A Blockchain Solution to a Public Safety Problem

There is a clear need for public safety reform in the city of Minneapolis. I recently sat down with @kommienezuspadt and @lovejoy to consider this issue alongside the ideas presented in Dan Larimer's book More Equal Animals. We came up with a way to use blockchain and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to improve relations between the community and police. With the need for change currently on full display in the Derek Chauvin trial, it's possible our idea will actually go somewhere.

Background

In the wake of demonstrations stemming from George Floyd's public killing by Minneapolis police last year, a majority of the city's councilors said they supported disbanding the city's police department. The idea had precedent. Camden, New Jersey's Police Department was formally disbanded in 2013 in response to a budget crisis. Camden's unionized force was replaced with officers who were told from day one that their job was more like the Peace Corps than like the Special Forces. Despite some hiccups along the way, the Camden approach seemed like a success story Minneapolis could draw on.

Within a few months, however, the effort to dismantle the MPD collapsed. All that came out of it was a relatively minor budget cut which included no staffing changes in the department. During this time, police significantly slowed down service to neighborhoods like mine. Total violent crime increased by 21% in 2020. As Forbes reported in December, "Police have recorded 532 gunshot victims so far this year, more than double the number reported last year. Carjackings are also up 331% from the same period last year and violent crimes have surpassed 5,100, over 1,000 more than what was reported in 2019."

Derek Chauvin was one of the officers involved in George Floyd's death. He is currently on trial to determine his legal culpability in the killing. Regardless of the verdict, the past year has exposed the need for drastic reforms to Minneapolis public safety. Popular news coverage suggests police unions are a barrier to such reforms. But bureaucratic quagmires in city government also impede reform efforts. Overcoming these barriers calls for creativity.

Rebuilding Trust with a Community-Based Metric

Picture an app built around a database of police officer profile pics and badge numbers. Every city resident would have an account on the app, and would be allotted a number of NFTs equal to the number of police on the force. Residents would give individual officers a community approval badge (CAB) NFT for providing good service. Poor service would be answered with withholding or withdrawing the CAB. A democratic elections process could determine governance within the app. The system would be built on a public blockchain to maximize transparency and accountability.

Such an app would essentially create a new, community-based metric for police performance. A metric like this could be very useful. Local media could use it to publish weekly or monthly stories celebrating exemplary officers. Residents could use it to determine which particular officers have conducted themselves in a satisfactory or problematic manner. The absence of CABs or a sharp decline in an officer's number of CABs would warrant attention. It could trigger a performance review within the department, an action by city government, a media report, or a response from a community group.

The big idea here is to realign stakeholder incentives. Police officers would be incentivized by social rewards and professional consequences to provide good service. The prospect of safer streets might be enough to incentivize residents to use the app honestly, but the app could also provide reputational benefits to users for active participation. When officers respond to calls at businesses, business owners might like to know how many CABs are held by responding officers. By realigning incentives in these and other ways, community trust in public safety could be rebuilt.

Feasibility

It is technically feasible to make a blockchain app that generates a useful public safety metric from user activity. And we are in a moment when Minneapolis is sorely in need of solutions to its policing problem. But this is not a tried and true idea. It is a radical departure from the status quo. For the idea to work, police would have to provide their badge numbers to everyone at every service call, perhaps by handing out printed cards. Asking police to do this may not seem unreasonable, but asking anyone to change their behavior, even in small ways, is naturally thorny. Plus, some officers probably wouldn't welcome the professional scrutiny.

All things considered, there may turn out to be no political appetite for an app like this. But the relationship between Minneapolis and its police is tense. Politicians want to diffuse this tension, and might appreciate having a new tool at their disposal. In the long run, such a tool could perhaps also be productively applied to other segments of government. Assuming all of the details could be worked out, the cost would be modest with enormous potential gains.

This article was originally published on Voice for Cryptowriter in association with Voice. I'm sharing it here as well because I think it contains ideas that you may find interesting.