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.