Pre-Crime Goes Live

Nope, we're not talking about "The Minority Report", the superb Phillip K Dick story, nor Minority Report the not-so-bad Tom Cruise film, nor even Minority Report, the aggressively adequate TV series.  No, we now have police departments around the country who claim with a straight face that they can predict which people are going to commit crimes, and intervene in these people's lives to prevent those crimes.  Whether or not these departments have recently hired precogs has not been disclosed, for your security.

I have to admire the reporter for the New York Times who somehow managed to report this as a straight news story and not a science-fiction parody.  I think the single mention in the Times story that "Civil liberties groups take a dim view of the strategy, questioning its legality and efficacy, and asserting that it may actually worsen the rapport between the police and civilians." also took an awful lot of self-discipline.

I won't hold back with my opinion, because hey, it's my blog.  I think the racial imbalance of these programs will easily approach 100%, especially in the South.