The shadow knows

I had a great time yesterday hanging out with Adam. He’s a 16 year old sophomore at Lincoln East High School, and needed a job shadowing experience for his career education class. I’ve hosted other high school students in career ed classes in the past. It takes a certain amount of confidence to contact the chief of police, and I’m not about to turn down anyone who makes that effort.

We started the day with lineup and an informal staff meeting. Then we were off to the daily news media briefing. We went from there to a planning meeting with the Crime Analysis Unit, where we prepared for our monthly ACUDAT meeting. Afterwards, we took care of a few items on the “to do list” around headquarters. A short road trip followed, including a couple of cheeseburgers and fries.

Then it was back to headquarters for the ACUDAT meeting, where we examined the recent crime trends and patterns, particularly daytime residential burglaries and larcenies from auto in which wallets and purses are being stolen. We discussed the circumstances and locations where purses or wallets would typically be left in parked cars. At ACUDAT, we also did a little impromptu training on how to use our information system to search for suspects with an unusual physical description. The idea for this little demo came from an email Officer Mike Schmidt sent out recently looking for anyone who might recognize a distinctive description of a suspect in a case he’s working.

Following ACUDAT, I just had to take a glance at the bulging email inbox while Adam went through a few questions he needed to ask me on his interview list for the class assignment. We were in my office when Officer Katie Flood came in with a hot tip about the residential burglaries we had just discussed at ACUDAT. The tip came from a reporter, who had experienced something unusual at home over the weekend. We passed that information on to Capt. Kim Koluch of the Southeast Team.

I didn’t want to bore Adam to death, but I continued what I intended to be a fast look at the email. One of the messages, though, was a Threshold Alert that had just arrived, notifying me that a sexual predator had given a new address that placed him in violation of Lincoln’s municipal ordinance restriction on residency within 500 ft. of a school. This needed some immediate follow-up, so we pulled up the details on the subject in our records management system and the State sex offender Registry. Using the new Lincoln GIS viewer, we zoomed to the area, identified the parcels, adjusted the slider to turn the aerial photos on, and used the measure tool to calculate the distance from the sex offender’s lot line to the edge of the school grounds: 351.5 feet. This whole exercise took us about five minutes, and we delivered the results to Sgt. Tim Kennet on the Southwest Team for investigation.

Our next trip was to the Mayor’s Office, where I had hoped to catch chief of staff Rick Hoppe for a quick conversation, and also hoped to introduce Adam to the Mayor. Alas, they were in meetings, but around the corner at the planning department, I needed to see Jeff McReynolds, who is one of the main people behind the new GIS viewer we had just used. He enjoyed that story, and took a minute to show Adam a couple of other things in the application.

I had Adam ring his mom up and tell here there was no need to pick him up, then we went mobile and headed for home. On the way, I showed Adam some of the ways we are using mobile data in our vehicles. I discussed an idea with him that has been floating around in my head for a couple of months. I’m meeting with some researchers to pitch the concept next week, and we’ll see if we can bring it to market. Adam liked it. Hopefully he won’t run off and patent it first, now that he knows.

I don’t know about Adam, but I had a good day. I have a sneaking suspicion he did, too. He’s an outgoing guy with a very sharp mind. He was picking up on the crime analysis portion of the day instantly, and connecting those dots quickly. He also has a dry sense of humor that will serve him well. When you can kid around with the chief of police—both take it and dish it out--it’s a good sign!

By the way, Adam is the grandson of the last Lincoln police officer to be killed in the line of duty, George Welter. I’m sure his grandfather would be very proud of him

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.

Runza was a big hit

Wednesday was our regular monthly ACUDAT meeting, and we had another site visit from the Riley County (Kansas) Police. Four employees made the trek to attend the meeting and spend most of the day. They were particularly interested in our crime analysis operation, our information systems, and the wildly-revised and updated way we are handling Crimestoppers these days. It’s the third visit this year from the Riley County Police, so they are apparently seeing some things that are interesting and valuable.

