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Hot Spot Policing Reduces Crime in Real World Experiment

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Brad Rutledge

Today there is an abundance of theories about different strategies and tactics police departments can implement to reduce crime and save tax payer money. Unfortunately, like many theories, they can be difficult to measure, and prove – or disprove.

I recently came across an article in Dispatch called A Hot Spot Experiment: Sacramento Police Department that took the so-called Koper curve theory of hot spot policing, and put it to a real world test.

The Sacramento Police Department tested out the theory, which states that certain neighborhoods or locations will have an unequal distribution of crime when compared to other locations in the same area. The higher crime areas are called hot spots, and the theory says that when there is a visible police presence in these hot spots, crime will drop.

The CommandCentral Heat Map shows density of crime by time per agency patrolling area.

The experiment outlined a ranking of Hot Spots, and two separate groups (Hot Spot Policing, and Routine Patrols) were assigned. Hot Spot Policing was defined as having police officers who are highly visible in the assigned Hot Spot for 12-16 minutes every two hours.

The Sacramento Police Department tested the theory over a three month period. Following are some of the findings of that real world study:

Crimes in areas that used Hot Spot Policing decreased by 25 percent
Officer productivity improved due to Hot Spot Policing
Hot Spot Policing lead to significant cost savings (almost $300,000 over the three month period)

So, while this is only one real world experiment that seemed to show benefits to implementing the Koper curve theory of hot spot policing, more research can be done. I also found it interesting to see how vitally important accurate crime data and statistics are to implementing a technique such as Hot Spot Policing. Accurate crime data allowed Sacramento PD to identify Hot Spots, and track the impact of its experiment. Ultimately it seems, having the ability to collect, track, and analyze crime data, leads to better knowledge, and thus better decision-making.

Congratulations to the Sacrament Police Department for using their data to implement Intelligence Led Policing systems that lower crime, and save money. To read more about this experiment, visit http://cops.usdoj.gov/html/dispatch/06-2012/hot-spots-and-sacramento-pd.asp

Intelligence Led Policing Yardsticks: Data Cleansing and Management

Posted on February 25, 2013 by Detective Seals

So let’s start piling in the data! Right?

Not just yet cowboy; pull back the reigns for just a minute. I know you’re anxious to get your Intelligence Led Policing initiative up and running, but don’t skip the most important step: making sure the data you are going to feed into your intelligence system isn’t garbage! We’ve all heard the term, “garbage in, garbage out.” Well, the data integration between an RMS/CAD system with an analytics solution is where that term really comes to life. So many agencies I speak to have unwittingly made the mistake of pushing data into an intelligence system without vetting that data first. What makes it worse is that most of these agencies won’t figure out that they pushed bad data into their system until they begin to get results from that system that doesn’t make sense. Some of the most common results they will see as a result of bad data are:

Maps will be a mess
Multiple crime types getting bulked together (think murder, rape, theft, lumped together in an “other” category)
And generally, their numbers won’t jive with what they know to be true

So let’s talk about your data; I mean really talk about why it is so important to spend time on your existing data set to make sure that it is clean, standardized, and accurate. Don’t assume that your data set is correct. It may be a difficult thing for you to do, but I want you to assume that you data set is “generally” correct, but needs verification before it is trusted. As President Reagan said so often, “Trust, but verify”. Now don’t get me wrong, you can certainly use your existing data, as it sits, without verification, for your intelligence initiative. You can pull intelligence from that un-vetted data set and distribute that intelligence throughout your department. But, without verifying your data, your intelligence will be wrong.

Data verification is the key to good intelligence.

So how do you verify your data? Here are a few areas to check in what I would consider the most common error categories, and steps to take to correct any mistakes you may find.

1. Maps - Most commonly our mapping data, whether from GIS, Google, Lat/Long, or address, is far from perfect. As a matter of my experience, I would say that maps are one of the most inaccurate, yet one of the most desired data sets for an agency.

Crime map data comes from a variety of technologies.

Meaning, we all want good maps, but very few of us actually have such.

