Officers used arrest records, social networks, and police data to generate a list of people they believed were at heightened risk of being involved in a shooting — then showed up at those people's homes to let them know they were being watched.
Thin Blue Lie is a reporting-driven examination of how American policing quietly remade itself around data, technology, and risk prediction—and how those systems failed long before the public noticed.
The Pentagon calls this "use it or lose it." The idea is that if you don't spend your budget before the fiscal year ends, Congress cuts it next year. So you spend.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette — a 240-year-old institution — nearly died this spring. It was rescued at the last minute by a nonprofit called the Venetoulis Institute, which promptly cut roughly 40 percent of staff, with union members bearing the brunt.
