Fighting violent gang crime with math
(PhysOrg.com) — UCLA mathematicians working with the Los Angeles Police Department to analyze crime patterns have designed a mathematical algorithm to identify street gangs involved in unsolved violent crimes. Their research is based on patterns of known criminal activity between gangs, and represents the first scholarly study of gang violence of its kind.
The research appears today on the website of the peer-reviewed mathematical journal Inverse Problems and will be published in a future print edition.
In developing their algorithm, the mathematicians analyzed more than 1,000 gang crimes and suspected gang crimes, about half of them unsolved, that occurred over a 10-year period in an East Los Angeles police district known as Hollenbeck, a small area in which there are some 30 gangs and nearly 70 gang rivalries.
To test the algorithm, the researchers created a set of simulated data that closely mimicked the crime patterns of the Hollenbeck gang network. They then dropped some of the key information out — at times the victim, the perpetrator or both — and tested how well the algorithm could calculate the missing information.
“If police believe a crime might have been committed by one of seven or eight rival gangs, our method would look at recent historical events in the area and compute probabilities as to which of these gangs are most likely to have committed crime,” said the study’s senior author, Andrea Bertozzi, a professor of mathematics and director of applied mathematics at UCLA.
About 80 percent of the time, the mathematicians could narrow it down to three gang rivalries that were most likely involved in a crime.
“Our algorithm placed the correct gang rivalry within the top three most likely rivalries 80 percent of the time, which is significantly better than chance,” said Martin Short, a UCLA adjunct assistant professor of mathematics and co-author of the study. “That narrows it down quite a bit, and that is when we don’t know anything about the crime victim or perpetrator.”
The mathematicians also found that the correct gang was ranked No. 1 — rather than just among the top three — 50 percent of the time, compared with just 17 percent by chance.
Police can investigate further when the gangs are narrowed down.
UCLA mathematicians have an algorithm. Hollenbeck has 30 gangs all armed to the teeth. Guess who’s gonna win that battle. Then there is the matter of pure demographics and the demographic future. This battle will far more be won in the bedroom than behind a keyboard.
What puts the LAPD at a further disadvantage is that California is literally out of prison space. You can have the world’s best algorithm on the world’s fastest supercomputer to solve the caper, but then what? You found the doer. Too bad the doer might not see a day in prison, even if he does get convicted somehow. But, you found the doer. Doesn’t that make you feel so warm and cuddly inside?
Far be it from me to suggest that Los Angeles restore its 1950s demographics, before Africa in America and Indoamerica South of the Border decided to invade it. That way, you wouldn’t need a fancy algorithm to solve gang crimes, because you wouldn’t have that many gang crimes.
Every time I drive through the Hollenbeck district, I imagine what it must have looked like when the area was White and Jewish — clean and safe, uncrowded, the parks graffiti-free and peaceful (instead of gang war zones), the schools the best in the country. Now it is dirty, overcrowded, run-down and wholly unsafe, the local schools score third from the bottom in the entire nation, only trailing behind those in Mississippi and Washington DC.
I hold out little hope for LA. It is a paradise for violent gang members, illegal aliens, the homeless and welfare eaters. For the shrinking tax base, it is becoming increasingly unbearable.
The LAPD Chief brags that the new LAPD graduating classes are over 1/2 Hispanic; White officers make up ~ 37% (and falling) of the police force;, blacks ~ 7% — a small number reflecting the fact that blacks have been ethnically cleansed out of LA by violent Hispanics. Order 40 allows violent, heavily armed foreign gang members to operate with impunity throughout the city, preying on citizens and businesses. Thanks to new legislation signed by Geriatric Brown, officers are no longer allowed to tow the cars of unlicensed, illegal drivers caught driving on LAs highways — even though unlicensed drivers cause five time as many fatal accidents as licensed drivers.
AND, as mentioned in the commentary above, California is SO completely broke that prisoners are being released onto the streets, 11,000 before the end of the year, 30,000 + over the next two years — but not before being RE-classified as “nonviolent” or “nonsexual” and of “no threat to society.”
In light of all this, Police Chief Beck and Sheriff Lee Baca are 100% against CCW for the citizens of Los Angeles, believing that “more guns cause more crime”, a lie John Lott debunked over a decade ago — both Beck and Baca are hell-bent on making sure that YOU, a law-abiding American citizen, and in violation of The Second Amendment of the United States, will not be able to defend yourself and your loved ones against violent, armed gang members and the 11,000+ newly released “nonviolent” prisoners.
Both law enforcement officers tell us that by YOU not having a gun to protect yourself, LA is much safer. If you believe that, there is a bridge over the LA River…
Baca is about to find himself in a whole new world of hurt. Stay tuned.
Is that enough to keep you from moving to LA? If not, there’s more. Lots more. Just ask.
Bon