The Director's Desk

Thanks, Tony

2012-01-27T04:35:00.018-06:00

Wednesday night around 2130, my home phone rang, and it was Chief Jim Peschong. Jim was on his way to the hospital in York, about 40 miles away, and shared the tragic news that Officer Tony Howe had been killed in a single-vehicle traffic crash while on his way to work from his home there. Tony was an eight year veteran of LPD. Our hearts and prayers go out to his wife, children, parents, and family.

From time to time, we have dealt with passing of a coworker. Sometimes it has been the culmination of a long struggle; sometimes it has happened in an unimaginable instant. The thought of a young colleague suddenly taken from his family and friends is almost inconceivable. It takes some time to sink in. There was a pall over LPD last night and today. That standard "how ya doin?" greeting was mysteriously absent, as was the laughter, the smiles, and friendly banter. Everyone was thinking about Tony, and had the same lump-in-the-throat feeling. It could have been any of us. It could have been my family, my wife, my son, my dad, getting the news that Tony's family had to deal with.

I don't know whether this is unique to this work, because I really haven't done much anything else, but it seems to me that police officers develop a particularly strong bond. It's probably similar in other jobs where people share a set of experiences, both inspiring and terrifying, that most people can barely relate too. It creates a sense of family, a brotherhood and sisterhood, that's hard to describe, but palpable. It brings us together in the times when the mutual support is most needed: in the face of both exhilarating accomplishments, or crushing blows, when we share the highs and lows of life. It's a lot like a big extended family at such times, and in a strange way, even in tragedy it is comforting.

Tony Howe was a fine police officer and deputy sheriff. His career in law enforcement brought him to Lincoln in 2003, after serving at the York Police Department and the York County Sheriff's Office. I felt fortunate at the time to have the opportunity to hire someone with Tony's experience, and he never dissappointed me. He was well-liked and respected here. He was just recently assigned as an investigator in our Criminal Investigations Team. This is a highly sought after position, and the selection is competitive. You get this job when your supervisors and peers recognize your proven work ethic, performance, and talent as exemplary. It is a testament to Tony's reputation and track record as a Lincoln police officer. But more importantly, Tony was a fine husband, dad, son and man. He was exceptionally active in the community, and will be sorely missed by all those whose lives he touched.

Among the condolences I received yesterday was an unexpected one from the Executive Director of the Teammates Mentoring Program. I am on the Teammates Board, yet I did not even know that Tony, aside from raising three children of his own, served as a mentor in his hometown. Suzanne wanted me to know that Tony will be missed by the youngster he has been partnered with for the past two years. Police work is plenty exhausting. All the more so when you face an 80 mile round trip commute everyday to a night shift, with the not-so-unusual court appearances, hearings, training sessions and the like, which almost inevitably take place in the middle of your "night" or on your days off. Yet despite a demanding career and a growing family, the blur of work, kids, cub scouts, youth sports, and Sunday school, Tony made room to serve as a one-on-one mentor to a youngster who needed his presence, encouragement, and support.

Hard to think of a better example of someone who stepped up to the plate for the benefit of others. Thanks, Tony, for all you've done, and may God bless you and your family.

Fact check

2012-01-23T05:41:00.001-06:00

A couple of weeks ago I took issue with the Hometown Quiz printed in our local newspaper concerning Lincoln's first roundabout. More recently, one of the questions was to identify the streets in Lincoln that are named after Presidents. The answer published Saturday was five: Adams, Cleveland, Garfield, Madison, and Washington.

Hmmm. I wonder what Abraham Lincoln (Mall), Andrew Jackson (Drive), Benjamin Harrison (Street), and Franklin Pierce (Drive) would think about that answer. If you look really close, you might even find that James Monroe (Avenue) could make a case. It would take a little research to determine whether the last few yards west of 21st Street were actually ever vacated by ordinance. I wouldn't rely on Google Maps as the deciding factor, if I were President Monroe, but if you searched for "2050 Monroe Ave. Lincoln, NE" you'd see his point.

False alarms 2011

2012-01-19T05:13:00.004-06:00

About a year ago, I reported on the impact of Lincoln’s revised false alarm ordinance. At the time, however, the new law had only been in effect for six months. We now have a full year operating under the new ordinance. Here is the trend over the past decade—beginning in 2002, which also happened to be our peak year for false alarms.

The number of false alarms has declined by 45%. The number of addresses with five or more false alarms during the calendar year has decreased by 82%. This has occurred despite the fact that Lincoln's population during the past 10 years has increased by about 54,000. These are certainly impressive results.

Crime interrupted

2012-01-18T06:00:00.001-06:00

Maybe I'm the last to know, but yesterday I received a letter from Darryl Forté, the Kansas City, MO chief of police. Here are some excerpts:

"I would like to share some positive information...regarding one of your police officers....He and his wife bravely interrupted a rape in progress...while visiting in Kansas City. [They] were walking to their hotel...when they heard a female voice screaming for help. They...observed a naked man on top of a female who was trying to fight him off. [The officer] ran toward the two and the male...attempted to flee on foot. However [the officer] caught the male and detained him until our police officers arrived. [His wife] stayed with the female victim until police officers arrived. Due to their efforts, a rape suspect was apprehended that night and has since been charged with the crime....It is good to know that another police department shared ouir commitment in helping others in time of need, whether it is on or off duty, and I thank you."

That's a pretty fine citizen's arrest by an off-duty Lincoln police officer and his wife while on vacation in another jurisdiction. Congratulations on a job well done to both of you. And thanks, Chief Forté, for passing this along.

Taxi !

2012-01-16T06:17:00.040-06:00

You could step outside in downtown Lincoln and shout that until you're blue in the face, but no taxi is likely to materialize. Despite what you see on the movies, there are only a few cities in the United States where you can actually hail a cab: New York, Washington D.C., Chicago. There are a few other cities where taxi stands in certain areas are common, or where you can walk up to the nearest hotel and reliably find a cab just waiting for a fare, such as South Beach in Miami, the Gaslamp district in San Diego, or the Riverwalk area in San Antonio. Let's face it though: it takes a really large population density to make a business model work that relies upon driving around waiting for someone to hold up their hand and shout.

The dearth of taxis in Lincoln has been in the news lately, as a State Senator has proposed legislation making it easier for a taxi company to get into the business. I'm all for fair markets and competition, but it remains to be seen whether there is a steady enough demand for taxis in Lincoln to support a higher level of service from the private sector. We shall see.

As this issue has unfolded, I've been reading the comments on news stories, many of which are ripping the City of Lincoln for maintaining a monopoly on taxi service, and obstructing others from entering the fray. This is ludicrous. The City does indeed have some regulatory authority over taxis: we require drivers to obtain a taxi license--primarily to ensure that Chester the Molester is not your driver. The City has no role, however, in how many taxis are in play on the street, how many companies do business, or what a taxi ride costs. The State Public Service Commission has some regulatory authority over taxi companies, but this is not a City function at all, and those who believe the gov'mint is responsible for their taxi wows are ripping the wrong unit thereof.

I'm a bit skeptical about whether anything can be done that makes it significantly easier for a tipsy twenty-something to find a taxi while weaving along the sidewalk at 14th and O after the bars close. There may be a demand for more taxis during the hour of power, but it's pretty hard to make a living on a demand that exists for only an hour or two and only two or three nights a week. Consider this: if you're a driver, you will be pretty lucky to make two runs between the time the demand picks up near bar break and the time it disappears again, because it's going to take you at least a half hour to shuttle you're first fare home and return downtown--often longer. Not my concern, however, and I wish good luck to any company that wants to try to figure out how to make this work.

As long as you make sure taxi drivers have fairly clean criminal and driving records, I'm perfectly happy to let the free market work. It does not, however always provide us with exactly what we want. I, for one, am hoping for a Whole Foods market and a Legal Sea Foods restaurant.

No such luck

2012-01-12T06:09:00.006-06:00

I was in Austin, TX yesterday morning, with a team from the Nebraska College Partnership, attending a meeting of 38 college coalitions with similar aims from around the country. Part of my role was to present about the work that led to the results I highlighted in yesterday's post.

I had Good Morning America on the tube as I was packing yesterday morning, when this story came on. Wow, did that crime sound familiar. I recalled an attempted bank robbery in Lincoln several years ago with a similar modus operandi. I also remembered that the perpetrator had been involved in a series of similar robberies involving explosives and hostages in the Denver metropolitan area prior to his arrest in Lincoln. Was there any chance that this guy had been released? Could he be out there again, plying his old trade? I jotted down the name of the Sheriff in Betonville, AK for a possible email contact and bolted for breakfast.

During the introductory remarks for the morning, I found the case: A4-015773, February 11th, 2004, identified my guy and jumped on the Bureau of Prisons Federal inmate locator. Looks like Mr. Huber is still incarcerated in Leavenworth. So much for that theory. Nonetheless, the fact that I was able to pull out my iPad and do this research before finishing my croissant during the opening minutes at the morning plenary is a pretty impressive example of how mobile information technology has changed our world.

Party data

2012-01-11T05:52:00.006-06:00

The topic of party disturbances is no stranger to the pages of the Director's Desk. Last week, I put together the end-of-the year data for Nancy Hicks, a Lincoln Journal Star reporter. She mentioned this in the second half of her weekly column. Here's the graphs on an incredible trend.

Dropped a dime

2012-01-10T04:59:00.001-06:00

A reader posted a comment on yesterday's post, inquiring about whether I had dropped a dime on a certain asphaltium potholius.

Dropped a dime. Let's see how many readers of the Director's Desk can explain the origin of that phrase.

"Outta my way!"

2012-01-09T06:04:00.001-06:00

January's unseasonably mild weather allowed me to bike to work every day last week. We're normally coping with a foot of snow on the ground and a double-digit below zero wild chill. I'm out early, before traffic is much of an issue, but with short daylight and heavier traffic, the ride home is a little more treacherous. I wear hi-viz and run some high-tech lights, though, and am not afraid of a little nighttime riding. I generally find Lincoln driver's to be considerate and patient when I am the same.

One evening last week, I had an encounter with an irate motorist--a rare occurrence for me. My route included a short two-block stretch on a multi-lane arterial. It was dusk, and I was in the inside lane, about 3.5 feet out from the curb--basically in the right tire track. The angry motorist was directly behind me, and I think he was probably annoyed that he couldn't pass right away due to other traffic in the outside lane which prevented him from swinging around me. He had to dog it for about half a block, and when he finally passed, he executed a right turn directly in my path, rolled down his window, made the universal peace sign, and shouted a colorful greeting that I will translate as, "Outta my way!"

I wasn't trying to be an obstruction, but I just couldn't get over any closer to the curb safely. Here's why:

This particular species of pothole tends to form where the poured curb meets a seam in the roadway surface. This short stretch of road had quite a few in quick succession. While I would ordinarily choose to ride a little closer to the curb, the safest course of action in the situation I suddenly found myself was to assert my presence emphatically in the lane. If you were behind me in a car, you would not be tempted to pass until you had plenty of room to move into the inside lane. I could have kept a tighter line to the right, and simply zig-zagged around the obstructions for the next couple of blocks, but it would not be a good thing to be following a cyclist who suddenly changes course to dodge one of these buggers, rather than one maintaining a steady and more predictable course. He obviously doesn't realize it, but this was safer for both of us.

While I have occasionally seen a cyclist acting boorishly or disobeying the law by failing to right as close as practicable to the right hand side of the road, most of the time when I see a bike out in that right tire track or the center of the lane, it's for the same reason: debris, storm sewer grates, uneven pavement joints, potholes, in preparation for a lane-change or turn. The vast majority of motorists are respectful of me in traffic, and the vast majority of cyclists understand the physics involved in an encounter between a 22 lb. Huffy and a two-and-a-half ton SUV.

One more round

2012-01-06T05:04:00.011-06:00

What is it with roundabouts, that this topic ends up in my posts so often? Earlier this week I mentioned the weekly "Hometown Quiz" in the newspaper that proposed Lincoln's first roundabout was "near 31st and Pine Lake Road." Pshaw. The one the author had in mind is only 10 or 12 years old. I noted that another roundabout, at 16th and Centerpark Road had been around for at least 40 years, and that there were probably others in Lincoln's past.

The comments thread took off, with several readers pointing out even older roundabouts, such as this one in Pioneers Park, and these two in the Woodsshire neighborhood. Two readers, Dave and Eric, recalled that a fountain once stood in the middle of 11th and J Street at the turn of the century. Sometime later in the automobile age it was retired to Antelope Park where it still resides (although no longer as a fountain) on the grounds of the Children's Zoo. I think we can safely say that the intersection of 11th and J Street was Lincoln's first roundabout, as he fountain would have caused the intersection to function as such, and no instructions were needed.

Holiday DWI focus

2012-01-05T05:56:00.049-06:00

Every year in December, the Lincoln Police Department puts a special focus on drunk driving enforcement. Since the vast majority of drunk driving arrests occur on the late shift, Capt. Marty Fehringer, one of the overnight Duty Commanders, was this year's coordinator, and sent me the results: 213 DWI arrests by LPD during the month of December. This is the all-time single month record for drunk driving arrests in Lincoln. As I have often said, there is nothing that a police officer does that has a greater impact on public safety than arresting a drunk driver. The officers who contributed to this project should be complimented for their efforts.

We weren't alone in focusing on DWI during the month, and the local news has reported on the results from the Lancaster County Sheriff's Office, and the statewide arrests by the Nebraska State Patrol.

Here's an interesting way of looking at LPD's drunk driving arrests: a temporal grid of the most recent 5,000 cases. I've blogged before about using this method for visualizing data sets that have strong time-and-day patterns, which is clearly evident in the DWI arrests. You can click on the image to enlarge the view.

This grid, by the way, is a screen capture from our latest version of CrimeView Dashboard. It took me less than five minutes to prepare this for my blog this morning. Performing this analysis and producing a graphic like this a few years ago would have made a decent project for the week. It also would have required a few thousand dollars worth of software on a fat honking PC, and a GIS analyst with extensive training and experience. Now it's a few minutes on my wife's low-end Dell with an iffy WiFi connection in our little home office, while sipping my first cup of joe. Pretty incredible, when you think about it.

First roundabout?

2012-01-03T05:59:00.001-06:00

Saturday's Lincoln Journal Star always contains an insert, the Neighborhood Extra. There is a small feature in the insert every week called "Hometown Quiz." The quiz posits three questions about Lincoln's history, the answers to which are published in the following week's edition. Last week, Tonja read one of the questions to me: "Where was the first roundabout in Lincoln?" I took a stab, although I was a little doubtful: "9th and M Street."

When the paper arrived this past weekend, I was a little surprised to see the printed answer: "31st Street near Pine Lake Road." I think not. Never mind that there is no 31st Street near Pine Lake Road; I imagine the author was thinking about the little roundabout at the intersection of S. 32nd Street and a private roadway named Zermatt Drive that feeds the SouthPointe Pavilions shopping center.

I guessed 9th and M Streets because I recall seeing a late19th or early 20th century photo depicting a horse fountain in the middle of M street, looking west, with the Lincoln Paint and Color Company (now known as Color Court) building in the background. It caught my eye because at the time I first saw the image, the police station was located at that corner. If that fountain was in the intersection at S. 9th Street, it would have caused the intersection to function exactly like a modern roundabout.

Lacking any confirmation that the fountain was in the intersection, rather than midblock, I still think it is quite likely that there have been circulators in Lincoln's distant past that are long since forgotten. I know for sure, however, that the S. 32nd and Zermatt Drive example is nowhere close to the first. The huge rotary at S. 16th and Centerpark Road has been there for at least 40 years, and still ranks as the largest roundabout in Lincoln. It has been carrying traffic all day long, including the largest tractor-trailer rigs some pretty busy shift changes (Square D, Weaver's, and the Miller & Paine warehouse, come to mind). Funny, this roundabout has served well for several decades without any of the consternation that seems to accompany current iterations of this rather ancient intersection form.

Holiday shopping

2011-12-30T05:07:00.000-06:00

During December, 148 shoplifting reports were filed in Lincoln. Here's a partial list of some of the more interesting articles appearing on those police Incident Reports, proving that thieves will steal anything:

Chapstick
Kitty Litter
Pillowcases
Thermometer
Picnic Basket
Shopping bags
Panties
AirWick refills
Red Alert security kit
Navel jewelry (not to be confused with Naval jewelry)
Superglue
Hot dog buns
Chili cheese dogs
Footies
Pla-do
Fingernails
2 green limes (do they come in other colors?)
Shot glasses
Tequila
Vodka
Cognac
Beer (lots of)
Cologne

Wake up call

2011-12-29T05:44:00.000-06:00

If you didn't catch this tragic story on the national news this week, it is difficult to read, but should serve as a wake up call for everyone to check and test your smoke detectors, formulate and test the family fire drill. While your at it, give up smoking--one of the leading sources of ignition for house fires in Lincoln and nationwide

A Christmas prayer

2011-12-27T04:42:00.002-06:00

This was the first Christmas since 1981, as I recall, that I wasn't at work. I only remember two Christmas days in the past 38 that I was off duty. It was strange being at home, and I have a new appreciation for the feeling Tonja has had these many years. All day long, I thought about the officers, firefighters, and dispatchers working on Christmas.

I also found myself wondering what normal people do on Christmas, until I discovered my own answer: they go to the movies. My own desire to see the latest Mission Impossible flick proved to be, indeed, a mission impossible. That will have to wait for a later date. Late in the afternoon, though, we slipped out on a mission of our own, to find a recipient of a random act of kindness, an annual tradition for Tonja and her coworkers. We tapped on the window of a young mom with two toddlers at a convenience store, and handed an envelope of cash through the car door, with a simple "Merry Christmas".

