Problem Resolution Team app

Back in the mid-1990s, the Lincoln Police Department was diving into problem-oriented policing, which at the time was still a fairly new concept: instead of responding over and over again the the same place or problem, try to identify the underlying issues and work to resolve those. Several examples of such work can be found on my blog, by following the POP tag in the label cloud. Another great source for information is The Center for Problem Oriented policing, popcenter.org.

One of the early practitioners of problem-oriented policing in Lincoln was Capt. Jon Briggs, who commanded the Northeast Team at the time. Some of the problems his officers were working on required the assistance of other agencies, such as the Health Department, Aging Services, the Building & Safety Department, Animal Control, and the Law Department. Jon saw a real need to coordinate and collaborate across agency boundaries.

This need became a concept paper, which we presented Mayor Mike Johanns, and Lincoln's Problem Resolution Team was born--with Capt. Briggs as it's chair. In the ensuing 20 years, the PRT has become institutionalized in Lincoln, and several LPD managers have served as the chair. LPD Crime Analyst Char Estes provides the technical support, among her other duties. The team has experienced many successes in resolving chronic issues at problem properties, and today many other cities have similar inter-disciplinary teams of this type.

Longtime readers of this blog know that I am something of a minor league GIS geek. Every now and then I'll dive into a GIS project, which is an opportunity to work on something that requires an entirely different skill set than my normal job duties. This week, I spent several evenings working on a project for the PRT. With a little help from Jeff McReynolds, Lincoln's GIS program manager, I was off to the races in an effort to create a mapping application for tracking current PRT properties.

I used ArcGis Online to build a web mapping application that displays the location of these properties. A click on the icon brings up the details, including the most recent photo from the Lancaster County Assessor's Office, and a link to more detailed information about the property. I think it will be a nice tool for the PRT, and it's certainly a good example of the utility of ArcGIS online if even a GIS hobbyist like me can do it.

Many crime analysts read the Director's Desk, and most of those are involved in GIS work as part of their duties. If you have yet to explore creating web mapping applications, I suggest you do so. This is only one of many we use for a variety of purposes in public safety: CCTV cameras, parcel lookups, street finder, fire hydrant locations, fire pre-plans, P3i, stream gauges, and much more. Web mapping applications are ideal when you need a simple, single purpose application quickly.

A good starting point (other than visiting arcgis.com) would be to look around the GIS community in your own jurisdiction: the county assessor, public works department, parks & recreation, building inspections agency, and so forth. You may find that other municipal GIS technicians are already deploying web mapping applications, and can offer you some assistance in getting started.

Evaluation important

I only participate in one web forum, sponsored by the International Association of Crime Analysts. Once or twice a week, I will look over the posts, and from time to time I'll send a message off-list directly to someone who has posted a question. Occasionally, if I think something might have general interest to the group, I'll post my reply to the list.

Such was the case earlier this week, when an east coast analyst sought advice on how she might best contribute to a quarterly meeting at which police command staff members would be discussing proactive strategies to impact crime. This is a topic near and dear to me, that consumes a lot of space on the Director's Desk. Clicking the "Crime Analysis," "POP," or "Crime Prevention" tags in my label cloud would bring you to scores of posts on this topic.

My advice to her was to make friends with the Problem Oriented Policing Center's website, popcenter.org, and to help her commanders devise simple, straightforward evaluations to proactive strategies they implement. Evaluation is an important, yet often overlooked step in problem solving. I'm a huge believer in evidence-based practice, which demands assessing results so you can determine what works.

I have found a basic multiple time series to be one of the most practical ways to answer this question. In her post to the IACA forum, the analyst used the example of a preventative strategy to reduce larcenies from automobiles at certain apartment complexes. I'd think of evaluating that by collecting data on the volume of these crimes around the target locations before and after the intervention, then comparing that with the same time frames at other similar apartment complexes, and in the city as a whole.

In a couple of weeks, I'll be teaching my regular two-day course on this topic to recruits in the police academy, where two of the key questions they will grapple with in such scenarios are these: How will you know if it worked, and where will you get the data?

Micro-places

Longtime readers of the Director's Desk have been bored stiff from time to time with my ruminations about such topics as evidenced-based policing, situational crime prevention, and the like. Of particular interest to me is a phenomenon that is at the heart of a lot of good police work: digging into crime where it actually occurs--particularly impacted neighborhoods, blocks with pernicious problems, specific addresses with repeat offenses, even an individual apartment.You will find lots of examples here in my blog about problem-oriented policing strategies that are targeted at these micro-places.