The team arrived in LPD at 0815, so they must have been on the road pretty early from Manhattan. I reasoned that a lunch break would be good, since the ACUDAT meeting was starting at 1300 hours, and I needed to be there a little early to help set up. So at 1130, I jammed everyone into my Avenger for a trip to a sandwich joint. We needed something quick, so the West O Street Runza was my choice. Much to my surprise, most of the group were familiar with the Runza, and ecstatic at the culinary delights that awaited. Apparently Lt. Mark French has Nebraska connections, and Officer Brian Swearingen has frequented the lone Runza in the State of Kansas—down the road in Lawrence.

I’m one of the few people still around who dined on many occasions at the original Runza restaurant. I guess when you’ve grown up with it, you sort of take the best fast-food place extant for granted. For my out-of-state readers, it’s hard to explain what a Runza is, and you don’t really want to know anyway. But if you’re ever driving through fly-over country on I-80, and see that sign, exit immediately and enjoy the quintessential Nebraska sandwich. Don’t be ordering any I-talian Runza, or any mushroom-and-cheese Runza. Go for the original.

If you time it right on a east-to-west trip, you could have a pork tenderloin for lunch in Iowa, then hit the Runza in North Platte for supper.

Long, boring, and useless

Last Wednesday, our regular ACUDAT meeting was attended by a crime analyst and a police lieutenant from the Aurora, Illinois.  Like many departments (Lincoln included) Aurora is looking around for good ideas.  They’ve been thinking about some potential changes to their Compstat meetings, and that’s why they were interested in having a look at ours.

We hooked Aurora up remotely using gotomeeting.com, and for a little over an hour they were able to eavesdrop on our meeting.  On the menu last week were Church burglaries, school burglaries, and larceny from autos in swimming pool parking lots.  No doubt these same crime patterns occur from time to time in Aurora.  We exchanged some information about these crimes, discussed some strategies and plans, reviewed our year-to-date crime stats, how we’re doing on some crimes discussed at previous meetings, and that was that. 

I don’t know if Aurora saw anything of interest, but I think the reason so many other departments have visited our ACUDAT meeting is because it represents an alternative to how Compstat is carried out in most other cities.  After visiting with dozens of other departments, in my view the typical Compstat meeting is too long; is static (rather than interactive); is too general, dealing too much in statistics rather than getting down into the  specifics of individual problems; focuses too much on trying to hold district commanders accountable; has a “gotcha” feel rather than an information sharing one; is too scripted; contains far too many PowerPoint slides; is not sufficiently current; and is targeted too much at administrators, rather than operational personnel. 

Compstat has pretty much swept the field in policing.  If you’re not doing a Compstat meeting now, you will be with your next chief.  On balance, I think the fundamental concepts it represents are good ones: focus on results, monitor your performance, get the command staff engaged in the department’s key outcomes.  Care must be taken, however, not to create a meeting that is long, boring, and mostly useless. 

LNKstat kick off

Taking Charge, the City of Lincoln's performance management process, by which we set goals, develop performance indicators, and monitor progress, jumped up to a new level today with the inauguration of LNKstat: a meeting designed to collaboaratively focus the attention of the City's management staff on our municipal government's performance. LNKstat meetings are patterned after a practice that was originally developed in policing during the 1990s, COMPSTAT, which here in Lincoln our police department calls ACUDAT. 

LNKstat is designed to serve the same purpose as ACUDAT, only by more broadly examining all eight of the City's outcomes, from safety & security to efficient transportation. We have been receiving some top-notch technical assistance from the What Works Cities initiative to develop and refine LNKstat, and this morning's meeting begins a series of six coming up in the next few months. 

Today's focus was on the City's first outcome area: safety & security. Our police and fire chief, along with our Parks & Recreation Department and Public Works Department, reviewed the public safety performance indicators from Taking Charge with Mayor Beutler and his staff, and fielded questions and comments from the other City department heads.

