Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel focused a recent news conference on technological advances of the Chicago Police Department and its exploration of decision support tools for reducing the incidence of violent crimes.
Emanuel’s message is that smart policing is giving the city the ability to intervene ahead of shootings in two of the most notoriously violent areas, the city’s South and West sides, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The recent Englewood district tour highlighted:
- Expanded gunshot detection
- Street cameras
- New surveillance center
- New cellphones that instantly inform officers of shootings
The integrated strategic decision support technology is supposed to put informed officers on scene faster than a 911 call, according to the city.
“This allows our police officers to be all that much smarter and more effective in using technology and command ability to make sure people are in the right place at the right time to prevent a shooting in the first place,” Emanuel told reporters on the tour.
The centers, currently part of a demonstration project, are manned by district intelligence officers, which are working with researchers through the National Institute of Justice and other sources of grant funding. The goal of the project is to explore how development and implementation of data-driven predictive analytics with real-time assessment of neighborhoods can reduce crime and violence.
Other cities, like Hartford, Conn., have similar data centers that drive crime strategies, which law enforcement leadership regards as “force-multipliers.”
Exploring Data-Driven Decisions
Under the Smart Policing Initiative (SPI), The Bureau of Justice brings together law enforcement and research partners to analyze and develop “effective and economical” evidence-based law enforcement strategies and interventions, according to Police1.com.
SPI is a collaborative that includes 31 law enforcement agencies testing solutions to their most serious crime problems. The city of Chicago has been working with the Illinois Institute of Technology and research partner RAND Corporation on its decision support system since 2009, according to the SPI website.
RAND has been evaluating and advising the decision support software and improving its Strategic Subject List (SSL), developed by the university. The ultimate goal is that the system will advise responding police on situation intervention in order to reduce shootings in particular.
Last September, CBS News featured Jonathan Lewin, Chicago’s deputy chief of technology, and asked him to explain the department’s list.
The data that feeds the list comes from about 600 of the city’s gangs and gang factions, and more than 100,000 documented gang members. The list helps not only helps policing, but also outreach to those deemed high-risk.
Of the more than 2,000 on the SSL since it was first developed until the time of the CBS report, 87 percent did not commit further violent offenses.
Next Steps
RAND has been assessing the SSL’s ability to identify which persons are most likely to be a party to violence, and how high-scoring persons are placed on it. The company is looking at:
“How well the model segments high-risk persons into operationally actionable categories, such as persistent risk vs. short-term risk; perpetrators vs. likely victims and high risk due to lifestyle behavior (e.g., substance or gambling abuse) vs. directly participating in violence,” according to SPI.
RAND is also analyzing differences between those on the SSL, and those who aren’t, but have other high-risk factors.
