Test pattern

Friday morning I had a speaking engagement on the University of Nebraska’s east campus. My audience was not your typical college class. Rather, it was a group of about 30 seasoned citizens taking a six week course entitled “Crime and Punishment,” one of many offerings of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.

Talk about sharp as a tack, this was one incredibly engaged group of thinkers. I noticed an esteemed professor emeritus of Journalism, and a recently-retired Lincoln bank executive among the attendees. They were ready to discuss, and shot lots of challenging questions. I’d love to see the mix between this class and Dr. Boohar’s students.

My topic was “Crime in Lincoln,” as discussion of crime statistics and trends. I had also been asked to talk about the use of technology in crime fighting. The technology part focused on our use of GIS to locate, respond to, and impact problems with POP projects—crimes that years ago might simply have resulted in responding to each report individually, then moving on to the next call. I used the Southeast Team’s impact on residential burglaries through open garage doors as my example. I also explained how technology is changing criminal investigations in some interesting ways. Most people would think of the CSI stuff, but my focus was on how we are now following the digital trail that suspects leave as they go about their daily lives.

On the discussion of crime statistics and trends, I exposed this group to the counter-intuitive fact that crime has been falling significantly in Lincoln since 1991. I used this graph (updated with 2008), and noted the various potential causes of crime decreases. As with every group I talk too on this topic, there is a certain surprise evident when the audience learns that crime is actually down. I explained to this group that the actual number of Part 1 offenses in Lincoln was less in 2008 than in 1986—despite the fact that our population has grown by around 70,000. We’ve effectively grafted the Cities of Grand Island and Kearney onto Lincoln during that time.

Why then, does it seem that crime is up? My next PowerPoint slide faded in this image, to answer that question:

There was a collective nod of understanding, and I really didn’t need to explain. This audience remembers very well when the Star Spangled Banner played after Johnny Carson. If you are 35 years old, you’ve never seen the test pattern. I noted that on my first day as chief, there were two reporters at our morning briefing, and that yesterday there were seven. There was only one TV station in Lincoln, no stations with a talk-radio format, no Internet, no sex offender registry, and so forth.

Everyone’s got one

An opinion, that is. The anonymity of the comments on the Lincoln Journal Star’s website causes people to write some things that they probably would never say if their identity was known. Personally, when I post, I do so over my actual name. I don’t put too much stock in anonymous comments to news articles, though from time to time there are thoughts worth heeding.

These two struck me this week, because they were two days apart, and both relate to traffic enforcement (or the lack thereof) on the same street.

This comment is from an article concerning a fatal accident that occurred at 84th and Leighton:

brian wrote on March 26, 2009 1:50 pm:

" I think it is time the city starts enforcing their traffic laws instead of weed laws, if they did i believe we would have less accidents resulting in death or permanent disability. I was disabled in an accident right here in lincoln due to someone running a red light. the new stoplight is not going to help until the police start emforcing stoplight and stop sign violations. Hopefully Tom Cassidy reads the paper and decides to do what they are paid to do , that is enforce the traffic laws, then maybe noone else has to live in agony or die due to needless traffic accidents. "

This one is from an article concerning two recent rape/robberies in the City:

Losing respect wrote on March 24, 2009 2:22 pm:

" LPD is quickly losing more and more respect when they have police officers standing in the middle of 84th Street with a radar gun pulling over people for a minor traffic offense of speeding. I guess this is the only "crime" they can seem to handle. Is it time to call in the big time guys from another agency? "

Getting jabbed from both directions at the same time comes with my territory. It’s one thing to have your ear to the rail of public opinion, it’s another to stick your finger in the air to see which way the wind blows. You’ve got to have your own compass.

Sign up, it’s free!

The President of the Woods Park Neighborhood Association posted a comment earlier this week, asking me how many people have signed up for Crime Alerts, using crimemapping.com. He’s interested in publicizing the service more widely to other neighborhood associations and their members, using the resources of some of our local newsletters and networks.

As of yesterday morning, there were 1,005 people signed up for Crime Alerts in Lincoln. That’s okay, but it ought to be well into the five digits, in my view. Seems to me that in a city of a quarter million, there should easily be 10,000 people who’d like to now if a mailbox down the street got vandalized, a set of golf clubs were stolen across the cul-de-sac, or a GPS unit taken out of a car parked one street over.