It wasn't an easy day for the emergency services personnel. A tragic gunshot suicide on Christmas day occurred. I pray that the victim's family and friends are able to cope with the loss. Although this was the most major case, there was plenty of other work to do. The police department responded to 169 incidents on Christmas. That's a little less than half a normal Saturday, but it included a dozen assaults, three child abuse cases, two death investigations, four burglaries, and the usual flotsam and jetsam of human behavior. You've got to wonder about the motivation for shoplifting a six pack of Earthquake beer on Chirstmas. Is that a microbrew?

Lincoln Fire & Rescue responded to 52 incidents. During the early morning hours on the 26th, we responded to a house fire where a young father was critically injured. Fortunately, is wife and two children escaped unharmed. I thank God that he is still alive, and pray for his recovery.

Had me stumped

2011-12-22T08:03:00.001-06:00

Every couple of months I do a call-in to a morning radio talk show on KLIN Radio, Jack & John in the Morning. Jack Mitchell and John Bishop have quite a shtick, and we enjoy bantering back and forth--with a little genuine content mixed in.

This morning, at about 7:45 they asked me how many phone calls the 911 Center in Lincoln handles per day. I was stumped, and admitted that I couldn't answer. This caused quite a bit of guffawing on their part, as I apparently have a reputation for being able to spew obscure data on demand. When they regained their compsure, they closed out the segment by telling me that they'd be looking forward to a post on my blog with the information.

Here it is. In 2010, we handled 373,056 incoming phone calls. That is an average of 1,022 per day. Hope that was quick enough for you!

Police iPad advice

2011-12-21T05:24:00.018-06:00

Apparently if you Google the terms "iPad" and "Police", a couple of my past blog posts are near the top, concerning my own experiences using an iPad as a tool in my job. As a result, I get an occasional contact from other police & fire types on this subject.

Friday, a captain at a small department emailed me. I'm not sure if he is comfortable with me naming the agency, so for the moment, I won't. He had attended my presentation at a conference earlier this year, and had gone home determined to look into equipping his staff with tablets. It appears he found a funding source, and now has 14 Apple iPads on order. He was looking for any advice or tips. Here's my reply:

That is awesome! Congratulations. Here are my top three applications:

1. Google Maps. A good, current street map that follows you around, aerial photos if you need them, and street-level images. You have good StreetView coverage in your town, and this works great on an iPad. With 14 units, you could actually set up Google Latitude and create what amounts to an AVL system for your department--you'll all be able to see where one another are on the map. This is how my family keeps track of me.

2. The Apple web browser is Safari, and the iPad version is preinstalled. Think of any website that you and your colleagues find useful on your desktop computers. If you have an Internet connection, you'll be able to access almost all of those same sites on the iPads. There are a few web components that do not work on iPads--sites that use Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight, for example, but this is pretty minor. One of the cool things you can do with an iPad is to take any bookmark you've set in the browser, and create it as an icon on the desktop. Stuff that you use often, like the sex offender registry, state statutes, state inmate locator, and any other websites can be set up as a one-click icon on the screen.

3. Any documents that you want to deploy--procedure manuals, handbooks, telephone contact lists, etc.--can be loaded up in iBooks, as .pdf files. I've got a ton of these, and it works really, really well for arranging all those printed documents we're used to carrying in a three-ring binder! If you get yourself a free Dropbox account, you can store the master documents in a shared folder, install the iPad Dropbox app on each iPad, and this would be a great way of distributing new or updated .pdfs.

I take it from your email that you are getting the WiFi only iPads, rather than the 3G model. If you have a wireless network at the office, schools, home, etc., you can connect to those whenever you are close enough, but to really get the maximum value out of your iPads, you're going to need that Internet connection when you are on the move. A mobile hotspot like a MiFi or Overdrive wireless hotspot would be the solution, as you note. One problem with that is that you then have another battery to go dead. Be careful when you go shopping for your mobile hotspot, and try to find one that will continue to transmit and receive while connected to the charge cord--some do, some don't--and make sure you've the cell provider you select has good coverage.

You'll have some work ahead getting fourteen iPads set up and activated, and some ongoing administrative work keeping application updates current. This isn't difficult, it's just going to require a little time now and then. You can lock those iPads down in lots of different ways, to prevent users from accidentally deleting applications, or buying applications, or installing stuff, or using certain features like youtube, videos, iTunes, in app purchases, and so forth.

I've got a post on my personal blog about some of my favorite apps:
http://lpd304.blogspot.com/2011/01/police-ipad-update.html

Best,

Tom Casady

'tis the season

2011-12-20T04:51:00.008-06:00

I counted 22 cases reported to the police theft or vandalism involving Christmas lawn displays since Thanksgiving. Fortunately, no babies have been reported stolen from mangers (yet), but we are missing a small flock of geese, and a damaged donkey. A reindeer named Rudolph has been smashed, and another unnamed reindeer is missing in action; possibly Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Cupid, Comet, Donner, or Blitzen.

A polar bear has been stolen, along with two penguins, one snowman, and a pair of Santas. One of those Santas has a serial number, so if you encounter a shady character trying to sell you a Santa out of the trunk of his car at a too-good-to-be-true price, be sure to check the base for the number 8500, lest you purchase stolen goods.

In a twist of irony documented under case number B1-116522, someone stole the Grinch that stole Christmas from a home on North 15th Street. What goes around, comes around.

Back-up up and running

2011-12-15T06:32:00.000-06:00

Tuesday night around 7:30, the lights went out. Lincoln's 911 Center lost power, due to a badly corroded breaker box far away at the opposite end of the County-City Building, down in an underground vault where the building's electrical panels live. We ran on backup battery power for a while, but when it became apparent that the fix was days, rather than minutes, the staff hit the ejection button and moved to the back-up center.

Parts are being overnighted, and we hope to be back in business at the main center today or tomorrow. We are fortunate to have a back-up center, and also fortunate that it is regularly exercised. This little crisis was not without its trials and tribulations, but the public would not even notice the difference. In fact, we had previously planned on moving to the lifeboat for the later half of the week as part of a normal exercising of the back-up site, and in order to take care of carpet cleaning and other maintenance at the main site.

Probably the biggest impact of the fail-over was the loss of connectivity between the computer-aided dispatch system and the police and fire records systems. The 911 Center's computer systems feed data to the police and fire systems, and without those links, things get a little interesting--sort of like 1974. Not a bad thing at all for highly-computerized enterprises to maintain their practice at operating in an unplugged condition from time-to-time as part of their emergency preparedness planning and exercising.

Behind the curtain

2011-12-12T05:54:00.003-06:00

Do you ever wonder what really goes on at the police department, behind the curtain? Here's a little insight: an internal email that Officer Jason Brownell (who is currently assigned as our domestic violence investigator) sent out Friday to his colleagues:

"Officers,
Thank you to all who have been completing the Domestic Violence Lethality Assessment forms. This has proven to be a valuable tool for us as adepartment to use in gauging the actual and real threat imposed on a victimand his/her family. I have not only received valuable feedback from theCounty Attorney's reference your efforts, but victims have also commented on investigating officers willingness to go beyond the window of the immediate report and listen to their story. As always, there will be instances where victims do not always make the choices we may find easy to make in our own lives, yet that is the reason why we come to work every day; to make a difference."

Now that's enough to make this public safety director pretty proud, but it's also worth checking out this local video-on-demand program about Lincoln Fire & Rescue, in which local radio host Dale Johnson interviews Firefighter Nancy Engelbrecht.

Day at the Legislature

2011-12-07T05:18:00.001-06:00

I spent a good part of the day on Monday at the Nebraska State Legislature, which isn't even in session. The Judiciary Committee, however, was having some interim study hearings, and I had been asked to testify on two issues. The first was a special hearing by the committee to study "policies and procedures associated with immigrants who come in contact with law enforcement at Federal, state, and local levels." The second was Senator Amanda McGill's Legislative Resolution 243, an interim study to examine the extent of human trafficking in Nebraska in connection with labor and sex trafficking.

Of the two, I was more intrigued by the human trafficking testimony. I came prepared with a couple of actual examples of cases investigated by LPD in 2011. I had planned to fill the role of trying to help those in attendance at the hearing understand that human trafficking really does occur in Nebraska. My friend Alex Hayes, the Omaha Police Chief, beat me to the punch when he testified about his experience in Omaha with the sex trade. He essentially told the senators the same thing I had planned. He was followed by another friend, Weysan Dun, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Omaha field office. Among other things, SAC Dun told the senators another story about an Omaha case that was quite similar to one of my two examples.

By the time I was in the seat, the point had already been made, and there was no real need to convince the committee that the sex trade in Nebraska is a good example of human trafficking. Instead, I told them about the hard life, and about the vulnerability evident with sex trade victims, who often suffer from mental health and substance abuse issues, have endured a lifetime of abuse, neglect and exploitation, and are hardly free to make their intelligent, informed, and voluntary decisions. Rather, they are often manipulated and abused by handlers who may pose as boyfriends, business partners, husbands, and the like, but in actuality are pimps and exploiters who take advantage of the vulnerability of addiction, poverty, alcoholism, and mental illness. For that matter, so do all of the johns.

Paul Hammel's Omaha World Herald article contains a good description of the immigration hearing, while Dan Holtmeyer's Daily Nebraskan article thoroughly covers the human trafficking hearing.

Number three

2011-12-05T05:09:00.002-06:00

Lincoln's snowfall on Saturday didn't amount to much. By Nebraska standards, a couple inches of wet slushy stuff on December 3rd is par for the course. Nonetheless, it was the first snowfall of the season, and like every year I can remember, the first snow resulted in chaos on the roads. There were 78 traffic crashes in Lincoln Saturday, which ranks as number three for 2011. They happened all over town.

The two leading days for traffic crashes in 2011 were earlier this year. There were 123 on February 24th, and 98 on January 31st. Unlike those days, however, this past Saturday was a day when most driving was optional. It's not like rapidly-deteriorating street conditions caught us when a storm struck at rush hour on a weekday.

I hate to whine, but boy, did I see some idiotic driving. I watched a guy yesterday who was tailgating the pickup in front of his so closely he's lucky that he didn't hook his front bumper on the trailer hitch. And here's an idea: how about leaving half a car length in between you and the car ahead when you stop at a light. That way, at least when you get rear-ended, you won't be paying for a new radiator and grille, too. My favorite, though, are those owners of four-wheel drive SUVs who don't seem to understand physics: they may be able to get better traction on the slick stuff, but once all four wheels are locked in a skid, that Yukonasaurus is just a heavier sled.

It generally takes a while before most people come to their senses, and start to realize that in winter conditions, you've got to plan ahead with a little more time, slow down, leave a little more following distance, think ahead about the incline at the upcoming intersection, maybe consider applying the brakes a little earlier and more gently, and so forth. Not to worry, though, by about the first of April, drivers seem to have it figured out.

Catching up

2011-11-30T06:15:00.000-06:00

A nasty back spasm has laid me low, but also provided me with a little time to catch up on the news. This story (and this one a few weeks ago) always stirs the readers. And I noticed that Kevin is back in the news.

Packers v. Lions

2011-11-29T05:39:00.001-06:00

Running a little behind this year, but in keeping with my holiday tradition, here’s a few one-liners from the blotter on Thanksgiving Day:

SOMEONE DOING BURNOUTS ON ORANGE HARLEY.
HUGE FIGHT IN THE PARKING LOT
DRANK TOO MUCH UNK HOW MANY STEPS SHE FELL DOWN
W/M BLACK TRENCHCOAT SINGING
DAD IS HURTING MOM
VICIOUS PREDATOR OUTSIDE IN THE ALLEY
UNK AMOUNT OF PEOPLE ARE ABOUT TO FIGHT SAID THEY HAVE KNIVES
JUMPING AROUND AND HORSING AROUND
PIANO TAKEN OFF PORCH - COMP HAS POSS SUSP INFO
PR CONCEALED RUM IN PANTS/LEFT W/O PAYING
SISTER GRABBED SISTER BY THROAT
HUSBAND SLAPPED HAND AWAY FROM TV
ESTRANGED HUSBAND PUSHED V IN FACE/HEADBUTTED HER
UNK PR TOOK VICTIMS PIANO FROM PORCH
UNK PR TOOK WASHING MACHINE FROM VICTIMS PORCH
V RCVD TXT MSGS FRM UNK INDIV REGARDING HER AGE

In the Smithsonian

2011-11-23T05:59:00.005-06:00

Last Friday, I was in Washington, DC with a couple hours to kill waiting for an 8:00 PM flight from National Airport. Whenever I can, I love to spend a little time at any one of the Smithsonian museums. On this occasion, I stopped at the Castle for a few minutes on my way to the Freer Gallery, just to find a quiet spot to work a little email. There are a few items on display in the Castle itself, though, and I could not resist snapping this photo of an IBM Selectric in the west wing.

I forwarded the photo to Police Chief Jim Peschong, who keeps one of these Mesozoic relics in his office, ostensibly for the occasional envelope, or self-carbonated form (for extra credit: what is "carbonated?"). I have refrained from informing him that he could print an envelope on his HP LaserJet, but nonetheless, I often rib him about his Selectric. "You're in the Smithsonian!" I said in the text accompanying the photo.

A few minutes later he replied:

"You didn't have to go all the way down there to get a photo of one. Stop by sometime and take all the photos you want :)
Sent from my Verizon wireless Blackberry"

No doubt he will also be the last man on earth using a Blackberry :) . I snapped a couple of other shots on my way down to the National Mall.

Research to practice

2011-11-22T05:15:00.000-06:00

Dr. John Laub is the Director of the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the United States Department of Justice. He hosted a discussion Friday concerning how research is translated into practice. I represented the practitioners, and was the onion in a petunia patch of academics. I told the group that in my view, four things must converge for research to be translated into practice.

First, there must be a champion at the agency: one or more people interested in advancing practice, willing to try things, open to change and to new ways of doing things. While it may help if this catalyst is the chief or a highly-placed placed manager, that isn't absolutely necessary. Change agents and opinion leaders may be, and often are, rank-and-file, first-line supervisors, and mid-managers.

Second, these agents-of-change must find out about the research findings. Practitioners and researchers do not swim in the same pond. You won't find many police chiefs reading the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, or attending the American Society of Criminology conference. If you want to influence criminal justice practitioners, you better disseminate your findings in a format and venue likely to reach the intended audience. I rattled of some publications cops are more likely to read, gave a plug for really short summaries of significant findings, and suggested a few conferences where you might actually find practitioners in attendance.

Third, the research better be actionable if it's going to impact practice. The research has to suggest relatively clear and straightforward actions, changes, or practices that flow from the research results. When research suggests specific actions or steps, it is far more likely to find favor among practitioners than vague or broad implications that are difficult to operationalize. Researchers should ask themselves this question: "What exactly can I suggest that an agency or individual do, based on the results of this research?"

Finally, the implementation steps that emerge from the research must be practical. All sorts of impediments to change exist, including internal resistance, conflicting external expectations, financial constraints, political opposition, union contracts, to name but a few. Understanding the local landscape and the land mines that police managers must tiptoe around can help researchers frame recommendations that are more likely to have a fighting chance of moving from research to practice.

Organizational momentum exerts its own gravity, and liberating practice from its pull can require considerable power. My sense, however, is that the field of criminal justice is very interested in adopting evidence-based strategies, and that a large plurality of police officers are open to research. My experience in fire and rescue is short, but thus far I have sensed the same thing: willingness to adapt as new technology, new research, and new knowledge as it emerges.

Here's the best way to get research in front of the practitioners, and to maximize the chance that research results find their way into the field of practice: collaborate with the practitioners on the research. And I mean really collaborate. Involve practitioners in framing the research questions, developing the research strategies and methodology, interpreting the results, developing the final products, and disseminating the research to others. True collaboration is a lot more than soliciting a letter of support and getting access to a set of agency data. Rather, it is a partnership. I've had the opportunity to be a full partner in research (including some underway right now), and it is a far different experience than being a subject of research.

Predictive firefighting

2011-11-18T07:01:00.002-06:00

I've blogged before about the concept of predictive policing: using our data and our knowledge to make informed judgement about where crime is likely to occur in the future, what kinds of crimes are ascendant, and who is likely to commit crime. Google "predictive policing" and you won't go far until you find my name associated with this topic. Earlier this year, I edited an issue of Geography and Public Safety on predictive policing, and contributed my own article to the volume, "Police Legitimacy and Predictive Policing."

This week, I participated in an intriguing meeting and web conference, along with Lincoln Fire Chief John Huff, Assistant Chief Rick Furasek, Chief of Logistics Kendall Warnock, Chief of Training Roger Bonin, Capt. Eric Jones, and Capt. Scott Weibe. The web conference was with Buxton, a firm that specializes in consumer analytics. Buxton has been doing some work with the Philadelphia Fire Department, applying its methods to create a "Fire Vulnerability Index." This all sounds incredibly familiar to me, and is essentially the same process used in policing to deploy resources and determine strategies that are geared to creating the most bang for the buck.

Our current station relocation study is well on its way to identifying the best alternatives for providing data-driven decisions for Lincoln's fire, rescue, and emergency medical services. While the current study is based largely on historical data about incident trends, the methods used by the private sector for locating retail businesses hold promise in creating more robust predictive analytics in public safety.

What I learned from Jake

2011-11-16T06:08:00.001-06:00

In the summer of 1975, I was a 21 year old police officer, newly promoted to an assignment as a motor officer. It wasn't really a promotion, but as I looked around the Lincoln police department, the chief, assistant chiefs, most of the captains, lieutenants, and sergeants had all been motorcycle cops, or so it seemed. It appeared pretty evident to me that riding motor was a resume-builder. So, despite my complete unfamiliarity with the steed, I accepted the assignment. As part of my accouterments, I acquired a pair of aviator sunglasses--to protect against pebbles, wind, sun, and bugs, of course.

