DICFP is the name LAPD has given to its most recent version of “data-driven” policing. DICFP stands for Data-Informed Community-Focused Policing.
LAPD launched Data-Informed, Community-Focused Policing (DICFP) in April 2020 in response to the forced shut-down of Operation LASER, its central Predictive Policing program that operated from 2011 to 2019. DICFP contains many of the same elements of Operation LASER, but renamed and reorganized.
DICFP kept the main elements of what it calls “data-driven policing” of both locations and people. Information, reports, data continue to be gathered on areas, locations, communities, and individuals. LAPD claims to analyze this information to make judgements about where and who to direct police to target.
Image description: This diagram highlights the related roles of community engagement, ‣s, ‣, ‣, and more in LAPD’s “policing process.” Image source: LAPD’s guidebook “Data-Informed Community Focused Policing in the Los Angeles Police Department” (pg 13).
While branded as “new,” the basic elements of DICFP are the same as policing programs that came before it. It’s about surveillance of communities (with surveillance falling most heavily on communities that are Black, brown, indigenous, and poor, as well as disabled folks, migrants, trans and queer folks); the gathering of information or data about the community through various apparatus; the manipulation of information or data to create a desired outcome; and using that information to justify force and remove people from an area, or to banish them.
More so than Operation LASER (at least in its design), DICFP additionally uses the language of community policing to give the appearance of “working with community” and “building trust,” but these are tactics of infiltration and surveillance which also maintain control on funding and resources that might otherwise be allocated to community services and programs not tied to police.
<aside> <img src="/icons/sync_red.svg" alt="/icons/sync_red.svg" width="40px" /> DICFP is a new name for old tactics, using updated and more expansive technology. At its core, the intentions of DICFP are the same as all policing, both locally and internationally: to surveil, control, harass, gather information on, and ultimately remove or banish people from an area.
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LAPD started using DICFP in April 2020 and still uses it today.