That’s exactly what Crime Alerts do—they send you a short email about the Lincoln police reports about crime within the distance you specify from your address. After you pick the address, the distance, and the crime types you’re interested in, the information automatically comes to your email inbox when the alert is triggered by a new crime report.

I’ve made a couple of attempts to ramp those numbers up in the past. I’m signed up for Crime Alerts personally in my own neighborhood, and I receive alerts from time to time about things I never would have spotted in the volume of police reports that cross my computer screen daily. It’s a simple, free, and effective way to keep an eye on crime in your own back yard.

I want people to know what’s happening in their area. If they do, they will be able to keep things in perspective, yet take preventative precautions that help us achieve our goals as a police department.

Don’t get over stimulated

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (AKA the Stimulus Bill) had opened up a number of funding streams for criminal justice. We are watching these closely, and frankly the announcements in the Federal Register and information coming out on the Federal agency websites are so hot and heavy that it’s a full time job just to keep up.

On the one hand, you don’t want to miss out on any golden opportunities. The whole goal, after all, is to get money moving into the economy, and some of it might as well move through the Lincoln Police Department. On the other hand, you don’t want to bite off something you can’t chew. Sometimes the eyes are bigger than the stomach. So, in order to avoid heartburn caused by overstimulation, we have a few principles that are guiding our thought process as we pick and choose our possible targets for application.

Look for genuine needs that cannot be fulfilled in our normal budget.

There is no shortage of these. We haven’t had capital outlay money in our operating budget for many years, and there are lots of items of equipment and supplies that need to be updated. Technology needs in particular are always looming—lab equipment, broadband, digital video, audio, and transcription to name but a few. Our crimes scene van is a 1991, and we’ve got to be one of the largest police departments in the country without a mobile command post vehicle.

Do not create a substantial on-going obligation with one-time only funds.

Here today, gone tomorrow—at least with many of these funding streams. One-time projects and expenditures are the most appropriate target for one-time funding. It takes over a year to recruit, hire and train a police officer. More personnel is the biggest need of all for us, but if the dollars are gone by the time the position is ready to go, you better be able to build the ongoing cost into your long range budget, or you’ve made a huge mistake even starting down that path.

Look for projects that are within our capability to manage.

We need to get cracking on anything we apply for and receive quickly. The economy needs the shot in the arm now. Some of the projects we have in mind would require significant management: grant writing; financial monitoring and reporting; the drafting of requests for proposals, specifications, and contracts; project management and performance testing; and so forth. We have limited resources to devote to these functions, and only a few personnel have the capability. The short timeline and the need to get underway in 2009-2010 is a limiting factor.

Do not start programs that create a constituency that will demand continuation.

A luxury once tasted becomes a necessity. Once you start a program, there are people with a vested interest in its continuation. If you’re not careful, the hue and cry when you try to sunset it down the road will become intense, and even political. Here’s what happens: responding to the uptick in crimes against gerbils, you implement a Gerbil Protection Unit. The officers get spiffy windbreakers with POLICE-GPU printed on the back, and join the International Association of Gerbil Crime Investigators. A few years later, the funding has disappeared, and it’s time to roll the function back into the regular operations of the department. Attempting to do so causes an uproar among gerbil lovers (and who doesn’t love gerbils!) The personnel in the Unit are cheesed at the demise of their chosen specialty. I’ve been through a Warrants Unit, D.A.R.E., G.R.E.A.T., and school resource officers in elementary schools. The tooth-gnashing and hand-wringing was significant.

Perception and reality

Don’t get me wrong, I’m mad as heck about two recent rape and robbery cases. We are working hard to solve these cases, and to stop this series before another victim is harmed. And I’m plenty annoyed at the two clusters of nighttime residential burglaries, too.

But some of the news coverage last night was, well, a bit sensationalized. One of the stories I watched made it sound like we were in the midst of an unprecedented crime spree. They even interviewed a gun dealer, prying a statement that sales were “up slightly.” I don’t mind law abiding citizens buying a gun for personal protection, folks, so don’t go off on me. My point is that the news coverage seemed to be portraying an out-of-control crime increase.