One day, Capt. Paul Jacobsen called me aside. Jake was a Captain of Detectives--among the most prestigious of positions at LPD. He was a legend for his investigative skills, particularly his ability to develop rapport with suspects that led to an inevitable confession of the most heinous crimes. It was said that Jake could get a tree to admit to the offense of issuing a bad check, wood pulp being a necessary precursor in the production of the paper upon which the check had been printed.

"Casady," Jake said, "You need to lose those mirrored sunglasses. You can't talk to a man when you can't see his eyes." Sage advice from the master of interviewing. The Ray-Bans were relegated to off-duty wear. I remember one more thing Jake taught me about interviewing: "When you ask a suspect a direct question, and he repeats the question back to you, the next words out of his mouth are likely to be a lie."

Jake knew a few things about human nature, humor, honor, gunfights, and life. He passed a couple of those on to me, and to this day when someone repeats a clearly worded question right back at me before answering, I recall his words.

Institutional failure

2011-11-14T05:50:00.029-06:00

Like most Nebraskans, I'm a fan of the Nebraska football team. I'm not the rabid sort, but I make it a point to find a TV or a radio on fall Saturdays. Afterall, I hold a couple of degrees from this institution, and a pair of plaques designating me as some kind of honored alumnus. I watched Saturday's game against Penn State on TV, but the best part for me was on the radio, afterwards, as I puttered around in the garage and listened to Coach Pelini in the post-game show.

It was the coach's finest moment. He spoke bluntly, and what he lacked in polish was more than made up for in candor and emotion:

I will be honest with you. Going into the football game, I didn’t think the game should have been played, for a lot of different reasons. My job as a football coach is to educate and to prepare the kids that come into the program for the rest of their life and that’s what we are. We’re a university system. The situation that’s going on is bigger than football.

I had the same feeling. Something seemed so wrong about this. Wednesday's spectacle of 10,000 clueless students rioting, the veneration of the former head coach, all this just smelled rotten. While neither the fans nor the players are responsible for this mess, the institution of The Pennsylvania State University has some soul-searching ahead.

I urge you to read the grand jury presentment. There is an old legal saw that a decent prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. We all should remember that Jerry Sandusky is innocent before the law. He will have his day of judgement, and it will be from a higher authority than you or me. Assuming his innocence of the criminal charges that have been filed, I separate this from the actions of the institution, through its leaders, who, regardless of the veracity of the charges, should have quickly and decisively acted to protect children and fulfill their legal and moral obligations. From their own sworn testimony before the grand jury, it is clear that a cascade of Penn State University personnel failed to take steps to intervene in an apparent felony sexual assault of a child in progress and to report a suspected violent crime to the police after becoming aware of the offense.

When you read the grand jury report, you learn that a 28 year-old graduate assistant, witnessing what he believed to be the first degree sexual assault of a child in the shower room, called his father. The head football coach apparently felt no obligation at all beyond passing the graduate assistant's report along to the athletic director, who in turn told the senior vice president. And the president of the University, informed that a staff member had seen some sort of discomforting activity in the shower between a former coach and a child, did not ask follow-up questions, investigate any further, or heed these obvious warning signs.

Everyone understands that evil exists in the world, and that in any institution a trusted person in a position of authority can succumb to its power. We've seen in in churches, in schools, in police stations, in the halls of Congress, and in the White House. Normally, we can separate the bad act of a person from the insitution itself. How do you make that distinction, though, when the chain of culpability begins with the graduate assistant, and flows through the head football coach, the athletic director, the senior vice president of business and finance, and the president himself? The problem, in this case, is not only an individual.

I will be curious to see how the NCAA reacts to this case of institutional failure. How does (at best) ignoring, or (at worst) covering up the signs of 13 years of child sexual assault compare to something like failing to report that some players have received free tattoos? How to you deal with this situation, when the reaction of the entire chain of command at the University, faced with these unfathomable report of the rape of a child was:

to take away the alleged perpetrator's keys to the locker room?

Nebraska law

2011-11-10T04:45:00.006-06:00

Mandatory reporting of child abuse and neglect to law enforcement or the Department of Health and Human Services is the law in Nebraska. The Statute is very clear:

28-711. Child subjected to abuse or neglect; report; contents; toll-free number.

(1) When any physician, medical institution, nurse, school employee, social worker, or other person has reasonable cause to believe that a child has been subjected to child abuse or neglect or observes such child being subjected to conditions or circumstances which reasonably would result in child abuse or neglect, he or she shall report such incident or cause a report of child abuse or neglect to be made to the proper law enforcement agency or to the department....

28-717. Violation; penalty.
Any person who willfully fails to make any report of child abuse or neglect required by section 28-711 shall be guilty of a Class III misdemeanor.

Rethink that

2011-11-08T05:54:00.001-06:00

I've had this conversation with a few hundred parents across the years, and it has occurred twice in the past week. The parent will be talking to me about some kind of situation their teenager was involved in (normally, getting arrested or ticketed for something like shoplifting or MIP). The parent asserts that their child was just an innocent bystander, and that the police arrested/cited him or her despite the child's innocence. The police officer wouldn't even listen.

I generally read the parent a few excerpts from the investigative reports, which is decidedly different from the account offered by the son or daughter. With depressing regularity, the initial reaction of the parent is that the officer is lying. "What", I ask, "would the police officer gain by fabricating the report, or by embellishing the facts?" The answer is pretty obvious: absolutely nothing. In fact, she or he would most certainly face termination of employment if the facts were embellished or fabricated. The teen, on the other hand, has a vested interest of immense proportions.

Nonetheless, the parental response, rather than being a rational assessment, is often this: "My child would not lie." Really? Like you never lied to your parents, or stretched the truth, or told the story in a way that made you sound a little less culpable, and a little more like a victim of circumstances who was just in the wrong place and the wrong time? Really? Better rethink that.

Here's a news flash: good people do bad things. Young people are even more prone to do stupid things than adults, even when they are honor role students, standouts in the school orchestra, and members of the Church youth choir. Human nature is to paint our own bad conduct in a manner that reflects less negatively upon ourselves. Parents need to remember that. A good starting point is to remember what they did and said themselves when they were caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

Doesn't mean you shouldn't support them, help them, protect them, or love them as they learn the lessons of life in the school of hard knocks.

Good things in medium-sized places

2011-11-04T05:57:00.001-05:00

A few months ago, I blogged about good things in small places: what I admired and learned from the tiny little police department in Waverly, Virginia. Yesterday and today, something similar is going on here in Lincoln. Four members of the San Diego County Sheriff's Office are here in Lincoln for a site visit: Commander Beyers, Captain Donahue, Deputy Blackwell, and Dr. Noah Fritz, the crime analysis manager.

Noah and I became acquainted more than a decade ago, when he managed the Crime Mapping and Analysis Program for the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center. He went on to be the president of the International Association of Crime Analysts for several years, earn a doctorate, teach at the collegiate level,and conduct original criminal justice research--all after a good run at the head of the Tempe, AZ crime analysis unit, where he mentored a rather incredible cohort of young people who are now some the leaders in this field from coast to coast.

Most recently, Dr. Fritz has returned to his roots: managing a large crime analysis operation in an agency of nearly 4,000 employees providing law enforcement services in the fourth largest county in the United States. He and a his colleagues are visiting Lincoln to learn about our unique approach to police information resources and technology, which begins with the fundamental question "What would be helpful to our street officers, investigators, and detectives?" It has been an honor to host their visit, and just as I was impressed by Chief Kevin Sands' operation in Waverly, I think the staff from San Diego has seen some very interesting and thought-provoking stuff here in Lincoln, despite the fact that we are about one tenth their size.

As previously noted, Lincoln seems to be in a sweet spot: large enough to have some significant resources, yet small enough to actually implement some clever and innovative ideas. Size is not always an advantage, and organizational momentum exerts its own gravity. It would be hard to turn an aircraft carrier around in Salt Creek.

Hot seat

2011-11-02T06:05:00.008-05:00

Remember that scene in A Christmas Story where Ralphie's little brother, bundled up in a snowsuit, falls down on the way to school and can't get up? That's about what I felt like yesterday afternoon at a live burn training for Lincoln Fire & Rescue recruits. The rookies helped suit me up, and into the burn house I went, where what seemed to be a pretty intense fire had been kindled. Despite the Nomex hood, my ears were burning, and it had nothing to do with anyone talking about me.

I had never been in bunker gear before (hot, tight, heavy), and never used a self-contained breathing apparatus before (hot, tight, heavy, and slightly frightening at first). I have a major fire phobia, and here I am--at 58 years of age--crawling on hands and knees into an inferno. Geez, I took a baby aspirin this morning, who am I kidding? In Round Two, the inferno was much more intense, but the experienced firefighters all reminded me that this was kids' stuff compared to a real fire, and that the combustibles in this exercise--all wood products--were quite a bit different from mattresses, upholstered furniture, carpeting, and so forth that would be encountered in the real deal.

Having survived a deadly real deal (barely) in 1964, I knew they were right. Hence, my fire phobia. I'm glad I did it, though. It was informative, and in a strange way rather exhilarating--sort of like exorcising a demon that has dogged me for nearly 50 years. Here's a few take-aways from the afternoon:

I will never view a knot of firefighters standing around at a fire ground in the same way. From this point forward I have a new appreciation for "rehab."
The principle of "two in, two out" is crystal clear to me. Even in a controlled training situation, I was mighty comforted to know that someone had my back, a feeling I have had on many occasions, though in a different uniform.
It takes me at least 60 seconds to tie my necktie in the morning. Getting into your turnout gear in a minute is a feat I can hardly imagine.
I was crawling into the burn house to watch. Firefighters, on the other hand, have work to do in that gear: roofs to ventilate, power tools to operate, ladders to climb, strategies to execute, hose to drag. It was about all I could do to drag myself.
Relaxation really works:. A little past experience in remaining calm in crisis helped me deal with the instinctive terror remarkably well. To a certain extent, you really can convince yourself to stay cool in the hot seat. I have a feeling that this ability cuts both ways: it is at the same time both helpful and dangerous.
Forced to choose between fire, heights, snakes, spiders, and public speaking, I'll deliver an speech with a tarantula on my head while handling a copperhead and balancing on a phone pole (are there still phone poles?), thank you very much.

And thank you to the instructors and the trainees who helped me. I wish you all well as your careers begin. Within a few months, you will have experiences and accomplishments that few people can even imagine, much less achieve.

Why am I suddenly craving a nice wild party call, a bar fight, 10th & Q, and a foot pursuit with a drunken chain smoker?

Alarmed and sprinkled

2011-11-01T04:56:00.002-05:00

Since becoming Public Safety Director, I have maintained an office at the Lincoln/Lancaster County Health Department building, at 3140 N Street. Yesterday afternoon, though, I was downtown for a city council meeting, when my iPhone beeped with an automated text message notifying me of a working fire at...3140 N Street!

Shortly after I had left the building, a fire alarm sounded at the Health Department. Despite around 200 employees and clients who were in the facility, no one knew there was a fire until the alarm sounded. The building was evacuated promptly, but this was no false alarm. A pretty significant fire had started in a lower level storage room. It had a head start, but as soon as the detectors detected, the alarm went off along with the sprinkler system, keeping the fire isolated to the room of origin until Lincoln Fire & Rescue responded and completed extinguishing the fire. We'll have a better idea in a few days of the source of ignition.

Without the alarm and the sprinkler system, it's hard to tell what would have happened. This much is for sure: the damage would have been much more significant, and quite possibly lives would have been imperiled. We've seen recently what a fire can do in an unsprinkled office building of similar size. This is the second time in the past two days that alarms have alerted occupants to a peril and allowed evacuation from a structure fire that could have been catastrophic.

Mayor Chris Beutler came to the scene as the overhaul was underway, and had a good opportunity to see how the Fire & Rescue Department handles a fireground, and how the National Incident Command System works in managing such incidents. I could tell he was both intrigued and impressed, as was I. In particular, I was interested in watching and learning about the work that must occur after the fire is out: the removal of smoldering materials, the examination of interior walls and ceilings for lingering fire that may be hidden from sight, the monitoring of hazardous carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide gas, the ventilation of the building, and so forth. All of this is time consuming and tedious, but very necessary before the clean-up and rehabilitation can begin.

It appears that the damage and loss will be somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000--covered by insurance. It could have been much worse. Good preventative engineering and preparation and good response by all involved prevented a greater tragedy.

Lost and found

2011-10-31T06:16:00.000-05:00

Here's an email that went out to all LPD employees on Saturday, from Officer Brad Junker. Let's hope it has a happy ending!

On 10-29-11, at approx 1300 hrs, I located a men's white gold
wedding-style ring in the weight room; it was found on the floor next to the
white squat rack. In the event that you do not enjoy wearing gloves in your
house around your wife and do not enjoy sleeping on the couch, the ring was
turned over to Cpt Wright and can be claimed in the LPD Duty Command office.

Job hunt

2011-10-28T05:03:00.000-05:00

Here in Lincoln, there are two universities that offer graduate degrees in forensic science. I suppose there are 20 or more people who graduate with a master's degree in this field every year in Lincoln. I doubt there are five jobs that open up annually in the entire state of Nebraska for forensic scientists. I get the sense that the same phenomenon occurs elsewhere in the United States. It is another aspect of the CSI effect, I suppose. Our gain, though, because a significant number of our police recruits these days are graduates from these programs.

On the other hand, the field of crime analysis seems to have a significant number of job openings at any given time, and I know from my own experience that sometimes good applicants are hard to find for those jobs. Here's a sampling of job postings from a single source (the International Association of Crime Analysts) in just the past several weeks. Anyone looking to get involved in policing, but not as a sworn officer, would do well to consider this field--especially anyone interested in applied technology, problem solving, computer software and data mining, as applied to policing.

Earlier this week, I had a conversation with a friend who is a crime analyst at a mid-sized California police department. She has a very bright intern who is interviewing for jobs as an analyst. I offered to help with some references, as I am acquainted with people at the two agencies where she had applied. If my friend thinks she is sharp, I have no doubt that she'd be a good one. In reality, the intern needs to decide where she would prefer to work, because in her job hunt, she will have choices to make and need not settle for the first offer. That's not true in many fields these days.

The International Association of Crime Analysts website is a great place to go for working analysts looking for resources, or for students exploring potential career fields. Crime analysts do varied and interesting work, and have the opportunity to make a major impact in their community in many different ways.

Bad things happen

2011-10-27T05:08:00.001-05:00

A reader who left a comment yesterday suggested in light of recent events that a reminder was in order. Get yourself enmeshed in the world of illicit drugs, and bad things happen: tragic things, frightening things, deadly things. There are those who believe that decriminalizing the possession and use of controlled substances would eliminate the black market and thus eliminate the profits that drive drug-related violent crime. I doubt it. As the news reveals every single day, plenty of mayhem erupts from the abuse of otherwise legal drugs.

Made me think

2011-10-21T04:44:00.000-05:00

Dr. Jerry Ratcliffe, a professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, is among my crime analysis/GIS pals. We met about a dozen years ago, "networking" after a conference session. Jerry is unusual in is field, in that he has a decade of experience as a police officer at the London Metropolitan Police before he moved on to academe. Dr. Ratcliffe maintains a personal website that is chock-full of great stuff. He also has a wicked sense of humor, and the best presentation style--bar none--I've ever seen.

I had the opportunity yesterday to attend a session Jerry presented at the National Institute of Justice's Mapping and Analysis for Public Safety conference. His topic was the impact of crime theory on police practice, a topic that staved off writer's block for me during an entire week of bloging a few years ago. He focused on routine activities theory, rational choice theory, crime pattern theory and the types of police strategies that flow from these theories of crime: crime prevention through environmental design, situational crime prevention, geographic profiling.

It was a good session, primarily review for me, but he said one thing in particular that piqued my interest and, made me think,and caused me to reach for a pen. When discussing rationale choice theory, Dr. Ratcliffe opined that criminals do not often consider the risk of apprehension, rather are usually concerned only with the immediate escape. So true. This observation suggests that investigating crimes with an eye towards clearance after-the-fact, whatever it's merits, is unlikely to cause criminals to stop and reconsider their actions before they commit the crime. Strategies that create the appearance or reality that immediate escape will be difficult, on the other hand, can effectively prevent crime. This difference has some clear strategic implications.

My own presentation at the conference will be later this morning, concerning our new location-based services application, P3i. I also had a great opportunity to discuss our current fire station relocation study with another friend, Bruce Silva from the Omega Group. We buy the CrimeView family of products from his firm, but they also market a suite of similar products for fire departments, named FireView, naturally. Bruce is quite familiar with fire operations and data, and confirmed my feeling that our current study is headed down the right path.

Be prepared

2011-10-18T05:24:00.004-05:00

The Lincoln Public Schools has launched a new application to provide its staff and emergency responders with updated situational awareness information about each of its schools and facilities. The system, developed with assistance from a U.S. Department of Education Readiness & Emergency Management for Schools (REMS) grant, was developed by a contractor, SafePlans. I attended a kickoff training session yesterday, along with other staff from LPD and LF&R

The system is called Emergency Response Information (ERIP), and provides data such as area maps, aerial photographs, floor plans, exit locations, utility shutoffs, hazardous materials locations, and digital imagery of the interior and exterior of each site. This is all good information, and it is nicely packaged. The site is designed for simple navigation, and does not require any uncommon plug-ins or helper applications. It runs fine in IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, Safari's iPad edition, and the webkit browser on my Android tablet. Like many such systems these days, it is a secure web application. Here's the problem with web applications for emergency preparedness: in an emergency, there is a fair possibility the Internet will be unavailable: power may be out, data centers offline, backhaul cut, wireless services overwhelmed.

