A new GPS system that warns of high crime areas

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Updated: February 13, 2012 9:18AM

So I’m visiting an urban city and I am trying to find my way around.

Would it be a good idea to have a GPS navigation system that could steer me away from high-crime areas in the same way it shows me how to avoid highway construction?

Heck, yeah.

Such a device seems to be a reasonable response to today’s unfortunate reality: Too many criminals are prowling the streets looking for unsuspecting victims.

But a new Microsoft patent that could help people avoid unsafe areas is drawing a lot of heat.

Aol.com interviewed Sarah E. Chinn, a Rutgers University professor and author of Technology and the Logic of American Racism, about the controversy.

One glaring problem is that in online reports, the app is being referred to as the “ghetto app” even though Microsoft doesn’t call it that. The company actually calls the app a “Pedestrian route production,” a bland but harmless title.

“It is pretty appalling,” Chinn told Aol.com. “Of course, an application like this defines crime pretty narrowly, since all crimes happen in all kinds of neighborhoods. I can’t imagine that there aren’t perpetrators of domestic violence, petty and insignificant drug possession, fraud, theft and rape in every area.”

That sounds like a fair assessment unless you are the mother of Nequiel Fowler. Nequiel was 10 when she was fatally shot on Labor Day 2008 while playing on her block on the Southeast Side.

According to prosecutors, the alleged shooter, Luis Pena, was actually trying to kill a rival gang member. Pena is currently on trial, which means at this very moment the dead child’s mother is reliving this nightmare.

And she is hardly alone.

Every day it seems as if fresh blood is spilled in pockets of the city’s South and West Sides.

On Tuesday night, for instance, yet unknown assailants in the Auburn-Gresham neighborhood shot another young black male to death.

Although the murder rate is down more than 2 percent citywide, neighborhoods plagued by gangs and drugs, like Englewood, saw a dramatic increase in homicides.

It is no wonder so many black people have fled to the suburbs.

But whenever anyone dares point out that this madness is not happening in all of the city’s neighborhoods, and is primarily occurring in neighborhoods that are predominantly black, many of us bristle over the ugly truth.

In this instance, asking if the so-called “ghetto app” is racist is asking the wrong question.

The question we should consider is whether it is racist to refer to Microsoft’s pending patent as “ghetto app” in the first place?

“Ghetto” was scuttled by the media decades ago because it was deemed to be an offensive term used to describe low-income and crime-affected neighborhoods.

Today, people throw the word around as if it were innocuous.

Those people who are calling Microsoft’s patent a “ghetto app” are engaging in the same offensive behavior that they are accusing the software giant of exhibiting.

And don’t think for a minute concerned parents aren’t warning their kids about what neighborhoods to stay out of. There are teens who are chauffeured everywhere because their parents are scared to let them walk around the corner.

These parents don’t need an app to tell them their neighborhood is not safe.

But they also know Microsoft isn’t the problem. Microsoft is the messenger.

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Byron Pickett, along with members of his band, “Phenomenon,” will perform 6-8 p.m. Friday at the Little Black Pearl, 1960 E. 47th St.

The concert will give donors an opportunity to meet Pickett, who will leave on Saturday for orientation at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Readers contributed nearly $24,000 to help Pickett attend the famed music school.