That is most certainly not the case. Here are Lincoln’s crime statistics, so far this year (well, as of Sunday) in comparison to the same period in 2008:

Keep in mind that we experienced a sizeable drop in crime in 2008, part of a longer term trend of crime decreases in the City. The number of crimes in Lincoln during 2008 was less than in 1986, despite a population increase of about 70,000.

During 2009, we will have some horrible crimes in this city of a quarter million. There will be several crime series, or patterns uncovered during the year. Any crime is one too many, but there’s nothing to be gained by exaggerating the situation by creating perceptions that are not reality.

We’d like to get your Wii back

Det. Sgt. Luke Wilke caught me in the hall the other day. He’s responsible for coordinating follow-up investigation on residential burglaries, and is getting a little frustrated at the frequency with which Playstations, Xboxes, and Wiis are being ripped off, but the victim has no serial number. I found 39 cases since the first of the year where one of these game systems was lifted in a burglary or theft. We have the serial number in only 17 of those cases. Those with serial numbers are posted on the stolen property listing on our public website.

Several times each year, we will locate a load of goods that we just know are stolen, but we are unable to match up the goods with a corresponding crime report. Often the property ends up with unidentified ownership, and eventually is disposed of at public auction.

So, do this for me: get your Xbox right now, flip it around, and jot down the serial number on a Post-it note. Take that over to your bookshelf, open the dictionary to the word “hermetic,” and stick the note on that page for future reference. Might as well do the same with your other CRAVED products while you’re at it. Thanks.

In perspective

The recent spate of residential burglaries with the same M.O. has a lot of people abuzz. Wednesday night at a speaking engagement with the Lincoln Women's Chamber of Commerce, I fielded a lot of questions and sensed a good deal of concern.

I'm concerned too, particularly since I live in the most recent target area. It's good, though, to keep things in perspective. Here's the past 15 years in residential burglaries through March 18th of each year:

(I wonder if there's a police department anywhere on earth where the chief could grab these data in 10 minutes while wearing his fuzzy slippers.) The long term trend is flat. The fluctuations are normal in data of this type. The heck with the data, though, I'd like to catch the thief. These are some awfully good photos, that's an unusual coat, and a distinctive stocking cap.

Now and later

It has happened again. After a string of unusually bold residential burglaries near 84th and Holdrege Street ten days ago, we were hit again—hard—yesterday by the same M.O.. We are now up to 28 burglaries or attempted burglaries overnight from the 17th to the 18th in which the theives entered (or attempted to enter) through the side or back walk-in door to the garage, and from there into the house while the residents slept. The burglars don’t penetrate very far—they generally have grabbed a nearby purse and split.

It just boggles my mind that none of the victims (or their dogs) have been awakened. Although certainly not unknown, this isn’t a particularly common burglary method. Burglars generally avoid occupied residences scrupulously. You never know when you’ll encounter a light sleeper with a 12-gauge and a bad temper—or a Dalmatian with the same. Although the walk-in garage door is a common entry point, you’re normally investigating a daytime or weekend burglary that occurred while the occupants were away.

The problem we now have is that the burglar(s) have succeeded in a pretty big way, which will not only encourage them to continue, but also inspire other burglars to pick up this method. I need everyone with an attached garage and a walk-in door to do two things: one now, and one later. Now, start locking the passage door between your garage and the house—religiously. Later, stimulate the economy: visit the home improvement store this weekend, buy the baddest deadbolt lock you can stand to fork out the cash for, and put that Makita and Rotozip to work for a change. Look over the door frame and jamb, too. You want to beef that baby up, so that a burglar would need more time, and make more noise. They don’t like that at all, and will move on. The last thing you’d want in this type of crime is to rouse the homeowners.

The security of that walk-in door needs to be at least as good as your front door—actually, better, since it’s more vulnerable due to concealment. These doors (are often pathetic: weak jambs, with cheap key-in-knob locks. A screwdriver is all it took.

The two neighborhoods hit yesterday were around Stonebridge, near Wilderness Ridge Rd. and Yankee Hill Rd., and Cripple Creek, near S. 44th and Elkridge. The later is my neighborhood. There are several police officers, troopers, and deputies who live in both of these areas. As you might be able to tell from the time I write my blog posts, I’m a light sleeper.

