HotSketch: Drawing Police Patrol Routes among Spatiotemporal Crime Hotspots

During the course of a day, a police unit is expected to move throughout the city to provide a visible presence and respond quickly to emergencies. Planning this movement at the beginning of the shift can provide a helpful first step in ensuring that officers are present in areas of high crime, but these plans can quickly break down as they are pulled away to 911 calls. Once such an initial plan is deferred, police units need to be able to rapidly and fluidly decide where to go next depending on their immediate location and time. In this paper, we present our research to couple spatiotemporal analysis of historical crime data with sketch-based interaction methods. This research is presented through an initial prototype, HotSketch, which we describe through a set of use cases within the domain of police patrol route planning

Influencing operational policing strategy by predictive service analytics

Everyday there are growing pressures to ensure that services are delivered efficiently, with high levels of quality and with acceptability of regulatory standards. For the Police Force, their service requirement is to the public, with the police officer presence being the most visible product of this criminal justice provision. Using historical data from over 10 years of operation, this research demonstrates the benefits of using data mining methods for knowledge discovery in regards to the crime and incident related elements which impact on the Police Force service provision. In the UK, a Force operates over a designated region (macro-level), which is further subdivided into Beats (micro-level). This research also demonstrates differences between the outputs of micro-level and macro-level analytics, where the lower level analysis enables adaptation of the operational Policing strategy. The evidence base provided through the analysis supports decisions regarding further investigations into the capability of flexible neighbourhood policing practices; alongside wider operations i.e. optimal officer training times

Visual Event Cueing in Linked Spatiotemporal Data

abstract: The media disperses a large amount of information daily pertaining to political events social movements, and societal conflicts. Media pertaining to these topics, no matter the format of publication used, are framed a particular way. Framing is used not for just guiding audiences to desired beliefs, but also to fuel societal change or legitimize/delegitimize social movements. For this reason, tools that can help to clarify when changes in social discourse occur and identify their causes are of great use. This thesis presents a visual analytics framework that allows for the exploration and visualization of changes that occur in social climate with respect to space and time. Focusing on the links between data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) and a streaming RSS news data set, users can be cued into interesting events enabling them to form and explore hypothesis. This visual analytics framework also focuses on improving intervention detection, allowing users to hypothesize about correlations between events and happiness levels, and supports collaborative analysis.Dissertation/ThesisMasters Thesis Computer Science 201

Adoção da estratégia de patrulhamento multiagente para otimização do policiamento preventivo na cidade de Porto Alegre, RS

A presente dissertação tem por objeto o estudo do problema de otimização de roteamento de patrulhas policiais para minimização da ociosidade em hotspots e do tempo de resposta no atendimento de ocorrências, por meio da predição de locais de recorrência de crimes, usando estratégia multiagente de policiamento. As patrulhas operam em jornadas de serviço determinadas, em meio a pé, de bicicleta, motorizado e a cavalo, e movimentos controlados por central de operações, a fim de realizar ações preventivas de patrulhamento e permanência, em pontos de maior densidade de ocorrências, e atendimento de ocorrências. Para a definição dos hotspots são adotadas técnicas de análise preditiva sobre dados históricos de ocorrências por horário, dia da semana e mês do ano, identificando sazonalidades, e estruturas notáveis (bares, escolas, parques etc.), cuja presença no espaço pode interferir na ocorrência de crimes. Quanto ao local de aplicação, a pesquisa tratará da área de 9º Batalhão de Polícia Militar da Brigada Militar, responsável pelo policiamento preventivo no Centro Histórico e bairros adjacentes de Porto Alegre, RS. Serão utilizadas informações dos registros de ocorrências dos anos de 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 e 2021 da Secretaria da Segurança Pública e dados abertos quanto às estruturas notáveis presentes na região. O modelo formulado será implementado, por meio de simulação, utilizando-se dados do emprego operacional da Brigada Militar, no espaço determinado, a fim de aferir a eficácia do modelo na prevenção da criminalidade, a otimização dos recursos disponíveis e o aumento da sensação de segurança das comunidades atingidas.The purpose of this dissertation is to study the problem of optimizing the routing of police patrols to minimize idleness in hotspots and response time in attending to police incidents, by predicting crime recurrence locations, using a multi-agent policing strategy. Patrols operate on specific duty days, on foot, by bike, motorized and on horseback, and movements controlled by an operations center, in order to carry out preventive patrolling and permanence actions, in points with a higher density of occurrences, and to respond to incidents. For the definition of hotspots, predictive analysis techniques are adopted on historical data of occurrences by time, day of the week and month of the year, identifying seasonality, and notable structures (bars, schools, parks, etc.), whose presence in space can interfere with the occurrence of crimes. As for the place of application, the research will deal with the area of the 9th Military Police Battalion of the Brigada Militar, responsible for preventive policing in the Historic Center and adjacent neighborhoods of Porto Alegre, RS. Information from the records of occurrences from the years 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 of the Secretariat of Public Security and open data regarding the notable structures present in the region will be used. The formulated model will be implemented, through simulation, using data from the operational use of the Brigada Militar, in the given space, in order to assess the effectiveness of the model in preventing crime, optimizing available resources and increasing the sense of belonging. safety of affected communities