A friend is the co-investigator on several research projects that have involved crime hot spots.  One of these that caught my attention last year was a study of juvenile crime in Seattle. The reserarchers, Drs. David Weisburd, Elizabeth Groff, and Nancy Morris, found that a huge percentage of juvenile crime occurs on a very small percentage of the block faces in Seattle (a block face is both side of one street, between the two adjacent intersections--like the 1500 block of S. 9th Street.)

I've been meaning to look at this in Lincoln for some time, and I got motivated yesterday to do so, a job that took about 15 minutes to set in motion, and ran on my computer while I was away at lunch.  Here's my method:  I took all the crimes reported to LPD in 2012 (21,153 total), and joined those points to the nearest street segment.  Street segments in our geographic information system are essentially the equivalent of the block faces studied by Dr. Weisburd, et al. in Seattle. I then summarized the crimes by street segment, and joined the results back into the streets layer. My result was a GIS layer of streets, where each segment also has a COUNT field that is the sum of the 2012 crimes along that segment.  Here are the results:

There were 13,771 total street segments in the City of Lincoln.  Of those, 7,481 (54%) had no crime at all in 2012. Moreover, 81% of all the crime (14,149 offenses) occurred on only 5% of the street segments (689 segments). The top 1% of the street segments (138 segments) accounted for 7,148 crimes--41% of the total.

These data are consistent with other studies, and demonstrate something very clear: crime is intensely concentrated at these very local micro-places. Police efforts focused on intervening in the conditions and preventing crime at individual premises on those blocks where crime is concentrated are far more likely to be effective than driving around aimlessly burning fossil fuel (or as we call it in policing, "routine patrol").

Here's a snapshot of the 5% of the street segments in Lincoln where 81% of the crimes occurred in 2012.

Personal touch

I blogged last week a couple times about the police department's efforts to reduce false alarms, as a means of both using resources efficiently and improving public safety. One of the most effective tools in achieving this reduction was a redesigned municipal ordinance that increased the cost for chronic repeat false alarms. The pocketbook can be a powerful motivator. There is, however, another tool that has proven to be powerful  and one that I think is often under appreciated

Back in 2011, a home improvement store here in Lincoln had developed quite the reputation for their chronic false alarms. That year, Lincoln police officers responded to 19 false alarms at the business Apparently the escalating fines for more than 3 false alarms in a single year hadn't done the trick. But in 2012 and 2013, there has been a dramatic change. There has been one false alarm in 2013, and there were only two in all of 2012. A drop from 19 false alarms to two at a big box retailer is pretty astounding.  So, what changed?

The answer lies in the personal touch. Sgt. Ed Sheridan paid a visit to the store, and talked face-to-face with the manager. That was the turning point. I have a feeling that for some businesses the bill for excessive false alarm simply goes into the accounts payable stack along with the other monthly bills for pest control, lawn care, and garbage service. When you meet the right person and have a personal conversation, though, you can often change this dynamic.

You can let the manager know that this isn't just a matter of cost: responding to false alarms puts officers and the public at risk.You can tell the manager about your concern that repeated response to false alarms can lull police officers into a deadly sense of complacency. You can tell him or her about the police officers and firefighters right here in Lincoln who were killed during emergency driving. You can offer to speak personally to the firm's alarm company, or to make an appeal up the chain of command on the manager's behalf to a national or regional manager, if that would help get him or her the needed resources to solve the problem.

Engaging in this approach requires timely information about premises with emerging false alarm problems.  Lincoln's ordinance allows three free false alarm responses annually, before the fees kick in. We use one of our GIS applications, CrimeView Dashboard, to alert personnel in our five command areas of emergent alarm problems.  An automated query looks for addresses with three or more alarm dispatches within the past 90 days, then creates a widget that is displayed in the dashboard.  Although it appears on the dashboard automatically, you can drill into the data as far as you want with a mouse click. Here's what the false alarm widget displayed this morning for Capt. Anthony Butler and the Northwest Team officers:

This widget uses graduated symbol sizes and the number within the circle to immediately show the heavy hitters at a glance. It is a great example of using the power of geographic information systems (GIS) to deliver actionable information to police personnel.  We also have a significant problem with repeat false fire alarms. Beginning this year, these are also covered in Lincoln's ordinance. We are in the process of implementing the Omega Group's companion product for the fire service, FireView Dashboard, and I expect that repeat false alarms will be among the widgets we include on the dashboard for battalion chiefs and fire captains.