Why? – There are a multitude of reasons that our maps leave a lot to be desired, such as: inaccurate input from our officers and dispatch, duplicate addresses resulting from some unknown oddity in city planning, and GIS, Google and other mapping systems simply putting the map point in the wrong place. Very few of these, other than officer/dispatch mistake, are under our control. This is what makes the mapping issue such a big problem, many of us just throw up our hands and exclaim, “it’s out of my control, so we’ll just have to live with it.”

Effect – By leaving bad mapping to its own devices, we are allowing our data to be tainted. In essence, we are saying, we don’t really care about those crimes that are mapped incorrectly, we will just rely on the crimes that are mapped correctly. Of course, this is false logic because, as we all know, especially Intelligence Led Policing should be an “all crimes” approach. With an “all crimes” approach, we know we are getting the entire picture. Without it, we are only getting a biased view.

Solution – The first step is training – make sure your officers and dispatchers are entering the addresses correctly. After that is done, choose a software solution, such as the one I use, CommandCentral by PublicEngines, that allows you to identify incorrect mapping points and move them to their correct location. I have seen many software solutions, records management systems included, that allow the user to see incorrect mapping points, but very few allow the user to move those bad points to where they really need to be. CommandCentral, however, has gone one step further than just allowing you to identify and move your mapping points, it has streamlined that entire process down to just a few clicks of the mouse. I am able to look at all of my crimes over a particular date range in the entire city, un-click my zone designations, and then click a tab called “outside” that shows all of my crimes that mapped outside of my zone designations. I can utilize the administration tools to move mis-mapped crimes to their proper location. A quick solution to a menacing problem.

2. Crime Types – Used widely by agencies to easily designate the difference between certain crimes, such as Burglary Residential and Burglary Commercial, these designations have quickly gotten out of hand in many jurisdictions. What I mean by out of hand is that many agencies have found themselves with so many crime types, some have 400, 500, or more, that they have a hard time keeping the designations separate.

Why? – Let’s face it, so many times it is much easier for an officer to pick Theft/Other than it is to find the exact designation that the crime demands, especially when there are so many options. Whats more is that in so many records management systems, in order to run a report on a parent crime type such as theft, you have to run multiple individual reports on each crime type designation within that parent theft designation. And sometimes, an officer incorrectly categorizes a crime. He may write a burglary report, when in actuality, it should have been a theft report.

Effect – You find your data is scattered all over your records management system. For instance, in order to run a report of the thefts in your jurisdiction, you have to go to multiple report tables, run multiple reports, and then you still have to compile, generally manually, all of those records into one document.

Solution – Like Maps, the first step is training. Make sure you train your staff the proper way to designate each crime and more than that, make sure they know why it is so important to properly designate each crime. The second step then is to revert back to your software solution to make this whole process easier for you. I again refer to CommandCentral, it allows me to easily bulk my various crime types into easy-to-understand quick tabs. Meaning then, that all of my various thefts are bulked into one tab simply called “Theft,” while still allowing me to just choose one type of theft and generate a report on it alone if needed. The system also allows me to bulk these crime types myself. That way, if I want to move a specific crime type to another category, I can do so with ease.

3. Numbers – Truly at the heart of the matter aren’t they? The chief wants them, the city council wants them, even the FBI wants them. But if the data problems we spoke of earlier are not right, then your numbers are surely off as well.

Why? – There is a direct correlation between your numbers being off and the data supporting your numbers being off. As go the earlier topics, so goes your numbers, and so on.

Effect – So many times we are in a rush to get the numbers out that we forget the correlation. As a result of putting out bad numbers, we all look poorly to those we have created the report for. We are working with something the likes of a living organism, all parts must work together for all the parts to work correctly.

Solution – Begin by correcting all of the areas that you would get your numbers from, such as the areas we spoke of earlier. Please be diligent about this. You must understand that if your data sets are not correct, then there is no way your numbers, which come from those data sets, can be correct.