The City's performance management team, a group of representatives from most of the departments, led by the Mayor's Chief of Staff, has been working for the past few months with What Works Cities to prepare for this process. The first meeting was excellent. Lots of good information was shared, several action steps were identified, and we all had a productive meeting examining how things are going in the effort to ensure a safe and secure community, and what we need to do to keep on track. 

Next week, LNKstat will shift focus to outcome area number two: livable neighborhoods. This one may be even more challenging than safety & security, because there are eight City departments with a   portion of responsibility for this outcome. What's exciting to see is the City's top management staff focused together on these outcomes, not just those within our own individual domains. 

All in the family

Lincolnites intrigued with the ongoing saga of the media-darling defendant, Ricky Turco, got a taste of family dynamics in a recent article in the Lincoln Journal Star that provided some insight into Ricky's situation. Let's just say his namesake was not exactly a great role model.

Sometimes the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

We had another example of this axiom at last week's ACUDAT meeting. A discussion took place concerning a series of offenses committed recently by four brothers, ages 10, 11, 12, 15, and 16. We're not talking egging a house or letting the air out of tires--more like commercial burglary and auto theft. These boys seem to have arrived in Lincoln with their mother in 2005 from parts unkown. Unfortunately, people don't arrive the the back seat of the patrol car with a complete social history. Not-entirely-jokingly, I told those in attendance at ACUDAT to grab the a copy of the intelligence bulletin on these youths, put it on your clipboard, and keep it there until you retire.

It reminded me of Charles, Earl and Melvin--three teenage brothers who showed up in Lincoln in the early 1980's and soon thereafter became very well known to all Lincoln police officers. The brothers distinguished themselves quickly, graduating from misdemeanors and juvenile court to adult felonies, accumulating hundreds of arrests, and sharing several prison terms.

So it is, in policing. When you start as a young man or woman, you will inevitably watch your youthful charges grow up, give birth, become grandparents, and with depressing regularity pass on their lifestyle and livelihood to future generations. Most Lincoln police officers should be able to fill in the last names of Charles, Earl and Melvin, as well as all of the following. Come to think of it, though we've never talked about this, I'd wager that Det. Sgt. Jim Breen would score 100% on this quiz within 60 seconds:

• Ricky, Nikki, and Ronnie
  
• Charlotte, Benita, Ricky and Allen
  
• Jason and Derek
  
• Pam, Eric, and Kevin
  
• Demond and Demond
• Leo and Leo
  
• Beth, Kenny, and Farrell (and sometimes Henry)
  
• Ida, Monique, Melanie and Mindy
  
• Theresa, Lee, Paul, David, and Anthony
  
• Evelyn, Tammy, Tina, and the grandchildren

Veteran officers won't have any trouble remembering Evelyn's husband, either. When Victor was killed in 1988, his death ended a string of 206 arrests by the Lincoln police department in the eight previous years. (We didn't computerize our arrest records until 1980, and it was just too much work to go back into the 3 x 5 index cards on Victor.) Evelyn and Tammy are still living at the same place. The retired officers who read this blog would all be able to recite the address by heart.

I always liked Victor and Evelyn, despite the huge burden on police resources they represented. One day, we had a misdemeanor arrest warrant for Victor. Steve and I were dispatched to their home to execute the warrant. The couple was watching a TV sitcom in the living room. We told Victor that we had to take him in. He asked if we could wait a few minutes until the show ended. We knew him well enough to realize that our choice was really to have a fight or not, and the choce was clear. Evelyn offered us dessert, so we sat down, had a bowl of ice cream, and watched the end of All in the Family before trundling Victor off to jail in high spirits. No need to muss the uniform over a short delay awaiting the next commercial break.

