Happy anniversary

Last night, I gave a short speech at the 10-year anniversary report of Lincoln’s Community Justice Center, held in Lincoln’s most impressive room: the Grand Hall at Grand Manse, formerly the 1906 Federal District Courtroom.  The CJC is a private nonprofit organization that serves both criminal justice agencies, offenders, and crime victims.  It was launched a decade ago by James Jones, a man I first met 16 years ago. 

The CJC provides support services to offenders who are recently released, on probation, and on parole—both adults and juveniles.  It serves our courts and corrections agencies by providing day reporting, victim impact training, and other alternatives to incarceration, or enhancements to unsupervised release.

The data is impressive.  Whereas nationally about 50% of released prison inmates  are back in the slammer within three years, Nebraska fares better, with a three-year recidivism rate of around 26%.  Offenders who are served by the Community Justice Center, however, have a return rate of slightly less than 8%.  Yes, there may be some self-selection in those results, but nonetheless, that’s a huge difference, and I think it can be attributed to good programming offered by an agency that is headed by a talented man who not only talks the talk, but has walked the walk.

Jim has earned my trust.   I was somewhat cynical and just a little suspicious when this ex-offender came to my office in 1994, introduced himself and pitched his concept for restorative justice.  I was wrong.  He did exactly what he said he would do, and  the organization he has built in the ensuing years is definitely an asset to our criminal justice system.  I had the opportunity, last night, to point that out to a roomful of movers and shakers, and to his wife and son—not that they needed to hear it from me. 

Busy week for TIU

TIU is the Technical Investigations Unit: the handful of Lincoln police officers who specialize in white collar crime, financial crime, fraud, and computer forensics.  Det. Sgt. Sandy Myers (one of our most senior and experienced detectives) supervises this unit.  She had a bulging accordion file on her desk Friday that will be expanding even further this morning. 

During the past week, over 300 credit card frauds have been reported.  On Saturday, we had to bring in extra staff to answer phones because the volume was so heavy.  The vast majority of these frauds emerge from two Lincoln businesses, whose credit card processing was somehow compromised over the past several months.  We are not sure how, yet.  It could be a virus, a hacker, or something else.  

While credit card fraud is not unusual, just to give you some sense of what is happening, we had 314 frauds reported in the past seven days, compared to 37 during the third week of September last year.  Although there is always a background level of fraud reported to LPD, the victims in these cases are overwhelmingly reporting that their credit or debit card numbers were fraudulently used, and they were recent patrons of one of these two businesses—as their banks have discovered, as well.

Apparently the criminals who snagged the card numbers and encoded these onto counterfeit cards really kicked into high gear last week as the cloned cards spread far and wide.  Consumers reported fraudulent charges made all over the United States, and in such far-flung parts of the world as Italy, the UK, Brazil, Taiwan, Peru, and Hong Kong. 

I am acquainted with many of the victims personally, and since I have been a customer of the grill at one of the impacted businesses several times this year, I cancelled both my American Express card and my bank debit card, as a precaution.  I suggest that anyone who has used a credit or debit card at these businesses since February do the same thing, or at the minimum watch your accounts and statements very closely.

This international crime spree is clearly the work of a sophisticated criminal enterprise.   Ultimately, credit card companies and banks who have issued these cards will, for the most part, be the ones who suffer the loss, as they stand behind their customers whose accounts were compromised through no fault of their own.  I am hopeful that this investigation can make some progress, but realistically I know at this point the best course of action is to try to limit the loss by ensuring that the vulnerable account holders are aware of the scam, and receive advice on how to minimize their future exposure.

Research coming

During the past two weeks, we have been notified about two Department of Justice grant projects that we will be part of in the coming year.  The first is a grant to support the Lincoln Sexual Assault Response Team, a consortium of agencies working to improve Lincoln’s response to the investigation of rape.  The funds will allow us to start implementing a series of recommendations from a year long audit of sexual assault investigations that was undertaken over the past two years.

The second grant goes to the University of Nebraska, but we are a partner in the research.  This grant will allow us to pursue a unique technology initiative that is intended to provide police officers with information in the field in a new and innovative interface.  It’s an idea that jumped into my head last November, and a group of UNL researchers turned it into a National Institute of Justice proposal to bring this concept to reality and to study its impact. 

I am excited about both of these projects.  The first is going to help us do a better job on one of our most serious violent crime.  The second has the potential to make a groundbreaking contribution to the field of policing.