Talk with teens

I had a great afternoon yesterday chatting with a group of about 40 teens who are participating in the current session of Youth Leadership Lincoln. I had the group immediately after lunch, which is a tough slot with any audience. They were pretty engaged, though, as I tried to give them a session on the art and science of crime analysis. We explored some current crime patterns, and the time just flew by.

The kids spent the day at the police department, with a variety of presenters. Earlier, Erin Sims, who directs our forensic lab, wowed them with her CSI presentation, and Capt. Dennis Duckworth spent an hour of fast talking about running the show as the Duty Commander. I was followed by Nebraska Supreme Court Chief Justice Mike Heavican.

Later in the afternoon, I met with our Youth Advisory Council, a group of high school freshmen, in our main conference room. We had a spirited discussion about topics I’ve blogged about before: digital footprints. I covered a couple of recent case examples, and also talked with them about the impact the emergence of widespread private CCTV, Web 2.0, and social networking have had on police work—both from the investigative standpoint and as media of enhanced communication.

The weekend in police reports

Haven’t done this in a while (lightly edited to protect identities, click images to enlarge):

Hydraulic, and with flames!

The morning after


Ranch style



New York style

…or are you just happy to see me?

Home alone

I received an interesting email inquiry last week, on a topic I think a lot of parents have questions about:

"This is kind of a random question, but since our children are getting older, I've been thinking a lot about how much supervision they need. For example, are there any laws on the books about me allowing my child to go the park, etc. by herself? If, God forbid, something were to happen, would I be charged with child neglect? If nothing happened, would I be charged with child neglect? In all seriousness I do not know if I am allowed to let my children play unsupervised. Can you help me know what is legal?"

Here's the response I sent:

"There is nothing about specific ages in the law, except for a provision in Nebraska Statute (28-710) that defines child abuse and neglect to include:

causing or permitting a minor child to be:
(iv) Left unattended in a motor vehicle if such minor child is six years of age or younger;

If you want my advice, I think kids who are in preschool are okay in a fenced yard or rural lawn for a few minutes while a parent puts the laundry in the dryer; kids who are 7-9 are okay to play outside and in the neighboring yards by themselves with an occasional check up by an adult, and kids who are 10 or older can ride or walk down to the neighborhood park without any adult supervision during daylight hours. After age 12, I'll give you one hour after sunset for every one year of additional age, but never beyond midnight until you graduate from high school. Those are parent/grandparent observations, though, not law."

Police officers investigate alleged child neglect cases regularly in Lincoln where someone has reported children left along or unsupervised. There are thousands of latch key kids in Lincoln who take care of themselves after school. How old is old enough to be left alone is a highly individual question. From the standpoint of what constitutes criminal child neglect, our officers look at the specific circumstances and the child's emotional and intellectual development. Are there obvious risks present? Does the child know where the parent is and how to contact the parent? Is there an emergency plan or a backup adult? Does the child have basic necessities, such as food, water, heat, and so forth? How long is the child left alone? ...and so forth.

Reasonable people can all disagree on these things, particularly for kids in the 7-12 year old range. It used to be pretty common for 12 year-olds to be employed as babysitters, and for second graders to watch Captain Kangaroo while mom went to the grocery store.

Which is it?

I have a small collection of funny signs that I occasionally use in a PowerPoint when appropriate. A reader of the Chief’s Corner sent me this one, after reading an earliler thread concerning the no left turn signs on O Street at 56th and Cotner. Can’t have it both ways….

Crime prevention reminder

Although I’ve blogged before about how to prevent home invasion robberies, it might be an appropriate time to repeat the advice.

Forgot again

Over the weekend, someone got into the victim’s unlocked car and removed his loaded Glock Model 21 .45 caliber pistol from the glove box. When he went to the shooting range on Sunday morning, he discovered the pistol missing. The victim, who holds a Nebraska concealed handgun permit, had apparently forgotten to remove his pistol from the car the previous night. He told us that his habit is to keep to car unlocked because it ordinarily contains no valuables.

It would be a habit worth reconsidering, because it’s not the first time he’s had a gun turn up missing from his car. Back on October 1, 2001 he misplaced his Schofield Model 3 in .44 Russian caliber. He had it at the shooting range, but after a stop for lunch, it was missing from the bag when he got home. It's still missing.

