Back in October, I posted the story of a fast information flow involving a registered sex offender. Monday, virtually the same thing happened: a CrimeView threshold alert notified me at 0500 hours that we had updated an address on a registered sex offender over night, placing him within 500 feet of an elementary school and thus in violation of Lincoln's residency restriction. This address was right across the street from an elementary school. I measured the distance at 77 feet, give or take a couple of inches.
Officer Court Cleland had investigated a missing person report concerning our subject on Sunday. His girlfriend contacted us, concerned that she had not seen him for . It was that report that caused his address to be updated in our primary database, and that update in turn caused the threshold alert to fire up in the wee hours. I forwarded my information to Officer Cleland before he got to work at 0700 hours Monday morning. He initiated the needed investigation on the ground to document the elements of the violation. Later Monday night, Officer Scott Parker found our subject and lodged him in jail for both violating the City's residency restriction and for failing to register an address change with the county sheriff, as required by State law. The subject was initially contacted at the University of Nebraska Student Union by the UNL Police, who notified us. He has been frequenting campus lately.
The use of this automated query has really simplified a task that would be pretty daunting without the technology. I'm not quite sure how we would be able to catch these violations if we had to rely on a manual process, because as of this moment we have 468 registered sex offenders living in Lincoln, and they are a highly-mobile group.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Record for arrests
The 2007 arrest data has been compiled, and it was a record year. There were 2,687 felony arrests, and 26,717 misdemeanor arrests. Actually, those are arrest charges, not individuals. Some arrests are for more than one charge (assault & vandalism, for example), and some individuals are...gifted: they manage to get arrested more than once in the same year.
Both of these numbers are high water marks for LPD, and represent a very large volume for a department of 317 sworn personnel and a city of 241,000. As in the past, I would challenge anyone to find a similarly-sized department that approaches these numbers. I can't account for the 38.8% increase in arrests during the past decade--a period of time during which crime has decreased. The increase in the number of arrests more than doubles population growth. I blogged about this phenomenon before, so rather than getting redundant, I'll just update the chart from last July's post (click the chart to enlarge).
Both of these numbers are high water marks for LPD, and represent a very large volume for a department of 317 sworn personnel and a city of 241,000. As in the past, I would challenge anyone to find a similarly-sized department that approaches these numbers. I can't account for the 38.8% increase in arrests during the past decade--a period of time during which crime has decreased. The increase in the number of arrests more than doubles population growth. I blogged about this phenomenon before, so rather than getting redundant, I'll just update the chart from last July's post (click the chart to enlarge).
Friday, January 11, 2008
New view
Yesterday, Jim Anderson over at the City's Information Services Division, made a little change to our public crime mapping application, CrimeView Community. We have a new set of 2007 aerial photos, and Jim replaced the 2005 series with the new ones. Aerial photos show up when you zoom in a click or two.
Contrary to a common belief, these are not satellite photos. Rather, they are photos shot from aircraft overflight, then orthorectified. This is a nice set, with six inch resolution: a single pixel is approximately six inches on the ground. They've also been updated in the City's other web mapping applications, such as the Lancaster County Property Map--which is probably a better place to browse the photo layer, since CrimeView Community limits how close you can zoom. Google Maps and Google Earth (a great application for touring) are actually two versions behind in the aerials--the photos date from 2003, as I recall. Microsoft Virtual Earth uses the 2005 photos.
Aerial photos are a very nice tool for police officers in a variety of situations: special events planning, tactical operations, missing person searches, crime scene and traffic crash investigation, and so forth. With the growth, change, and development that occurs in the City, a new set every couple of years is a very good thing to have. I'll be looking forward to getting the 2007 series in the compressed MrSID format, so we can incorporate those into our mobile mapping application for the field.