Evelyn called me at home on a Saturday morning a couple weekends ago. She was having an ongoing argument with Tammy, and had summoned the police a couple of times during the previous week. She was none too happy with Officer David Strom, a young whippersnapper that just plain refused to do what she wanted--make Tammy leave. We reminisced about old times, I convinced her that David was really a pretty good guy, then I had her put Tammy on the phone. After commiserating with each about the unreasonableness of the other, I asked both of them to help us out by leaving one another alone. Then, after a cheerful adieu, I returned from this alternate universe to the British Open. I love this job.

Park thieves caught in act

Thefts from cars parked at trailheads, recreation centers, and City parks is a topic that comes up frequently at our monthly ACUDAT meetings. Just last week, I handed Capt. Mike Woolman a document with some analysis of the thefts of this type in Southwest Lincoln—the area hardest hit by these crimes so far this year. The analysis showed that most of these were happening in the afternoons, and that Sunday was the most popular day.

Sgt. Mike Bassett fleshed out some more details from his own review of the individual cases. He learned, for example, that debit cards stolen in these thefts were often being used immediately, many in the Northwest part of Lincoln, and that on a few occasions multiple charges on the same stolen card were made at the same convenience store within a matter of minutes. It appeared the thief was calling friends and family over to fill up.

The Southwest Team redoubled its efforts. On Sunday afternoon, the Team had a bait car in place at this parking lot at the Jamaica North Trailhead, down at the southern tip of Lincoln’s Wilderness Park:

Sgt. Bassett had the bait car under surveillance in Wilderness Park when a pair of thieves struck. He deployed a set of Stop Sticks to prevent the thieves (who arrived in a van) from exiting. You can see how valuable that was, given the layout of the parking area. There's only one way in, and one way out, unless you are on two wheels, four hoofs, or a pair of feet.


View Larger Map

Two arrests were quickly made. Further investigation led to a third person, and the recovery of a large amount of stolen property from various thefts and burglaries. There will be a lot more investigation as a result, and I expect that we will clear several other crimes and make felony arrests.

This was excellent work. I am hopeful that these arrests slow these crimes down. Experience, however, teaches that there are always new crooks in the wings, and that arrests doesn’t always result in the defendant mending his or her ways. Thus, prevention efforts are still strongly recommended.

City Stat launched

As the latest part of his efforts to radically retool the City's budget into a performance-based process, Mayor Chirs Beutler launched City Stat this week. Modelled after the police department's ACUDAT meetings, and with a nod to Baltimore's CitiStat, Lincoln's version is an effort to monitor the City's progress towards achieving it's budget outcomes. For each of the City's eight goals, a City Stat meeting is planned, where the involved departments present an update on each of the performance indicators.

Not surprisingly, the City's top priority (Safety & Security) was the lead-off meeting, meaning the the police department was in the hot seat. With a series of just a handful of PowerPoint slides, I reported on how we are doing on violent crime, property crime, clearance rate, and injury traffic crashes. I used the same graphs that are posted on our public web site's Dashboard, adding a single sentence to summarize how it's going in the current year, through the end of November. Here's what the review of our performance indicators shows:

Violent Crime: We are well within our goal of no more than 555 offenses per 100,000 population, and the violent crime rate is down 8% again so far this year.

Property Crime: Our bellwether offense, the burglary rate, is up 5% this year. Despite this, large decreases last year mean that we are comfortably under the target maximum of 842 offenses per 100,000 population.

Clearance Rate: Through the end of November, our clearance rate is 30%, well over our goal of maintaining a 24% or better rate. It's the highest clearance rate on record.

Injury Traffic Crashes: Our injury crash rate is well under the cap of 850 per 100,000 and is down an additional 2% so far in 2009.

Next up is priority two: Livable Neighborhoods. The police department has a role in that one, too, so we'll be presenting some more progress data at the next meeting on response times and perceptions of neighborhood safety.

