Officer Katie Flood serves as our public information officer, takes care of our public web site, and publishes our annual report, among other duties. As a result, she spends a fair amount of time at her computer. I was walking down the hallway yesterday and saw Officer Katie Flood smiling at her monitor. I knew it had to be something good, so I stopped and inquired.
"I just saw this headline, and was expecting something a little different," she said.
I glanced at the headline, and my mind's eye immediately inserted a "t" in the word "sealing." I guess we all tend to see things through the lens of our professional experience.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Weekend fights
Over the weekend (Friday through Sunday), Lincoln police officers investigated 41 assaults. If that sounds like a lot, it's really not out of the ordinary. Last year, we investigated 4,852, an average of a bit more than 13 per day. Of the 41 assaults, 18 were domestic: they involved people who live together, have lived together, share a child in common, or have a dating relationship. This definition includes roomies, siblings, and even parent and child. Not all domestic assaults fit the expected template. Here is the slightly-sanitized narrative from case number B1-033422, in which a young man called to report a violent attack by his mother:
The 41 assaults occurred at schools, on buses, at residences, on the street, at a community center, a homeless shelter, a nursing home, and a group home. A common thread was alcohol, which was involved in over half the assaults. Here are a couple of lightly-edited excerpts from typical examples of the alcohol-related variety:
Case Number B1-033432
"Mother reports that she and her adult son became involved in an argument over his cursing at her when she told him to fold his clothes from the wash. Son said during this argument his mother struck him on the left shoulder with the wand of the vacuum. He stated this caused him pain. There was no visible injury and Mom denied the accusation."
The 41 assaults occurred at schools, on buses, at residences, on the street, at a community center, a homeless shelter, a nursing home, and a group home. A common thread was alcohol, which was involved in over half the assaults. Here are a couple of lightly-edited excerpts from typical examples of the alcohol-related variety:
Case Number B1-033432
"Victim said he was talking to a girl at a party when the suspect came up to them, was being loud and mouthy and said 'I'll fight you for her.' Victim said suspect then 'sucker punched' him in the side of the head and a fight ensued."Case Number B1-033336
"Victim was contacted walking on the sidewalk with blood running from his mouth. Victim reports that he was walking down the sidewalk on the NE corner of Centennial and O St. A unknown male wearing a black baseball hat, with large biceps and tattoos on his arms struck him in the face causing his top lip to be cut. Victim was unable to give any more description about the party responsible. Victim stated that he didn't want anything done and he only wanted to go home, and walked away from officer with his friends."
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Reaccredited, again
I made a speedy trip to Washington, DC to join a couple of staff members, Sgt. Don Scheinost and Capt. Joy Citta, as we appeared before the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies. The Commission considered the report of the onsite team that visited LPD last November, asked several follow-up questions, then voted unanimously to award accreditation to us for the next three years.
We were also named a Meritorious Agency, an award bestowed on agencies that have been accredited for 15 years or more (our first was in 1989). The Commission has also designated us as a Flagship Agency, meaning that we are recognized as being at a level of excellence sufficient to provide other agencies seeking accreditation with examples of “best practices” on how to address compliance, policy development, file maintenance, and other issues relating to the accreditation process.
Our employees should be proud of this milestone and recognition. Accreditation assures Lincoln's citizens that the department follows the recognized best practices in policing. It is not an easy process, and only about 5% of the agencies in the United States are accredited. Compared to our last appearance before the Commission, the trip was uneventful: no tornado, no looters.
We were also named a Meritorious Agency, an award bestowed on agencies that have been accredited for 15 years or more (our first was in 1989). The Commission has also designated us as a Flagship Agency, meaning that we are recognized as being at a level of excellence sufficient to provide other agencies seeking accreditation with examples of “best practices” on how to address compliance, policy development, file maintenance, and other issues relating to the accreditation process.
Our employees should be proud of this milestone and recognition. Accreditation assures Lincoln's citizens that the department follows the recognized best practices in policing. It is not an easy process, and only about 5% of the agencies in the United States are accredited. Compared to our last appearance before the Commission, the trip was uneventful: no tornado, no looters.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Design studio
The Jeffrey S. Raikes School at the University of Nebraska is an honors program for Computer Science and Management majors at the University of Nebraska. Retired Microsoft division chief Jeff Raikes, a Nebraska native who currently heads the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is it's patron.
I was at the Raikes School early about a year ago, invited to talk with students about some of our technology initiatives at the police department. This academic year, I had a much more in-depth experience with a group of Raikes Center students. One of my volunteer activities is serving on the board of the Teammates Mentoring Program, a great non-profit that matches up 5,000 mentors for an hour a week with school kids who need an extra supportive adult. Teammates is a client of a team of Raikes School in a year-long capstone class called Design Studio.
The Design Studio team takes on a software development project for a client, and spends the academic year designing and developing the project to the clients specifications. My role was to represent Teammates as the customer. Several times during the year, I have attended checkpoint meetings with the team, where the next iteration of the product was demonstrated, progress discussed, and the work plan reviewed. If I am satisfied with the work from the client's perspective, I sign off on behalf of Teammates.