Consider the denominator

This is a follow up to my post Tuesday about the declining number of false alarms in Lincoln. A reader, Michelle, who is an alarm administrator for a Texas law enforcement agency, left a comment telling me that the industry standard for assessing false alarms in the ratio of false alarm dispatches to alarm systems. This makes sense. The denominator provides the context for comparison., just like population is used as the denominator to calculate crime rates.

There are 5,554 registered alarms in Lincoln, so last year's 2,383 false alarm calls would represent a ratio of .43. We do not know how many alarms were in operation in 2002, the year we reached our high of 4,848 false alarms. I think we can reasonably assume that there are significantly more today, because the population of Lincoln is more than 30,000 greater today, and it is also my impression that the number of alarmed premises has soared in recent years.

Lacking specific data on the number of registered alarm systems in 2002, if we just assume that the number of alarm systems was the same as in 2012 for the sake of this exercise, the ratio of false alarms to alarm systems would have been 4,848 to 5,554, or.87. If I am right about the likely increase in the number of alarmed locations in the past dozen years, that ratio would actually have been considerably higher than .87, thus the decrease in the ratio to .43 in 2012 would be even more dramatic.

From past comparisons, I already knew that false alarms in Lincoln are on the low side when population is used as the denominator.  I was curious, though, if the same would hold true using Michelle's ratio of alarms to alarm systems.  In her comment, she had mentioned the website of the False Alarm Reduction Association, faraonline.org, so I went there in search of any data of this type from other jurisdictions. It looks like the site has lots of resources, but most are for members only, and I wasn't quite ready to fork over $150 to get a peak right at the moment.

I did, however, find a document on FARA's site that sheds some light on how Lincoln's ratio of false alarm calls to alarms system stacks up.  It was this description of the winners of the 2011 FARA Achievement Awards.  The top award went the the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police, which reduced the false alarm ratio from .42 to .35 over a three year period. One of the runner ups, the Riverside, CA Police, was recognized for a four year reduction from .69 to .41.  With Lincoln's ratio standing at .43, it appears we compare quite favorably with the award winners. 

Contact appreciated

Long-time readers of the Chief’s Corner know that I frequently hold up a particular problem-oriented policing project as one of the best example of how data, analysis, and a simple-but-clever crime prevention strategy has dramatically impacted a pernicious crime problem in Lincoln. 



I remember some officers being concerned that waking people up in the wee hours of the morning might not be so well received.  On the contrary, our experience is that people are quite appreciative of the effort, and glad that we let them know.  Here’s an example, that I received yesterday:

“Just wanted to give a Thank You to the Officer who was on my doorstep this morning at 2:30 am - I was a little groggy and I'm not even sure I said anything to him.  He came to our door to alert us that we hadn't shut our garage door last night after we came home from the grocery store.  We had the garage door light on and were advertising it quite well when he must have driven by.  I really appreciate the notification and patience while I figured out that my door bell was ringing before I came down stairs!”

I get this kind of feedback regularly, often in person by someone who recognizes me at the restaurant, coffee shop, or hardware store.  It makes quite a lasting impression when Officer Reed Pavelka is introducing himself on your front steps at 2:30 AM, and reinforces the habit of checking the garage door before bedtime for the next six generations. 

So far this year, Lincoln police officers have talked to citizens in their flannel jammies and fuzzy slippers (the citizens, that is, not the officers—I think) 142 times.  It is widely appreciated, and is the cause of the effect evident in that graph. That is a 59% decrease in open garage door burglaries, and it has driven the 27% decline in rate of all residential burglaries over the past three years. 

Evidence-based policing

This is the fifth and final post in a series that started Monday.

Having spent the week vastly oversimplifying criminology and policing, I need to acknowledge a couple things. First, there are many other theories of crime, supported by really smart people that I have not even mentioned. Second, no one theory explains crime. I think that even the most ardent proponent of a particular theory would probably agree with that. As a police officer, you can see crimes that seem to be best explained by one or another. Many of the distinctions in theory are blurred in the real world. Police strategies are not neatly compartmentalized into those based on one particular theory. There is a good deal of overlap.

In my own paradigm, I tend towards routine activities and rational choice theories because they are actionable. As a police officer, I can actually do something about wolves, ducks, and dens. Given a crime pattern, generating alternatives grounded in routine activities theory and situational crime prevention is comparatively straightforward. Information about what works and what doesn't is often available. The Problem-Oriented Policing Center provides a great compendium of such information. It is more difficult to come up with strategies that I have the resources to implement if I accept strain theory or subcultural theory as the best explanation for criminality. I'm not discarding other theories, just focusing on strategies that are within our power to carry out.