In CrimeView Community, the aerial photos show up automatically as you zoom in. In the Lancaster County Property map, you'll need to turn that layer on when it becomes available in the table of contents at the lower right. I'd suggest turning the parcel layer off, too, just to reduce clutter. Aside from the usual interesting places to look at on your tour, such as the State Capital and Memorial Stadium, I like the Pioneer Park bison (both live and bronze), and there are a couple of really cool lawn darts parked with the KC-135s .
Contrary to a common belief, these are not satellite photos. Rather, they are photos shot from aircraft overflight, then orthorectified. This is a nice set, with six inch resolution: a single pixel is approximately six inches on the ground. They've also been updated in the City's other web mapping applications, such as the Lancaster County Property Map--which is probably a better place to browse the photo layer, since CrimeView Community limits how close you can zoom. Google Maps and Google Earth (a great application for touring) are actually two versions behind in the aerials--the photos date from 2003, as I recall. Microsoft Virtual Earth uses the 2005 photos.
Aerial photos are a very nice tool for police officers in a variety of situations: special events planning, tactical operations, missing person searches, crime scene and traffic crash investigation, and so forth. With the growth, change, and development that occurs in the City, a new set every couple of years is a very good thing to have. I'll be looking forward to getting the 2007 series in the compressed MrSID format, so we can incorporate those into our mobile mapping application for the field.
In CrimeView Community, the aerial photos show up automatically as you zoom in. In the Lancaster County Property map, you'll need to turn that layer on when it becomes available in the table of contents at the lower right. I'd suggest turning the parcel layer off, too, just to reduce clutter. Aside from the usual interesting places to look at on your tour, such as the State Capital and Memorial Stadium, I like the Pioneer Park bison (both live and bronze), and there are a couple of really cool lawn darts parked with the KC-135s .
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Different angle
That would be a 90 degree angle to the left, to be precise. Check out the comment posted late yesterday afternoon in response to my post Tagger nabbed way back on December 18. Follow the link to the Lincoln Journal Star article from July, 29 2007, and as the commentator suggests, tilt your head (to the right). Or I suppose you could tilt your monitor to the left.
What do you know, Kanji: Rain.
We arrested another downtown tagger yesterday, using a tag that looks like aek . I've been rotating his tag right and left without luck. My neck hurts.
What do you know, Kanji: Rain.
We arrested another downtown tagger yesterday, using a tag that looks like aek . I've been rotating his tag right and left without luck. My neck hurts.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Not a wild guess
Urban police departments in cities of our size almost always divide the patrol landscape geographically into districts. We call our's Team Areas, or just Teams. We have five, which would be about par for the course in cities like Lincoln. Our Teams are further divided into beats. Into each beat, on each shift, a certain number of officers is assigned.
A good deal of numbers crunching goes into the allocation of resources to Teams and beats. We conduct an annual workload analysis that kills a couple trees in order to make sure that our field resources are distributed in a way that mirrors, as much as possible, the workload. This is not perfect, because you've got the realities of schedules to deal with. You can't bring in an officer to work two hours, go home, then come back for six more; you can't split days off, and so forth.
A misconception I confront occasionally is the mistaken belief that we assign officers equally across the city or across shifts and days. A reporter asked me about this recently, and wanted some information to back up my response. I produced a simple map of our Team and beats for her, with three measurements: The total number of officers assigned to each beat, the number of officers per square mile that represents, and the number of officers per 1,000 population. I thought it was an interesting graphic that the general public might like to see (click to enlarge).
Southeast Team is the two orange beats, Center Team the green beats, and so forth. Here is the response I sent to the reporter with a few points to remember:
A good deal of numbers crunching goes into the allocation of resources to Teams and beats. We conduct an annual workload analysis that kills a couple trees in order to make sure that our field resources are distributed in a way that mirrors, as much as possible, the workload. This is not perfect, because you've got the realities of schedules to deal with. You can't bring in an officer to work two hours, go home, then come back for six more; you can't split days off, and so forth.
