NYPD changes the crime control equation by transforming the way it uses information

Not satisfied with a major reduction in crime over the last 15 years, the NYPD has once again set the bar high, implemented a Business Intelligence solution from IBM...

As a general rule, crimes occur in a particular place at a particular time.

Though the effects of a crime may linger, the crime itself does not. The same is not true from the angle of law enforcement.

From the moment a crime is detected and reported, and throughout its investigation, the law enforcement system generates broad and diverse streams of information related to that crime.

While these streams are bound by a common thread – the crime – each concerns a different perspective of it –from the 911 call, to the dispatch of officers, to the various reports filled out by police at different stages of the investigation.

Over the years, major police departments have become extremely adept at capturing this information, doing so almost as fast as it is generated. The problem, however, is where the information goes after it’s ingested.

Hindered by silos
Big-city police departments are for the most part highly compartmentalised, and their functions highly specialised.

Thus, when crime information systems were first built as long as 30 years ago, they were designed to meet the needs of a specialised, vertically oriented process framework.

At the time, little or no thought was given to more advanced forms of reporting or analysis, or to the sharing of information across different departmental functions. The result was an environment made up of siloed systems that were very efficient at capturing data but were challenged in sharing it.

This situation had a direct impact on the detectives and officers investigating crimes, whose job it is to pull together all the strands of information and create a coherent picture to guide their efforts.

With case information residing in pockets throughout large departments, officers spend much of their time on the phone or on their feet trying to track it down, leaving them less time to do what they were trained to do – process the information to solve crimes.

In addition to streamlining the nuts and bolts of casework, large police departments like the NYPD are increasingly looking to the 'bigger picture' to guide their policies, practices and resource decisions.

The new wave among major metro police departments is to use information to become more proactive in the fight against crime. This means recognising patterns within crime statistics and using this recognition to modify policing tactics so that resources are directed where they’re needed most.

The NYPD’s CompStat program is a strong case in point. Ask any New Yorker about quality of life and most will tell you it improved markedly during the administration of Rudolph Giuliani, a time of dramatically falling crime rates.

Driving this reduction was an increased focus on more granular policing, under which so-called quality-of-life crimes (such as public drinking, begging and disorderly conduct) are aggressively enforced, and enforcement accountability established at the neighbourhood level.

CompStat, a weekly process under which crime data is gathered, analysed and shared, has proven an effective auditing tool that holds Commanding Officers accountable for any crime spikes in their precincts.

It did not however provide the powerful data mining capability that is now being employed by the NYPD to identify patterns and to find and capture individual criminals.

Putting the pieces together
The NYPD knows that it’s exceptionally good at both the bottom-up casework to solve crimes and the innovative, metrics-based policies that prevent them, but never enough to be satisfied.

From both perspectives the 'enemy' is the time required to get a holistic view of crime information and then act on it.

Time keeps perpetrators on the streets longer, hinders efforts to spot developing trends and increases the risks to officers.

The NYPD was determined to reduce this time by fundamentally transforming the way crime information is managed and exploited.

The department recognised that to more effectively solve and prevent crimes, it needed to provide information to key users – from precinct detectives to crime analysts to department leadership – more holistically, thus strengthening their ability to synthesize various bits of information into actionable intelligence.

A key lesson of 9/11, that having pieces of the puzzle, unassembled, isn’t enough, provided a key foundation of this understanding.

To frame and execute its transformation strategy, the NYPD engaged IBM Business Consulting Services.

IBM’s first move was to conduct a thorough user study designed to identify the information elements needed at every level of the department and from it establish the solution’s high-level business requirements.

From them, the team produced a conceptual design of the solution as well as a new underlying data model to facilitate the integration of information from the department’s many systems. The solution that came out of this process, known as the Crime Information Warehouse (CIW), provides a single, easy-to-use point of access to data on virtually all crimes committed in NY’s five boroughs.

In the backend, the solution pulls data from various standalone systems, transforms it to the new data model format and integrates it on the CIW.

The solution’s core technology, IBM DB2 Universal Database Data Warehouse Edition, runs on an IBM System p5 575. The CIW is backed up in real time on an IBM TotalStorage DSS800 storage server running IBM Tivoli Storage Manager.

Powerful processes with real-time speed
Having replaced its siloed systems with a common crime data repository, the NYPD is now able to do far more with the information, systems and processes that it already had in place.

Indeed, the solution’s architecture reflects the department’s key criterion that it was flexible enough to support a wide range of processes and users – both current and future. In that goal it has excelled.

At the tactical control level, for instance, the CIW solution provides the information foundation for the NYPD’s state-of-the-art Real Time Crime Center.

Using business intelligence software from IBM Business Partner Cognos along with GIS mapping and visualisation tools, officers and analysts in the center can detect crime patterns as they are forming, enabling precinct commanders to take proactive measures to keep ahead of these trends – and head off spikes in criminal activity.

The department’s CompStat program, already a milestone in innovative policing tactics, was also transformed into a more effective crime fighting tool by replacing its traditionally manual method of data tabulation with the CIW’s real-time data feed. Reports that could take weeks or months are now available instantly.

Empowering officers
But it’s not all about the big picture. This same ability to see deep and wide also enables dispatchers to flag dangerous situations for responding officers, thus contributing to increased officer safety.

The CIW also promises to transform the tasks of investigators – perhaps the most critical link in the law enforcement chain – by unleashing their most valuable quality: their judgement.

Investigators that once spent a huge slice of their time chasing down information can now access all of it through a single, portal-based interface (based on IBM WebSphere Portal) or by working with the Real Time Crime Center.

Freed from low-value data gathering, officers can now turn to the higher value, more analytical activities they are trained to do, such as formulating and testing hypotheses.

The ability of the CIW to support robust, multidimensional queries and drill-downs on crime databases enables them to refine and test their hunches far more quickly than was even imaginable a few years ago. The prime driver of the initiative, Chief Architect and CIO James Onalfo, sees the new solution as an example of the “culture of innovation” within the NYPD that has made New York the nation’s safest large city five years running.

“The NYPD’s innovative policing strategies depend on our ability to gather, share and act on information,” says Onalfo. “IBM–its people, partners and technology–have helped us redefine how information can be used to fight crime.”

For more information
www-07.ibm.com/businesscenter/au/istart/index.html

Shinead Feehan
IBM Communications 
Phone: +61 2 94635506
Email: shineadf@au1.ibm.com

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