We have experienced all of these to varying degrees with three comparatively minor crises during my tenure as police chief: We had a fiber optic line cut between the County City Building and the Law Enforcement Center that effeectively severed computer communications with police headquarters and the 911 Center. We experienced a water main break at the County City Building that took out the entire building for four months. We had a huge early season snow storm that took out power to over 100,000 citizens for up to a week, and crippled both landline and cellular telephone. These are nothing of the scale of an F4 tornado, a Category 4 hurricane, or a major earthquake.

If your eggs are all in the basket of an Internet/Intranet solution for preparedness, you may not be prepared. That's why I was very pleased to see that ERIP also provided a low-tech "offline" variant. If the cool web version is inaccessible, you've got the backup on a memory stick and still provides critical informationa working laptop and a generator for an occasional recharge. Keep it fairly current with an update at least every year and you will have a good sturdy belt in the event your suspenders fail.

Fired up

2011-10-14T06:39:00.023-05:00

Wednesday night, I attended a City informational meeting about the N. 14th and Superior construction project. It was a lively crowd--one of the more fired up groups I have seen in a while. Nonetheless, I was happy to be there, and pleased to talk to a lot of people one on one. It seemed to me that the great majority of those that attended were opposed to the construction design, which calls for a roundabout and for two pedestrian underpasses. I don't know whether the dialog changed many minds.

Obviously, this isn't my project to defend or explain, but I was asked to step forward and tell people what I thought about the public safety aspects. Some guy in the back kept yelling at me and interrupting, but eventually was called out by the crowd. I told the audience what we had experienced at Lincoln's first significant arterial roundabout, which was a huge reduction in traffic crashes, and an even larger reduction in injury crashes. As previously noted here on my blog, in the eight years since the roundabout at 33rd and Sheridan was installed the overall number of crashes fell by 80%, and the number of injury crashes fell by 92%. There have been two crashes at 33rd and Sheridan so far this year--neither with injury. Back in 1998, there were 24--thirteen of which were injury accidents.

These are the facts, and however you feel about roundabouts, you can't ignore these results. My own data and experience inclines me to believe that professional traffic engineers don't make this stuff up, and I tend to accept the research evidence on roundabouts they present in part because it is confirmed by my own observation. I told people that from a safety standpoint, I was more concerned with the impact of the year-long construction project than the intersection design. Construction zones pose hazards for both motorists and workers, and inevitably result in traffic on local residential streets from those motorists who ignore the posted detour routes.

A lot of concern was voiced about pedestrian underpasses planned on the south and west legs of the intersection, where the lay of the land supports this method of crossing. Apparently the grade on the east and north legs is such that an underpass is not practical. Some people are worried that these underpasses will be a place for ne'er-do-wells to lurk, close to the nearby middle school. I reminded folks that there are many pedestrian underpasses in Lincoln. I'm in a few of them virtually every day, and I've never seen a problem like this in Lincoln's underpasses, with the exception of the bridges along the Salt Creek levy where we sometimes have vagrants hanging out. This probably is due to the proximity of these bridges to the railyards and the People's City Mission, which does not admit drunks or allow drinking on the grounds. About the worse thing I've seen elsewhere is graffiti in a few locations. I just don't think 14th and Superior is going to be an attractive place for transients to crash.

It will be up to us to do what we can to ensure that any such mischief in the pedestrian underpasses is suppressed, and I think we can do so effectively. The alternative, at-grade pedestrian crossings of a seven lane conventional intersection, is worse, in my opinion, than the risk of trolls in the underpass. Several people I spoke with preferred the idea of an overhead pedestrian bridge. While I like the better visibility in a bridge, in order to comply with accessibility requirements, such structures built at a site like this would need to incorporate an exceptionally long approach or a long ramp with switchbacks in order to to keep the grade sufficiently low. Lincoln doesn't have any of this kind, but I've seen this type of overpass built in other cities, and then rarely used because the route of travel is so long that the very people it was intended for it will not walk the extra distance. I'm thinking of one in particular where the pedestrians almost always cross at street level right underneath a huge million-dollar-plus pedestrian overpass.

In a perfect world, we wouldn't have situations where middle school kids need to cross one of our largest arterial streets, but there isn't much the City can do about this, and the next best practical solution at 14th and Superior appears to be these underpasses. Sure wish we had one at Highway 34 and Fletcher for the Schoo Middle School students, and I wish the kids going to Scott Middle School didn't have to navigate 27th and Pine Lake, either. At these large intersections lots of distractions, I especially worry about right-turn-on-red vehicles failing to pay attention to a pedestrian or bike crossing in the crosswalk.

Happy trails

2011-10-12T04:44:00.004-05:00

I am a regular user of Lincoln's extensive network of recreational trails, normally in the pre-dawn hours. As such, I am particularly annoyed at crime on the trails, a subject that has been addressed on my blog on a few past occasions.

Recently, I have been quite concerned about a series of indecent exposures and a third degree sexual assault that occurred along the MoPac trail in north Lincoln. I've seen this pattern before, and it was eerily reminiscent of past cases. Our Crime Analysis Unit published a bulletin on the current pattern a couple weeks ago, and a lot of effort has been underway to catch this offender.

As is often the case, a citizen came through with a key tip this week. It is a good example of the importance of getting this kind of information out to the public via the news media. Alerted to the trend by news coverage, the tipster recognized the description of the suspect from an earlier contact, and notified LPD. The case has now been cleared with an arrest, and life on the trail is a little happier as a result.

Back office back up

2011-10-10T05:55:00.003-05:00

It was August 10, 1967. Two Lincoln detectives, Paul Whitehead and Paul Merritt pulled over a suspicious vehicle on O Street near 37th. Little did they know that the vehicle was stolen, and the occupants were escapees from the Indiana State Penitentiary. As they approached the vehicle, one of the escapees rolled out of the door, and opened fire with a sawed off shotgun, mortally wounding Det. Whitehead. He was the last Lincoln police officer to be murdered in the line of duty.

Would the outcome have been different in 2011, with the availability of the National Crime Information Center's database, with access to wants and warrants via our trunked radio system, and with mobile data computers in patrol cars? It is impossible to know for sure, but in all likelihood, the detectives would have been armed with critical information before they stopped the car and approached. The world has certainly changed in the intervening 44 years.

Last week, the manager of our Emergency Communications Center, Julie Righter, received the phone call no one ever imagines: her husband and the father of their children, Ron Righter, had died suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of 51 while on a business trip in Maryland. It was devastating news. Ron was a software engineer for Public Safety Sytems Inc., a firm that specializes in computer-aided dispatching software. That's how Julie and Ron met, many years ago.

Thursday, Julie asked me if I could spread the word to firefighters and police officers who might be attending Ron's funeral this Wednesday that she would appreciate it if they would feel free to wear their uniforms, "Ron was very proud of what he did," she said. Proud indeed. I know that corporations exist to make a profit, but over the years I have encountered lots of people in the public safety technology business that have the same pride in what they do that Ron Righter had. I want to thank them for the work they do that has helped us carry out our duties more efficiently and safely than ever before.

Think about the days before two-way radio, before computer databases and instant registration and wants-and-warrants checks. Paul Whitehead died before online access to electronic maps, risk assessments, hazardous materials guides, premise history, caution flags, and all the other advancements in communications and information technology we take for granted today. We all owe a debt of gratitude to the innovators who have created these tools, the companies who have developed and commercialized them, and the employees who maintain them--both in the private sector and our own city staff.

Take a moment to think about the thanks we owe to PSSI, ADMINS, Zoll, Harris, the Omega Group, ESRI, PenLink, DataWorks, Red Brain, and to Clair, Julie, Jackie, Todd, Kelly, Ron, Julio, Tim, Pete, John, Brian, Tara, Wade, Glen, Marcia, Mark, and the other employees who work behind the scenes, in the back office, as the technology back up that helps protect us, and helps us deliver effective and efficient services to the citizens of Lincoln. Thank you, Ron, for the contribution you made.

Panoramic crime scenes

2011-10-06T06:32:00.001-05:00

You've seen them: panoramic photos of the hotel lobby, a vacation rental, or the interior of a new car you are scoping out on the manufacturer's website. Panoramic photos are just popping up everywhere these days. I blogged about this a couple of years ago, marveling at the work of a local Lincoln firm (roundus.com), and wondering what the future would hold for panoramic photography in emergency services.

At the time, I was thinking about panoramic photography as a great means of establishing situational awareness for police officers, firefighters, and emergency responders. I though such imagery would be great for high-risk facilities such as government buildings, arenas, schools, critical infrastructure, and the like. I pictured a library of panoramas that a SWAT team commander, battalion chief, or incident commander could consult during a protracted critical incident.

What I wasn't really thinking about at the time, however, was preserving information about crime scenes or fatal traffic crash scenes through panoramic photography. A couple months ago, though, I found a new iPad app, TourWrist, that made me think about this application. TourWrist leverages the gyroscope in an iPad or iPhone, so you can navigate within a panoramic photo by moving or rotating the device. It is a very immersive experience. Next time you see someone holding their iPad over their head and looking up at it, or holding it at arms length and dancing in a tight circle, I'll wager they are using TourWrist to check out the ceiling of some opera house, or the landscape of some ancient ruins. It was my experience goofing around with this application that caused me to pause and think about scene photography.

Last week, I discovered something even more immersive and interactive: panoramic video. The sample videos from GoPano.com (especially playing in their iPad application) simply blew me away. I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around this: it's as if you are inserted right into the video, able not only to rewind, review, and repeat, but to control the point of view within the full 360 degree range of motion. What a great way of re-examining a scene, or presenting its appearance to those who were not there to see it live.

There is no doubt in my mind that panoramic photography and panoramic video will be hugely influential in the future of crime and crash scene investigation.

Flatter is better

2011-10-05T05:01:00.002-05:00

Last week, a copy of a police department annual report from another city arrived in the mail. This city’s population is about 50,000 fewer than Lincoln, yet it has 200 more police officers than Lincoln. Last year, the number of Part 1 crimes in this city was almost identical to Lincoln, as was the number of traffic crashes. This city’s clearance rate for Part 1 crimes last year was 10%: Lincoln’s was 29%. This city received just over 300 Crimestoppers tips in 2010: Lincoln received 1,833. I could go on, put the point is that LPD’s efficiency look mighty good in comparison.

Looking at the organizational chart in this city’s annual report, I noted eight different ranks: chief, deputy chief, major, captain, lieutenant, sergeant, corporal, and officer. In Lincoln's police department there are five: chief, assistant chief, captain, sergeant and officer. There is a lot of rank evident in this department: I counted a captain, 3 lieutenants, and 10 sergeants in the Traffic Unit alone.

I am a big believer in organizational flattening: reducing levels of rank. I also believe that fewer and smaller specialized units are an advantageous, in order to keep the percentage of sworn personnel delivering direct services—uniformed officers, investigators, and detectives—comparatively high. At every agency I’ve headed, I have eliminated a middle management rank and/or reduced the total number of incumbents in those ranks in favor of plowing more resources back into field services. I strongly believe that a flatter organization is more efficient, and that in the information age, a leaner management staff can still competently direct a complex organization.

Lincoln Fire & Rescue also looks good in this regard. Like the police department, there are five levels of rank at LF&R: chief, assistant chief, battalion chief, captain, and firefighters. Above the rank of captain (which is the first line supervisor, roughly equivalent to a police sergeant) there are 10 chief officers. This is low for a department of this size, and reflects an efficient use of management-level personnel.

You can find a huge amount of comparative information concerning municipal services online, and I would invite anyone to look at these kind of data if they are wondering about the bang-for-the-buck they receive in Lincoln.

Cover shot

2011-10-03T05:46:00.002-05:00

There is a short article in the September issue of Law Officer about the CrimeView Dashboard, a product of the Omega Group that we use here in Lincoln. The latest version is a huge upgrade from its predecessor that we launched in 2009. I did a double take when I saw a copy of the magazine laying on the desk of one of our crime analysts. I hadn't seen the issue yet, but I recognized the cover. I snapped that photo in the Lincoln Police Department's assembly room, over the shoulder of Capt. Jim Davidsaver. A couple months ago, the editors had asked me for a few screenshots or photos to illustrate the upcoming article. I used my Canon G12 that is normally employed when chasing fast grandkids, a task that benefits from it's optical viewfinder and Tracking AF focus mode.

Quicker is better

2011-09-29T05:59:00.002-05:00

I have been a proud member of the Police Executive Research Forum, a professional association of eggheads of my ilk, for a couple decades. One of the benefits of membership is a daily email composed of links to a handful of interesting or provocative news stories from around the country. For one reason or another, there has never been one from Lincoln. Maybe our local media outlets aren't picked up that much on the right coast, or maybe we're just not that interesting. Oh well.

Colorado, though, was in this week's clips with an interesting article from the Denver Post about a new Auto Theft Intelligence Coordination Center in Lakewood. Here's the excerpt that caught my eye:

The silver Dodge was screaming up Interstate 70 at 2 a.m., outgunning a state trooper who had flipped on his lights because of a minor traffic violation. It was only after the 19-year-old woman crashed inside the Eisenhower Tunnel that the reason for her 100-mph run became clear: She told troopers she thought they were after her because she stole the vehicle 11 days earlier. None of the law officers involved in the July chase even knew the car was stolen. The reason? Authorities in the small western Colorado town where it went missing hadn't filed a report in a statewide database yet. A delay in auto-theft reporting by police and sheriff's offices was one of the first problems targeted by Colorado's new auto-theft lab when it began work in January....some jurisdictions were taking from two weeks to three months. Now the average delay in reporting a stolen vehicle is about 1.5 days, down from more than four days a few months ago.

Holy cow, a day and a half is an improvement? Cheri Marti, who manages LPD's Service Desk and who's staff handles entries into the National Crime Information Center database tells me that from the time an Lincoln police officer submits a stolen vehicle report until the time the entry has been made in the State and national databases is less than two hours--often much quicker.

P3i for Duluth

2011-09-28T05:54:00.002-05:00

Duluth’s a nice place, I’m sure, but my only recollection of spending a month there one week during March several years ago is being pelted with horizontal freezing rain for about three straight days. I was travelling with Jane and Steve, colleagues from our local domestic violence shelter, Friendship Home, and Lancaster County Adult Probation. We were attending a training/planning session on improving our community response to domestic violence, taught by the renowned Ellen Pence.

Oh, wait, there was that lovely restaurant north of the City on the shores of Lake Superior. Ellen sent us there, with instructions to ask for a specific server, Zoe, and to inform her: “We are here to end violence against women.” A meal to-die-for ensued. But I digress….

Chief of Police Gordon Ramsay and I have become acquainted over the past couple of years. We’ve talked about various issues over the phone and email. He reminds me of me, and I suspect its mutual. Chief Ramsay is very interested in leveraging technology to work efficiently, and he learned of P3i via my blog. We have offered to bring Duluth onto P3i during the remainder of our research grant, and we are working on that right now. Like Lincoln, Duluth is a customer of the Omega Group and crimemapping.com, and like me, Chief Ramsay is a big proponent of crime alerts as a means of keeping citizens informed about crime in their own back yard.

Looks like the Chief is both a new blogger, and writes a column for the local newspaper, the Duluth Tribune. That’s great public outreach, and I wish him well in the blogosphere. It’s a challenge to keep up with fresh posts, but the pay off is huge when you let the public inside your office to see what’s on your mind.

Not particularly surprised

2011-09-27T06:55:00.001-05:00

Last week I testified at a City Council meeting, regarding a resolution to increase the rates we charge for Lincoln Fire & Rescue ambulance services. The rate increase averages about 4.5%, and is based on a formula that increases rates annually in an amount equal to the consumer price index increase, plus 2%. This method was the recommendation of a committee that studied the ambulance service in Lincoln a few years ago, and acknowledges the reality that medical services are increasing at a rate well beyond the general CPI.

During my testimony, I mentioned that LF&R actually recovers just over half of what we bill. This seemed to surprise many people, including some of the media. The Lincoln Journal Star ended up discussing this in their lead editorial yesterday. It's really pretty straightforward: many people who need an ambulance do not have private health insurance. The medicare and medicaid rates are well below the billing rate, and many uninsured patients have little ability to pay. Absent private health insurance, other taxpayers pick up the difference between the bill and the reimbursement rate, or the entire tab in many cases. This shouldn't shock anyone. The taxpayers also pay to extinguish your fire when you've put your grill too close to the deck railing, investigate your theft when you've left your garage door standing wide open, and incarcerate the offender if he is caught and convicted.

Good work noted

2011-09-23T04:49:00.024-05:00

My email address is on many of the internal lists and groups, so I get copied in on lots and lots of internal email. It is sometimes a battle to keep up, but I'm sure glad I didn't miss a couple of this week's emails (lightly edited for length), from Capt. Tim Linke and Chief Jim Peschong, and I heartily agree!

"Just a quick note to advise you of a significant incident to which B-shift crews responded today. Engine 3 and Medic 2 were dispatched to a person with a head injury. Upon arrival, the crew noted that the patient was down a steep embankment along the Salt Creek Levee. Engine 3 advised they would need a Truck Company for slope evacuation, and began providing aid to the victim. Truck 1 arrived then began setting up their rope rescue equipment and used Battalion 1's vehicle as an anchor point. Engine 10 arrived and assisted. Units skillfully immobilized the patient and placed him in a Stoke's Basket; he was then moved up the embankment with the haul system rigged by Truck 1. The patient was transported to Bryan West with potentially life-threatening injuries. Thanks to the combined efforts of all members on location, the patient was removed from a quasi-complex situation and delivered to definitive care within a very short time from dispatch."