100K and counting

I run Google Analytics on The Chief's Corner, which collects a lot of statistics on the traffic. The number of visits to The Chief's Corner topped 100,000 this week. Yesterday was pretty typical, with 441 visits, bringing the total to 100,651 since I launched in mid-April, 2007. There have been 208,160 pageviews by 23,785 unique visitors. The average visitor stays on site two and a half minutes, and views two pages. Of the total visitors, 40% have returned 15 or more times, 11% more than 100 times.

The hits came from computers using the following operating systems: 95.5% Windows, 4% Mac, and 0.26% Linux. The browsers line up as 84% Internet Explorer, 11% Firefox, and a smattering of Safari, Firefox for Mac, Netscape, Opera, and Camino (whatever that is.)

Just under a third of the total hits came from the City-County domain--so the blog's biggest readership is intimately local. But there are several other domain names that are heavy hitters, including all the major Internet service providers, the University of Nebraska, Lee Enterprises, and Lincoln Public Schools.

Hits have come from all over the place. Canada and the United Kingdom have a some regualr readers, especially in Vancouver, BC and in London. In the United States, seven states topped 1,000 visits. Nebraska contributed the most, naturally, followed by Virginia, Colorado, and New York. Reviewing the new visitor vs. returning visitor stats for each state and the domain names makes it clear that there are loyal readers in unexpected places like Herndon, VA , San Bruno, CA, and New York City .

The ways in which people found The Chief's Corner are interesting. Although the vast majority of hits were direct, search engines produced a dizzying array of unusual results. Here's an example: back on September 25th, 2007, someone in Charlotte, North Carolina Googled the phrase "bob and tom lincoln nebraska", hit this page, then spent 20 minutes visiting a total of 16 pages. Go figure.

Aside from the obvious terms like "lincoln police", "chief's blog" and "casady" (spelled about a dozen different ways), the biggest single search term that brought people to The Chief's Corner was "acudat".

Proving that less is more, the most popular single post, by a long shot, was also the shortest: I wonder who drove (2,205). Second place goes to Gary got his gun permit (858), followed by Not the only one with that thought (782), Third shift wrap up (622), and Prevention wins every time (589).

A hundred thousand hits is probably chump change for a popular blog, but to me that seems like a lot of traffic. It doesn't count the unknown number of readers who follow the Chief's Corner by subscribing to the RSS feed. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect this blog to reach so many people in 10 months.

Hot product

Officer Vicki Bourg, the school resource officer at Northstar High School, is growing tired of the number of iPods being reported stolen by high school students. We discussed this trend at last week’s ACUDAT meeting, and it’s pretty obvious that the Apple iPod is a hot product for thieves at the moment.

In 2008, we had 242 burglaries or thefts where iPods were among the stolen goods. This list of iPods reported stolen in the past 120 days is not complete—it’s only those for which we had a serial number or other identifying mark.

A decade ago, Dr. Ronald Clarke coined the acronym CRAVED to describe hot products that are common targets for crime: Concealable, Removable, Available, Valuable, Enjoyable, Disposable. The iPod fits the bill perfectly. The same characteristics that make it a desirable consumer products also make it a likely target for thieves.

Vicki should take heart in the knowledge that hot products inevitably come and go. A few years ago, it seemed like virtually every larceny from auto and residential burglary involved the theft of a case-full of CDs. That has dropped way off now—only 140 burglaries and thefts listed CDs in 2008. Hot products in my rookie year would have included things like 8-track tapes and CB radios!

Reducing the theft of iPods or any other hot product is usually a matter of working on the Ducks.

Visit from Topeka

Last Wednesday, the Topeka Police Department paid us a visit with a group of police personnel and citizens, looking for some fresh ideas. If you follow The Chief's Corner, you're already aware this isn't unusual. We host site visits and exchanges with other departments with some regularity.

What was unusual about this visit was that Topeka brought along a news crew. A nice story about the visit ran on the local ABC affiliate in Topeka, asserting that there's a bit of a friendly competition between us to be "America's Safest Capital City." I think Capt. Brown and I were just kidding about that, but for the record we have an awfully big lead--not that I'm bragging or anything.