In closing, I want us to all remember an old saying some of us were taught in mandate school: “The Fruits of the Poisonous Tree.” Use it as a guide for our Intelligence Led Policing. If we use bad data (the poisonous tree) in our intelligence initiative, then the intelligence that we get out of that bad data (the fruit), is corrupt, misleading, and all around garbage. Your Intelligence Led Policing initiative lives and dies on the quality of the data you feed it. Feed it good, accurate data, and it will thrive, feed it fruits of the poisonous tree and it will wither and die.

Intelligence Led Policing Yardsticks – Department-wide Roll Out

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Detective Seals

All Aboard The ILP Train

No, this article is not about trains, but chances are the sub-title has got you wondering. When you think about it, the concept of Intelligence Led Policing is not unlike a train itself. A train is “a series of railroad cars moved as a unit by a locomotive or by integral motors.” So when you speak of a train, you speak of all of the cars linked together moving down the track toward one common destination.This analogy should be the same for the functionality of our departments. Theoretically we should be moving toward the same destination. Unfortunately that’s not often the case.

In my last blog entry I wrote that to introduce Intelligence Led Policing to your department first required a supportive and informed command structure. So now that our command structure has bought in to the concept, we need that information to be distributed throughout the entire department. Easier said than done. As law-enforcement entities we have a tendency to compartmentalize ourselves into different divisions or groups. The great majority of which have a purposeful and utilitarian role; patrol units, criminal investigation units, crime scene units, community outreach units, support services units, and the list goes on. However, these necessary yet compartmentalized units are a double edged sword. What I mean is, all of this compartmentalization adds to one of our departments greatest hurdles: where the right-hand doesn’t know what the left-hand is doing. We all know and experience this problem day in and day out. No matter which of these units you find yourself in, very seldom do you understand the scope of direction of each individual department.

Department-wide Roll Out

It is for this very reason that when you implement Intelligence Led Policing into your organization, it is imperative that you move forward with a Department-wide Roll Out. Do not fall victim to the line of thinking that says the only person(s) in your department that needs to be trained in Intelligence Led Policing are those that are in your ILP division. This is the same line of thinking that believes ILP can work based on ILP staff issuing reports to the department anchored solely on the training and information only the ILP staff know. In reality that kind of thinking just leads to a lack of trust and belief in the system because it all hovers around one individual or a group of individuals that seem to “hold the keys.” Allow your trained Intelligence Led Policing staff to introduce and train the rest of your department in how the methodology works and how each department member can and should have a role in the process. This way everyone becomes a stakeholder with key roles and responsibilities, guiding them to take ownership in the program’s success. This approach holds true for departments large and small – even those that can’t afford to have an ILP division with multiple people in it. No matter how you decide to implement Intelligence Led Policing into your agency, it must be implemented and trained upon at a departmental scale.

Here’s a Few Steps to Follow

Evaluate Technology Vendors – What vendors offer industry specific analytics solutions? Define a list of feature must haves versus nice to haves. Look at how any given system handles your RMS/CAD data, what feature sets it has (and what those allow you to do), how it secures your data, what type of support is provided by the company, how long a typical implementation and training takes, and of course cost. Note: while it isn’t totally necessary to make a technology purchase, the point is to develop new insights from analyzing your data over time in a rapid, on-demand manner. Manual analysis requires detailed manipulation that can take days or weeks to build reports – instead of minutes.
Introductory Meeting – Be prepared to introduce ILP to your agency in a series of meetings held with one to two departments at a time. You’ll want to define it, illustrate current agency pain points, describe goals with moving towards this methodology, and present a plan with a timeline for a full roll out.
Data Management - You’ve got to have a basic understanding of your data. Make sure your crime reports correlate to the appropriate crime types. They should also include date, time, location, and detailed notes. Some analytics solutions will help you clean your data so that you get valuable information out of your systems. But you still need to understand how that data has been entered into the system over the years. This may be a painful process, but will reap rewards that in the end allow you to make tactical decisions that help you lower crime.
Create Expectations - Moving towards an ILP model – while directed by the people in charge of intelligence – requires multiple stakeholders to pitch in. From analysts, to command staff, to officers, and dispatch, there should be clear training and expectations on how new systems will be used and processes followed.
Support Expectations With Training - In order to make sure all agency members are on the same page, prepare entry level training into how to conduct ILP and how to use new systems. Understand that some people will learn by listening and others need visuals. Don’t just talk about the new system. Be ready to open it, walk through it, and show the trainees basic functionality. Also, tailor your presentation to your audience. If your analysts will use the technology differently than your command staff (and they should), make sure you show each audience how they can use it to their specific benefit. Conducting online training? Record the session so people can follow up. To do all this you may need to bring in your technology provider to conduct the training. Reputable vendors will provide this as part of their package/service. Additionally, some will have options for consultancy. An consultant will be able to review your data, set up your systems, and take a deep dive with your intelligence person(s) in a way that goes beyond basic training.
Follow Up – Prepare follow up emails with tips and best practices throughout the year following the launch of your ILP initiative. It’s important to continually positively reinforce what your staff can do with the system. Schedule group meetings from time-to-time to illustrate key points. And finally, report results on a monthly basis so that everyone in the agency can see how this methodology is making an impact in the community.

