Who is out there driving in-person economic spending as the country recovers from the pandemic? Right now, vaccinated consumers have been less likely to go out to restaurants and entertainment venues than those who don’t plan to get the vaccine. Early data shows that the vaccinated are still cautious and avoiding large crowds. Many states that have higher vaccination rates have had a slower rebounds of in-person spending and experts say that spending among vaccinated people will most likely be at full force by summer. Sarah Chaney Cambon, reporter at the WSJ, joins us for more.
Next, an interesting story about a man named Robert McDaniel who was put on Chicago PD’s Heat List. Chicago’s predictive policing program said he would be involved with a shooting, but didn’t specify what side he would be on. After an algorithm decided he would be on the list, police increased their surveillance of McDaniel and he also became a pariah in his own community… the increased scrutiny made people think he could have been a police informant. In the end, McDaniel was a victim who was shot twice on separate occasions. Matt Stroud, contributor to the Verge, joins us for Robert McDaniel’s life on the “heat list.”
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Tuesday. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles, and this
is the daily dive. Who is out there driving in
person economic spending As the country recovers from the pandemic.
Right now, vaccinated consumers have been less likely to go
out to restaurants and entertainment venues than those who don't
(00:22):
plan to get the vaccine. Early data shows that the
vaccinated are still cautious and avoiding large crowd Many states
that have higher vaccination rates have had slower rebounds of
in person spending, and experts say that spending among vaccinated
people will most likely be at full course by summertime.
Sarah Cheney Cambon, reporter at The Wall Street Journal, joins
(00:45):
us for more. Next, an interesting story about a man
named Robert McDaniel was put on Chicago p DS heat Lives.
Chicago's predictive policing program said he would be involved with
the shooting, but didn't specify what side he would be on.
I after an algorithm decided he would be on the list,
at least increased their surveillance of McDaniel, and he also
(01:05):
became a pariah in his own community. The increased scrutiny
made people think he could have been a police informant.
In the end, McDaniel was a victim who was shot
twice on separate occasion. Matt Stroud, contributor to The Verge,
joins us for Robert McDaniel's life on the Heatlets it's
news without the noise. Let's dive in dates with vaccination
(01:29):
rates below compared with states with higher rates, and so
again it supports that idea that higher vaccination rates or
not what necessarily triggering much faster growth in spending in
people's willingness to go out. Joining us now was Sarah
Cheney Kembon, reporter at the Wall Street Journal. Thanks for
(01:50):
joining us, Sarah, Thanks so much for having me oscar.
We're getting some data on who is powering the economy
right now. For a long time, obviously, to get out
of the pandemic, we've been looking to everybody getting vaccinated.
But what we're seeing in some of this first round
of data, as a lot of states are opening up
and everything a little bit more, it's not necessarily the
(02:11):
people that are vaccinated that are out spending right now.
It's people that are unvaccinated. To a point it makes
sense they might either be skeptical they might live in
states that had more relaxed rules around this, so they're
outpowering the economy right now, what are we seeing right
We're seeing that vaccinated Americans as in now are less
(02:33):
likely to go out to places like restaurants and salons
and entertainment venues than people who are not vaccinated. One
analyst I spoke with um put it pretty well, and
he said that the vaccinated are proceeding with cautious optimism.
So they are going out more than they were in January,
for instance, but they're just not going out as much
(02:54):
as people who don't plan to get the vaccine. And
you know, I'm interested in the story for for a
number of reason. It is obviously right to see how
the economy is doing, how people are getting out there,
but kind of also holds up a mirror to myself
in a way. I am vaccinated, but a lot of
this makes sense. We're in lockdown for basically a year,
you know, told constantly to be careful about stuff, social distancing,
(03:17):
mask wearing. Coming out of it's going to take a
little bit of doing. And even for myself, I've had
that pent up demand to go do so many things
but I haven't even been to a movie yet, partly
because there's not that many great movies out just yet.
I think next month the big blockbusters start rolling out again.
But even still, it is that kind of cautious optimism.
