Sheriff admits program to predict crime violated Constitution, has failed

A sheriff whose department several years ago implemented a program to predict crime, a move that resulted in the harassment of individuals in the county, has conceded its failure, its violation of the Constitution, and promised it will never return.

The decisions are the result of a lawsuit brought by the Institute for Justice over the schemes by the sheriff in Pasco County, Florida.

According to a report from the IJ, “For more than three years, the Pasco County, Fla., sheriff vigorously resisted a federal lawsuit brought by the Institute for Justice (IJ) challenging a controversial policing program that resulted in repeated harassment of children and their families. Today, on the eve of trial, the sheriff capitulated—admitting that the program resulted in repeated constitutional violations and pledging that it will never resume. ”

The legal team explained the challenged program “has been compared to a real-life version of ‘Minority Report.’ Using a crude computer algorithm, designed to predict who would commit future crimes, the Pasco sheriff’s office identified a list of ‘prolific offenders.'”

Without evidence, people, many under 18, were placed on the list and their families “were subjected to ‘prolific offender checks,’ during which deputies looked to cite them for issues like having grass that was too long, missing house numbers, unvaccinated pets, and excessive window tint on parked cars.”

It’s now gone, the IJ confirmed.

“For years, the Pasco sheriff ran an unconstitutional program, harassing kids and their parents because a glorified Excel spreadsheet predicted they would commit future crimes,” charged IJ lawyer Rob Johnson, “Today the sheriff acknowledged that dystopian program violated the Constitution and agreed never to bring it back.”

In the agreement settling the dispute, the sheriff confirmed his program violated the Fourth Amendment because while law enforcement has an “implied license” to knock on any resident’s door, the scheme involved officers who “exceeded” that by repeatedly confronting their targets.

”Second, the sheriff admitted that the program violated the First Amendment, which protects people from being punished for their ‘intimate associations,’ like with their family members,” the IJ said.

Finally, the program violated the due process requirements of the 14th Amendment because the program interfered with the targets’ “liberty interests.”

The agreement also includes a “six-figure settlement for the plaintiffs,” the IJ reported.

“For years, the Pasco sheriff’s office treated me like it could do anything it wanted,” Darlene Deegan said. “But today proves that when ordinary people stand up for themselves, the Constitution still means what it says.”

Evidence uncovered during the development of the case found that one deputy stated as his agenda against one target, “The goal is to get them to move away or go to prison.”

Another deputy bragged about getting his targets evicted from their homes.

The institute also confirmed it found “hundreds of hours of body camera footage, vividly depicting the harassment of plaintiffs and their families. In one video, deputies walk around the back of a plaintiff’s house late at night and knock on his window, telling him to come out of the house so they can write him a code citation. In another video, a deputy expressly tells a plaintiff that they are writing her citations because her son was on their offender list. In another, one deputy tells another they are going to ‘keep on harassing them, every single day.'”