Satisfied would be a huge understatement. The last checkpoint meeting was Friday at 8:00 AM (this is a motivated group!) and the work is in the home stretch. The product looks great, the functionality is excellent. It is designed to help recruit mentors, match them with Teamates chapters, suggest good potential student matches based on a preferences and interests algorithm, and track potential mentors through the recruitment process. It's going to be easy for people interested in becoming mentors to use, and a big hit with Teammates staff in the central office, chapters, and schools. The integration with Teammates management software is a particularly noteworthy a complishment.
I learned a ton by watching the team work, and by seeing the Agile software development process in action. This process, based on successive iterations of software and continuous incremental development, was something I was totally unfamiliar with. Having worked my entire life in a rather strictly defined hierarchy, the concept of self-organizing teams was not exactly in my toolbox. At the same time Design Studio was developing this product for Teammates, I was involved in a software development project of my own back at HQ (more on that later). These two projects were on almost exactly the same schedule, and what I learned by watching the Design Studio Team certainly was reflected in my own approach to our project.
If you ever hear anyone bellyaching about young people generally, or college students in particular, I hope you'll ignore it. I enjoy high school and college classes a lot, and I'm always impressed with the quality of discussion when I'm invited to various classes several times each semester. But Design Studio is on a different level entirely, and the experience of watching these incredibly talented honors students create was not only uplifting, it was quite the learning experience for me personally--and I am putting what I learned to good use.
Megan, Chris, Karri, Ethan, Callie, Eric, you rock! Suzanne, Jeremy, Nate, Chris, Brian, Doug (the other consultants, coaches, and clients), it's been a pleasure working on this project. Hope I didn't forget anyone. One more thing for the Design Studio students: I know you're going to read this, and you will make certain your parents see it. That's an order: don't make me find my parking ticket book.
I was at the Raikes School early about a year ago, invited to talk with students about some of our technology initiatives at the police department. This academic year, I had a much more in-depth experience with a group of Raikes Center students. One of my volunteer activities is serving on the board of the Teammates Mentoring Program, a great non-profit that matches up 5,000 mentors for an hour a week with school kids who need an extra supportive adult. Teammates is a client of a team of Raikes School in a year-long capstone class called Design Studio.
The Design Studio team takes on a software development project for a client, and spends the academic year designing and developing the project to the clients specifications. My role was to represent Teammates as the customer. Several times during the year, I have attended checkpoint meetings with the team, where the next iteration of the product was demonstrated, progress discussed, and the work plan reviewed. If I am satisfied with the work from the client's perspective, I sign off on behalf of Teammates.
Satisfied would be a huge understatement. The last checkpoint meeting was Friday at 8:00 AM (this is a motivated group!) and the work is in the home stretch. The product looks great, the functionality is excellent. It is designed to help recruit mentors, match them with Teamates chapters, suggest good potential student matches based on a preferences and interests algorithm, and track potential mentors through the recruitment process. It's going to be easy for people interested in becoming mentors to use, and a big hit with Teammates staff in the central office, chapters, and schools. The integration with Teammates management software is a particularly noteworthy a complishment.
I learned a ton by watching the team work, and by seeing the Agile software development process in action. This process, based on successive iterations of software and continuous incremental development, was something I was totally unfamiliar with. Having worked my entire life in a rather strictly defined hierarchy, the concept of self-organizing teams was not exactly in my toolbox. At the same time Design Studio was developing this product for Teammates, I was involved in a software development project of my own back at HQ (more on that later). These two projects were on almost exactly the same schedule, and what I learned by watching the Design Studio Team certainly was reflected in my own approach to our project.
If you ever hear anyone bellyaching about young people generally, or college students in particular, I hope you'll ignore it. I enjoy high school and college classes a lot, and I'm always impressed with the quality of discussion when I'm invited to various classes several times each semester. But Design Studio is on a different level entirely, and the experience of watching these incredibly talented honors students create was not only uplifting, it was quite the learning experience for me personally--and I am putting what I learned to good use.
Megan, Chris, Karri, Ethan, Callie, Eric, you rock! Suzanne, Jeremy, Nate, Chris, Brian, Doug (the other consultants, coaches, and clients), it's been a pleasure working on this project. Hope I didn't forget anyone. One more thing for the Design Studio students: I know you're going to read this, and you will make certain your parents see it. That's an order: don't make me find my parking ticket book.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Green Thumb
Our officers in the Narcotics Task Force received a nice honor yesterday, when the Midwest High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area honored the unit for the 2010 outstanding investigative effort. The award was in recognition of Operation Green Thumb, which took down a large and indoor marijuana growing enterprise in Lincoln, seized somewhere around $20 million worth of marijuana and equipment, and so far has resulted in Federal indictments or State charges against 13 defendants.
It was a massive effort: long, hot, humid, stinking, and dangerous. The intellectual component to dismantling a sophisticated criminal enterprise and untangling it's finances cannot be underestimated, either. The recognition for the officers and support staff is well-deserved. When you consider that the five-state HIDTA includes more than 50 drug task forces, and some very large metro areas, being tabbed as the top investigative effort by the Feds is an impressive accomplishment. Great work, everyone!