In my first year of moving to ILP and integrating an new analytics solution we were able to gain insights and make field-level decisions that ultimately led to a 20% reduction in FBI part 1 crimes. The downward trend continued in the two years that followed. If you’re interested in learning more about how to get started, send me a note at daniel.seals@publicengines.com, I’d be glad to have a chat with you. Stay tuned for my next entry in this Yardsticks for Intelligence Led Policing series.

BYOD: Cutting Costs and Boosting Efficiency for the Cash-strapped Agency

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Jeff Beaver

So your agency is a bit strapped for cash. Sadly, its not surprising given the Great Recession’s far reaching impact on the operating budgets of law enforcement agencies across the nation. In fact, IACP’s 2011 study showed that 1/3 of agencies surveyed nation-wide expected budget reductions in 2012. Just this week, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck announced that his department would lose 500 officers without a $200 million tax increase to fill the department’s budget gap. It seems agencies everywhere are challenged to do more with shrinking resources but for most communities taking cops off the street to cut costs [is a last resort]. So where else can you find cost savings?

Technology as a Force Multiplier

As cash-strapped communities are looking for ways to cut spending while keeping more officers on the streets, many agencies are cutting back on costly tech budgets while others are shifting their operational models to use technology systems that improve efficiency and cut costs. Take for example San Francisco PD, who recently developed a mobile application that enables officers to file reports when out on patrol. Designed for use on smartphones, the new application eliminates the need to run back to the office to deal with paperwork which enables officers to stay on the streets up to 4 additional hours per day.

BYOD-Bring Your Own Device

Unfortunately for the San Francisco PD, they can’t afford the $1.5 million necessary to put smartphones into the hands of every officer. Chances are your agency can’t afford to buy the department that needed batch of tablets, smart phones or other necessary mobile devices either. But why should [the agency] dish out, if those devices are already in the hands of the workforce? Today there are more iPhones are sold per day than babies born in the world; as mobile devices proliferate in the hands of consumers, corporations and government agencies alike are adopting policies that let employees use their personal mobile devices for and at work. In fact, according to a March 2012 GovTech study 40% of state and local IT government professionals say their agencies already have some sort of BYOD policy.

Cutting Costs and Boosting Efficiency

While there are many reasons an agency might consider implementing a BYOD policy, cost savings is chief. According to a May 2012 Cisco Business Solutions study of 600 U.S. IT professionals, savings based on reduction of IT costs and increased productivity ranges from $300 to $1300 annually per employee. So how are government agencies using BYOD to cut costs and boost efficiency?