I am aware of a handful of law enforcement officers (including one of our own) who have lost firearms under similar circumstances over the years. Like any other piece of valuable gear, it’s a target of opportunity if not properly secured, and we are all human. You’d like to think, though, that the loss of first one would be a significant emotional experience that would cause you to double and triple check thereafter.

Little early for that…

Weakest point

Over the weekend a burglar struck several homes in northeast Lincoln, all within a half mile of the intersection of N. 84th and Holdrege Streets. While the residents slept, the thief came into the house through the passage door from the garage, and (for the most part) stole purses. Most of the purses and unwanted contents were found strewn about the neighborhood.

Entry into the garages was made through exterior walk-in doors, which were left unlocked in a few cases, but pried open in most cases. For homes with attached garages, this is usually the weakest point, and a common target for residential burglars—particularly daytime burglars.

When I bought my first new house in 1981, the walk-in door to the garage was at the back, pretty well concealed from the neighbors. It was a hollow-core door with a window, and a key-in-knob lock—about as easy to break into as you could possibly imagine.

Your walk-in garage door needs to be up to the same security standards as the other exterior doors: a solid door, with a sturdy jamb, and a deadbolt lock with an absolute minimum one-inch throw. I’d put a secondary bolt on it, personally. I do not have a walk-in door in my current residence, which is even better.

Our burglar seems to have taken advantage of the habit of depositing the purse on the kitchen counter, or some other spot pretty close to the passage door. It made for a quick in-and-out for the burglar, with minimal noise. People rarely lock the passage door between the garage and house—another practice that would be good to change.

Weapon of choice

A few more agencies have joined the ranks of customers of the Omega Group that are offering their residents crimemapping.com as a means of keeping track of crime in their jurisdiction. I think its a decidedly good thing when citizens understand what’s going on in their own community, and realize that the police are dealing with more than the two or three items that happened to make the news on any given day.

The Peoria, Illinois Police Department is one of the recent additions at crimemapping.com. They have great data, and I particularly like the fact that (like Lincoln) Peoria includes short narrative comments for the crimes they map. I think these comments are helpful to understanding the context of crime.

For example, I received a Crime Alert last week pertaining to a crime right around the corner from my house. I’ve subscribed to a buffer of two-tenths of a mile from my address. I probably would not have known about it otherwise, due to the volume of crime we deal with in Lincoln. The comments in the Crime Alert indicated that an unlocked pickup had been entered, and some coins taken from the console. That’s a much different picture than the map alone, had the crime icon been labeled without the comments.

Interestingly, when I visited Peoria and clicked on my very first offense in crimemapping.com, it was this one (click image to enlarge):

I will add the egg McMuffin to my list of odd assault weapons.

By the way, I downloaded the Apple Safari (public beta 4) browser last week. There are definately some performance differences between browsers. I’ve tried Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and IE 8, but Safari is now my weapon of choice for crimemapping.com.

M.O. worth watching

Yesterday's theft at the Berean Church in Lincoln will certainly go down as one of the more interesting heists of the year. A man posing as an employee of the armored car service used by the church walked in wearing a rather generic security uniform. "Carl" was handed the weekend offering of around $145,000, initialed the receipt and waltzed out. About 15 minutes later, the real guard showed up. I wouldn't normally mention the amount (we don't like to entice other criminals), but somehow this already showed up in the press. I wonder if a reporter caught it on the police scanner.

It sounds like a movie plot. Round up Brad Pitt, Robert Wagner, and Pierce Brosnan! I thought there was a good chance that this distinctive modus operandi would show up elsewhere, and did some quick research on the Internet. I haven't found any similar cases, but if any readers of the Chief's Corner have any ideas for search terms or techniques, have at it. It's just a little hard to believe that this smooth operator was a first-timer.

Although most of the offering was in checks (less than $5,000 was cash), that's still a very good haul. Our three convenience store robberies so far this year have netted a combined total of less than $100. I wouldn't be surprised if the same scheme doesn't show up elsewhere in the future. Large congregations, beware.