Most of all, I want us to engage in police strategies that work. Evidence of impact impresses me more than theory. Show me that arresting more drunk drivers is correlated with fewer alcohol-involved fatal accidents, and I'm on board. Demonstrate that enforcement of minor public order crimes is related to lower overall rates of victimization, and I'll head that direction. Prove to me that when an offender is arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced for an act of domestic violence that he or she is less likely to commit the same crime against the same victim in the future, and I will make those investigations a priority.

I believe in practicing evidence-based policing. The evidence isn't always clear-cut, there are often gaps in our knowledge, and sometimes you must operate on the best information you have at the moment. You should always, however, keep your mind open for new and better information, and be willing to change course and adapt as the state of our knowledge improves. You should also look for any available evidence of the impact of your own activities on your desired outcomes, and at the bare minimum be able to describe the logical link between what you are doing, and what you hope to accomplish.


The Series:

Theory and practice
Wolves
Ducks
Dens
Evidence-based policing

Dens

This is part four of a series. Read Monday's post, if you haven't already.

Dens are problem places. These are the addresses that police officers are quite familiar with on their own beats: places with repeated calls for service and problems. Some dens have achieved their status because they are the location of lots and lots of human activity that inevitably involve the police and mostly minor crime. For example, so far this year, the list of the top five places where the most crimes have occurred (142 to 406) includes three high schools and two shopping centers.

Other dens are true dens of iniquity: places where bad actors congregate and bad actions occur with regularity. Retired LPD officers will instantly recognize addresses like 1416 P Street, 913 O Street, and 2272 Y Street--problem spots during the 1970's and 1980's. Today's officers have their own list of familiar-sounding addresses. I found, for example, one single-family residence in Lincoln this year that has already generated 13 police crime reports. There is also a home with 12, four with 9, and two with 8. That's a lot of stuff for a few single-family homes.

The Lincoln Police Department is quite good at is in identifying dens. I can give you the track record of a specific address all the way back to 1980 in a matter of moments, and find the owner and a photo of the premise in a few clicks thereafter. Our information by address is rich and deep. A den may be an exact address, or it may be an area where problems are concentrated. We use some specific techniques for pinpointing locations with emerging problems, such as Threshold Alerts. Our GIS capability is well-developed.

A key to dealing with dens is to look beyond the individual calls for service and incidents. This is the essence of most good problem-oriented policing projects: gathering the information, assessing the underlying problems, addressing those with a targeted strategy, and assessing the results.

Dealing with problems at places is not solely the job of the police. Place managers such as business owners, apartment managers, retail managers, and property owners have the most important role. We want to help them do it well because it is in our best interest. As an example, we provide some great resources to rental property owners and managers, so that they may be alerted to a den existing in their own units. Owners and managers can instantly obtain up-to-the-minute information concerning the basic details of all police dispatches to their property. We also provide liquor license holders with information about drunk driving arrests where the defendant claims to have been drinking in that particular establishment. We emphasize the value to our officers of establishing relationships with retail businesses on their beat, and we are heavily-involved in one of the most important places in any community: schools.

Here are a few examples of place-based interventions LPD has initiated that I've blogged about here in the Chief's Corner in the past:

Working with landlords to reduce problems at rental property.
Keeping close tabs on the residences of high-risk sex offenders.
Dealing with problematic practices at bars.
Recruiting good tenants into fragile neighborhoods.

Despite the fact that we do a particularly good job of locating and working on dens, there are a few ways I think we could improve. We could, for example, intervene more effectively on businesses with repeated false alarms. If the small fines don't seem to have the desired impact, maybe a personal visit by the police captain who commands the area would. I also think that in some case we could intervene earlier with place managers--even thought this is an area in which we generally excel. Sometimes we wait a little longer than we should. By the time we've actually spoken to or written the owner/manager, the problem has been in existence for quite a while.

Some people opine that place-centered police intervention merely moves the problems elsewhere. In my book, though, the displacement argument is unconvincing. The net effect of displacing crime is usually positive:even if there is some displacement, it's not one-to-one. And there can be some unexpected diffusion of benefits when crime prevention efforts focused on one offense type or one area actually exert a positive influence on crimes and areas other than those directly targeted. It's a contested issue, but I believe the greater weight of research evidence backs me on this one.


The Series:

Theory and practice
Wolves
Ducks
Dens
Evidence-based policing

Ducks

This is part 3 of a series. Read Monday's post, if you haven't already.

