir Mohamed can't complain about poverty in one regard and then think that an event welcomed by a lot of these impoverished people automatically has to be a bad thing.

A first project launched through the CSA is the “Liquor Store Theft Challenge” funded by Alcanna, Alberta’s largest liquor retailer. The challenge promises up to $250,000 to whoever can figure out how to stop liquor store robberies in Edmonton. One of Alcanna’s goals through the challenge is to “support and encourage the justice system in imposing consequences for these criminals once caught.”

Jimmy says that even if data used in projects funded by the CSA is truly anonymized—something experts say is next to impossible to do—it will still paint an unrealistic picture of communities.

“Police profiling, whether in this aggregate sense or in a direct sense, (can) justify further marginalization,” Jimmy said. “The people who are making these decisions are not the ones most impacted by them.”

I was actually about to mention that, as a minor example, a year or so ago I went to the Athlone Liquor Store (not Alcanna owned, by the way) on 127th street just north of the Yellowhead. Inside the store by the till is a massive wall full of security camera photos of thieves, and not to give the ending away (I think I took a picture but can't find it, I might have to go back and take one) but the vast majority of the people on that wall were either black or Red Indians. Do you know what "further justifies marginalization", Miranda? A literal realistic picture of these communities, profiling in the direct sense as it were. Not anonymized, but very useful nonetheless in teaching Edmontonians what the majority of our criminals look like.