I stand corrected

I think I will eat my crow before someone dishes it up for me. I shot from the hip--or maybe from the lip. In my previous post I claimed that relative police reporting practices are responsible for the disparity in traffic crash rates between Lincoln and Omaha. In fact, this appears not to be the case. I stand corrected.

Despite differences in our reporting practices (which may still exist), the difference between our crash rates described in the Omaha World Herald article do not appear to be due to the numerator (number of crashes), but rather the denominator: million miles driven. I went to the actual source data, the monthly recapitulations of traffic crash reports from the official keeper-of-the-records: the Nebraska Department of Roads. Here's what the "winter" of 2007-2008 looks like, when you examine box 17 on these monthly reports:

It appears from these data that the crash rates per capita in these cities are very similar. I did the same math for calendar year 2007 and for 2008, with similar results: Lincoln's rate per capita is within a gnat's eyelash of Omaha's: very slightly greater in 2007, very slightly lower in 2008. This would tend to confirm Allstate's ranking of traffic crash claim rates, which put us very close together.

Since the number of crashes lines up with population, the difference in crash rates per million miles driven is attributable to the much greater miles driven in Omaha--way out of proportion to any population difference. One might reasonably conclude that drivers in a larger city drive a little further on average, but that effect should be pretty minuscule. I suspect that the theory floated by Fred Zwonechek of the Nebraska Department of Motor Vehicles concerning the influence of a interstate travel through Omaha upon the million-miles-driven denominator is correct.

In the future, Casady, do your analysis before popping off. Mea culpa.

Neither, it’s the police.

Is it the drivers or the streets? That’s the question Omaha World Herald reporter Tanna Kimmerling asked in the headline of a Saturday article which purports to show that Lincoln more than doubles the wintertime traffic crash rate of Omaha.

It’s neither. This is a classic example of a reporting phenomenon: the Lincoln police department is simply more likely to submit reports of minor collisions to the Nebraska Department of Roads than our Omaha counterparts—particularly collisions occurring during inclement weather. I could reduce our rate dramatically with the stroke of a pen by not submitting reports on non-injury crashes with damages of less than $1,000 to the property of any one person, or by declaring a moratorium on non-injury traffic crash investigations anytime the snow starts falling in appreciable quantities.

A pretty good indicator of the genuine comparison of these two cities would be accident claims filed with insurance companies, rather than police reports filed with the Department of Roads. Allstate Insurance produces just that, with their annual America's Best Drivers Report. For 2008, Omaha and Lincoln ranked 16th and 19tn on the list of the safest of the 200 largest cities in the United States. The link to the 2007 report is dead, but in 2006, the order was reversed: Lincoln 22nd, Omaha 23rd. In 2005 Lincoln was 16th and Omaha 27th.

Suffice it to say that Lincoln and Omaha are neck-in-neck as some of the safest among the 200 largest cities in the United States. Before anyone gets too wound up about how Lincoln drivers are the world’s worst, please review my previous post on this topic, and be prepared to defend your position with something other than your wistful memories of the smooth-and-skilled navigators of the Lake Wobegon freeway system.

Right Lincoln

I got a great email yesterday, from a former Lincoln resident. This time, it was definitely the right Lincoln. The author had discovered our Facebook page, and wrote to tell me about a couple of excellent interactions he had with LPD during his years as a resident of the North Bottoms. Here's an excerpt:

"First of all I was stunned that officers actually responded to the call (I had just recently moved back from [another city] where the police are substandard). They were very professional in taking the report, and then left. I was not expecting them to actually LOOK FOR my bicycle (not a high priority in my own opinion). After they had left I went to work. Twenty minutes after I had arrived at work I got a telephone call from one of the officers. They had found my bike. ...When I asked where they had found it, he told me that he saw a male riding it... I'm taking the long way of saying that I was IMPRESSED with the fact that they were actually looking for the bike. VERY impressed."

Not only was it nice to get some positive feedback with the details about a couple specific examples, was really impressed me was that the writer had such a solid memory of a theft that occurred 11 years ago, on February 28, 1998. The investigating officer, Mike Pratt, saw the bike ride by while he was on another call later than morning, and nabbed a career criminal with an extensive record. He ultimately went to prison a couple years later for another offense, and was released in late 2005. The sudden end to his long string of arrests suggests to me that he probably has moved to another City--a good result for citizens in Lincoln.