I find myself hesitating sometimes. You know, these COVID vaccines
(03:40):
have been rolling out for a few months now, and
so you have not insignificant portion of the population that's
fully vaccinated. But I think it's just it's so much
more than just getting that second shot in terms of
what's going to change people's willingness to go out to
You think a lot of it is that the vaccine
roll up is incomplete. So even if you are fully voculated,
(04:02):
maybe you're waiting for more people to get vaccinated. And also,
you know, you have the fact that public health guidance
from like the CDC is shifting. You know, they recently
used some face mask of restrictions. But it takes a
while for that sort of news to disseminate and for
to like meaningfully change people's behavior. So let's get into
(04:24):
some of the numbers that we're seeing, because there's some
interesting things in there. Let's start off with foot traffic.
You mentioned the article. This is a proxy for spending.
So what are we seeing as far as that goes
when people are going to airports, hotels, theaters, all this
other stuff. So foot traffic data from this company, it's
a research or data analysts company called Earnest Research shows
(04:45):
that foot traffic at airports, hotels, and theaters has actually
been climbing faster in states with vaccination rates below percent
compared with states with higher rates. And so again it
supports that idea that higher vaccination rates are not necessarily
(05:05):
triggering much faster growth in spending and people's willingness to
go out. For states that voted for President Biden and
they have higher vaccination rates, their rebounds of in person
spending are a little slower than those that maybe had
more relaxed rules and voted for President Trump exactly. So
the foot traffic data from Earnest Research shows that Blue
(05:29):
states have had slower rebounds than Red states. And you know,
there are multiple factors that could explain what's going on.
I don't think it's just one thing. Blue states had
tighter business restrictions really throughout the pandemic, and they're starting
to lift those restrictions. So we'll kind of see whether
those states start to catch up more with Red states.
(05:50):
And then also they were hit earlier on with the
COVID pandemic. A lot of the states in the Northeast
were hit really hard, so there could be some scarring
effects there for an since that have kind of kept
people from going out in those areas throughout the pandemic.
You know, when it comes to online shopping too, that's
obviously something that played such a huge role throughout the pandemic.
(06:13):
That's just another big thing. I haven't stepped in a
store to buy clothes physically for so long. I can
do it online, and so these kind of things are
gonna slow that return as well. And we did see
that the earnest research data show that online spending has
accounted for a higher share of spending and these more
(06:33):
vaccinated blue states than in red states. And so it'll
be interesting to see how much of that continues as
the economy reopens more and hopefully COVID cases continue to
go down. You know, how much of that online spending
differences is actually going to stick around. It seems like
everybody kind of agrees that summer is going to be
(06:54):
this big point where many restrictions across the country are
going to be lifted, more people will be vaccine aided.
You know, it's the summer months, so it's hotter, so
you won't have things like flu and colds and obviously
COVID circulating as much hopefully, so everybody's looking for summer
for that real big boom. Yeah. The Analysa spoke with
for this story, we're saying that, yeah, right now, vaccinated
(07:16):
people are not going out as much as not vaccinated people,
but that will probably shift some over the summer as
hopefully more people become comfortable kind of resuming their normal
everyday activities, just going inside restaurants and traveling more, and
it maybe even going to concerts or movie theaters if
(07:38):
good movies come out, right right, That's what I'm looking
forward to all of those, hopefully very soon. Sarah Cheney
Kimbon Report at The Wall Street Journal, Thank you very
much for joining us. Thanks so much for having me
offscreet in Chicago. It wasn't a habitual offender list. I'm
(08:04):
sure somebody's passed arrests and contacts with police would be considered,
but also their social media posts where they lived, where
shootings had happened previously, who they knew that might have
been involved in a shooting or have been involved in violence.
Joining us now was Matt Stroud, contributor to The Verge.
Thanks for joining us, Matt, Thanks for having me. I
(08:27):
wanted to talk about a very interesting story about a
man named Robert McDaniels. He was caught up in the
heat list from Chicago p D. There were using a
predictive policing program to identify people that could be part
of crimes. This was many years ago now, but Chicago
p D came to him and said that he would
(08:47):
be involved in a shooting. They didn't know if he
would be the shooter or if he would be the
one getting shot, and it just kind of swirled into
this whole thing. It made him a prior in his
own community. There was instant police surveillance on him because
he was part of this list, and in the end
he was actually a victim of a shooting twice over.