A misconception I confront occasionally is the mistaken belief that we assign officers equally across the city or across shifts and days. A reporter asked me about this recently, and wanted some information to back up my response. I produced a simple map of our Team and beats for her, with three measurements: The total number of officers assigned to each beat, the number of officers per square mile that represents, and the number of officers per 1,000 population. I thought it was an interesting graphic that the general public might like to see (click to enlarge).
Southeast Team is the two orange beats, Center Team the green beats, and so forth. Here is the response I sent to the reporter with a few points to remember:
"Attached is a graphic that shows the total number of officers assigned to each patrol beat, the number of officers per square mile in each beat, and the number of officers per 1,000 population (based on 2,000 census block data). Thus, the Southwest Team's A beat has a total of 26 officers assigned, which is a density of 4.36 officers per square mile, and a ratio of 1.0 officers for every 1,000 residents.
A few things to keep in mind:
1. These are only uniformed patrol officers in non-supervisory positions (no sergeants, in other words), and I intentionally left out the 10 school resource officers.
2. This is the full staffing of each beat, and those officers are spread across 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. When you do the math on that, on average there would be a little less than 20% of the total on duty at in given time--in reality, it's never 20% because we staff up on the peak days and hours, and down on the off peak days and hours.
3. As you can see, with the exception of the downtown area (which is drastically skewed by a small resident population but a huge amount of non-resident use and commercial activity), Southwest Team A Beat is staffed at a considerably higher level than anywhere else--and four times the level of Southwest B Beat.
4. We do not staff our teams and beats based on square miles or population, but rather by workload demand. The assignment of police officers to areas, shifts, and days off is based on a complex annual analysis of workload: police incidents, arrests, special events, and so forth--and the time consumed by those activities. Our staffing is a reflection of where and when the workload is distributed."
Monday, January 7, 2008
Seeking your input
I made this same request of our employees on Friday, but the thought struck me that some of the readers of the Chief's Corner might have some ideas on this, too.
An article in Thursdays's Lincoln Journal Star concerns the apparent inconsistency in our issuance of traffic citations at accident scenes on December 6, 2007. Actually, you can see this yourself by simply looking through accident reports by date on our public web site, and comparing those in which citations are issued to those in which none is issued. Sometimes you can spot a logical reason (lack of evidence, for example), and sometime not. When the reporter contacted me with his questions last week, I stumbled through a lame explanation that I don't even buy it.
I think the reporter has done us a favor by pointing out the lack of consistency. While I think we are pretty consistent when the roads are dry, we have some more significant problems with this when the weather is bad. Some officers adopt my approach: you're required by law to have your car under control at all times and if you didn't, it's your fault, not the weather's; others are much more likely to cut some slack because of snow or ice. When your chance of getting a ticket depends as much on which officer gets assigned as what actually happened, something is amiss.
Our written policies provide a little flexibility on deciding when to issue a traffic ticket in connection with an accident-related violation, but not much:
Elsewhere in our written policies we describe various aggravating and mitigating circumstances in traffic violations that officers may consider when deciding whether to issue a citation, and whether the citation should be a warning or official ticket. The aggravating circumstances listed include the fact that a violation contributed to a traffic accident.
We'll be discussing this issue at this weeks' staff meeting, and Iwould like your advice. I'd like to find a way to improve our consistency without eliminating discretion entirely. I think there are cases where officers need to have some leeway, for example a case where the damage is exceptionally minor, or nobody else's property was damaged. It seems to me that if you run over your own mailbox, writing you a ticket is overkill. I've been at accident scenes on the elevated portion of southbound Interstate 180 on a few occasions where I had to hold on to the car handle to stand up, and where I really couldn't feel very good about issuing tickets to the dozens of motorists who became involved in the annual chain reactions. The usual admonition about slowing down, anticipating movements ahead, and maintaining a safe following distance would have been useless. An iron clad rule eliminates the ability of officers to make such common sense judgments.
