NYPD bypassed facial recognition ban to ID pro-Palestinian student protester

>A city fire marshal used FDNY’s access to a facial recognition software to help NYPD detectives identify a pro-Palestinian protester at Columbia University, circumventing policies that tightly restrict the Police Department’s use of the technology.

Why does the fire department need access to run facial recognition?

> Why does the fire department need access to run facial recognition?

Arson investigation, identifying the people at the scene of a suspicious fire?

The job of the fire department should be to fight fires, not to investigate crimes.

The police should be the ones investigating crimes, under extremely strict and limited guidelines (eg. 4th amendment) which in this case include not being allowed to use facial recognition software.

So adding more responsibilities to police to now also get expert level training in determining causes of fires and finding clues in a fire incident. That's kind of how we got here. Where the police are a panacea making them less effective and more corrupt since they are an even bigger keystone.

Separating out duties to experts is more effective. Let the fire department investigate fires and then pass on the information for the police to secure the suspect/s and follow the justice system. Same with mental health emergency cases. More social workers and experts dealing with a variety of mental disorders will be better to work people in crisis since they are trained for that.

The skills for putting out fires is very different from those for investigating fire-related crimes. It's literally a subarea of forensic science...