(09:09):
So Matt tell us a little bit about Robert McDaniels
and and how this whole thing happened. Robert McDaniel is
a resident of a neighborhood in Chicago called Austin and
he was placed on this list that was colloquially known
as the heat list, later called the Strategic Subject List.
And what that meant is that two police officers, a
(09:29):
social worker, and another representative of the local community came
by one day and told him, as you said, that
he would either be involved in a shooting or be
the victim of a shooting according to data that had
created an algorithm and created this list of the four
hundred people who CPD thought might be involved in in violence. Yeah,
(09:53):
and it led to surveillance. As you said, Uh, he
was tracked, he was pulled over, he was you know,
arrested on a couple of occasions for minor offenses that
would not have been noticed if police hadn't been looking
after him. Um. And because he was constantly being surveiled
and it always seemed that there were police around him,
people in his community UM started to question whether he
(10:16):
was a snitch or not. He denied that as many
times as he possibly could, but there's a lot of
animosity towards snitches in his community and um, the people
who he surround himself with. Uh, and they started to
think that he was actually a snitch. Um. And Yeah,
he was targeted. He said he was targeted twice because
(10:36):
of that involvement, because of his inclusion on the heat lift.
You know, once this happened, it was really its own
self fulfilling prophecy. There was so much scrutiny on him.
It seemed like something was bound to happen. That algorithm
that they used, and that was the other part of it.
There was a lot of secrecy around the algorithm. How
did he get on the list, why was he on
the list? All that, You know, he never really found
that out per se, but the algorithm said that he
(10:58):
was more likely nine percent of Chicago's population to either
be shot or have a shooting connected to him. And
as I mentioned, that's obviously what happened. Tell me a
little bit about the history of this data driven policing.
So geographic forecasting is used in many, many different police departments.
(11:20):
Most of the major cities in the United States used
predictive policing in one form or another UM. But the
the one experimental type program that has never actually made
it into reality before this UM is person based predictive policing.
Whereas where you know, police departments will use data and
they'll try to predict who's going to be involved in violence? UM.
(11:43):
It was tried once before in Los Angeles and their
program was pretty straightforward. From my understanding, it was it
was a habitual offender list. So if you have been
arrested frequently, UM, and it seems like you communicate with
people who are arrested frequently, they would do something similar
to what Chicago did, UM, which is you know police,
(12:04):
would you place you on their list, detectives would drop by.
It's something that would happen that was called Operation Laser
in Chicago. It wasn't a habitual offender list. I'm sure
somebody's passed arrests and contacts with police would be considered.
But also there are social media posts where they lived,
(12:24):
where shootings had happened previously, who they knew that might
have been involved in a shooting or have been involved
in violence. Um. But as you point out, the CPD
did not disclose the information that went into the algorithm,
so all of that is is pretty much a gas
as to what went into it. UM. This all stemmed
from work of a gentleman by the name of Andrew
(12:47):
Papa Christos who was at Yale University and was doing
research into connections that led to violence. He had no
intention ever of bringing police into his work. His intention
was that he would share information with community groups, with
(13:07):
social uh the social workers UM, so that they might
try to intercede and talk to people and try to
get them help so that they would no longer be
in any kind of risk. But he knew from the
get go that bringing police might bring this kind of
problem to people like McDaniel who were identified on that list.
And so the Chicago Police Department saw what Papa Cristos
(13:30):
was doing UM and then went to a different researcher
UM to actually write the algorithm and compile the data
that they gave to him. Yeah, and you know it's difficult, right,
police have so much information that they have to go
through to try to you know, catch these trends and
all that stuff. So they turned to this type of work,
(13:50):
these algorithms, all this stuff to help them organize that stuff.
I mean, there's a whole other conversation going around policing
and things like facial recognition technology. Right now. It's similar,
you know, similar in context, but the method of getting
there is a little different. And obviously, the very simple
but very important question what if the data that they're
using is wrong. Yeah, this is somebody who was not
(14:16):
involved in gang activities as far as I am aware
and as far as what has been revealed from the
arrest that stemmed from the surveillance. UM, this is somebody
who pretty much kept to him, not kept to himself.
