Topic: Crime Data

ProPublica's "Documenting Hate" project seeks to create a new database of hate crimes, claiming that FBI statistics are unreliable because many law enforcement agencies do not participate. The project relies on self-reported stories from individuals who believe they were victims of bias. Critics argue that relying on unverified personal accounts rather than official police data leads to subjective and potentially rigged results.

AC Thompson identified three major trends in ProPublica's data: a surge in anti-Semitism, a "rash" of anti-immigrant sentiment, and incidents where perpetrators invoke President Trump's name. The project tracks lower-level harassment that does not meet the federal legal definition of a hate crime. The hosts discuss the expansion of the "hate crime" category to include non-criminal behavior and speech.

President Obama's statements regarding the decline of violent crime in American cities are analyzed for their logic regarding gun ownership. While Obama acknowledged that crime has dropped over the last 20 years, he challenged the notion that increased gun ownership is the cause. The hosts point to cities like Chicago as counter-examples where strict regulations have not prevented high levels of violence.

Police departments in Santa Cruz and Los Angeles are using "PredPol" technology to predict where crimes will occur before they happen. This "predictive policing" relies on big data and historical crime mapping to deploy resources. The hosts dismiss this as another way to squander taxpayer money on tech-driven solutions that fail to address the root causes of crime.