I suppose a good way for police officers to look at it would be this:
An article in Thursdays's Lincoln Journal Star concerns the apparent inconsistency in our issuance of traffic citations at accident scenes on December 6, 2007. Actually, you can see this yourself by simply looking through accident reports by date on our public web site, and comparing those in which citations are issued to those in which none is issued. Sometimes you can spot a logical reason (lack of evidence, for example), and sometime not. When the reporter contacted me with his questions last week, I stumbled through a lame explanation that I don't even buy it.
I think the reporter has done us a favor by pointing out the lack of consistency. While I think we are pretty consistent when the roads are dry, we have some more significant problems with this when the weather is bad. Some officers adopt my approach: you're required by law to have your car under control at all times and if you didn't, it's your fault, not the weather's; others are much more likely to cut some slack because of snow or ice. When your chance of getting a ticket depends as much on which officer gets assigned as what actually happened, something is amiss.
Our written policies provide a little flexibility on deciding when to issue a traffic ticket in connection with an accident-related violation, but not much:
"If the investigation reveals probable cause to believe a traffic law has been violated, the investigating officer should cite the violator. In making the determination to issue a citation when a violation has occurred, officers should consider aggravating and mitigating circumstances."Generally, our feeling is that if you committed a violation that contributed to a traffic accident, that's even more serious than if the same violation did not result in a collison, so if we'd write a ticket for rolling through a stop sign at 20 MPH, we ought to be even more committed to writing it when the act results in an accident.
Elsewhere in our written policies we describe various aggravating and mitigating circumstances in traffic violations that officers may consider when deciding whether to issue a citation, and whether the citation should be a warning or official ticket. The aggravating circumstances listed include the fact that a violation contributed to a traffic accident.
We'll be discussing this issue at this weeks' staff meeting, and Iwould like your advice. I'd like to find a way to improve our consistency without eliminating discretion entirely. I think there are cases where officers need to have some leeway, for example a case where the damage is exceptionally minor, or nobody else's property was damaged. It seems to me that if you run over your own mailbox, writing you a ticket is overkill. I've been at accident scenes on the elevated portion of southbound Interstate 180 on a few occasions where I had to hold on to the car handle to stand up, and where I really couldn't feel very good about issuing tickets to the dozens of motorists who became involved in the annual chain reactions. The usual admonition about slowing down, anticipating movements ahead, and maintaining a safe following distance would have been useless. An iron clad rule eliminates the ability of officers to make such common sense judgments.
I suppose a good way for police officers to look at it would be this:
"What would I expect to happen if I was involved in this collision, and someone else's driving violation caused the damage to my car?"If you have an idea on how we can create a little more consistency, or how we ought to change our guidelines, I'dl ike to hear from you.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Guns here and there
A few weeks ago, I reported about guns surfacing in the Phoenix area that were stolen in a major 2007 burglary at Scheel's All Sports in Lincoln. Yesterday, a fifth stolen gun has been recovered in Phoenix. This one was seized during the execution of a search warrant relating to stolen vehicles and narcotics. The Scheel's guns will probably continue to surface for many years in similar circumstances.
Stolen guns (we have around 200 per year) don't always travel across the country, though. In the past week, we had three incidents in Lincoln involving stolen guns.
The first was on December 26 in southeast Lincoln. A 19 year old suspect committed a domestic assault by threatening two women with a Ruger 9mm pistol that had been taken in a south Lincoln apartment burglary back in January of 2007.
The second was on New Year's Eve in south Lincoln, when a 19 year old suspect playing around with a .380 Walther PPK shot his 12 year old brother. It was an accidental discharge, and fortunately the wound was not fatal. The Walther had been stolen in a southeast Lincoln apartment burglary in April, 2006.
The third was on New Year's Day in south Lincoln, when officers responded to a report of gunshots. They found a exit hole through an apartment door, and although the residents denied any knowledge of what happened, a search recovered a spent casing and a Daewoo 9mm pistol concealed under a mattress. The pistol had been stolen in Omaha, but we don't have all the details yet.