We had a far-ranging conversation, and our visitors also attended our regular ACUDAT meeting. I suspect the most salient idea the Topeka delegation took away concerned information for landlords. One of the things we've tried to do is make good current information available to property owners and managers about the police incidents occurring at their property. We do this with an instant report that they can generate 24/7/365 based on the specific address. We also provide some good advice on background checks for prospective tenants. We have some great web resources for instant access to this information.

Police department's are hampered in their ability to adapt and change by the fact that the great majority of officers work their entire career at the same agency. While this has some tremendous advantages, it also slows innovation because of the relatively rare injection of people who have other experiences and exposure to other ways of operating. That's why exchanges like these are so valuable for all involved. You can learn a lot by looking around.

Lock slows burglars

A few weeks ago, a burglary was reported at a self-storage unit in north Lincoln. It came to my attention because I know the victim, Steve, and he told me about the crime. Somebody clipped the padlock on his unit with bolt cutters, and made off with a trunk-load of goods. Among the stolen items were hundreds of jazz CDs.

The case was cleared when the suspects tried to sell the goods at a second-hand music/video/game store. I guess the people that showed up trying to offload the collection just didn't look like fans of classic jazz, and the owner was suspicious. He contacted us, and within a few days we had arrested three suspects--all meth addicts, two of whom are recently released from prison.

Before the arrests were made, I quizzed Steve about his padlock, and told him to get a disc lock. A few days ago, he confirmed that he had done so. Several years ago during an ACUDAT meeting, we were examining a spate of storage unit burglaries. During the discussion, Det. Sgt. Jeri Roeder mentioned that she rented a storage unit personally, and that the company required tenants to purchase a disc lock. She could never recall a case where one of these locks had been successfully attacked. No one else could either. From that point forward, the disc lock has been standard advice to owners and tenants of storage units.

This style of lock isn't a guarantee, but a standard padlock is a snap for a burglar armed with bolt cutters. Getting around a disc lock is a more complicated affair, and as we know, most burglars are essentially disorganized, lazy, and possessed of a rather short attention span. Let them move on to an easier target.

There have been 19 storage unit burglaries in Lincoln so far in 2008. The number has fallen like a rock over the past decade. I would attribute this in part to our efforts to promote better locks, in part to better physical security by complex owners, and in part to the proliferation of video surveillance systems. That's a very nice trend line.

Gas and GPS

At Wednesday's ACUDAT meeting, we reviewed current crime trends. Trailer thefts, street robberies and garage burglaries were among the topics. We also had a look at the theft of GPS devices. We've had three of these in the past two weeks, and 21 this year. I continue to think this will be a target of growing popularity with thieves, and hope more people take precautions.

One would think, with gas topping $4 per gallon, that the ancient art of siphoning would reappear. It has, although not as many cases have been reported to the police as I would have expected. I suspect that the skill of siphoning is mostly lost on the present generation. The skill of spelling siphon is clearly lost, too. So far this year, ten cases have been reported to the police. One of the victims was a retired police officer. Apparently the thief was unable to get into his locking gas cap (a good precaution), and was scared off, abandoning his hose and gas can.

There's not much of a geographic pattern to these offenses. They are spread around town. They have both picked up in recent weeks though--half of each have been since the first of May:

Underrated crime

I'll admit it. I'm guilty of it too. Bicycle thefts have never been on my list of serious crime. Despite the fact that I've owned one or more pricey steeds continuously since my freshman year in college (yes, the bicycle had been invented), I've never been the victim of a theft. If I had been, I'm sure it would be much higher in my hierarchy of criminality. Being a victim yourself tends to do that. It has moved up a notch however, in the wake of last Wednesday's ACUDAT meeting.