But he was not involved in violence at all, from
what I can tell, from what people who know him
to say. But he was a member of the community.
(14:36):
He knew everybody in the community. And as soon as
he started being tracked by the Chicago Police Department, people
stopped talking to He became sort of a pariah. UM.
He lost the only jobs that he was able to
get the time, UM, and nobody was Nobody was willing
to talk with him or be friends with him. The
(14:57):
only people who were who remained close to him were
his siblings and his relatives who would come by the
house that he shared with his siblings and his and
his mom. UM. But he it really turned him into
uh pariah in that neighborhood. UM, and the people who
would have contact with him wouldn't have contact with him,
(15:18):
questioning his allegiance, questioning what he was going to tell
the police about what he knew about the neighborhood, and
obviously since he was a member of the community, uh
and knew everybody in the neighborhoods, he knew a lot
about things that were going on, and they thought that
he might bring trouble on people who were in that community,
and so it turned him into a target, a pariah
(15:39):
and a target. Yeah, he was a worst case scenario
on both friends. You mentioned in your article you spoke
with the Chicago p D official about the program, and
the attitude about it was, well, if you're on this list,
there's a reason that you're there. And you know, as
you just kind of went through about McDaniel's history, really
no indication that he would be into involved in some
(16:01):
type of violent crime, but cops were laser focused on him,
and they even went to his place of work one
time and demanded the open a safe behind the counter.
They found marijuana in there, and they busted him for that.
They busted him, and from what he says, though, I
haven't been able to substantiate if they busted the shop
owner to um the way that the police they did not.
(16:26):
They did not comment specifically about McDaniel's case to me
for this story. And they were pretty pretty adamant about
doing that the one I talked to them the first
time around. The people who built the program were very
careful about talking about it in this complexity, in saying
the people who are on the list are either going
to be shooters or could be the victim of violence.
(16:46):
And the reason for that, I gathered is because the
people who created the list initially did think that it
could be helpful, did think that they could uh prevent
shootings of people who were not involved in violence, who
weren't carrying around guns. But I don't think that the
police who actually are on a beat on the street
(17:07):
trying to solve crimes, took it in that way, which
is why I mentioned the habitual offender list in Los Angeles.
I think the police in Chicago looked at it that
way as an investigative tool, as you mentioned too, is
to identify people who might be victims. In the end,
it failed because Robert McDaniels was shot twice. Tell me
briefly if you can how those happened, stemming back to
(17:29):
that whole issue of being a Prianius community. People thought
he might have been a snitch so bad that that's
why they shot him. They were both connected to conversations
that he had with people who called him on the phone,
send him text messages asking about why the cops were around,
and then within hours or days of those conversations, he
(17:50):
would be walking in his neighborhood. Once it was during
the day, once it was at night, and he's ambushed,
and so he has the bullet wounds to prove it.
And at least from what he tells me, the reason
why and his belief is that it's because people were
afraid that he was a snitch. The second time around,
he didn't even report it to police. He said he
(18:11):
knew who the people were that were involved, but to
prove the point that he's not a snitch, that's why
he didn't report it, which is just, you know, crazy,
the life that this guy has had to live because
of all that. In the end, the program in Chicago
and even the program in Los Angeles have both been disbanded.
In Chicago, there are a lot of reasons why it
was disbanded. One of the main ones is that the
(18:33):
Chicago police part was spending millions of dollars, some of
it federal on developing this program, and then in the
midst of this, the Lacwon McDonald video is released, and
all bets her off in Chicago. The number protests arise,
distrust and police skyrockets, and at the same time, the
number of shootings after the release of that video just skyrockets.
(18:56):
And so the idea that cp D is going to
spend its time on vironmental technology that might be able
to identify potential shooters or victims and shooters becomes more
existential and not worth pursuing. And so they ended up
killing the program in two thousand nineteen and then officially
announced the beginning of last year that it was it
was not going forward. It's a really interesting story, lots
(19:17):
of details we couldn't get too, so I suggest everybody
check out Matt's peace on the Verge. Matt Stroud, contributor
to The Verge, Thank you very much for joining us.
