[mintplant]

> Although, the solution would occasionally have issues with particular letters.

A mistake like this can and has destroyed lives.

http://thisiscriminal.com/episode-18-695bgk/

> Police officer John Edwards was patrolling a quiet neighborhood in Bellaire, Texas when he saw an SUV driven by two young African-American men. It was just before 2am on December 31, 2008. Edwards followed the SUV and ran the license plate number. His computer indicated that the SUV was stolen, and Edwards drew his gun and told the two men to get down on the ground. It wasn’t until later that he realized he’d typed the wrong license plate number into his computer. He was off by one digit. By the time he realized his mistake, one of the men had already been shot in the chest at close range.

[panic]

I'm not sure the license plate scanner is the one to blame here. Since when does stealing a car carry a death sentence?

[fao_]

Exactly, the fault lies with the trigger-happy police, not with the software.

[mintplant]

Of course. But it is precisely this "trigger-happy" nature which makes an introducing a system with an appreciable error rate dangerous. This at least partially (partially) accounts for higher costs.

[bigiain]

I wonder what the comparison of error rates between simple ANPR and "cops typing plates in" looks like...

[anitil]

This sort of thing doesn't really happen in Aus. I could see someone getting arrested and spending a night in jail unnecessarily or maaaaaaybe tased (and to be clear, whether we consider this a fair price to pay is a different question), but police rarely shoot people here.

[stevenwoo]

In my American government class in high school in Texas in 1984, I was taught to behave in such a way - keep hands on wheel, do exactly what you are told to, don't move suddenly, to minimize the chance police will kill you, because they don't know if you are a criminal with a weapon or not and a police officer has to be prepared for either situation. It helps immensely to not be an ethnic minority - representations in popular culture in America alude to the life or death possibility of every police stop for those communities like the recent episodes of the TV shows Insecure or Dear White People or Bruce Springsteen's song, 41 Shots. The other side of the coin is America extremely rarely prosecutes a police officer for killing someone, no matter what the circumstances, even if there is video.

[andrewstuart]

Yes it does.

Just the other day the trigger happy cops shot a couple of people at a swingers party.

[fphhotchips]

"The other day" = almost two months ago. Also, apparently (this is one of those stories with three sides) he was holding a fake gun without an orange tip or similar. Police say he was brandishing it, others say he didn't even have it on him. Who knows.

[anitil]

This is what I get for not following the news. I also remember a case years ago on Bondi beach where a guy having a psychotic break and brandishing a knife was killed. If I remember correctly this was used a justification for introducing tasers.

I should have said rarely.

[camillomiller]

A knife in the hands of a psycho is much more dangerous than you might think. If he's at close enough range a shooting reaction is correct.

[vincnetas]

You don't need to shoot to kill. You only need to disable a attacker, not kill him. "German Police shoot a knife wielding man in the leg in self defense"

https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=cfe_1440199540&comments=1

[DrScump]

Shooting is using deadly force. Shooting a suspect to intentionally avoid fatal wounds is a TV myth (most episodes of Quinn Martin's "The FBI" ended in this way, for example).

Every LEO in the country is taught to shoot only when deadly force is necessary and to shoot for the center of mass (and continue shooting until the suspect is down).

Shooting with intent only to inflict an immobilizing but not-life-threatening wound is inherently wrong and has been held actionable by the courts. If the LEO had the luxury and time to even consider such a tactic, then aim and fire, then by definition no innocent life was in imminent danger, and therefore the use of deadly force was excessive.

And if you take another look at your source, you'll see that there is no stated intent to only wound the suspect in that German case.

A good study of such situations is the Massad Ayoob book In the Gravest Extreme.

[jmnicolas]

Anybody that shot a handgun at the range will tell you that hitting a small moving target like a leg is not a guaranteed shot even by an experienced shooter (add stress, low visibility etc and this becomes even trickier).

If you come at cops with a knife I think it's "reasonable" they shoot you. What is not reasonable in the case of US cops is that they seem to shoot even non dangerous people and get away with it.

[camillomiller]

This is also very true, and it makes a difference.

[DrScump]

It's more complex than that.

Despite the tragic result, the officers were unanimously acquitted of any criminal wrongdoing.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/05/24/suprem...

[js2]

"Tuttle? His name's Buttle. There must be some mistake."

"Mistake? Ha ha, we don't make mistakes."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OalIW1yL-k

[StavrosK]

But the bureaucrat(?) did say "Buttle".

[js2]

Well I don't want to spoil the movie. Brazil is worth a watch.

[smcl]

"...and Edwards drew his gun" - I think this is the situation where the problem arose, not the license plate scanning itself

[cdfgg]

isn't it because the officer type wrong license? i thought the scanner purpose is to minimize human error like this

[michaelmior]

An automated scanner may be more accurate, but given that it will perform far more scans, I could imagine the total never of false positives being higher.

[michaelmior]

s/never/number/

[rasz]

sure, he typed wrong number and got same make, model and color stolen vehicle, also:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/policeman-b...

[DarkKomunalec]

No 100% accurate license-plate reader exists - and that includes human eyesight. Showing license identification confidence levels, as the author's code does, is far better at dissuading the cops from over-reliance on the tool, than pretending no mistakes will ever be made.