The Crime Analysis Unit made a nice catch recently. Sgt. Grant Richards discovered a group of half a dozen stolen bikes that were pawned by a thief on the same day of the theft. The going sale price for a really nice bike at a pawn shop is $50. Not bad for a Kona Unit 2-9 valued at $943. Doing a little research, Sgt. Richards found three other suspects who have been pawning stolen bikes regularly of late.

This was good work by the Crime Analysis Unit, but it shows we've got to redouble our efforts to prevent thieves from using pawn shops to offload stolen high-end bicycles. It's easy for pawn brokers to check our stolen property records to determine if a bike has been reported stolen (although the stolen report is about a day behind the crime), and it's also easy for the investigating officer to check our electronic pawn records to determine if the stolen bike has turned up in a pawn shop after a couple weeks have passed. There are several other ways to dispose of a stolen bicycle, and I seriously doubt that pawnshops are anywhere close to being the most common method. Nonetheless, that's a fairly easy door to close more firmly by diligent checks.

Here's why it's important. Bicycle theft is an underrated crime. So far this year, there have been 494 bike thefts in Lincoln. The loss has been $100,305. That's not even counting the 71 burglaries in which bicycles were among the stolen goods. Last year, the total dollar loss from bicycle theft was $125,301. Robberies, by comparison resulted in a total loss of $92,839.

Lack thereof

Last night was our monthly ACUDAT meeting, where we discuss the highlights of current crime trends and patterns in Lincoln.  I must say, that the highlight of last night's discussion of crime was the lack thereof.  We seem to be down in a pretty significant trough right now--which is, of course, good!  If there is one thing I've learned during my career, though, it is this: nothing lasts.  With spring weather finally upon us, I would expect the activity to pick up significantly.  Here are our first quarter crime statistics:

Crime may be a little slow right now, but it certainly hasn't come to a complete halt. Among the trends under discussion last night were residential garage burglaries, thefts of copper, thefts of golf equipment, thefts of license plate thefts, and thefts of high-dollar commercial outdoor power equipment.  We are anticipating increases in certain types of crime as the economy recovers, and we discussed new construction starts in particular as an area of vulnerability. As always, prevention efforts were on the agenda: six of the eleven auto thefts in the past two weeks were cases where the keys were left in the car.  Eight of the 43 residential burglaries were cases in which the garage door was standing open.

Coast to coast host

We use gotomeeting.com around  here to conduct our shift assemblies (what we call lineup) at the various times during the day when officers are coming on duty.  Web conferencing is ideal for getting everyone on the same page (well, the same screen) about current events.  Gotomeeting, though, has some other nice benefits for us, and last week was a good example.

I was contacted by a crime analyst at the Howard County (Maryland) Police Department who had been referred to LPD. He was interested in our geographic crime analysis process and software. Rather than just talking to him, I fired up gotomeeting, and brought him to my desktop for a little demo on Tuesday morning.  I think he was surprised not only by our GIS work, but by the logic that underlies our entire information system.

The following day was our regularly scheduled ACUDAT meeting.  A crime analyst from the King County(Oregon Washington) Sheriff's Office had contacted me a couple weeks ago about that.  She had been referred by someone who had told her about our process.  We exchanged a couple of emails, and I ultimately just invited her to attend our next meeting remotely. So on Wednesday, Cynthia participated in our meeting from 1,800 miles away. 

Over a two day period we had site visits from both coasts, one from an agency about our size (Howard County Police), the other from an agency much larger (King County Sheriff).  No travel was involved, and everyone got the information they sought.  That's a pretty efficient way of doing business.