Thank you very much for having me. That's it for today.
Join us on social media at Daily Dive Pod both
(19:39):
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and tell us the stories that you're interested in. Follow
us on iHeart Radio, or subscribe wherever you get your podcast.
This episode of The Daily Divers produced by Victor Wright
and engineered by Tony Sarrentino. I'm Moscar Mirs and this
was her daily dive.
It's Tuesday. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles, and this
is the daily dive. Who is out there driving in
person economic spending As the country recovers from the pandemic.
Right now, vaccinated consumers have been less likely to go
out to restaurants and entertainment venues than those who don't
(00:22):
plan to get the vaccine. Early data shows that the
vaccinated are still cautious and avoiding large crowd Many states
that have higher vaccination rates have had slower rebounds of
in person spending, and experts say that spending among vaccinated
people will most likely be at full course by summertime.
Sarah Cheney Cambon, reporter at The Wall Street Journal, joins
(00:45):
us for more. Next, an interesting story about a man
named Robert McDaniel was put on Chicago p DS heat Lives.
Chicago's predictive policing program said he would be involved with
the shooting, but didn't specify what side he would be on.
I after an algorithm decided he would be on the list,
at least increased their surveillance of McDaniel, and he also
(01:05):
became a pariah in his own community. The increased scrutiny
made people think he could have been a police informant.
In the end, McDaniel was a victim who was shot
twice on separate occasion. Matt Stroud, contributor to The Verge,
joins us for Robert McDaniel's life on the Heatlets it's
news without the noise. Let's dive in dates with vaccination
(01:29):
rates below compared with states with higher rates, and so
again it supports that idea that higher vaccination rates or
not what necessarily triggering much faster growth in spending in
people's willingness to go out. Joining us now was Sarah
Cheney Kembon, reporter at the Wall Street Journal. Thanks for
(01:50):
joining us, Sarah, Thanks so much for having me oscar.
We're getting some data on who is powering the economy
right now. For a long time, obviously, to get out
of the pandemic, we've been looking to everybody getting vaccinated.
But what we're seeing in some of this first round
of data, as a lot of states are opening up
and everything a little bit more, it's not necessarily the
(02:11):
people that are vaccinated that are out spending right now.
It's people that are unvaccinated. To a point it makes
sense they might either be skeptical they might live in
states that had more relaxed rules around this, so they're
outpowering the economy right now, what are we seeing right
We're seeing that vaccinated Americans as in now are less
(02:33):
likely to go out to places like restaurants and salons
and entertainment venues than people who are not vaccinated. One
analyst I spoke with um put it pretty well, and
he said that the vaccinated are proceeding with cautious optimism.
So they are going out more than they were in January,
for instance, but they're just not going out as much
(02:54):
as people who don't plan to get the vaccine. And
you know, I'm interested in the story for for a
number of reason. It is obviously right to see how
the economy is doing, how people are getting out there,
but kind of also holds up a mirror to myself
in a way. I am vaccinated, but a lot of
this makes sense. We're in lockdown for basically a year,
you know, told constantly to be careful about stuff, social distancing,
(03:17):
mask wearing. Coming out of it's going to take a
little bit of doing. And even for myself, I've had
that pent up demand to go do so many things
but I haven't even been to a movie yet, partly
because there's not that many great movies out just yet.
I think next month the big blockbusters start rolling out again.
But even still, it is that kind of cautious optimism.
I find myself hesitating sometimes. You know, these COVID vaccines
(03:40):
have been rolling out for a few months now, and
so you have not insignificant portion of the population that's
fully vaccinated. But I think it's just it's so much
more than just getting that second shot in terms of
what's going to change people's willingness to go out to
You think a lot of it is that the vaccine
roll up is incomplete. So even if you are fully voculated,
(04:02):
maybe you're waiting for more people to get vaccinated. And also,
you know, you have the fact that public health guidance
from like the CDC is shifting. You know, they recently
used some face mask of restrictions. But it takes a
while for that sort of news to disseminate and for
to like meaningfully change people's behavior. So let's get into
(04:24):
some of the numbers that we're seeing, because there's some
interesting things in there. Let's start off with foot traffic.