That's quite a few stolen gun incidents in a six day stretch, and highlights the importance of gun owners securing their premises and weapons. We had a spate this year of guns stolen from automobiles (a really poor place to store your firearm), and in several residential burglaries where guns were stolen, the premises were either left unlocked or lightly secured. A little more attention to good security would prevent some (though certainly not all) of our stolen gun cases.
Stolen guns (we have around 200 per year) don't always travel across the country, though. In the past week, we had three incidents in Lincoln involving stolen guns.
The first was on December 26 in southeast Lincoln. A 19 year old suspect committed a domestic assault by threatening two women with a Ruger 9mm pistol that had been taken in a south Lincoln apartment burglary back in January of 2007.
The second was on New Year's Eve in south Lincoln, when a 19 year old suspect playing around with a .380 Walther PPK shot his 12 year old brother. It was an accidental discharge, and fortunately the wound was not fatal. The Walther had been stolen in a southeast Lincoln apartment burglary in April, 2006.
The third was on New Year's Day in south Lincoln, when officers responded to a report of gunshots. They found a exit hole through an apartment door, and although the residents denied any knowledge of what happened, a search recovered a spent casing and a Daewoo 9mm pistol concealed under a mattress. The pistol had been stolen in Omaha, but we don't have all the details yet.
That's quite a few stolen gun incidents in a six day stretch, and highlights the importance of gun owners securing their premises and weapons. We had a spate this year of guns stolen from automobiles (a really poor place to store your firearm), and in several residential burglaries where guns were stolen, the premises were either left unlocked or lightly secured. A little more attention to good security would prevent some (though certainly not all) of our stolen gun cases.
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Safety is job one
A major news story this past week has been the 2007 spike in the number of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty. As of last week, 186 police officers had died, compared to 145 in 2006. Excluding 9/11, 2007 will be the highest year since 1989.
Hopefully the surge in 2007 is an anomoly. I started my career at the Lincoln Police Department in 1974, the deadliest year ever for police officers--277 killed in the line of duty. Since that time, there has been a dramatic decrease in line-of-duty deaths. Adjusted for the increased number of law enforcement officers, the long term decline is even greater.
There are a number of reasons for this, in my opinion. Personal body armor would certainly be one of those. Better policy (such as mandatory handcuffing of prisoners) is another. But in my view, the most important factor has been dramatically better tactics and training. As an example, every police officer in the United States knows the proper way of making a high-risk stopped of a vehicle containing a suspect who may be armed. This method simply did not exist in the summer of 1974, when running up the the driver's door and jerking it open was the order of the day. Similar improvements in tactics and training have impacted prisoner searches, transports, alarm responses, field contacts, and a myriad of other police activities.
There is an interesting and often overlooked statistic in the officers killed data: more officers killed in the line of duty died in traffic collisions than in any other manner. Of the 186 deaths as of December 26, 81 were traffic collisions, and 69 were shootings.
I can't find the source right now (maybe a reader with more time or expertise here can help me), but I am certain I recently saw a comparative graph of civilian an police traffic fatalities per million miles driven. Over the past 40 years, civilian traffic fatalities have fallen like a rock in the United States. Better roadway engineering and automotive engineering--things like crash barriers, reflective roadway markings, seat belts, airbags, anti-lock brakes, and so forth--are responsible. But for police officers, the line is flat. The declining rate of fatal traffic accidents has not impacted police traffic deaths.
My theory is that the failure of police traffic deaths to follow the downward track of civilian fatalities has do to with the far greater burden of dealing with the technology of the patrol car. In 1974, the '72 Plymouth Fury I was assigned had a radio with a knob and 4 buttons. It also had two toggle switches, one for the red lights, one for the siren. That was about the extent of it. Today, your radio has a virtually unlimited number of talk groups, and you can't function without a cell phone. You're mobile data computer is vital, you might have a mobile video system, a moving radar set-up, and a GPS. The very things that have helped improve officer safety in some ways--instant communication and database queries, for instance--makes for more distracted driving and greater exposure to traffic risk.