It was a massive effort: long, hot, humid, stinking, and dangerous. The intellectual component to dismantling a sophisticated criminal enterprise and untangling it's finances cannot be underestimated, either. The recognition for the officers and support staff is well-deserved. When you consider that the five-state HIDTA includes more than 50 drug task forces, and some very large metro areas, being tabbed as the top investigative effort by the Feds is an impressive accomplishment. Great work, everyone!
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Roundabout bout
The plan of the Public Works Department to install a few more roundabouts in Lincoln has hit a bit of a speed bump. These proposals are getting a lukewarm reception in some corners. A proposed roundabout at N. 14th and Superior St. that has become somewhat controversial. The general public appears to be somewhat unconvinced. Some Nebraskans view roundabouts a little bit like a cow looking at a new gate: they’re not quite sure what to do.
I have blogged before about the impact of the roundabouts, and about a couple of other controversial traffic engineering projects here in Lincoln that weren’t exactly greeted with open arms. These projects, though accompanied by plenty can second-guessing and hand-wringing, have each had a significant impact on improving safety. They take their share of criticism, but the engineers are almost always right.
Yesterday, I went to the City Council’s public hearing on a proposal to redesign another intersection, this one at S. Coddington Ave. and W. Van Dorn Street. There have been 12 crashes at this location in the past two years. Eight of those were injury accidents, and a total of 22 (!) victims were sent to the hospital from those crashes. Every single crash was a right angle collision.
A roundabout will be only one of several options that will be examined for this intersection, and I have no idea if it would fit. A lot of that depends on how much land is available, I suppose. If a roundabout results, though, I can pretty much assure you that the number of crashes will plummet, the injury accidents will become exceedingly rare, and that the typical crash will be a minor one. I know this, because this is precisely what has happened at two other intersections that were converted to roundabouts at S. 33rd and S. 40th Streets and Sheridan Boulevard.
To illustrate the impact, I took this bar chart to the City Council showing the traffic crashes at S. 33rd St. and Sheridan Boulevard. The bar on the right depicts 104 total crashes in the eight years before the roundabout was installed. The bar on the left depicts the 21 crashes in the eight years after the roundabout was installed. The pink section of each bar represents the number of the total that were injury accidents: 27 before, two after. The scale is a quarter inch per crash. Hard to argue with those data.
I have blogged before about the impact of the roundabouts, and about a couple of other controversial traffic engineering projects here in Lincoln that weren’t exactly greeted with open arms. These projects, though accompanied by plenty can second-guessing and hand-wringing, have each had a significant impact on improving safety. They take their share of criticism, but the engineers are almost always right.
Yesterday, I went to the City Council’s public hearing on a proposal to redesign another intersection, this one at S. Coddington Ave. and W. Van Dorn Street. There have been 12 crashes at this location in the past two years. Eight of those were injury accidents, and a total of 22 (!) victims were sent to the hospital from those crashes. Every single crash was a right angle collision.
A roundabout will be only one of several options that will be examined for this intersection, and I have no idea if it would fit. A lot of that depends on how much land is available, I suppose. If a roundabout results, though, I can pretty much assure you that the number of crashes will plummet, the injury accidents will become exceedingly rare, and that the typical crash will be a minor one. I know this, because this is precisely what has happened at two other intersections that were converted to roundabouts at S. 33rd and S. 40th Streets and Sheridan Boulevard.
To illustrate the impact, I took this bar chart to the City Council showing the traffic crashes at S. 33rd St. and Sheridan Boulevard. The bar on the right depicts 104 total crashes in the eight years before the roundabout was installed. The bar on the left depicts the 21 crashes in the eight years after the roundabout was installed. The pink section of each bar represents the number of the total that were injury accidents: 27 before, two after. The scale is a quarter inch per crash. Hard to argue with those data.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
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:
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.
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.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Every phone is a camera
…these days, and I have frequently warned people that the chances are pretty good that if you do something dumb in public (and sometimes in private) you ought not be surprised if it comes back to haunt you when you are least expecting it.
This warning pertains to police officers, too. I ran across this controversy in St. Louis. Police officers should never retain their own “collection” of interesting evidentiary photos they have acquired on the job. This has been a problem from time to time, and with digital imaging and the ubiquitous cell phone camera, it has the potential to become an issue today than it has in the past.
Years ago, a police officer could use his or her own 35 MM camera to take a photo, then tag in the film as evidence. It was never retained on the camera itself, the film was not developed by the officer, and the negative was in the custody of the police department. This is not the case with digital images, hence, it is best to refrain from using personal cameras to take evidentiary photos at work.
This warning pertains to police officers, too. I ran across this controversy in St. Louis. Police officers should never retain their own “collection” of interesting evidentiary photos they have acquired on the job. This has been a problem from time to time, and with digital imaging and the ubiquitous cell phone camera, it has the potential to become an issue today than it has in the past.
Years ago, a police officer could use his or her own 35 MM camera to take a photo, then tag in the film as evidence. It was never retained on the camera itself, the film was not developed by the officer, and the negative was in the custody of the police department. This is not the case with digital images, hence, it is best to refrain from using personal cameras to take evidentiary photos at work.
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