You mentioned the article. This is a proxy for spending.
So what are we seeing as far as that goes
when people are going to airports, hotels, theaters, all this
other stuff. So foot traffic data from this company, it's
a research or data analysts company called Earnest Research shows
(04:45):
that foot traffic at airports, hotels, and theaters has actually
been climbing faster in states with vaccination rates below percent
compared with states with higher rates. And so again it
supports that idea that higher vaccination rates are not necessarily
(05:05):
triggering much faster growth in spending and people's willingness to
go out. For states that voted for President Biden and
they have higher vaccination rates, their rebounds of in person
spending are a little slower than those that maybe had
more relaxed rules and voted for President Trump exactly. So
the foot traffic data from Earnest Research shows that Blue
(05:29):
states have had slower rebounds than Red states. And you know,
there are multiple factors that could explain what's going on.
I don't think it's just one thing. Blue states had
tighter business restrictions really throughout the pandemic, and they're starting
to lift those restrictions. So we'll kind of see whether
those states start to catch up more with Red states.
(05:50):
And then also they were hit earlier on with the
COVID pandemic. A lot of the states in the Northeast
were hit really hard, so there could be some scarring
effects there for an since that have kind of kept
people from going out in those areas throughout the pandemic.
You know, when it comes to online shopping too, that's
obviously something that played such a huge role throughout the pandemic.
(06:13):
That's just another big thing. I haven't stepped in a
store to buy clothes physically for so long. I can
do it online, and so these kind of things are
gonna slow that return as well. And we did see
that the earnest research data show that online spending has
accounted for a higher share of spending and these more
(06:33):
vaccinated blue states than in red states. And so it'll
be interesting to see how much of that continues as
the economy reopens more and hopefully COVID cases continue to
go down. You know, how much of that online spending
differences is actually going to stick around. It seems like
everybody kind of agrees that summer is going to be
(06:54):
this big point where many restrictions across the country are
going to be lifted, more people will be vaccine aided.
You know, it's the summer months, so it's hotter, so
you won't have things like flu and colds and obviously
COVID circulating as much hopefully, so everybody's looking for summer
for that real big boom. Yeah. The Analysa spoke with
for this story, we're saying that, yeah, right now, vaccinated
(07:16):
people are not going out as much as not vaccinated people,
but that will probably shift some over the summer as
hopefully more people become comfortable kind of resuming their normal
everyday activities, just going inside restaurants and traveling more, and
it maybe even going to concerts or movie theaters if
(07:38):
good movies come out, right right, That's what I'm looking
forward to all of those, hopefully very soon. Sarah Cheney
Kimbon Report at The Wall Street Journal, Thank you very
much for joining us. Thanks so much for having me
offscreet in Chicago. It wasn't a habitual offender list. I'm
(08:04):
sure somebody's passed arrests and contacts with police would be considered,
but also their social media posts where they lived, where
shootings had happened previously, who they knew that might have
been involved in a shooting or have been involved in violence.
Joining us now was Matt Stroud, contributor to The Verge.
Thanks for joining us, Matt, Thanks for having me. I
(08:27):
wanted to talk about a very interesting story about a
man named Robert McDaniels. He was caught up in the
heat list from Chicago p D. There were using a
predictive policing program to identify people that could be part
of crimes. This was many years ago now, but Chicago
p D came to him and said that he would
(08:47):
be involved in a shooting. They didn't know if he
would be the shooter or if he would be the
one getting shot, and it just kind of swirled into
this whole thing. It made him a prior in his
own community. There was instant police surveillance on him because
he was part of this list, and in the end
he was actually a victim of a shooting twice over.
(09:09):
So Matt tell us a little bit about Robert McDaniels
and and how this whole thing happened. Robert McDaniel is
a resident of a neighborhood in Chicago called Austin and
he was placed on this list that was colloquially known
as the heat list, later called the Strategic Subject List.