Flow chart

I admit that I am something of a data hound. I take a little good natured teasing about that from time to time.  Over the weekend a friend sent me an email filled with charts. When I read it on Saturday morning, I laughed so hard I woke Tonja up, spewed coffee, and almost--well, you know.  Come to think of it, there was a flow chart for that:


see more Funny Graphs

Hybrid mileage

The Lincoln Police Department acquired our first hybrid in 2004, and over the past few years we have worked a handful into our fleet in parking enforcement and unmarked assignments.  This year, however, we are deploying our first hybrids as marked police patrol vehicles.



We aren't alone.  There is an emerging trend in U.S. police departments to mix in some hybrids.  For example, the New York City Police Department deployed some Nissan hybrids last year, and is adding more hybrids of various types this year.  If you Google hybrid police patrol, and click images, you’ll see lots of examples emerging.

We now have three marked Ford Escape hybrids out on the street sporting our new graphics design.  Here’s the early data:  Capt. Joe Wright’s assigned Escape has 699 miles, and is averaging 30.0 MPG.  Sgt. Danny Reitan reports that the Escape he drives has 365 miles, and is averaging 32.5 MPG.  Sgt. Don Arp sayss that the Escape he is assigned to drive has 456 miles on the odometer, with an average of 27.1 MPG.

Our overall fleet mileage has been inching up over the past several years.  For the fiscal year that just ended on August 31st was 12.7 MPG.  These hybrids are more than doubling that average.  When you drive 2.4 million miles per year, that will make you sit up and take notice!

Bag limit

 I received this polite email last evening, from an unfortunate motorists who is displeased over receiving two speeding tickets on two consecutive days.  I don’t believe either of these tickets came from the Lincoln Police Department, but I must be reasonably accessible for someone who want to protest that the bag limit has been exceeded.

“To Whom It May Concern:

The purpose of this e-mail is to express my concern regarding a speeding ticket I received yesterday (Tuesday September 14, 2010) between 5:00-6:00 PM. The location was on I-80 going west bound. Normally the speed limit is 75 mph but was reduced to 65 mph. According to the officer it was a "construction zone" although there were no workers and no indication of construction. I informed the officer that this is my second speeding ticket in two days and I have no prior record of tickets. I've already signed up to take the STOP class in Sarpy County on Saturday September 25th which is $96.00 and I don't believe that I should pay the ticket from yesterday. I understand that the officer is doing his job however, this location should not have been 65 mph if there was no construction or indication of any construction on the west bound side. I've been to Lincoln many times and have never had this problem before.

Thank you for your consideration on this matter.”

Cookie thief

Back in the pre-Cambrian era, when I was an undergraduate with a sociology minor, I was introduced to labeling theory, by a graduate teaching assistant, Dr. Jay Corzine (who went on the bigger accomplishments in the field):  tell a kid he’s a delinquent, and delinquent he will be.  Since then, I have had a better understanding of the implications of a youngster’s first few brushes with the law.

Sgt. Danny Reitan handed me this Incident Report, shaking his head, as I was on my way out the door last night.  It has been lightly edited for length and to protect the identity of those involved:


Is it a good idea to call the police and enmesh a 14 year old middle school student in the machinations of the criminal justice process over a seventy-five cent cookie?  To be fair, this apparently isn’t his first cookie-lifting, and he was in trouble earlier this year for boosting some clothes at a department store.  Still, what ever happened to be held after dismissal for a study hall supervised by the Driver’s Ed teacher, or cleaning blackboards dry erase boards for an hour after school?

Day and night

University of Nebraska home football games are pretty overwhelming events in Lincoln.  When a stadium fills with 85,000 fans downtown--with a huge but unknown number of other fans clogging parking lots and bars during the game--you better believe that the City is hopping for the police.  So, how do you think a night game versus a mid-day game would compare, in terms of the police workload?

Not so fast.  Nebraska's home opener against Western Kentucky on September 4 was at 6:00 PM.  We dispatched 482 events that day.  Last weekend's game against Idaho was at 11:30 AM.  We dispatched 517 events on that day.  The reason may revolve around the kickoff effect:  during the evening and nighttime hours when police work starts to peak, people are either in the stadium or stationary somewhere watching the game.  The game-time lull on Saturday night is more significant than the game-time lull in the middle of the day, which is pretty mild on any normal Saturday anyway. 

Another possibility is that the hard-partying crowd is worn out to some extent by the end of a night game, whereas with an early game there is plenty of time to rally for round two before the bell tolls.  If this post looks vaguely familiar to you, I looked at the same phenomenon last year in a post titled Night and Day.  The key difference in the opposite result in 2009 was a night game win compared to a day game loss.  I'm guessing that the downtown bars have a strong financial interest in a Husker victory,