Ducks are victims or targets. A citizen who leaves the keys under the driver's side visor in his car is a sitting duck. A retailer who keeps a considerable amount of cash in the register, rather than making timely deposits is a sitting duck. A gaggle of catalytic converters conveniently piled up by the fence at a salvage yard is a flock of sitting ducks.

Focusing police efforts on the victims and targets is generally more productive then devoting those efforts exclusively towards offenders. We've shown over and over again that you can reduce crime with straightforward prevention methods. It is much more efficient and effective, in most cases, than investigating cases after the fact and seeking to arrest the offenders. Since ducks can be both persons and things, you can engage in strategies primarily aimed at changing potential victim behavior, and in strategies that are primarily aimed at making the thing less craved.

Craved, as in: Concealable, Removable, Available, Valuable, Enjoyable, and Disposable (I believe Ronald Clarke originated that, but it's become so commonly repeated, I'm not certain.) If it is difficult to dispose of stolen property, it is less craved. If the thing is concealed from view and protected by a lock, it's less available. If the product won't work without an electronic code, it's less enjoyable. Car alarms, removable-face plate and auto disabling stereos, fox urine sprayed on park fir trees, regulation of pawn shops, cable locks on school laptops, the list is long on efforts to harden targets in order to make them less craved. Some target-hardening initiatives have been especially effective. You'd be hard pressed to find a credible explanation for the drop in business burglary other than the proliferation of alarm systems, for example.

Many of our efforts in situational crime prevention involve attempts to increase guardianship. In this approach, we seek to make people more aware so they will be more watchful. We also encourage them to notify us when they observe criminal or suspicious behavior. We encourage the use of countermeasures that make it easier to guard themselves and their property: security lights, visibility corridors, CCTV, alarms, controlled access, drop safes, and many others.

I'd give the Lincoln Police Department good marks for our work on preventive strategies in the duck pond. We practice problem-oriented policing department-wide, and we do a pretty good job of recognizing crime trends and jumping on them early with preventive strategies. There are many good examples of these in past posts on the Chief's Corner, such as:

-Making it harder to offload stolen bicycles.
-steps to protect portable GPS units.
-Recommending the use of better locks.
-Suggesting getting your car up into the driveway when possible.
-Contacting us about suspicious behavior.

If I were to pick out the two best examples from my blog of LPD efforts to reduce crime by focusing on sitting ducks, though, it would be our comprehensive strategy to reduce metal thefts, and our projects to reduce open garage door burglaries.

Finally, there is a special category that must be mentioned: repeat victims. In preparation for this post, a ran a report I had never created before: 2008 Incident Reports summarized by the name of the victim. After winnowing out the obvious (various retail stores, City of Lincoln, Lincoln Public Schools, etc.) I was left with a list of individuals who had been repeatedly victimized by crime this year. When you look at these victims, you find that almost all of those at the top (there was one exception in the top 8) are women who are in domestic violence situations and have been repeatedly assaulted, had property vandalized, been stalked, had their protection order violated, and so forth. In many cases their assailant had been arrested on multiple occasions, and in a couple of cases, he is presently a fugitive. If we can intervene effectively to protect these repeat victims, there is a chance we can prevent very serious crimes.


The Series:

Theory and practice
Wolves
Ducks
Dens
Evidence-based policing

Back at the POP conference

I'm traveling today, with some airport time to blog. Last year, I wrote a few posts about my first experience at the annual Problem-Oriented Policing Conference. I'm back at this year's conference, in Bellevue, Washington. The POP Center has brought me here to present two sessions, Mainstreaming Problem-Oriented Policing, and Problem-Oriented Policing in Mid-Sized Cities.

I wrapped up my assignment yesterday afternoon, and I also had the chance to attend some other sessions. As with most conferences, though, some of the best stuff was on the breaks and after the sessions. I had the opportunity to meet and speak with several other chiefs from Dayton, OH, Lee's Summit, MO, and Port Washington, WI. The host chief, Bellevue's Linda Pillo, is a member of my Benchmark City Chiefs group. I particularly enjoyed chatting with St. Paul Minnesota police chief John Harrington. He's just completed a rather significant challenge for a municipal police department. We've had very similar careers in cities that also have a lot of similarities.

One of the presenters, Chris Bruce from Danvers, Mass., featured The Chief's Corner in one of his slides during his presentation, Reporting to the Community about Problem-Solving Efforts. Several attendees told me that they read this blog from time to time. Dr. Brandon Kooi and Dr. Gary Cordner have both been picking my electronic brain and apparently finding some of my rambling useful in their educational settings.