Tim Linke
Captain, Acting B1B

"I just wanted to say to everyone "Congratulations on a job well done" on the Peter Hardy homicide investigation. As an observer from the sidelines, which is still very hard to do, you all worked like a well-oiled machine on this investigation. I mean from all the street officers, Team Detectives, Criminal Investigations Unit, crime scene tecs, Fugitive Task Force, Commanders, Support units, etc.. To see the work and precision that was done on this investigation just has to make you proud to be a member of the Lincoln Police Department."

Chief Peschong

How many?

2011-09-21T05:08:00.003-05:00

Yesterday one of my colleagues at the police department emailed me with a question. He wanted to know what number I use for Lincoln's population. That's an easy one right now, as the 2010 Census data released earlier this year pegged Lincoln at 258,379. The problem comes in between the dicennial censusus (censi?). I'll see news articles, websites, and reports that will continue to use that 258,379 number clear up until 2021, when the next census numbers from 2020 are released.

I'll bet you could search through the City of Lincoln, State of Nebraska, and Lancaster County websites and find plenty of different numbers for Lincoln's population on pages and documents published at about the same time, so I counsel the consistent use of the best and most recent available population data. Right now, that's the 2010 Census count, but population is a moving target, and that count is just a snapshot in time. Lincoln's population is likely to change significantly every year during the decade. Based on our historic rate, we will probably grow by somewhere between 35,000 and 45,000 during the next decade.

Thus, unless you want to use increasingly outdated numbers, you've got to make some kind of adjustment or estimate in between the decades. If you live in a City of 100,000 or better, you shouldn't have to make your own guess, because every two years the United States Census Bureau releases fresh population estimates. The methodology of the estimates is described in detail, and from my experience these have proven to be quite accurate when the actual tally is made at the end of the decade.

I recommend using the Census Bureau's most recent count or estimate because they are the authoritative source: not some city limits sign or some website with unattributed population data. The every-other-year estimate is released in the summer of even numbered years, but it is an estimate as of July 1 of the preceding year. The estimate is essentially one year behind, and always for the odd numbered year. So next summer, the census bureau will release an estimate of Lincoln's population, but it will be an estimate of where that population stood on July 1, 2011.

By the way, think about the implications of Lincoln adding 3,500 to 4,500 residents annually. In Nebraska, that's a pretty big town in its own right: somewhere around the size of Auburn, O'Neill, Fairbury, Cozad, or Broken Bow. That's what we are tacking on to Lincoln, every single year.

Highly visible

2011-09-19T06:00:00.002-05:00

Leaving church southbound yesterday, Tonja and I encountered a traffic crash in the cleanup stages at 70th and NebraskaHighway 2. Due to a curve and hill, we didn't see the crash site until it was too late, and we were briefly caught in the jam. It was an opportunity for me, though, to do something I always enjoy: watch professionals at work. Officer Dave Hensel was investigating the crash, while Officer Mario Herrera handled traffic control.

This is a big, busy intersection with 20 total traffic lanes, and this was the peak time. It was raining, chilly, and visibility was poor. Mario, in his rain gear, had his hands full but was in complete control of the intersection. Dave went about his work in short sleeves and a traffic vest, no doubt soaked to the skin. Mario's cruiser number 218, a 2011 Charger, stood out well, too, equipped with an LED light bar and grill lights. By comparison, thin halogen rotators in the light bar on cruiser 107, Dave's 2007 Crown Victoria, were much less eye-catching.

The switch to LED lights is a very nice technological advance in emergency services, one that will no doubt help protect emergency services workers. They are brighter, last longer, have fewer moving parts, and draw considerably less energy. I run LED lights front-and-back on my bikes for my pre-dawn rides, and the output from these small rechargeable units simply amazes me. Who would have thought, just a few years ago, that you would be able to pump that kind of power from a 165 gram lighting system? Despite the lights, though, it was the high visibility outerwear--Mario's rain jacket and Dave's vest--that mattered most to me. It wasn't exactly easy to get this habit ingrained in our officers, but these days they do a great job.

I want all police officers and firefighter/paramedics nationwide to be as diligent as LPD officers have become in making sure they put on their high visibility outerwear when working around traffic. This simple step will save lives from the most significant threat to personal safety police officers and firefighters face in their work, which is neither bad guys nor burning buildings, rather, traffic crashes.

Different perspective

2011-09-14T06:05:00.003-05:00

I had a speaking engagement yesterday morning at a local service club’s breakfast meeting. I spoke to the group about some technological changes that are impacting the 911 Center, Lincoln Fire & Rescue, and the police department. Among the topics, I told the group about our new location-based services application, P3i. I explained that I was encouraging officers to get to know the parolees and registered sex offenders on their beat. I think this both helps in their supervision and encourages their own self-control.

An audience member just flat disagreed, and during my presentation she took me on head-to-head. She was quite adamant in disagreeing with this entire idea, and did not like this concept in any way, shape, or form. I tried to steer the Q & A in a different direction, by explaining that if she doesn’t like the sex offender registry or the concept of parole supervision her issue was with the legislature, not me. She would have none of it, though, and continued to opine in opposition quite stridently.

It was a little uncomfortable (more so, I think, for the audience than me) but I appreciated hearing her perspective, and admired her persistence and her willingness to go against the grain. She thinks forgiveness is important (me, too), and doesn’t like the idea of the police inserting themselves into the lives of past offenders in this way. It is always good to be reminded that not everyone sees things the same.

Weekend wrap-up

2011-09-13T05:02:00.004-05:00

This past weekend has to be one of the biggest in Lincoln's history. We had somewhere close to 400,000 people attend several special events from Friday through Sunday: three air shows featuring the Navy's Blue Angels, a sold out University of Nebraska volleyball match, and the 313th consecutive sellout at Memorial Stadium for the Nebraska football game.

That's a whale of a lot of traffic. Over a year's worth of planning and preparation went into the weekend, and all three of Lincoln's public safety agencies--police, fire, and 911--were deeply involved in operations. It all came off, however, with few hitches. As we knew, the post-airshow traffic was mighty pokey, but there wasn't much that could be done about that, given the fact that every single vehicle had to pass down one of three lanes. Everyone was well-warned in advance, and most people were patient. From what I've seen, the bigger problem seemed to be a shortage of sunscreen.

It was a great show, and I enjoyed it all three days. Tip a broad-brimmed hat to the officers, firefighters, and dispatchers who helped make it a rousing success! By the way, as a former red-head who burns after 5 minutes exposure to a 40-watt incandescent light bulb, I'm recommending Nutregena Sport Face, SPF-70.

Must have missed it

2011-09-08T05:54:00.001-05:00

I must have missed the story of chaos and carnage in the two new roundabouts near the University of Nebraska’s Memorial Stadium. Despite dire predictions from Internet pundits, it seems that a sell-out crowd managed to attend last Saturday’s season-opener for the Cornhusker football team without any bodies being left in the road.

Having driven the twin-twin rounbabouts (two in a row, double lanes) several times now, I have concluded that navigating them is just pretty natural. If you want to got right, you get in the right lane; left or u-ball, left lane; straight ahead, take your pick.

Still, with 85,000 fans coming and going, along with an untold number of dalliers, hangers-on, and tailgaters without tix—I thought it might be a better show than it turned out to be. The season, however, is still young.

Not that bad

2011-09-06T05:11:00.000-05:00

Over the weekend a guest column ran in the Lincoln Journal Star, about which I have mixed emotions. On the one hand, I appreciate citizen awareness and support. On the other hand, the column was a little, shall we say, alarmist. The author suggested that Lincoln's crime rate is higher than the last two places she has lived: New York City, and Martin County, Florida.

Not so fast. As readers of the Director's Desk should know, the long term crime trend in Lincoln is down, and way down, since peaking in 1991. I cannot find a website named crimeratecomparison.com that the writer refers to in her column, but the most recent published national crime data is the 2009 Uniform Crime Report from the FBI. 2010's preliminary report is out, but the final report will be published this fall. In the 2009 UCR.

New York City's violent crime rate was 552 per 100,000.
Lincoln's violent crime rate was 458 per 100,000.

New York City's property crime rate was 1,670 per 100,000.
Lincoln's property crime rate was 3,933 per 100,000.

New York is a very safe city--among the safest big cities. Lincoln's violent crime rate, though, is significantly lower than New Yorks, and in the bottom third of cities within 50,000 either way of our population. While our property crime rate is significantly higher than New York's, 80% of those Lincoln property crimes are the most minor category: larceny/theft. I suspect that most, if not all of the difference is a reporting phenomenon. Call the New York City Police Department and report that the Sunday New York Times was stolen from your front porch. This will be an interesting experiment. Let's see if that results in an official police crime report for larceny/theft. I guarantee it would in Lincoln. In fact, the most recent case number for a Sunday Journal Star stolen from a front porch is B0-107175. We had to fend off a few such reports when the Journal Star's printing press crashed on June 11.

As for Martin County, Florida, the FBI doesn't publish crime rates for counties, but the largest city in Martin County is Stuart, population 16,000. The 2009 violent crime rate in Stuart was 438 per 100,000, and property crime was 4,688 per 100,000. That's pretty similar to Lincoln, although in fairness I think you'd have to compare Stuart to a like-sized Nebraska City, such as LaVista ( violent crime: 52/100,00 and property crime: 1,995/100,000).

Nonetheless, I appreciate this writer's support and agree wholeheartedly that "taking care of the small stuff" helps prevent the big stuff. This was a mantra at LPD when Rudy Giuliani and I were attending different secondary schools together. I would challenge anyone to find a municipal police department of 321 officers who arrests people for 26,972 charges--as Lincoln did in 2010. I will put our arrest productivity up against anyone, anytime, anywhere. This is a bad City to live in if you're a chronic rider-of-bicycles-upon-downtown-sidewalks.

While she overstates the case, the call to awareness and action is always a good one. Watchful citizens are even more important than plentiful police officers in preventing crime. I think when people get the impression that crime in Lincoln is way up, it is a result of ubiquitous news media coverage of crime (scroll all the way to the bottom, or you'll die of boredom).

On second thought, you best not call NYPD to report the Times stolen: that would be filing a false police report.

P3i for public

2011-09-01T05:09:00.004-05:00

Our new location-based service application, P3i (Proactive Police Patrol information) is now in the Apple iTunes store and the Android Marketplace. The public version is just like our internal police-only version, except the data available to the user is different. For the general public, it is a sanitized subset of police incident reports in the past 30 days: crimes like burglary, theft, robbery, vandalism, and assault—with the exact address and personal identifiers redacted.

You will be able to see the incident reports of this type near your current location as you move(within Lincoln), based on the GPS position reported by your device. The app will give you some insight into the capabilities the officers have with the application and you can imagine the full-fledged police-only data that displays on their devices.

On a related note, the Omega Group, our longtime crime mapping software vendor, has recently released a mobile version of crimemapping.com for iPhone. The app is very similar to the public version of P3i. Just as with the regular browser version of crimemapping.com, you can sign up for Crime Alerts—something anyone who lives in Lincoln or any other community served by crimemapping.com should definitely do. I’m subscribed to my own address in Lincoln, and to my daughter’s in Omaha, and even though I swim in the stream of police incident reports and daily briefings, I often find out about crime in my own neighborhood through Crime Alerts.

No monopoly on hate

2011-08-30T05:58:00.001-05:00

It’s a new semester, and invitations to speak at various University of Nebraska classes have begun. Last year, I blogged about a visit to ALEC 466: Agricultural Leadership and Communication, Leadership and Diversity. The instructor, PhD student Helen Fagan, gave me a couple of broad topics, racial profiling and hate crimes.

I’m hardly and expert, but it seemed to be a good discussion, like last year. Perhaps my years of experience in policing provide a certain viewpoint that contributes to the students’ learning process. I took along a few Incident Reports that are typical examples of hate crimes in Lincoln.

The reports (13 in all) are a depressing testament to, hate, racism, and just plain ugliness: an assault outside a McDonalds on a man who couldn’t restrain himself when he felt the customers ahead of him were moving too slow, and who couldn’t refrain from making his report to the police laced with disgusting, racist language; a gay couple’s window smashed out with a brick; a Latino couple accosted by an Asian man with an incredible barrage of hateful, racist language; a racially-charged fight at a high school: a car load of bigots looking for a victim to torment outside a gay bar. Remarkable, however, was the racial and ethnic diversity of both perpetrators and victims, proving that no one has a monopoly on hate.

As I reminded the students, this snapshot of a few police reports is just the tip of a much larger iceberg.

LF&R debriefings

2011-08-24T04:55:00.007-05:00

One of the really good things I’ve discovered at Lincoln Fire & Rescue as I’ve learned more about the operations is a common practice of conducting both formal and informal after-action-reviews of major incidents.

Due to a conflict, I couldn’t attend the debriefing following this year’s largest fire (Lincoln Public Schools Administration Building), but recnetly I sat in on a short review of a structure fire that occurred on July 5th on SW 10th Street. Battalion Chief Dean Staberg conducted the review. It was a nice assessment of what worked, what didn’t, and lessons learned.

A self-critique like this is a marvelous process for an organization to adopt. It is particularly valuable when the goal is to share information in a collegial setting aimed at performance improvement, not in second-guessing or blaming. I’d like to see more of this on the police side of public safety in Lincoln.

Here’s one simple tidbit, for example, that I picked up: rather than referring to the faces of a basically-rectangular structure by their compass point, LF&R designates them by letters: A, B, C and D (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta). The letters are assigned clockwise beginning with the main face where the address would be. This way, no one has to guess about the compass directions, which are often unclear in the dark, on winding streets, and when buildings are not oriented north-and-south. My house is a pretty good example: here’s the aerial photo. In this image, north is straight up. What would you call the side with the deck and patio? The north side? The west side? LF&R would call it the Charlie side--simply and effectively eliminating any confusion.

New blog

2011-08-22T05:47:00.000-05:00

Andrew Dasher is the manager of the Lincoln Police Department's Crime Analysis Unit. Drew has a new blog, locationbasedpolicing.com. He is interested in engaging more of his colleagues in a dialog about the emerging technology of location-based services in policing, and the implications of this technology for police strategies.

I was really intrigued with his most recent post about a free geocoding and map hosting service, batchgeo. It amazes me what you can do these days with free products and services. Drew has published a sample map of a fictional series of auto thefts, to demonstrate the output from batchgeo. Click on one of the fake cases, and check out the cool label that incorporates an image. I can write the string of html code necessary to create the labels in Drew's sample map, but this product automates that to a very easy pick-and-click step. There simply is no reason any police or fire agency with the inclination couldn't be creating some useful GIS products.

Good luck with the blog, Drew. This is certainly a topic that is gathering a lot of momentum in policing, and if you can stimulate some more discussion among crime analysts and policing practitioners, you will be performing a nice service to the professional field.

Make ‘em pay!

2011-08-19T05:05:00.002-05:00

Another citizen emailed the Mayor expressing dismay that the City of Lincoln doesn’t make the University pay for traffic control surrounding UNL home football games. This writer SENT HIS MESSAGE IN ALL CAPS and held up the example of Ann Arbor, Michigan, home of the University of Michigan. The Mayor’s Office asked me to respond on behalf of the administration, which required just a slight rewrite of last week’s response to another correspondent.

Don’t think we’d win the case in the court of public opinion, if we took our whistles and went home. Maybe I’m wrong, though.

Urban legend circulating

2011-08-18T05:51:00.000-05:00

One of the downsides of the Internet and email has been the rapidity with which unfounded rumors and urban legends spread. Within the past ten days, three people have forwarded this email to me. It is always passed on by a credible person who is familiar with this situation right here in Lincoln!

“This message is or any lady who goes to work, college or school or even driving or walking the streets alone. If you find a young person crying on the road showing you their address and is asking you to take them to that address... Take that child to the POLICE STATION!! No matter what you do, DON'T go to that address. This is a new way for gang members (MS13) to rape women. Please forward this message to all ladies & guys so that they can inform their sisters & friends and family. Please don't feel shy to forward this message. Thank you!”

I have told all the correspondents that this is a urban legend and has no credence whatsoever. Not that it’s entirely bad advice, however. Better yet, though, why not just call the police?

Not the first urban legend I’ve dealt with on the Director’s Desk, and sometimes an email circulates that has all the appearances of an urban legend, but is actually quite true. When I see something fishy like this, I generally search snopes.com with a few keywords, like: child | crying | gang | rape. It is amazing how often the story is not only the same, but even the wording is nearly identical to something that first popped up on the web years ago.

Call for assistance

2011-08-15T05:50:00.003-05:00

I've been on a short vacation with Tonja, celebrating our anniversary. I snapped this photo in Parker, Colorado. While I don't like using 911 for anything but emergencies, you've got to admire the business plan behind these vehicle graphics.

Bigger jam

2011-08-11T05:10:00.000-05:00

Football traffic has been the theme this week, but yesterday was a good reminder of a looming traffic jam that will make a home football game look tame in comparison: the Guardians of Freedom airshow. This is going to be a marvelous three day event, beginning with a private show for people with disabilities on September 9, then a public show on the 10th and 11th.

If you’ve never seen the Blue Angels, you’re in for a rare treat. I love airshows, and this one will be over the top. The last time Lincoln hosted an airshow, the crowds were large and the traffic was immense. This show should draw an even bigger audience—not to mention the complication of a University Nebraska home football game on the same day.

Yesterday, there was a large fully-functional exercise involving all the key players: Airport Authority, police, fire, military, emergency management, and so forth. Scores of personnel and equipment were involved. This follows a large table-top exercise conducted at the Health Department last month. A full years’ planning has gone into the event—more than anything I’ve seen during my career other than last summer’s national Special Olympics.