And what that meant is that two police officers, a
(09:29):
social worker, and another representative of the local community came
by one day and told him, as you said, that
he would either be involved in a shooting or be
the victim of a shooting according to data that had
created an algorithm and created this list of the four
hundred people who CPD thought might be involved in in violence. Yeah,
(09:53):
and it led to surveillance. As you said, Uh, he
was tracked, he was pulled over, he was you know,
arrested on a couple of occasions for minor offenses that
would not have been noticed if police hadn't been looking
after him. Um. And because he was constantly being surveiled
and it always seemed that there were police around him,
people in his community UM started to question whether he
(10:16):
was a snitch or not. He denied that as many
times as he possibly could, but there's a lot of
animosity towards snitches in his community and um, the people
who he surround himself with. Uh, and they started to
think that he was actually a snitch. Um. And Yeah,
he was targeted. He said he was targeted twice because
(10:36):
of that involvement, because of his inclusion on the heat lift.
You know, once this happened, it was really its own
self fulfilling prophecy. There was so much scrutiny on him.
It seemed like something was bound to happen. That algorithm
that they used, and that was the other part of it.
There was a lot of secrecy around the algorithm. How
did he get on the list, why was he on
the list? All that, You know, he never really found
that out per se, but the algorithm said that he
(10:58):
was more likely nine percent of Chicago's population to either
be shot or have a shooting connected to him. And
as I mentioned, that's obviously what happened. Tell me a
little bit about the history of this data driven policing.
So geographic forecasting is used in many, many different police departments.
(11:20):
Most of the major cities in the United States used
predictive policing in one form or another UM. But the
the one experimental type program that has never actually made
it into reality before this UM is person based predictive policing.
Whereas where you know, police departments will use data and
they'll try to predict who's going to be involved in violence? UM.
(11:43):
It was tried once before in Los Angeles and their
program was pretty straightforward. From my understanding, it was it
was a habitual offender list. So if you have been
arrested frequently, UM, and it seems like you communicate with
people who are arrested frequently, they would do something similar
to what Chicago did, UM, which is you know police,
(12:04):
would you place you on their list, detectives would drop by.
It's something that would happen that was called Operation Laser
in Chicago. It wasn't a habitual offender list. I'm sure
somebody's passed arrests and contacts with police would be considered.
But also there are social media posts where they lived,
(12:24):
where shootings had happened previously, who they knew that might
have been involved in a shooting or have been involved
in violence. Um. But as you point out, the CPD
did not disclose the information that went into the algorithm,
so all of that is is pretty much a gas
as to what went into it. UM. This all stemmed
from work of a gentleman by the name of Andrew
(12:47):
Papa Christos who was at Yale University and was doing
research into connections that led to violence. He had no
intention ever of bringing police into his work. His intention
was that he would share information with community groups, with
(13:07):
social uh the social workers UM, so that they might
try to intercede and talk to people and try to
get them help so that they would no longer be
in any kind of risk. But he knew from the
get go that bringing police might bring this kind of
problem to people like McDaniel who were identified on that list.
And so the Chicago Police Department saw what Papa Cristos
(13:30):
was doing UM and then went to a different researcher
UM to actually write the algorithm and compile the data
that they gave to him. Yeah, and you know it's difficult, right,
police have so much information that they have to go
through to try to you know, catch these trends and
all that stuff. So they turned to this type of work,
(13:50):
these algorithms, all this stuff to help them organize that stuff.
I mean, there's a whole other conversation going around policing
and things like facial recognition technology. Right now. It's similar,
you know, similar in context, but the method of getting
there is a little different. And obviously, the very simple
but very important question what if the data that they're
using is wrong. Yeah, this is somebody who was not
(14:16):
involved in gang activities as far as I am aware
and as far as what has been revealed from the
arrest that stemmed from the surveillance. UM, this is somebody
who pretty much kept to him, not kept to himself.
But he was not involved in violence at all, from
what I can tell, from what people who know him
to say. But he was a member of the community.
(14:36):
He knew everybody in the community. And as soon as
he started being tracked by the Chicago Police Department, people
stopped talking to He became sort of a pariah. UM.