Highlight of the conference for me was a presentation Tuesday by John Campbell, Better Solutions for Crime Reduction in Public and Subsidized Housing. His theme was essentially echoed a few past posts I've made in the Chief's Corner. It reaffirmed my belief that getting place managers engaged is a key to effective crime and disorder control strategies.

Top POPs

POPs are problem-oriented policing projects. I've blogged about them on many past occasions. Around 14 years ago, I created a little one page form called a POP Project Summary, so we could collect a few brief details about these projects. Sgt. Don Scheinost collects the POP project summaries, maintaining an archive and using these as proof that we do what we claim to do when it's time for our accreditation.

Sgt.Scheinost sees some really good POP projects that follow the classic SARA problem-solving model: Scan, Analyze, Respond, and Assess. Some POP projects are a little weaker on the analysis and assessment, but they all represent an important aspect of our style of policing: don't just respond to incidents and take reports, think about the problem or the conditions, and how we can address that more effectively. The Chief's Corner contains lots of examples of good police work wrapped up in creative POP projects.

Last week, I was in Washington, D.C. at the expense of the National Institute of Justice, serving on a panel to discuss the use of police data to support broad community initiatives. With time on my hands, I attended some of the other presentations. Dr. Gary Cordner intrigued me with one of the slides in his presentation "Taking the Information Highway Beyond the Next Interchange." It was a screen shot of another police department's web site, Port Washington, Wisconsin.

The Port Washington PD posts a short description of their POP projects on their public web site. I liked that idea a lot. I think it gives citizens a little bit more insight into what the police do, beyond what they see on the latest episode of Cops. I sent an email to Chief Richard Thomas, letting him know of my intention to steal his idea, complimenting his 19 officers on the work reflected in their POP projects, and suggesting that he tell his city manager I said so.

We can't post them all (we completed 160 last year), but Sgt. Scheinost and our public information officer, Officer Katie Flood, are going to pick a few every month and maintain this short summary of POP projects on our web site. Look for it in the "What's New" box, and under "Information and Events".

Core value

Back in November, I wrote a series of posts about the challenges facing one of Lincoln's fragile neighborhoods. The posts ended with Outside the bubble on November 16. It was a plea for help. There simply is no way, given the economic and social problems this area confronts, that the police acting alone can restore its health and well-being. In January, the Lincoln Journal Star published an insightful week-long special report, The Core on this same issue.

Help is on the way. Mayor Chris Beutler, flanked by the heads of a bevy of public and private organizations, announced yesterday at a morning press conference that the City is launching “Stronger Safer Neighborhoods”, an initiative aimed at attacking these issues in a more holistic manner. Former planning commission chairman Jon Carlson has been hired as a mayoral aide to coordinate the diverse activities, and he will be assigned to the police department, which will direct the project.

We will continue to devote some major police effort to this area, but the approach includes other elements, such as codes enforcement, social services, and economic development. It's going to be a block-by-block, alley-by-alley, and even building-by-building effort to identify problems, and figure out what resources can be brought to bear to improve those conditions. This could be making life miserable for a resident crack dealer, getting outpatient mental health care for a problematic tenant, training a landlord on how to do a decent background check, forcing an owner to bring a deteriorated building up to code, getting a graffiti-covered dumpster replaced, or finding a low interest loan for a resident who needs help rehabilitating a house.

Although his job title is administrative assistant to the mayor, Mr. Carlson is being assigned to the police department. We've cleared out a vacant office right down the hall from mine for his command post, and he'll be ready to hit the ground running on day one, next Thursday. He will be assigned as a member of the Southwest Police Team, because that's the place we intend to start this initiative. We've done similar work before, including Free to Grow in the Center Team Area, and the work we've been doing in the Southwest Team Area with Project Safe Neighborhoods. But this is clearly something more comprehensive than our usual problem-oriented policing projects.

Law enforcement has a clear role to play, but you might think that it's not exactly the bailiwick of the police to manage a project of this scope where social services and economic development are major thrusts. I think the Mayor asked us to take on the coordination of his initiative simply because he trusts us the most to make it happen. His faith is well placed.

Job one will be to lay out the baseline data that will be the indicators of success, and I am confident we can make a huge difference in the core with the collaboration of others, and the infusion of human and financial capital. We look forward to the challenge.

Proactive policing

Last Thursday, Capt. Kim Koluch, who commands our Southeast Team, handed me a Lincoln Police Department Problem-Oriented Policing Project Summary. I was on my way out the door at the time, to a speaking engagement at the Lincoln Chapter of the Association of Information Technology Professionals.