Despite the planning, however, we are at the mercy of geography. No amount of advance planning and no quantity of soldiers, airmen, police officers, deputy sheriffs, state troopers, and volunteers can overcome the reality that there are only a handful of lanes that can get you into and out of the airshow.

Based on past experience, I don’t look for this to be an insurmountable problem for the pre-show arrival. After the show, however, when everyone seems to want to leave at the same time, the delays will be long. We will do our best, but you’d be well-advised to plan on a relaxed mosey after the show. Stick around and spend some time at the static displays. Pack a picnic. Have a blast, and then avoid the frustration of the peak traffic.

We’ll need to take the opportunity next month to update this photo with our latest patrol car graphics!

Cost per game

2011-08-10T05:45:00.004-05:00

Last weekend, a correspondent to the Lincoln Journal Star wrote a letter to the editor bemoaning the fact that the University of Nebraska does not foot the City’s bill for the cost of traffic control at UNL events, such as home football games.

The letter stimulated some additional correspondence from another citizen with some of the City Council members. This latter correspondent also incorrectly believed that the City is typically reimbursed when dignitaries visit Lincoln and require traffic/crowd control or security. Here is a response I sent to clarify the situation:

“Councilman Emery copied me in on this thread just now, and I thought I might clarify a few things.

First of all, football games are the only UNL events for which the police department incurs overtime expenses. Any LPD officers who are engaged in basketball, baseball, or other UNL events are off duty, and being paid by UNL.

Last year, LPD spent $38,325.49 on police overtime for traffic control surrounding UNL football. This has been cut in half over the past several years, as we have reduced the number of officers involved in directing traffic. That works out to about $5,500 per home game. We are not responsible for crowd control in the stadium, which is the job of the University Police Department, but the traffic on City streets is our responsibility, and I think that's how UNL views it: your streets, your problem, your cost.

As Councilman Emery notes, it's a huge economic engine, and although I have discussed this with mayors and councils over the past five administrations, no one has been particularly interested in drawing a line in the sand. Really, the only leverage we have would be to threaten to stop directing traffic, and I suspect the egg would be on our face if we did that, not on the University's.

UNL also pays the going rate for the Lincoln Fire & Rescue medical standby at Memorial Stadium.

To the best of my knowledge, we have never received any kind of reimbursement for expenses incurred in Presidential and Vice Presidential visits to Lincoln, although I can only recall one of those (Dick Cheney, 2004) in the past 20 years. If memory serves me, that cost us close to $32,000. We have occasionally provided some security services to other visiting dignitaries, but these have been low-key events involving only a handful of officers--usually one or two.”

This will be interesting

2011-08-08T06:06:00.000-05:00

On several past occasions on my blog, I have explained my positive experiences with roundabouts. For one reason or another, people in Lincoln still seem a little skittish about this form of intersection, despite the overwhelming evidence that they have reduced collisions and improved traffic flow.

Well, we have a pair of new ones about to open, which will immediately be put to the test. The acid test, as in around 85,000 football fans coming and going to the University of Nebraska’s Memorial Stadium at the September 3 season opener for the Cornhusker football team.

Even I, defender of roundabouts that I have been, am waiting to see how this works out. I trust those engineers, because experience tells me that they are almost always right about such matters, but somewhere back in the dark recesses of my mind rest a lot of memories of herding cats at UNL football games.

Officer Aaron Moore made a remark to me one day that added a new phrase to my vocabulary. He had about a decade of experience handling one 10th and O Street on game days, one of the busiest intersections in the City. The overpass there was closed one year for construction. One leg of this massive arterial simply dropped off the edge of the earth. We all knew it would be an interesting season for Aaron and his colleagues at 10th and O. After the first game, I asked him how it went. He said that people kept pulling up to the intersection, coming to a full stop, completely befuddled about what to do next, just staring at the barricades “like a cow looking at a new gate.” You’ve got to love that Nebraska-ism, which I have oft repeateded, usually garnering a perplexed look from the city slickers in the audience.

We shall see how the drivers deal with this new gate in a few weeks.

Brief me where I am

2011-08-04T05:32:00.001-05:00

Every day at Lincoln Fire & Rescue, a short conference phone call is held, connecting all the fire stations. Special events, assignments, upcoming training, and similar information is exchanged in about 10 minutes.
Ten times every day, a similar briefing is held at Lincoln Police Department HQ. It happens 10 times daily because of the variety of overlapping shift schedules. It’s the same kind of information as at LF&R, with some highlights added about such things as recent crimes and persons-of-interest.

Beginning in the summer of 2005, LPD started using web conferencing (gotomeeting.com) to conduct the shift briefing, as a means of getting the content of the duty commander’s computer monitor out to the substations where around 95 employees begin their workday. It has worked splendidly. No one really needs to see the shift commander’s smiling face, but everyone needs to see the photo of the stolen 2009 Mitsubishi Eclipse, the map of the most recent street robberies, and the mug shot of the dangerous suspect that is on the loose.

This year, as we have been deploying our new location-based services application, P3i, we have also been loading gotomeeting’s mobile application on the iPhones and iPads. With a broadband connection on your laptop, or with an iPhone or iPad, you can join the shift briefing (we call it “lineup”) remotely. I’ve been doing that regularly for years on my laptop from home or on the road, but about a year ago I switched mostly to using the iPad app. The latest version works on both iPad and iPhone, and I tried it out this week for the first time on my phone. It worked fine, and the small screen was not much of an issue for the types of things Capt. Jim Davidsaver was covering during the briefing.

Daily shift briefings like this are occurring nationwide (actually, worldwide) in police departments. I predict that in the future, lineup will be a quaint anachronism, and the virtual meeting or web conference will be the primary means by which this information exchange is accomplished. It just makes sense.

Second murder

2011-08-02T04:57:00.000-05:00

Lincoln's second murder of the year occurred over the weekend in the wee hours Sunday morning at a house party in the Southeast Team area. This isn't the first time someone has been murdered at a party. Whenever we can show results like this, you can be assured that the collateral splatter has been reduced, as well. Too bad we didn't get to this one before the lead flew. An unfortunate end to a young man's life, but at least nice work by the officers got this homicide cleared up quickly.

Looking for a handout

2011-07-29T06:29:00.000-05:00

I note that this guy has been arrested for a much more serious offense.

Map happy

2011-07-28T05:29:00.001-05:00

Most readers know that I am a bit of a GIS wonk. I now have my hands on a new set of data, and a new range of questions. Capt. Julio Talero is the GIS analyst at Lincoln Fire & Rescue, but I can’t help by dabbling a little myself on the weekends. I leave the heavy lifting to him, but I can play a little, too.

In preparation for a meeting last week, I prepared a few simple slides for my iPad. Capt. Talero provided me with a set of four-minute travel time polygons. Using ESRI’s ArcGIS and Network Analyst extension, he created these polygons, which represent coverage areas from each fire station within four minutes of hypothetical travel time: hypothetical because the method uses the speed limit of each street segment to perform the calculation. In the real world, you don’t get a running start, your acceleration is not exactly like a Cobra 429, and there are plenty of motorists who either can’t hear your siren over their music, or freeze up in the inside lane.

This first map shows the location of the stations, and the four-minute polygon surrounding. There is a lot of overlap, and these 14 polygons are opaque: they are layered over or under the adjacent station’s four minute area.

Overlap is good if it’s located in the right place: the areas where you are most likely to have a high volume of calls for service. If you want to have a reasonable response time to every address in the City, you have to consider both proximity to the fire station, AND the likelihood that the resources at that station are already committed. In a busy area, the resources are more likely to be occupied elsewhere, so the response is not coming from the closest station anyway. Here’s another map depicting the overlap areas:

In this map, each of the 14 polygons is shaded pink and semi-transparent. As four-minute travel time areas overlap, the visual effect is that the color becomes more and more opaque—a hotter shade of pink.

Options abound

2011-07-27T05:51:00.000-05:00

Monday night, the City Council voted to restore fire station 11 to the budget, a cut that I had proposed when Lincoln Fire & Rescue was facing the prospect of a major hit during the upcoming fiscal year. Now that it’s back, we will be focusing on our study of the optimal way for us to use our existing resources. The issue of how many stations Lincoln needs (and can afford) is not going away, and we need to be well-prepared to give our elected officials and citizens our best professional judgment.

This includes an examination of our existing facilities and our future needs. Nothing is off the table, and there are many options that need to be considered. The past few fire chiefs have stressed the need for one or two additional fire stations, and the first of those stations are in the City’s Capital Improvement Program (although without any funding source.) I’m not so sure. I’ll have to see that need myself before I sign up with the program. It’s not that I can’t be convinced, but I need to make sure we consider the options.

The need for new fire stations has been predicated on the growth of Lincoln. Since we occupied the newest station (14) in 1997, Lincoln has grown by 49,000. That’s the equivalent of Nebraska’s third largest City, Grand Island, with Auburn thrown in to boot. Growth would certainly suggest the need for more fire stations and fire companies, but maybe we could accomplish quite a bit by relocating one or two existing stations, by relocating apparatus, by opening one or more medic-only stations, or by (heresy!) breaking apart an engine company and a truck company. Maybe a combination produces the best return on investment: something like building one, moving two, and lighting up a medic-only station.

Fire stations aren’t cheap, but the real cost is not in the construction, it’s in the staffing. You pay the contractor once; you pay the salaries and benefits every year. I don’t think it is likely that the checkbook will be thrown open, so we need to make the best investment of the dollars that become available. The key question is this: what provides the best result for the money?

Think about this for a moment: when the need for elementary schools changed, Lincoln Public Schools did more than just build more: they also moved. Here’s a few former schools that have other uses now: Whittier, Bryan, Willard, Hawthorne, Bethany, and Hayward. I’m probably forgetting a few. For sure, they added schools, too, but they also moved to where the kids were.

Can this be accurate?

2011-07-22T05:10:00.000-05:00

It's 2:21 AM. You've just returned to bed after about a half-hour of singing softly to a five year old with a touch of stomach flu. The sheets have been changed, and the washing machine is humming as you drift back to sleep, trying not to think of the 7:30 AM staff meeting where you are expected to make a brief presentation. Suddenly, you are jarred--again--by the shouts and whoops and slamming car doors coming from across the street, where your new neighbors this year seem to have a perpetual parade of their closest 40 friends over for a few cases of beer three or four times a week. This is getting very, very old.

So, after suffering through these nights most of the year, picking up cans, cups, and bottles the next morning with depressing regularity, you finally call the police. You know they've got other things to do, and you know that you tipped a few yourself when you were 21 or 22. You never wanted to be "that guy", but this has gotten ridiculous.

That, readers, is a wild party disturbance complaint: incident code 12311, location code 81, with a default initial response of two units, priority three, code one. As of midnight, we have dispatched police officers in Lincoln to 282 of these. Usually, the call is the last straw in a situation like this that has been brewing over hours, if not months. During the same time period last year, Januray 1 through July 21, we dispatched police officers to 519. That's a pretty dramatic reduction by any standard. But wait....

In 2005, from January 1 through July 21, Lincoln police officers were dispatched to 1,012 wild party disturbance complaints. Could that really be accurate? I double checked and checked again. Are we missing a few months from the data? Does this query have a syntax error? Apparently not. It is both accurate and remarkable.

You can click the link in my label cloud to Party On. read about the trend and the strategies, and follow the emerging pattern over the four years I have published the Director's Desk.

Hot or not?

2011-07-20T04:53:00.001-05:00

I don't have to tell most Americans that it has been incredibly hot the last few days. In Nebraska, we're talking 100 or better, with heat index readings in the 110-115 range. There is not much relief at night, as the slight in temperature is offset by even higher humidity.

The stifling heat made me wonder about a topic I've blogged about on a few other occasions: the impact of weather. It's been about the cold, previously, but now I'm interested in whether the same phenomenon applies to extreme heat. Hot, or not? I went back a month to the same days of the week during a milder week in June--the 19th, 20th, and 21st, when the high temperatures were in the 70s and 80s,and compared this to the past three days we have sweltered through: Sunday, July 17 through Tuesday, July 19.

June July
Sunday 306 312
Monday 369 389
Tuesday 341 359
Total 1016 1060

Not much of an impact apparent in this highly unscientific analysis. Here's the same data for Lincoln Fire & Rescue on the same dates:

June July

Sunday 53 57

Monday 67 49

Tuesday 56 63

Total 176 169

The impact of brutally cold weather upon our workload that is so obvious in our data does not, in this little comparison, seem to apply to extremely hot weather.

P3i picking up momentum

2011-07-15T05:56:00.006-05:00

The Lincoln Police Department’s location-based services application, P3i (Proactive Police Patrol information) is getting a little more attention around the dial these days. Since my blog post back on June 14, the first public unveiling of the concept, we gave gotten a bit of news coverage and a feature-length article in the Police Chief, one of the most widely-read professional publications in the field.

The video has been getting a lot of hits, and inquiries have been coming in from other organizations and departments in such places as Illinois, California, Texas, Washington D.C., Virginia, and Kansas. As the project continues, the research & development team from UNL and LPD will be working on interim reports, articles, a and a book chapter. Conference presentations are also in the works. This weekend, some of our officers are going to be showing P3i to a few parole and probation officers—a field that I think is particularly ripe for the use of location-based services. I’m interested if they will see the potential.

The feedback I’m getting from external sources has included glowing words such as “revolutionary”. We shall see. Sometimes things look good in development, but fall somewhat flatter in the real world. That’s the purpose of the research phase of this project, but I am cautiously optimistic. Remember, though, that this is “Version 1”. Location-based services applications generally, including P3i, will continue to become more polished as time passes.

During the first 45 days of the launch, the application gradually dribbled out in small groups to what was eventually 60 officers. During that time, they reported 504 contacts or attempted contacts that would not have occurred but for P3i, resulting in 65 arrests and 92 Information Reports. We are well into the second month now, and we are now fully deployed for the test. The last of the applications (a web app for our mobile data computers combined with a USB GPS puck) was checked off this week. We now have 75 officers in the experimental group who have P3i on one of five different devices. Their feedback will be far more significant than the impression of anyone who has read an article, attended a conference presentation, or watched an amateur youtube. The jiggling camera and rattle, by the way, an intentional--like reality TV.

Closing Eleven

2011-07-12T04:58:00.011-05:00

Mayor Beutler released his budget proposal yesterday for the upcoming fiscal year, 2011-2012. There is a $9.3 million gap between revenue and the cost of producing exactly the same services next year as last year. The Mayor proposes to fill that gap with a combination of further budget cuts and some relatively small tax increases. As I mentioned last week, Lincoln is at a decision point: the easy cuts happened a long time ago, and from here on out, the cuts bring a certain amount of pain that Lincoln's citizens are going to have to face.

Among the more dramatic cuts is the Mayor's proposal to close Fire Station 11, which serves the Arnold Heights/Airpark neighborhood, home to around 5,000 residents and a thriving industrial/commercial area. Geographically, this area is somewhat isolated from the rest of the City by a sprawling cold-war era nuclear bomber base that now serves as the Lincoln Municipal Airport, the Nebraska Air National Guard base, and a commercial/industrial tract. The old airbase functions like a large lake: you can't drive through it, you've got to go around it. There is no bridge.

There are no hospitals in Airpark, no nursing homes, no drug treatment centers, no homeless shelters, nor any of the other major facilities that generate large numbers of fire and rescue calls. As a result, Station 11 is something of the Maytag repairman of Lincoln Fire & Rescue, with slightly over 300 calls for service in 2010. By way of comparison, the average of Lincoln's 14 fire stations is around 1,500, and the busiest station cracked 6,000 last year.

A bean-counter would immediately realize that from a strictly managerial standpoint, a fire station at the bottom of the list with a volume less than 25% of the average, and only half that of the next lowest station, is the logical cut. It's not, however, quite that easy. Serving the residents and businesses in Airpark is going to be quite difficult without Station 11. The next closes stations, 13 and 14, are all on the opposite side of the lake, and the travel time will increase by upwards of five minutes--into the 7-10 minute range. Moreover, pulling those units from such a great distance has a persistent domino effect on their regular service areas: if Engine 13 responds to Airpark, it would now be more than five minutes out of position if something occurs in its normal service area.

Google "flashover" and "cardiac arrest" so you can see for yourself what the extra response times means. The solution to the Station 11 dilemma might lie in re-configuring the location of fire stations in Lincoln. Build a new firehouse further south, and Station 11 might be able to serve the growing workload along West O Street and Interstate 80, while still providing effective response to Airpark. We are presently engaged in a study to determine the potential impact of some strategic relocations like this in Lincoln. This is a future solution, however, and the budget gap looms right now.

The quirky manner in which Lincoln developed is no one's fault. The geography, however, puts public safety in a predicament.

Efficiency Comparison

2011-07-11T05:11:00.000-05:00

PSAP stands for "Public Safety Access Point": a term-of-art in the emergency communications field that refers to the call center where the phone is answered when someone calls 911. Lincoln's PSAP is the City of Lincoln Emergency Communications Center (popularly known as the 911 Center). It is one of the three public safety entities that is now my responsibility. The 911 Center manager, Julie Righter, provided me with some interesting data that was collected by another midwest PSAP. Julie knows that I'm something of a data hound, and I find it useful to compare with other service providers as a benchmark for how we are doing. In this comparison, Lincoln's center fares very well. That's good: we want to continue to strive to provide good efficiency, and good value to the taxpayers.

I am intrigued by the metric of "Dispatchers per 911 Calls", where Lincoln ranks in the middle of the pack, while we are at the top in "Dispatchers per Administrative Calls." I think this reflects an interesting difference in Lincoln. Citizens in our community--more than most--understand that you only call 911 in an emergency, and have been conditioned to call the non-emergency number, 402.441.6000 in other circumstances. A lot of communities struggle with this a great deal. While our personnel still get some real doozies calling 911, on balance we have much less of a problem in this regard than most others. Hence, we have a high number of co-called administrative calls in comparison to 911 calls. That, too, is very good.

