Kinda like this...
Posted on 07/01/2012 1:54:48 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Los Angeles police are aiming to beat suspects to the scene of a crime by using computers to predict where trouble might occur.
The Los Angeles Police Department is the largest agency to embrace an experiment known as “predictive policing,” which crunches data to determine where to send officers to thwart would-be thieves and burglars. Time Magazine called it one of the best inventions of 2011.
Early successes could serve as a model for other cash-strapped law enforcement agencies, but some legal observers are concerned it could lead to unlawful stops and searches that violate Fourth Amendment protections.
In the San Fernando Valley, where the program was launched late last year, officers are seeing double-digit drops in burglaries and other property crimes. The program has turned enough in-house skeptics into believers that there are plans to roll it out citywide by next summer.
“We have prevented hundreds and hundreds of people coming home and seeing their homes robbed,” said police Capt. Sean Malinowski.
Crime mapping has long been a tool used to determine where the bad guys lurk. The idea has evolved from colored pins placed on a map to identifying “hot spots” via a computer database based on past crimes and possible patterns.
Over the past decade, many large police departments, including Los Angeles and New York City, have used CompStat, a system that tracks crime figures and enables police to send extra officers to trouble spots.
The new program used by LAPD and police in the Northern California city of Santa Cruz is more timely and precise, proponents said. Built on the same model for predicting aftershocks following an earthquake, the software promises to show officers what might be coming based on simple, constantly calibrated data — location, time and type of crime.
The software generates prediction boxes — as small as 500 square feet — on a patrol map. When officers have spare time, they are told to “go in the box.”
LAPD ought to use it on themselves.
A few years ago a guy in Oklahoma (I think) developed some software that would predict the general location of where serial rapists would strike and was predictive of the area of the town where the rapist lived.
Kinda like this...
Gee.. could that be like profiling..
Tucson is on it’s way to a close 2nd place thanks to Sheriff Dupnik of Pima County and the TPD Chief.
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