WHAT BIG RETAILERS ALREADY KNOW, POLICE LEADERS ARE LEARNING
Companies like Wal-Mart have long understood the importance of being able to anticipate or predict future demand. For example, in anticipation of a large weather event, Wal-Mart may shift its supply chain to send duct tape, bottled water, and Pop-Tarts to the affected area in advance of the storm. Products like duct tape and bottled water make intuitive sense based on what we know of emergency preparations and response. This represents the confirmation in predictive analysis, confirming what we already know or think that we know. The Pop-Tarts, on the other hand, may seem odd. After years of experience with large weather events, Wal-Mart has found increased sales of Pop-Tarts associated with large weather events—strawberry Pop-Tarts, to be accurate.9 While speculation regarding the reasons for this observation may exist—Pop-Tarts can be eaten cold; they are tasty; kids like them—the important outcome in this situation is the ability to anticipate the increased demand and being able to adjust the supply chain accordingly to ensure that an adequate supply of strawberry Pop-Tarts is delivered to the stores in the affected area in advance of the storm when people are making their preparations. This is the discovery part of predictive analysis, which can be tremendously powerful in policing.
Risk-based deployment10 supports the optimization of public safety resources and assets, including personnel. Like the just-in-time supply chain analytics used by Wal-Mart to ensure that there are enough Pop-Tarts on hand in advance of an approaching storm, risk-based deployment has been demonstrated to effectively address the main goals of police deployment: allocate police resources when and where they are needed to prevent or deter crime through a strong police presence and to ensure the ability to respond rapidly by proactively positioning resources when and where they are likely to be needed in order to ensure a timely response. Ultimately, the incorporation of meaningful, operationally relevant analysis into information-based police tactics, strategy, and policy has been shown to increase public safety and change outcomes.
Risk-based deployment was tested on New Year’s Eve 2003 and found to markedly reduce random gunfire complaints associated with the holiday.11 Using a risk-based deployment strategy, police identified locations and times expected to be associated with increased complaints of random gunfire and proactively deployed police resources to those locations to prevent or deter crime or respond more rapidly. The results demonstrated increased public safety associated with the predictive-policing strategy. Random gunfire complaints were decreased by 47 percent, highlighting the deterrent effect associated with information-based deployment, while the number of weapons recovered went up 246 percent, underscoring the rapid response possible with effective prepositioning of resources. In addition, these marked increases in public safety were associated with a reduction in police resources required, resulting in a $15,000 savings in personnel costs alone during the eight-hour initiative. The ability to anticipate the time, the location, and the nature of crime supports the police manager’s ability to proactively allocate resources—preventing or deterring crime through targeted police presence and enabling rapid response by pre-positioning police assets when and where they are likely to be needed.
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While outsourcing may or may not represent a viable solution, the emphasis that predictive policing puts on information-based prevention, targeted response, and resource allocation—sworn or otherwise—supports the ability to do more with less, without compromising public safety. Again, personnel resources represent law enforcement’s single largest budget line item. Approaches that support the efficient allocation and effective use of resources, including personnel, are needed now more than ever before. The ability to allocate police resources more effectively using predictive-policing methods will enable law enforcement agencies to prevent crime and respond more rapidly, changing outcomes in communities.
http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display&article_id=1942&issue_id=112009MUCH more at the link
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