The POP Project Summary gave me a great example to demonstrate how we use information and analysis to inform good police work. At our November 21st ACUDAT meeting, we had discussed a rash of burglaries occurring at apartment complexes, with entry through sliding glass doors. In many of these, the simple expedient of a broomstick in the track would have prevented the burglary. Capt. Koluch's team was already on top of this trend before the meeting, and three of her officers had initiated a POP Project two days earlier. It had just concluded when Capt. Koluch handed me the summary.

In the parking lot of the restaurant where the AITP meeting was being held, I cracked open my laptop, and used CrimeView to make a year-to-date map of these offenses, and a bar chart by month. For once in my life, I was actually five minutes early, and a good current example is always so much nicer than a PowerPoint.

Here was the strategy employed by officers Spencer Behrens, Matt Tangen, and Joe Yindrick: They contacted managers at 22 large apartment complexes, to make sure they were aware of the pattern. They handed out over 100 informational fliers for posting at entryways and communal mailboxes. Some complexes publish tenant newsletters, and included this information in the next issue. The information provided included the advice of a bar in the door track--something several complexes make available for their residents. The Southeast Team also beefed up patrol time in these complexes, as workload allowed. Finally, we got this information out to the news media, and several stories highlighting prevention resulted.

The results are impressive. In the six weeks prior to the project, 24 of these burglaries occurred. In the six weeks after, there were 8. On Matt, Spencer, and Joe's beat, where they did the door-to-door work, these burglaries fell from 9 to 2. Whereas there were 16 sliding glass doors citywide in October, and 20 in November, as of today there have been only three in December.

Dr. Susan Welch, who taught my research methods class, would point out the problems with the methodology of this simple pre-post test. First, the n is quite small, making statistical significance hopelessly elusive. Second, the effect of history compromises the internal validity of this quasi-experiment. I'm a huge believer in basing strategies on sound scientific evidence, but in the real world you must sometimes act on incomplete information and imperfect knowledge.

"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome."

-Samuel Johnson

Take your GPS with you

One of the more serious crime problems in Lincoln for many years has been larceny from automobiles--cars that are broken into in order to steal property. This is one of the most common ways citizens in Lincoln are victimized by crime. We work very hard on these crimes, and we get many good tips from watchful citizens who observe car prowling.

In recent years, there have been some good healthy reductions in these offenses. This year, though, the numbers have been up 4%. As of midnight, we have investigated 2,883 larcenies from auto in 2007. During the same time period in 2006, the total stood at 2,762. Here's the trend over the past five years (click to enlarge):

That's a reduction of 46%--more than $900,000--not counting the inflation that occurred during that time period.

Hot items in Lincoln for these crimes have changed over time, from CB radios in the 1970's to car stereos in the 1980s, and CDs in the 1990's. Lately, iPods, cell phones, laptops, and other personal electronics have been common targets. Around the country, portable GPS units, catalytic converters, and airbags have been hot commodities for such thieves. We haven't seen much of this in Lincoln--yet.

My prediction is that GPS unit theft in Lincoln will pick up big time in the next several months. These units are much more widely available, more affordable, and are growing in popularity. The high value and small size of portable GPS units will be irresistible to thieves. Best protection: stow your unit and it's mounting hardware out of sight (better yet, take it with you), and keep a microfiber cloth in the glove box so you can wipe off that tell-tale circle where the suction cup sticks to the windshield, a sign that there may be a unit loose in the console or glove box.

Oh, and park your car in the garage or driveway if possible--even if you have to do that three-car-monte maneuver the next morning. It makes a big difference in reducing your risk (scroll down and check out the table about half way through this page from the Problem-Oriented Policing Center).

Unbelievable headline

There's no place like home, and I'm happy to be back in Lincoln this morning. My presentation at the Problem-Oriented Policing Conference concerning strategies to reduce high-risk drinking by college-aged young people included a section on the off-campus party scene. We've had a methodical approach to this that has yielded some significant results.

In preparation for the presentation, I gathered some data last week about the number of complaints received from the public concerning party disturbances. We have a specific incident code for these calls: 12311 DISTRUBANCE-WILD PARTY. Here's a slide with the results from my PowerPoint:


A reduction of 35 complaints per month is nothing to scoff at. I would estimate that the average party complaint requires just over two officers for the response. These calls often result in citations, reports, court appearances, and a fair number of complaints to Internal Affairs or the Citizen Police Advisory Board. Cutting 35 of those per month not only relieves some of the heartburn for residents in these neighborhoods, it saves police officers a significant amount of work, too. Although these data are not specific to college-aged young people, many of our party complaints come from neighborhoods where there are lots of rentals and a large proportion of tenants in the 20-25 age bracket.

