One Man's Mission to Stop Gang Violence Using
Social Media
This article was originally
published on September 15, 2016.
Too many of Desmond
Patton’s students on Chicago’s South side were struggling to keep
their focus when they came to school.
The reason why rocked Patton to his
core.
“As I was sitting and talking to kids
they would be like, my best friend was sitting there yesterday, he’s dead, or
my brother was shot yesterday,” Patton recalls. “I was like ‘How can I sit and
focus on grades and test scores when these young people are losing people day
to day?’”
Patton, now an assistant professor
at Columbia University, is doing his very best to change that.
Inspired by the tragic experiences of his former students, he’s working to
create an algorithm he thinks can prevent violence and possible homicides
in Chicago. To do so, Patton and his team of researchers are developing
ways to track social media activity which he says is directly linked to violent
crime in the Chicago area.
Columbia University recently awarded Desmond a $100,000 grant
allowing him to develop computational tools aimed at predicting and detecting
communication that can lead to gun violence in Chicago. The algorithm, he says,
is different from what police departments currently
use.
Click here for the full article.
Source: The Grio
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