He lost the only jobs that he was able to
get the time, UM, and nobody was Nobody was willing
to talk with him or be friends with him. The
(14:57):
only people who were who remained close to him were
his siblings and his relatives who would come by the
house that he shared with his siblings and his and
his mom. UM. But he it really turned him into
uh pariah in that neighborhood. UM, and the people who
would have contact with him wouldn't have contact with him,
(15:18):
questioning his allegiance, questioning what he was going to tell
the police about what he knew about the neighborhood, and
obviously since he was a member of the community, uh
and knew everybody in the neighborhoods, he knew a lot
about things that were going on, and they thought that
he might bring trouble on people who were in that community,
and so it turned him into a target, a pariah
(15:39):
and a target. Yeah, he was a worst case scenario
on both friends. You mentioned in your article you spoke
with the Chicago p D official about the program, and
the attitude about it was, well, if you're on this list,
there's a reason that you're there. And you know, as
you just kind of went through about McDaniel's history, really
no indication that he would be into involved in some
(16:01):
type of violent crime, but cops were laser focused on him,
and they even went to his place of work one
time and demanded the open a safe behind the counter.
They found marijuana in there, and they busted him for that.
They busted him, and from what he says, though, I
haven't been able to substantiate if they busted the shop
owner to um the way that the police they did not.
(16:26):
They did not comment specifically about McDaniel's case to me
for this story. And they were pretty pretty adamant about
doing that the one I talked to them the first
time around. The people who built the program were very
careful about talking about it in this complexity, in saying
the people who are on the list are either going
to be shooters or could be the victim of violence.
(16:46):
And the reason for that, I gathered is because the
people who created the list initially did think that it
could be helpful, did think that they could uh prevent
shootings of people who were not involved in violence, who
weren't carrying around guns. But I don't think that the
police who actually are on a beat on the street
(17:07):
trying to solve crimes, took it in that way, which
is why I mentioned the habitual offender list in Los Angeles.
I think the police in Chicago looked at it that
way as an investigative tool, as you mentioned too, is
to identify people who might be victims. In the end,
it failed because Robert McDaniels was shot twice. Tell me
briefly if you can how those happened, stemming back to
(17:29):
that whole issue of being a Prianius community. People thought
he might have been a snitch so bad that that's
why they shot him. They were both connected to conversations
that he had with people who called him on the phone,
send him text messages asking about why the cops were around,
and then within hours or days of those conversations, he
(17:50):
would be walking in his neighborhood. Once it was during
the day, once it was at night, and he's ambushed,
and so he has the bullet wounds to prove it.
And at least from what he tells me, the reason
why and his belief is that it's because people were
afraid that he was a snitch. The second time around,
he didn't even report it to police. He said he
(18:11):
knew who the people were that were involved, but to
prove the point that he's not a snitch, that's why
he didn't report it, which is just, you know, crazy,
the life that this guy has had to live because
of all that. In the end, the program in Chicago
and even the program in Los Angeles have both been disbanded.
In Chicago, there are a lot of reasons why it
was disbanded. One of the main ones is that the
(18:33):
Chicago police part was spending millions of dollars, some of
it federal on developing this program, and then in the
midst of this, the Lacwon McDonald video is released, and
all bets her off in Chicago. The number protests arise,
distrust and police skyrockets, and at the same time, the
number of shootings after the release of that video just skyrockets.
(18:56):
And so the idea that cp D is going to
spend its time on vironmental technology that might be able
to identify potential shooters or victims and shooters becomes more
existential and not worth pursuing. And so they ended up
killing the program in two thousand nineteen and then officially
announced the beginning of last year that it was it
was not going forward. It's a really interesting story, lots
(19:17):
of details we couldn't get too, so I suggest everybody
check out Matt's peace on the Verge. Matt Stroud, contributor
to The Verge, Thank you very much for joining us.
Thank you very much for having me. That's it for today.
Join us on social media at Daily Dive Pod both
(19:39):
Twitter and Instagram. Leave us a comment, give us a rating,
and tell us the stories that you're interested in. Follow
us on iHeart Radio, or subscribe wherever you get your podcast.
This episode of The Daily Divers produced by Victor Wright
and engineered by Tony Sarrentino. I'm Moscar Mirs and this
was her daily dive.
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