There are a number of indicators that our strategies have helped, including survey research data from the University of Nebraska's Omnibus Survey, police complaint and incident data, data on the number of arrests and citations for such offenses as maintaining a disorderly house or minor in possession of alcohol. Here, however, is the anecdotal evidence that there has been a shift, however slight, in attitudes about the propriety of inviting a couple hundred friends over to share a few kegs in your tiny two-bedroom one-toilet rental on New Hampshire Street: an unbelievable headline. I doubt our colleagues in Madison have seen anything like that in the Wisconsin State Journal.

Prevention wins every time

ACUDAT is an acronym we use for our version of COMPSTAT. It stands for Analyzing Crime Using Data About Trends. ACUDAT is a monthly meeting I host on the third Wednesdays at 7:00 PM in the LPD assembly room at headquarters. Any officer of any rank and any civilian employee is welcome to attend. It's optional, and open to all. Generally about 20 to 30 people are there.

The purpose of the meeting is to review our current crime trends, patterns, cases, and suspects. We are trying, once a month, to step back from the volume and from the daily drum beat of activity to take a look at a bigger picture: the entire city, the broader pattern, how we're doing, and the connections that might get lost otherwise in the sheer volume of what we do.

As of last night, I have held ACUDAT meetings for exactly 10 years. I'm not sure about everyone else, but for me it has been a valuable experience, that has led to lots and lots of learning and many fresh observations that would not have been made otherwise.

One of the outcomes of ACUDAT is action. This might be additional follow up on a case that we suddenly realize is related to other cases, or further work on a new suspect that has been identified. But as we've continued this process, our outcomes have increasingly involved creating or energizing preventative interventions. An excellent example follows, and one that constitutes absolutely outstanding police work by Capt. Kim Koluch's late shift officers on Lincoln's Southeast Police Team.

A common crime trend we examine is residential burglary. We've discovered that a large percentage of these burglaries occur through garages--many are through garage doors left open at night. Golf clubs, bicycles, and tools are common targets, as is beer in spare refrigerator, and the contents of cars parked inside. Last night, as we examined residential burglaries in the past two weeks, I noted that 8 were through open garage doors. That seemed low. Residential burglary is down about 7% so far this year, but the open garage door burglaries still seemed low. So I checked. Open garage burglaries are especially down this year: from 80 at this point in 2006, to 54 so far in 2007. That's a one-third reduction.

Here's why: The Southeast Team is most heavily hit. They are home to affluent neighborhoods with two and three car garages, expensive stuff, and spare fridges. The late shift Southeast Team officers have been working on a problem-oriented policing project in which they are using their uncommitted time to search subdivisions, find garage doors standing open, and wakie up the owners to let them know. It's a great project. When you hear our PIO talking about this on the 6:00 news, you've forgotten about it by the end of the newscast. If you read about it in the paper, the half-life of that knowledge is about 30 minutes. But when Officer Paul Aksamit is talking to you on the front stoop at 3:00 AM, it will cause you to double check the garage door before bedtime for the remainder of your life, and you will pass the habit on to the next six generations.

The Southeast Team had knocked on 101 doors as of midnight yesterday. The door-knocks, as the chart shows, are mostly in the very wee hours of the morning.

The map shows the locations where officers have made contact on open doors this year, and you can clearly see that the Southeast officers are really charging along on this. That area along the southern fringe corresponds quite well with the area normally hammered the hardest with garage burglaries.

I've had exactly zero complaints (not that I really care--if somebody doesn't realize how this is protecting them, I'd be happy to explain). The number of open garage burglaries in Southeast has fallen by more than half compared to the same time period in 2006. Congratulations on great police work to Paul Aksamit, Tony Ortiz, John Hudec, Tim Abele, Eric Runge, Chad Hein, Alan Grell, Jesse Hilger, Keith White, and their Sergeant, John Walsh, who has knocked on 16 doors himself!

There are few professional joys greater for police officers than catching an offender in the act. But it is far, far more effective to implement strategies like this that prevent crime than to engage in the endless chase of crook-catching efforts, inevitably leading to the occasional arrest of a chronic repeat offender who receives a plea bargain, house arrest, and intensive supervision probation, only to be caught driving suspended at 4:00 AM prowling residential neighborhoods a few weeks later.