Three of the five Lincoln Police Officers killed in the line of duty during our history died in traffic collisions: Charles Hall, Frank Leyden, and George Welter. It is simply the biggest risk officers face. Many police officers are committed to reducing their risk of felonious assault. They wear their armor, replace it at five years, they look for tactical training opportunities, and they practice what they have learned. We need to be equally committed to taking steps that will protect us from the greater risk of fatal traffic collisions.
Slow down. Wear your traffic vest. Stop texting. Minimize talking on the cell phone while driving. Pull over if you need to type anything longer than a plate number on a mobile data computer. Keep you seat belt low and tight, your gear out of the airbag deployment zone, your eyes moving, your mirrors adjusted, your windshield clear, and your bladder empty. And by all means, refrain from listening the that certain genre of music while trying to negotiate the mean streets.
My number one wish for 2008: a safe year for our police officers.
Hopefully the surge in 2007 is an anomoly. I started my career at the Lincoln Police Department in 1974, the deadliest year ever for police officers--277 killed in the line of duty. Since that time, there has been a dramatic decrease in line-of-duty deaths. Adjusted for the increased number of law enforcement officers, the long term decline is even greater.
There are a number of reasons for this, in my opinion. Personal body armor would certainly be one of those. Better policy (such as mandatory handcuffing of prisoners) is another. But in my view, the most important factor has been dramatically better tactics and training. As an example, every police officer in the United States knows the proper way of making a high-risk stopped of a vehicle containing a suspect who may be armed. This method simply did not exist in the summer of 1974, when running up the the driver's door and jerking it open was the order of the day. Similar improvements in tactics and training have impacted prisoner searches, transports, alarm responses, field contacts, and a myriad of other police activities.
There is an interesting and often overlooked statistic in the officers killed data: more officers killed in the line of duty died in traffic collisions than in any other manner. Of the 186 deaths as of December 26, 81 were traffic collisions, and 69 were shootings.
I can't find the source right now (maybe a reader with more time or expertise here can help me), but I am certain I recently saw a comparative graph of civilian an police traffic fatalities per million miles driven. Over the past 40 years, civilian traffic fatalities have fallen like a rock in the United States. Better roadway engineering and automotive engineering--things like crash barriers, reflective roadway markings, seat belts, airbags, anti-lock brakes, and so forth--are responsible. But for police officers, the line is flat. The declining rate of fatal traffic accidents has not impacted police traffic deaths.
My theory is that the failure of police traffic deaths to follow the downward track of civilian fatalities has do to with the far greater burden of dealing with the technology of the patrol car. In 1974, the '72 Plymouth Fury I was assigned had a radio with a knob and 4 buttons. It also had two toggle switches, one for the red lights, one for the siren. That was about the extent of it. Today, your radio has a virtually unlimited number of talk groups, and you can't function without a cell phone. You're mobile data computer is vital, you might have a mobile video system, a moving radar set-up, and a GPS. The very things that have helped improve officer safety in some ways--instant communication and database queries, for instance--makes for more distracted driving and greater exposure to traffic risk.
Three of the five Lincoln Police Officers killed in the line of duty during our history died in traffic collisions: Charles Hall, Frank Leyden, and George Welter. It is simply the biggest risk officers face. Many police officers are committed to reducing their risk of felonious assault. They wear their armor, replace it at five years, they look for tactical training opportunities, and they practice what they have learned. We need to be equally committed to taking steps that will protect us from the greater risk of fatal traffic collisions.
Slow down. Wear your traffic vest. Stop texting. Minimize talking on the cell phone while driving. Pull over if you need to type anything longer than a plate number on a mobile data computer. Keep you seat belt low and tight, your gear out of the airbag deployment zone, your eyes moving, your mirrors adjusted, your windshield clear, and your bladder empty. And by all means, refrain from listening the that certain genre of music while trying to negotiate the mean streets.
My number one wish for 2008: a safe year for our police officers.
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