Device Purchase and Maintenance: By letting the force use their own smartphones and tablet devices, IT doesn’t have to purchase as many (if any) smartphone/mobile devices. Additionally, BYOD reduces (if not eliminates) the time and resources necessary for maintaining a fleet of devices (software upgrades, hardware fixes) as the responsibility for device procurement and maintenance falls to employees who own their devices.
Device Training: Specialized hardware and software can be a pain to get the force to adopt en masse. But, BYOD can enable employees to utilize the everyday devices that they are already comfortable using, eliminating the need for employee downtime for device training.
Phone/Data Plan Savings: Faced with a 15% IT budget reduction 2011, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission decided they were paying too much for employee mobile phone service, noting that many users weren’t even using their company phones, preferring their own devices. Implementing a BYOD policy gave employees access to agency email, calendars, contacts and tasks on their phones, monitored their data/phone minutes using mobile device management software and reimbursed them for work use. The result: the agency’s cost for phone service was slashed in half.
More Efficient Time in the Field: BYOD and the development of specialized applications (like San Francisco PD’s app to file reports on smartphones) can result in officers spending more time on the streets and less time in the office. BYOD gives police increased access to resources and communication when in the field, additionally giving mounted officers, cops on bikes and others mobile access they could only achieve previously by lugging around clunky ruggedized laptops.

Ready or not, BYOD is coming. Heck, it may have already arrived.

As more and more consumers get smartphones and tablets, its likely BYOD is already happening at your agency whether sanctioned or not; perhaps a detective uses his personal smartphone to check work email or maybe a crime analyst checks documents or pulls up crimereports.com on her iPad. Since people’s attachment to their mobile devices doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon, BYOD is most certainly on its way if not already here to stay. Our advice: Don’t fight it. Leverage it. Save some dough to keep more cops on the street, and more streets safe.

Already Doing This?

Let us know how its working for you, what cost savings you’ve found, and what other hitherto tips and insights that can help fellow agencies successfully implement BYOD. Use the comments section below to share your best practices.

“Why Intelligence-Led Policing? The Answer”

Posted on August 30, 2012 by Detective Seals

This is part two of a multi-part series on Intelligence-Led Policing written by Detective Daniel Seals of the Covington, GA Police Department. Stay tuned each Thursday for a new entry.

Why Intelligence-Led Policing

Well, because you are probably already doing it and just don’t realize it. Ask any of your veteran officers, “where are our highest crime areas?”or “who do we deal with the most?” They’ll all have answers for you, and they’ll all sound pretty similar. This is what Intelligence-Led Policing is all about though — taking the information you already have and doing something useful with it. That last part is usually the gap in most departments; doing something with it. Officers have actionable intelligence, but rarely do they put it to use or share it with other officers and command staff. There is for a multitude of reasons. For instance, officers are told; “stay in your zone/beat”, “drive around and make sure the public sees you”, “don’t get in to anything so you can answer your calls.” These are all generally good tenants of policing, but they don’t allow for an intelligence-led, focused way of policing.

Focus on High Crime Areas

If you know where your crime is generally and where it isn’t generally, then why not focus your patrols in the areas where crime is? This sounds pretty obvious, but all too often policing turns into a game of, “drive around and see if you find something while answering calls in between.” This is akin to the “spray and pray” method of firearms, where you fire your weapon multiple times in multiple directions with the assumption that you will surely hit something. We would never teach our officers to do this. We teach them to be precise and exacting on the firearms range. How about using the same precision and exacting nature in the rest of their job? Why not go to where you know the crime is and hang out there until you get a call? I guarantee your mere increased presence in these high crime areas will at the very least disrupt the criminal element in these areas. By no means am I suggesting a neglect of the other areas of your city or township, but rather a focus on the higher crime areas. This is, of course, a very elementary break down of Intelligence-Led Policing — it’s also an illustration of a starting point.

Extract Individual Information and Compile it Holistically

Intelligence-Led Policing starts with taking all of the information your officers already have, coupling it with other local, state, and federal intelligence, adding it to the crime data you have compiled in you records, and finally, mixing it together to create an intelligence product that your entire department can use. Again, this is not far from what you are doing now, it’s just a more structured way of putting it all together and most importantly getting it out to your officers so they can use it every day, all day.

Between now and my next entry, I encourage you to make a list of all the different information sources that you currently have access to. Because in my next blog, I will describe how to compile this information, make it accessible, and actually get your officers to “buy in” to this new way of policing.