Old School

2011-07-06T06:06:00.000-05:00

You already know that I can’t make this stuff up. Make a note: prior to all naked reenactments, glance around and look for a police car.

What a difference

2011-07-05T05:20:00.000-05:00

Lincoln's fireworks ordinance was liberalized this year, basically to reflect the reality of what otherwise law-abiding citizens were really doing: shooting off a lot of inch-and-a-half firecrackers that were heretofore illegal. Insight of the new law, I wondered what would happen to the number of complaints the police receive about fireworks. Here's the data on Incident Code 12341-DISTURBANCE/FIREWORKS for the week running from 0001 on June 28th to 0500 on July 5th:

2011 - 319
2010 - 502
2009 - 501
2008 - 557
2007 - 572

That's a reduction of 40% in 2011 from the average of the preceding four years.

Reality bites

2011-07-01T06:14:00.000-05:00

Mayor Beutler held a news conference yesterday to break the bad news to the citizens of Lincoln: you are going to face some tough choices this year pertaining to the City budget. Lincoln is facing a $9.3 million shortfall between the revenue coming in, and the cost of providing exactly the same services next year as we are providing today. That's the reality, even if it bites.

We are far better off than most cities, but several years of plugging the budget gaps with one-time only funding sources has finally come home to roost. Now, we are facing the gut-check: cut $9.3 million in services or find some additional revenue. With a few small exceptions, the cuts from here on out will hurt.

Lincoln prioritizes its government programs into tiers, and all those programs and tiers are listed on the City's website. In order to get $9.3 million, most all of the tier 3 programs and a good chunk of tier 2 would be gone: 60 neighborhood parks closed, all but one of the City swimming pools closed, a fire station closed and 12 firefighters laid off, 13 police officers and civilian support staff gone, public transportation slashed in half, three libraries shuttered, and so forth. It would be brutal, but would leave intact the higher priority programs.

I've been around the block before, and I can predict what some of the reaction will be. Some will accuse the Mayor of being alarmist, and accuse the City of laying out potential cuts of popular or high-profile services just to soften the public up for a tax increase. If you think that's the case, visit the list yourself, and find the cuts you would propose that add up to $9.3 million. Do not, however, try to pretend that you can fill this kind of gap by slashing the bookmobile and a smoking prevention program.

Someone told me today that we pay extra for red ambulances. If it's more than a couple hundred bucks, I'd be the first to say "let's buy white." But we only buy six every ten years, so unless we're paying about $15 million each for that paint job, I don't think that's going to make a dent. Truth be told, the low-hanging fruit was plucked a long time ago. While there may be an occasional expense that could be reduced in City government, these little bits and pieces will not add up to a hill of beans compared to the mound we are facing.

Anyone who thinks the City is crying wolf should Google "firefighter layoffs", "police officer layoffs", "park closings", "library closings", and you'll see that there are many cities around the United States doing just that to cope with their budget problems. If citizens can live with the cuts, we will continue to deliver the best services we can with the resources we have. If they can't live with them, now is the time to say so.

Dark and stormy night

2011-06-28T05:55:00.001-05:00

Overnight yesterday, Lincoln had two severe thunderstorms that passed through the City, the first about 2030 hours, the second about 0130 hours. Between 3 and 4 inches of rain fell in a relatively short period of time. Good thing we've got the open channel of the Antelope Valley project, rather than the old box culvert that ran from just south of N Street to just north of Vine. Judging from the debris line I noticed during the pre-dawn bike ride, there is no doubt in my mind that O Street would have been underwater, and a good amount of urban flood damage would have occurred.

The dark and stormy conditions made for a busy night for police and fire, with downed limbs, alarm trips, and lightning strikes that kept the City hopping. Props to the cops, firefighters, and 911 employees who weathered the storm.

W2 not quite that large

2011-06-23T05:54:00.023-05:00

The June 20th edition of the Lincoln Journal Star contained a letter to the editor from Michael James urging Mayor Buetler and I to work towards reducing the compensation of firefighters. I welcome advice and input, but I would like to clarify some information in his letter. Mr. Smith stated that the average firefighter's compensation was over $77,000, and that for the Emergency Services Division the average was over$100,000.

That sounded implausible to me, particularly since the entire budget of Lincoln Fire and Rescue this year is $27,230,616 and the department has 301 employees. Dividing the later in to the former yields $90,467 per employee, and that would include the pro-rated per-employee cost of maintaining 16 facilities, over 25 apparatus, a sizable amount of equipment, quite a bit of diesel fuel, and all the other operating costs involved in an urban fire and rescue department.

I pulled a spreadsheet of every employee's end-of-the-year pay for 2010. This was total pay, which would include salary, overtime, holiday pay, and so forth--the bottom dollar on the final pay stub. The average firefighter, from chief to rookie, was paid $70,139 last year. That includes all the firefighters regardless of assignment--paramedics, fire apparatus operators, battalion chiefs, assistant chiefs, the works Take out the top brass, and the average drops into the high 60's

While 70K is certainly a nice salary in Lincoln, the impression that the average firefighter is pushing 80-100K is a bit over they top. Maybe the author was referring not to salary, but to the "total cost of ownership" which includes insurance premiums, worker's compensation costs, and so forth. These non-salary expenses of employees are there in every single job to varying degrees, public or private sector. Rest assured, though, that the average pay on a firefighter's W2 was way under the figures quoted by Mr. James

Firefighters don't make the rules on their compensation. It is senseless to fault the union that represents them for trying to get the best deal possible for its members: that's what a union is supposed to do, and it is neither sinister nor un-American. In fact, playing politics is as American as apple pie. People and groups of all manner use the political process to pursue what they perceive as their best interests and to try to get officials elected who see things the same way. They do so with varying degrees of success, and on occasion, he who lives by the sword, dies by the sword. Welcome to democracy.

It bears noting that the City doesn't make the rules on compensation either. In Nebraska, the ultimate arbiter of public employee pay is the Commission of Industrial Relations, a creation of the State Legislature functioning under State statutes that establish the principal of comparability. The City effectively must pay its employees the same as similar jobs in similar cities as determined by the Commission. Suggesting that firefighters are overpaid and urging the Mayor and I to reduce their compensation is certainly Mr. James' prerogative, but right now, the rules of the game are set by State law.

I want citizens to have accurate information about firefighters' pay. They will have to decide for themselves whether they think that is too much, and if so, the remedy will need to start with a majority of Nebraska's State senators. They tweaked the law a little bit in the last legislative session, but it will be a while before we see what, if any, impact these changes have.

My interest is in having the best employees we can afford with the money the citizens are willing to pay for the service. If there was no collective bargaining, we'd probably pay exactly like the non-union employers in the private sector: enough to attract and retain the type of employee that we feel we need to deliver the quality of services we desire, and to prevent them from jumping ship to our competitors who would work equally hard to lure the best ones away. Maybe the package necessary to do that would be lower, maybe not.

I can find hundreds of people who would be willing to serve as firefighter-paramedics or police officers for less than the women and men who hold those jobs now. I'm not so sure we would be happy with the result. I do not think that it is in the public interest for LF&R to become the place where paramedics cut their teeth before moving on to greener pastures as soon as they've got training and experience at our expense, and some of the folks who've offered to be police officers for reduced prices raise the hair on the back of my neck (which, by the way, is one of the few places on my head it is still located.)

Good things in small places

2011-06-20T05:15:00.003-05:00

Kevin Sands is the police chief in Waverly, Virginia. He heads a department of seven in his small town. Waverly is a far more typical police force than Lincoln. In the United States, 90% of police agencies employ fewer than 50 officers, and half employ less than 10.

I met Chief Sands and his sergeant, Willie Richards, in San Diego last week, where I was unveiling our new location-based services application to a national audience of police technologists. Waverly and Lincoln shared a conference session. I presented about P3i, then Kevin and Willie followed with a presentation about how they are using Apple iPads to bring some great information technology to their small force.

Just as I have found a lot of uses for my iPad at work, so has the Waverly Police Department, and they've leveraged the applications very well, equipping their officers with some resources that would be the envy of big-city cops. Kevin had a nice set of Keynote slides demonstrating a variety of applications they are using for everything from language translation to report writing. Willie has hand crafted some very clever vehicle mounts with an articulating arm, by grafting together parts from a couple of sources.

I was impressed, as were others. There is a tendency to look towards large agencies for innovation and in research in policing. I am convinced, however, that lots of great ideas bubble up in small agencies which have a key advantage over the big cities: they are more agile. Small agencies, though facing plenty of challenges, can often turn on a dime and implement innovative ideas quickly and well. By comparison, the big agency has a tougher time responding to change or opportunity.

There is probably a sweet spot at the nexus between large-enough-to-have-resources and small-enough-to-be-nimble. That's a good place to look for innovative and creative work, but don't ever count out the small places like Waverly, Virginia.

Proactive Police Patrol information

2011-06-14T06:08:00.017-05:00

Proactive Police Patrol information (P3i) is a location-based services application that we have developed and deployed at the Lincoln Police Department in collaboration with the University of Nebraska and with funding from the National Institute of Justice (the research arm of the Department of Justice.)

Last fall, the University was awarded a grant to develop and study this technology. I am the co-principal investigator on this project, and I posted a teaser about it last September. Within two weeks, there was actually a functioning version of the application. In the ensuing months, it has been through many more iterations, as our collaborators at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering have continued to enhance and improve P3i. Deployment began on May 4, and P3i is now in the hands of 60 Lincoln Police officers, who are using the application on four different devices: iPhones, iPads, Motorola Xoom tablets, and Droid2 smart phones. There will 15 more around the end of the month, when a version of the application that can be used on our regular mobile data computers (Panasonic Toughbooks) should be ready.

P3i works the same way many other location-based services apps. It's a map-based application that displays the "police points of interest" around you, based on your current coordinates. The map moves with you as you walk or drive, and the points simply stream towards you as the map scrolls. If you are using it on a smartphone, when you pull it out of your pocket, its already centered on your location. The points of interest represent the locations of recent crimes, the addresses of parolees, registered sex offenders, people with arrest warrants and so forth. These data are updated daily. We use very similar data in our internal mapping applications, so the process was already in place to automatically gather and geocode these data from our reporting systems for display in a geographic framework. With P3i, we have moved these data to the street as a location-based service. Just as you might use Google Maps or Bing on a smartphone to search for a restaurant, then click the icon to bring up a photo, a link to its website, and a button to launch Streetview, you can do all the same things in P3i. Rather than the restaurant, though, it's the sex offender who lives in the corner house, or the guy in apartment 201 with an arrest warrant that you might not have known about without this technology.

The early word on P3i is encouraging. I've been in this business long enough that I think I am familiar with sound of sucking-up-to-the-chief. The reaction I've been hearing from officers is something quite different. UNL's Public Policy Center is in the process of conducting research, though, to shed some light on how this technology impacts policing and police officers. At the end of the day, I am pretty confident we will have data that reflects on efficiency and effectiveness, not just anecdotes (although we've already got a bag-full of those, too).

Location-based services

2011-06-13T05:50:00.001-05:00

A location based service (LBS) is a data service delivered to a mobile device using information about the device's current location. If you use a smartphone, you've almost certainly used a location-based service. A common example would be a weather application. You click the icon to open the application, and it returns the weather conditions. You don't have input "Lincoln, NE" or "68508" because the phone already knows where you are, and reported those coordinates to the app, so it could deliver the information that is relevant to your current location.

Many mobile devices these days are location aware. There are a few different ways a gadget can figure out it's location. First, if it is a phone or has a wireless air card, the cell phone signal includes some location data. Your cellular carrier knows what tower the phone is communicating with and where that is located, and in some circumstances your location can be triangulated even more precisely because your cell signal is pinging multiple sites. Second, if the device uses WiFi to connect to the Internet, WPS (wireless positioning systems) could be used to determine it's location. WPS providers maintain large databases of the locations of Inteternet access points. Finally, the current crop of smatphones, many tablets, and a sack full of other gadgets now have integrated GPS, hence the ability to determine latitude and longitude by the signals of global positioning satellites.

There are tons of LBS applications available for the new generation of smart phones and tablet computers that are taking the mobile computing world by storm, and these kinds of apps have widely adopted by consumers. This is how tens of thousands of people will find restaurants, bus stops, dry cleaners, and nearby ATMs today. It is remarkable how quickly LBS apps have become integrated into the daily life of so many people. The increased computing power of mobile devices, the falling price of GPS receivers, and the proliferation of broadband data services has changed the landscape of mobile computing dramatically.

Location-based services have tremendous potential in criminal policing, emergency services, and community corrections. I have a feeling that we're on the verge of something significant in these fields. More on that later this week.

NG911

2011-06-10T06:28:00.004-05:00

Among my new duties as public safety director, I am now responsible for the Emergency Communications Center (more commonly known as 911), previously a division of the City of Lincoln Finance Department. Yesterday, I finally got to spend a significant chunk of time with its manager, Julie Righter. Julie tagged along with me to make a presentation at a conference in Kearney, and the half-day commute provided us with a good long uninterrupted meeting. I highly recommend a road trip when you really need to concentrate without distractions.

The field of emergency communications is not entirely foreign territory to me, but I needed more than just a refresher. There is a new language to be learned, and among the conversation in the front seat yesterday were Zetrons, Embers, site controllers, Orion MapStar, Vela, enunciators, Paracletes, logging recorders, consoles, modules, fire picks, CAD picks, trunking, conventional, and interoperability. I now know that you can have a Bluetree and a Bluetooth, but they are not the same thing, and neither is blue. I learned that OpenSky has nothing to do with open sky, and that PlantCML is related to Magic XL, but they are more like cousins than immediate relatives.

The communications center has more acronyms than Carter has little liver pills. I could probably now score over 70% on GETC, NEMA (not to be confused with NENA), LEOP, FEMA, MSAG, QI/QA, EMD, ESD (I, II, and III, no less), NIMS, IDT, CALEA, PSSI, APCO, PSAP, PSCSAM, and (my favorite) TERT. Would you really want to be known as a TERT?

It was quite a vocabulary lesson, as Julie briefed me for a few hours on current projects, future projects, and the many issues she and her staff are juggling. The one that really caught my attention, though, was Next Generation 911, also known as NextGen911, and in its shortest form, NG911, essentially an initiative to update the nation's 911 infrastructure to adapt to the wireless mobile technology a growing number of citizens employ as their weapon of choice for communications.

You've got a century of development and history in emergency communications based on land line telephones and private radio networks under your belt. Now suddenly everyone wants to use such things as email and text messaging to contact their local emergency services providers, with an audio file, video clip, and set of images attached! On the 911 end, the technology is all adapted for the phone call and radio dispatch. NG911 is the collection of protocols, training, software, hardware, network, and other stuff needed to move emergency communications into position to respond to the new reality of how the world communicates.

Inspection

2011-06-08T07:00:00.014-05:00

One of the nice things I've discovered is that Lincoln Fire & Rescue pushes out a lot of information through automated database reports. I'm all over push technology for keeping people informed. Yesterday morning, I got an email with a document attached that was a summary of the preceding day's activity: seven fire calls, 55 medicals, 9 others (including one intriguingly labelled "odor.") At the bottom of the Monday list, however, was a listing of 105 inspections. I knew just a little about it, but I was surprised by the number, and learned a little more.

Fire companies from each station go on a periodic basis to the businesses and commercial establishments in their response area. They update the emergency contact information; look over the fire protection systems, hallways, stairwells, alarm panels, exits, elevators, emergency lighting, and so forth. This information is collected on a check sheet form, and updated to a database. Any problems are either immediately remediated or referred to fire inspectors for follow up.

It is good fire prevention work, and it's an excellent way to update information that can be very valuable in an emergency. The police department uses this data, too. Once a week, at 0700 on Mondays, the file is uploaded from LF&R's database to LPD's records management system, so it is available to police officers and employees. It is especially helpful in finding the keyholder in the wee hours of the morning when a break-in has been discovered, a door is found unsecured, or some other problem comes to light that requires the presence of a person in authority over the premises.

Business inspections are a valuable activity with many benefits, and a great example of proactive work that serves a good purpose. The next step up is the pre-plan, a topic for a future post.

Maybe Maverick needs Goose

2011-06-06T06:03:00.001-05:00

Chief Jim Peschong announced his intention to team up some officers in two-person patrol cars this summer. It's an idea the LPD management staff has kicked around for a couple of years, and tested out on an ad-hoc basis. Jim intends a more systematic implementation.

Collecting data and information will be the key to evaluation, along with a "dosage" (number of units, length of time)that is sufficient to provide a fair test. I'm all about trying things out and seeing how they work. Adapting to change is an imperative. Unless it requires a huge capital investment, or presents an unacceptable risk of failure, you can always revert if it doesn't pan out.

Managers of my age all learned in school that the two-person patrol unit was less efficient than single-officer patrol, and that there was no significant advantage in safety. A progressive police manager just accepted the consensus of the experts that single was better than double. In reality, though, that consensus is based on an awfully skinny body of research evidence, mostly from the 1970's, and all before two major developments: :five-dollar-a-gallon gas, and the in-car computer (include video system, multi-function lighting systems, ALPR, trunked radio, and smartphone in the techno-gadget group.)

Maybe the math has changed, now that the V-8 is becoming an anachronism and the front seat is turning into a cockpit and command post. Maybe in the information age Maverick needs Goose, and the two of them can operate more effectively together as a team than as a pair flying solo. Certainly worth considering.