A Novel Method of Spatiotemporal Dynamic Geo-Visualization of Criminal Data, Applied to Command and Control Centers for Public Safety

[EN] This article shows a novel geo-visualization method of dynamic spatiotemporal data that allows mobility and concentration of criminal activity to be study. The method was developed using, only and significantly, real data of Santiago de Cali (Colombia), collected by the Colombian National Police (PONAL). This method constitutes a tool that allows criminal influx to be analyzed by concentration, zone, time slot and date. In addition to the field experience of police commanders, it allows patterns of criminal activity to be detected, thereby enabling a better distribution and management of police resources allocated to crime deterrence, prevention and control. Additionally, it may be applied to the concepts of safe city and smart city of the PONAL within the architecture of Command and Control System (C2S) of Command and Control Centers for Public Safety. Furthermore, it contributes to a better situational awareness and improves the future projection, agility, efficiency and decision-making processes of police officers, which are all essential for fulfillment of police missions against crime. Finally, this was developed using an open source software, it can be adapted to any other city, be used with real-time data and be implemented, if necessary, with the geographic software of any other C2S.This work was co-funded by the European Commission as part of H2020 call SEC-12-FCT-2016-thrtopic3 under the project VICTORIA (No. 740754). This publication reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. The authors would like to thank Colombian National Police and its Office of Telematics for their support on development of this project.Salcedo-González, ML.; Suarez-Paez, JE.; Esteve Domingo, M.; Gomez, J.; Palau Salvador, CE. (2020). 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Examining The Delivery Methods Of Current Content And Curriculum For Recruit Police Officers

This qualitative-interpretive, phenomenological analysis study describes the lived experiences of police officers, their training programs and their educational relationships with academy instructors and field training officers. The focus was not on content material, but rather the delivery methods of the curriculum, in an attempt to provide training programs that improve transference of knowledge for increased learning and job preparedness. This research study showed that a lack of knowledge and understanding of andragogy for police academy instructors and field training officers is creating a limited learning environment for recruit police officers. Without the knowledge and ability to use better forms of instruction, police academy instructors and field training officers have leaned heavily on PowerPoint-based lectures and using recruit police officers\u27 failures as the primary mode of instruction after the fact. There is, however, a clear desire from the participants of this study to improve their skills as educators, create more opportunities for practice, and further develop mentorship possibilities. This research also makes it clear that the participants desire an opportunity to practice the skills they are learning, that there are important mentorship and leadership opportunities for police academy instructors and field training officers, and that completing a higher education degree program prior to attending the police academy may help foster learning and graduation from the police academy