Follow up from visits

Last September, we had a visit from the Council Bluffs, Iowa Police Department. They were here to have a look at our use of computer monitors to improve our information flow during our roll call (we call it lineup). Council Bluffs Police Capt. Terry LeMaster emailed me last week with an update. They have installed equipment and changed their roll calls to incorporate computer and video content. He sent a photo:


We also had a November visit from a Topeka Police Department delegation that even brought along a news crew. I got a follow-up email from Capt. Ron Brown last week, too:

"Hi Chief! I have included some stats to show how our initiative is going. Crime is going the right direction as you can see. We have started a Chief’s Youth Advisory Council modeled after yours and it is VERY successful. Thanks for the idea. The young folks are very engaged and providing valuable insight. Capt. Stanley has taken on your roll call room as a model and is working on flat screen TVs and computer link ups for our roll call room. Thanks again for the great information and assistance; it did not fall on deaf ears!"

In January, we hosted another visit from the Tulsa Police Department. Officer Will Dalsing, Capt. Travis Yates, and Major Daryl Webster were in Lincoln as part of a project to visit several cities to get a feel for how they use data, information, and crime analysis. Their trip to Lincoln was to observe one of our ACUDAT meetings.

We always benefit from these site visits. It's a great opportunity to share ideas, learn what others are doing, and in some ways to compare yourself to the field and gauge how you're doing. This week, three members of my staff will be in Atlanta at the meeting of the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies.

Vulnerable places

At our most recent ACUDAT meeting a couple weeks ago, we noted a series of thefts of purses from autos in the parking lots at health clubs: Gold’s Gym, Prairie Life, the Woods Park Tennis Center, Five Willows, to name a few. These are not new, but it was unusual to have several of these in short order during the dead of winter and spread around town.

We also noticed several thefts from parked cars in the downtown area, late at night while the owner was away at one of the local watering holes or a movie.

These are all examples of places where a purse left in a car is vulnerable, because it is fairly obvious that the owner of the car will be away for a while. The thief simply has to wait until the coast is clear, smash a window, and make off with the purse. Aside from the loss of any cash, the victim has to cancel credit cards, obtain a new driver’s license, watch her accounts like a hawk, and worry about identity theft.

There’s not a easy fix for this, but there are a couple things people could do to reduce the chance they will fall prey. First, make sure all your valuables are out of sight—preferably in the trunk. This isn’t a guarantee, but a purse on the floorboard or seat is a sitting duck to a thief that is window shopping.

If you are going to a place you don’t like to carry your purse into, such as your health club, the movies, or a bar, it would make sense to leave your purse at home and just take your driver’s license, if possible. Stuff it in the side pocket of your gym bag, or the pocket of your jeans and leave the purse at home.

With spring coming, trailheads, dog runs, swimming pools, softball fields, and similar outdoor sports venues will pop up as additional places where purses left in cars are in particular jeopardy. The same advice applies: don’t take it, use a fanny pack, or at least lock it in the trunk.

This is a topic I’ve touched on before, but it bears repeating. There are always going to be crimes like this that exploit vulnerabilities, and we would like to prevent as many as possible. It’s not a good feeling knowing that some cretin has you name and ID, and knows where you live.

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

Manhattan project

Last Wednesday was the third one of the month, and that means it was our regularly scheduled ACUDAT meeting to review crime trends and progress towards our goals. The June meeting was attended by visitors from the Riley County (Kansas) Police Department. Chief Brad Schoen and his command staff came up for the afternoon.

Capt. Tim Hegarty, who heads their patrol division, had arranged the visit after he was here a couple of months ago. The Riley County Police Department is unique in our part of the country, as an integrated police agency that covers the entire county. The largest cities are Ogden and Manhattan--home of Kansas State University. Way back in 1974 the Ogden Police Department, Manhattan Police Department, and Riley County Sheriff's Office were merged into a single police agency. That must have been quite the project, given the politics that swirl around such matters.

A non-political project--an effort to improve information and analysis--brought Riley County to Lincoln Wednesday. RCPD is in the process of acquiring the same geographic crime analysis software we use, CrimeView. They were interested in seeing how we use this in our department, and particularly how analysis of patterns, trends, and crimes is used to guide our strategies. We host visits like this a few times each year, and it's a great opportunity to share ideas.