Pack Rat

2011-06-03T05:53:00.001-05:00

The annual retirees' luncheon at LPD was hosted yesterday by the department's current management staff. The turnout was great, with over 60 in attendance. I enjoyed hobnobbing with some of my former colleagues and supervisors from the mist, all of whom are much smarter today then they were back then--just like your mom and dad get a lot smarter when you have kids of your own.

I was among the attendees with a speaking role, and I told them about my new job, and briefed them on an innovative technology we have created and are now testing at LPD. Many of them remember Lincoln's last stretch with a public safety director, from 1954 to 1970, and they all remember the pre-technology days of onion skin, carbon paper, staple-pulling, and a file cabinet full of mug shots in Records. They are pretty amazed at what's at an officer's fingertips today.

Among those in attendance was the Grand Forks, ND police chief, John Packett, who was a lieutenant at LPD when he left in the mid-1980's for an interesting succession of management jobs before landing in Grand Forks. I hadn't seen him in years. Back during his LPD days, he was the sergeant of my motorcycle squad, and the guy who taught me to ride an Electra Glide. I'd never ridden a motorcycle of any kind before, but I drove a yellow '71 VW, and familiarity with a stick shift was apparently sufficient to mark me as a pre-qualified candidate. "Same thing," he told me, "except the clutch and shifter are in a different place." I promptly crashed into a fence on the maiden run down the empty midway at the State Fairgrounds.

Sgt. Packett's squad, of course, referred to itself as the Six Pack, and we all had nicknames: Pack Rat, Danko, Butch, Furb, Din-Din, Frenchie. Back then, everyone had a nickname, and fifteen tickets for the shift was considered a reasonable "goal."

Reality check

2011-06-01T21:22:00.001-05:00

Saturday, Tonja and I went to the farmer's market downtown. As the market was winding down, we slipped into Lazlo's for lunch, and took a couple stools at the bar. Another couple doing the same thing came in several minutes later, and sat down to our left, with one stool between us.

There was a newspaper on the counter, and the man started sipping his black pepper porter, reading the Saturday news and commenting to his wife:

"Well, the mayor's appointing Tom Casady to be a Public Safety Director. Just what we need: another bloated bureaucrat with a six figure salary. Casady says he hopes to reduce overlap and redundancy. Apparently he doesn't understand that he IS the redundancy."

A Lazlo's employee we've known for years came by and congratulated me on the promotion. I figured for sure our fellow diners would pick up on that, but they did not, and he continued to hold forth on the matter. We finished up our lavosh and headed out, mildly amused. In retrospect, I should have had the bartender bring him another beer, then tipped my hat and waved as we went out the door--better yet, two beers, just to be redundant.

Not really sure I disagree with him, though, and I'm glad I heard his candid perspective. If I turn out to be nothing more than another layer of management, then this will be a really bad idea that should be abandoned. I'm going to do my best, though, to try to add some genuine value to the management of these three agencies, and to do so in a manner that saves money in excess of what my services add to the costs. You can hold me to that, and you can bet your bottom dollar I will know the score.

Last day

2011-05-31T05:33:00.002-05:00

This appears to be my last day as chief, as tomorrow I will transition to public safety director. It will take me a few weeks to get all the loose ends tied up. There are tons of details and practical maters to attend to, such as my office moved and my gear cleared out. You accumulate a lot of stuff over the course of a career. The new interim chiefs, John Huff and Jim Peschong, will have the same transition tasks, and we still have all the usual business to attend to in the process--particularly the budget.

Ironically, last night's devastating fire at the Lincoln Public Schools District office building occurs immediately before my new role managing police, fire, and 911 begins. Hope that's not an omen.

To blog, or not to blog

2011-05-28T16:26:00.001-05:00

My apologies for neglecting the Chief's Corner last week. I was out of town at a meeting of the geospatial technology working group of the National Institue of Justice, and just didn't have much time To do much more than try to keep up with the most pressing email and messages.

Many readers have probably heard that the Mayor announced on Friday that he is changing my role in his administration from police chief to public safety director. In this capacity, I will be assuming responsibility for police, fire & rescue, and the 911 center. This is going to be a huge change for me, and the question looms as to whether I will be able to keep up with this off-duty hobby of blogging.

I do this because I think it creates a little transparency in my work, and helps people understand what's going on in my head--beside being a little fun, from time to time. That's probably a good thing, but it's also another draw on my limited time. The Chief's Corner competes primarily with my early morning workouts, and if I am forced to choose, I'm going with the bike and the gym.

For now, though, I will try to keep on blogging a bit and see how this works out. Looks like I will need a new name, and a new photo.

Oh, deer

2011-05-23T05:09:00.000-05:00

A deer crashed through a bedroom window into a house in midtown Lincoln last week, causing around $5,000 damage before exiting through the front door. It's not entirely unusual to have such events. I recall a few years ago when a deer walked into KMart and caused quite a commotion.

Capt. Marty Fehringer had a good deer story from early Friday morning. Officers were busy with the investigation of a serious injury accident, in which a minivan ran over a man laying in the street during a rainstorm (you can't make this stuff up). As they were finishing up near Centennial and O Streets, right at 2:00 AM, a deer came prancing down O Street, right through the height of bar break, eventually heading south and disappearing into the neighborhood near the State Capitol.

That's the heart of downtown, and you have to wonder how she managed to get that far into the urban environment. Over the years I can recall police scrapes with deer, turkey, cattle of various breeds, and even as ostrich. Don't mess with a 6 foot tall bird, by the way--at least so I'm told.

Recognition earned

2011-05-20T06:49:00.003-05:00

Last night, a superlative Lincoln police officer, Det. Sgt. Mike Garnett, was honored by his peers at the annual Law Enforcement Coordinating Committee Conference in Kearney, Nebraska. This is the premier law enforcement conference in our State. I missed it, due to commitments in Washington, DC early this week, and a 0530 training session I am teaching today.

It pains me to miss the surprise. Mike Garnett is one of the officers who I most admire. Serving this community for 38 years, he has given the best years of his life to the citizens of Lincoln. Mike was honored for his work as a key member of the Lincoln/Lancaster County Narcotics Task Force, and a multitude of complex inter-jurisdictional cases he has shepherded to successful conclusions. He has served for many years in the Narcotics Unit, coordinating countless investigations of drug trafficking from first tip to final disposition. His ability to coordinate complex cases is legendary. He is simply a prosecutor's dream come true: organized, succinct, credible, forthcoming,and--above all, scrupulously honest.

I've admired Mike Garnett for 37 years. As a 20-year old trainee, I recognized him as someone I should aspire to be like. We served together on the ASAP squad.: Alcohol Special Action Program: a squad of six officers dedicated to DWI enforcement, at a time when drunk driving was viewed as humorous, rather than deadly. Mike (along with Barry Rogers) taught me the craft of detecting drunk drivers, and removing them from the road before they killed someone.

There have been many samples at 37 degrees centigrade through the Porapak P column and the flame-ionized detector over the past four decades, Mike. You've saved a lot of lives during your career. Most do not realize or appreciate the fact that they are alive today because of what you did, but many others understand that you interrupted a trajectory that leads inevitably to the premature grave and a quick ticket to the Hot Place. I've had the opportunity to participate in just a little of that, but you for far longer, and for far more people. They owe you a debt of gratitude

Congratulations, not just on this award from the LECC, but on what you have accomplished as a police officer and a man.

Just another day

2011-05-17T05:04:00.002-05:00

Last Friday, I blogged about the two big events that kept our officers occupied on Wednesday of last week: a tense standoff with an armed subject firing a high-powered rifle, and a huge full-scale exercise simulating a campus shooting. But those were just the most high-profile of the days events. On Thursday, I had a speaking engagement with the Leadership Lincoln fellows. I thought it might be interesting to tell them about the events of the preceding day that did not grab the headlines. So I took along the data, as well as a few highlights from the reports. Here's the synopsis:

Last Wednesday, we responded to about 300 other events. That's a fairly slow day for us. Among those were 15 assaults, eight of which were domestic assaults. Two of those assaults occurred shortly after midnight when a man came home to discover his wife in bed with another man. At about the same time, officers responded to an assault in which a drunken man was chasing his wife around the house with a meat cleaver while she cradled the couple's 2-month old baby.

There were 10 child abuse/neglect cases on Wednesday. In one, officers investigated a report that a parent and her friends had smoked meth in the company of four children ages 1 to 11. In another, Officer Chris Howard investigated a report of possible human trafficking. An 11 year old girl reported that the woman posing as her mother had actually purchased her from her biological parents in Africa, as a means of obtaining refugee status, and was forcing her into all the household labor.

We investigated two death cases, one of which was the untimely death of one of our retired officers, and both of which consumed considerable investigative effort, even though there was no obvious evidence of foul play. You cannot act on assumptions when an unattended body is discovered.

There were six missing person cases. One of those was a 14 year old boy. This is the 8th time he has been reported missing, and he has been arrested 7 times for such crimes as shoplifting, marijuana, and skulking around inside other people's cars in the dark of night. A 22 year old women was also missing. She, too, had been reported as a missing person 8 times previously. She has also been the subject of five prior mental health investigations involving suicidal ideation or suicide attempts during the sort time (3 years) she has been in Lincoln.

There were only three narcotics cases, probably because we were too busy to engage in much proactive activity. In one, an 10 year old girl brought her mom's stash of marijuana to school and gave it to a teacher.

There were two rapes. In one, the victim went to an apartment to do some drinking and hang out. After passing out, she awoke to found a man engaged in an an act of sexual penetration, and it appeared that he was not the first to assault her during her unconciousness. Although she is in her early twenties has been the victim in over a dozen assaults and three sexual assaults. She has worked for an escort service, and advertised as a massuese on craigslist. Her drug of choice appears to be meth, as she has a felony charge pending in District Court for possession of methamphetamine.

There were 11 medical emergencies, of which nine were mental health crises, all involving either an attempted suicide or suicidal ideation that required evaluation. Looks like that might be getting even worse.

There were also 13 parking complaints, 46 disturbances, 20 prowlers, 9 vandalisms, 16 larcenies, 20 traffic accidents,three French hens,two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree.

While the TERREX exercise unfolded, and the SWAT Team performed their apex job, it was just another day at the office for the remainder of the Lincoln Police Department.

Admirable performance

2011-05-13T15:03:00.000-05:00

Wednesday was a mighty busy day for the Lincoln Police Department. A lengthy standoff with a barricaded suspect armed with a high-powered semi-automatic rifle was the dominant event. Ironically, it unfolded just before a huge, full scale critical-incident exercise involving a dozen regional agencies and over 900 participants. We were heavily involved in the exercise, which used a campus shooting as it's scenario.

Reality, however, overwhelmed the exercise for the Lincoln Police. As usual, I was incredibly impressed by the performance of our SWAT Team. Despite a very dangerous situation, they kept their cool, controlled the scene, patiently negotiated, and dipped deep into the bucket of strategies to make every effort to save this man's life while protecting their fellow officers and citizens. A score of officers who supported the effort by crowd control, traffic direction, and other logistical support should also take a bow, as should the FBI--which diverted from the exercise to assist at the real thing. Thanks, too, to the Nebraska State Patrol, which diverted their mobile command post and helicopter to help.

It is unfortunate that the subject ultimately took his life, but this was not for any lack of effort by our team and its negotiators. When I authorized the call out of SWAT shortly before midnight, I was reluctant to go back to bed, due to a training obligation at 5:00 AM. Instead, I listened to the first couple of hours unfold, before heading to HQ. As the day wore on and I continued to monitor events, I was continually impressed by the work being done, the options being explored, and the decisions being made by the commanders. Sometimes I take their work for granted, but on this occasion--a thirteen hour standoff with a man whose stated intention was to shoot it out with the police, and who fired several volleys of rifle fire during the standoff--I simply admired the professionalism on display.

All the police officers, and a few thousand citizens in the neighborhood slept safely yesterday--even the scores of gawkers who didn't seem to understand the potential of a high-powered rifle to knock them off the perch from which we were trying to chase them. My job in an incident like this is to stay the heck out of the way, and let the experts do their job. If I've done mine well, they will have the equipment, training, practice, leadership, policy and ethics to perform well when the time comes. And they did. The LPD SWAT Team made me proud to be a Lincoln police officer, and I do not doubt that everyone else at the Lincoln Police Department feels the same way.

Slow blogging

2011-05-13T13:12:00.000-05:00

Sorry, readers, but Blogger has been down for the past couple of days, and I've been unable to post new stories, or your comments. It seems to be back, so thousands of users around the world are probably glad to be back in the saddle. I'll try to catch up, with a couple of posts I just wrote in Notepad, waiting for service to be restored.

Well-deserved

2011-05-11T04:34:00.001-05:00

Mayor Beutler's swearing in ceremony and a proposed changes to the City's alarm ordinance brought me to yMonday's City Council meeting. I needed to stay around after the swearing ceremony to testify about the minor modifications to the alarm ordinance we are advocating, in order to make it a little easier to administer and a bit more fair to the permit holders.

In between the two, however, was the monthly Mayor's Award of Excellence, which went to Lincoln Fire and Rescue's Capt. Jeff Hatcher, for a project he undertook to ensure that Lincoln's deaf and hard of hearing citizens had special smoke detectors that emit a strobe light, a low-frequency tone and a vibration. Capt. Hatcher discovered this gap in the community safety net, and stepped in to ensure that it was closed. The eloquent impromptu remarks he made in accepting the award, to a packed house in the Council chambers, would cause the buttons to pop on any City employees vest. Great work, Jeff!

Then & Now

2011-05-06T04:28:00.002-05:00

Police Officer Katie Flood serves as the department's public information officer, among other duties. She is our liasion with the news media (most quoted woman in Lincoln, I believe), she manages our public web site, she plays an important role on our accredation team, and she is the publisher of our annual report--plus a few other duties. This is not the first time I have acknowledged the quality of her work, but her most recent accomplishment simply cannot go unrecognized.

It is the 2010 Annual Report of the Lincoln Police Department. The theme, Then & Now, is simply marvelous. Officer Flood has taken the Annual Report to an entirely new level of interest and entertainment, by including throughout the document photos and data that juxtaposes information about the police department across a century of our history. I am simply blown away. I couldn't stop looking and reading until I had reached the end.

Truth be told, a good share of our Annual Report is a little on the dry side. Pages of statistics make for a good archival reference, but it's not exactly a potboiler. This year, however, I couldn't wait to see the current photos paired with their partners from decades past, and the statistics from the horse and buggy era were a blast to see alongside the 2010 data. I particularly liked Katie's choice of the arrest data from 1915: I guarantee you she picked that year specifically due to the 13 arrests listed for the offense of Insulting a Woman.

Katie, it's outstanding. Our employees and retirees will enjoy it very much, as will the general public. You've turned the mundane into the exceptional--again!

Found in the desk

2011-05-04T05:49:00.000-05:00

She's 27 now, and I don't think she's holding a grudge about this.

Marathon weekend

2011-05-02T05:20:00.000-05:00

The Lincoln marathon and half-marathon was run this morning in perfect conditions. The runners lined up and started starting (it took over a half hour) at 7:00 AM, with the temperature in the low 40s, the sun warming the spectators, and a light breeze to cool off the second half.

The Casady's were at 20th and Pawnee, where the fans lining the street performed the wave for the runners at the 15K mark. This year, we cheered on our daughter and son-in-law, along with 9,998 other runners. Aside from the years I ran the half or worked the traffic, this has been our favorite perch, as the runners crest a mean hill and catch their breath on a nice half mile downhill stretch. We used the cool tracking app to keep get ready for the camera work, and had a fine time with our best friends who live up the block.

Later at lunch, we started thinking about the economic impact of marathon weekend. A few thousand people come from all over the United States to run in Lincoln's marathon, which is also the National Guard Marathon. Our kids came down from Omaha, spent the night with us, ate out twice, and did a little shopping. They're pretty typical, although hundreds of hotel rooms are involved and many more restaurant meals for the families that come from around the country. Tonja noticed the increased traffic at Chico's on Friday, the Marriott down the street from our home had a full lot, and our waiter confirmed it had been a busy weekend with marathon guests.

It may not be a Nebraska home football game, but I guarantee the Lincoln marathon generates a bunch of local economic activity. This is one of the reasons it was so annoying to see a guy my age or better throwing a snit in his Lexus SUV eastbound at the intersection of 10th and D Streets. He was wearing a coat and tie, and he wanted to continue east through the steady stream of runners heading north on 10th Street. He apparently expected the officer directing traffic to stop a few thousand shoulder-to-shoulder runners deep in oxygen debt, a mile and a half from the finish. The officer whistled several times and motioned for him to turn northbound He ultimately complied, and as he turned we saw him mouthing a string of profanity and gesticulating rather enthusiastically. Guess he was headed for Church.

The marathon route has been published and publicized all over town for weeks. Message boards have been up around town for a week. This is the 34th running. It's not like there wasn't an opportunity to plan ahead and figure out the alternate route. The marathon comes around once a year. 10,000 people achieve a significant personal goal. It is a huge bump to local business. If you can't figure out how to get to church, I'll be happy to escort you personally next year.

Letter to the driver

2011-04-27T06:07:00.000-05:00

We receive phone calls now and then from people who have observed a serious traffic violation. There’s not a lot we can do about it after the fact, in most cases. We have a process, though, by which we will collect the information on the more significant cases, and send a form letter to the registered owner. The object is to encourage him or her to drive more safely in the future

Last week, the registered owner of a 1998 Cadillac received a form letter with my facsimile signature at the bottom. The violation is described as follows:

“Your vehicle was observed being operated with a medium-sized dog standing on the steering wheel while the vehicle was in motion.”

Hmmm. Too bad I didn’t look at that one before it went out. Maybe we should have sent the letter to the dog this time.