Leveraging Wireless Broadband to Improve Police Land Mobile Radio Programming: Estimating the Resource Impact

Despite rapid growth in criminological studies of police technology, examinations of police land mobile radios are absent in the literature. This is troubling given the central role mobile radios serve in police operations and their significant management costs. The present study seeks to fill this gap by introducing the functionality of wireless broadband radio programming. Current practice requires a police officer to physically drive to a radio programming location to manage their mobile radio. Wireless programming remedies this burdensome reality, thereby saving officer time and cost. Geospatial analyses are used to estimate distance saved associated with wireless programming. We then conduct a number of calculations to determine time and cost savings related to the observed differences between existing and wireless radio programming within the context of the North Carolina State Highway Patrol. Results suggest wireless radio programming can save significant personnel and financial resources. Implications are discussed

Measuring the effect heterogeneity of police enforcement actions across spatial contexts

Purpose: This study tests whether the effect of police actions is influenced by similar crime generators and attractors (CGAs) that influence crime. Said differently, in recognition that the presence of CGAs presents higher risk of crime at certain places, we test whether CGAs similarly create a situation where specific police enforcement actions are more effective at certain types of places than others. Methods: Using longitudinal logistic regression models incorporating panel data, we measure the effect of various police enforcement actions on gun violence in Newark, NJ. Risk Terrain Modeling (RTM) was further used to test whether the effect of the enforcement activities vary across spatial contexts. Results: When considered on their own, police enforcement actions were associated with increased likelihood of gun violence. However, certain types of enforcement actions conducted where CGAs highly co-locate, as identified through RTM, were associated with decreased likelihood of gun violence. Conclusions: Findings suggest that where officers conduct enforcement activities may be as important as what precise enforcement activities they enact. This has implications for the place-based policing tactics. Understanding the spatial context of high-crime areas can help police design strategies in a manner that maximizes their crime prevention utility

The History, Policy Implications, and Knowledge Gaps of the CCTV Literature: Insights for the Development of Body-Worn Video Camera Research

Closed-circuit television (CCTV) and body-worn video cameras (BWVCs) have rapidly spread throughout policing. Such widespread deployment has heightened the importance of identifying best practices for both of these technologies. The research community has worked toward the identification of such best practices, with bodies of knowledge emerging for both CCTV and BWVCs over recent decades. Given its earlier emergence, research on CCTV is more developed. Nonetheless, the BWVC literature is quickly becoming robust, with BWVC research developing at a much more rapid pace than research on most other police technologies. This essay reviews the CCTV and BWVC literatures across four main areas of inquiry: (1) program effect and common outcome measures, (2) contextual factors influencing program effect, (3) intervention costs, and (4) implementation issues. Specific attention is paid to knowledge gaps within the CCTV literature and how BWVC research can avoid (or, in certain cases, already has avoided) similar knowledge gaps

The Effect of Various Police Enforcement Actions on Violent Crime: Evidence From a Saturation Foot-Patrol Intervention

The current study tests the crime prevention effect of different police actions conducted during a foot-patrol saturation initiative in Newark, New Jersey. Police actions were categorized into two typologies: enforcement actions (i.e., arrests, quality of life summonses and field interrogations) and guardian actions (i.e., business checks, citizen contacts, bus checks, and taxi inspections). Logistic regression models tested the effect of enforcement and guardian actions on crime during daily (i.e., 24-hr) periods as well as the intervention’s operational (6:00 p.m.-2:00 a.m.) and nonoperational (2:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.) periods. Analyses were conducted twice, once for the Operation Impact target area and once for a surrounding catchment zone (to measure spatial displacement). Findings suggest that guardian actions had a greater crime prevention effect than enforcement actions on crime occurrence. Policy implications of the findings are discussed

Spatiotemporal Convergence of Crime and Vehicle Crash Hotspots: Additional Consideration for Policing Places

Policing strategies that seek to simultaneously combat crime and vehicle crashes operate under the assumption that these two problems have a corollary relationship—an assumption that has received scant empirical attention and is the focus of the present study. Geocoded vehicle crash, violent crime, and property crime totals across were aggregated to Indianapolis census blocks over a 36-month period (2011-2013). Time series negative binomial regression and local indicators of spatial autocorrelation analyses were conducted. Results indicate that both violent and property crime are significantly related to vehicle crash counts, both overall and during the temporal confines of patrol tours. Relationship strength was modest. Spatiotemporal analysis of crime and crash data can identify places for police intervention and improved scholarly evaluation

Predicting Initiator and Near Repeat Events in Spatiotemporal Crime Patterns: An Analysis of Residential Burglary and Motor Vehicle Theft

Near repeat analysis has been increasingly used to measure the spatiotemporal clustering of crime in contemporary criminology. Despite its predictive capacity, the typically short time frame of near repeat crime patterns can negatively affect the crime prevention utility of near repeat analysis. Thus, recent research has argued for a greater understanding of the types of places that are most likely to generate near repeat crime patterns. The current study contributes to the literature through a spatiotemporal analysis of residential burglary and motor vehicle theft in Indianapolis, IN. Near Repeat analyses were followed by multinomial logistic regression models to identify covariates related to the occurrence of initiator (the first event in a near repeat chain) and near repeat (the subsequent event in a near repeat chain) events. The overall findings provide additional support for the argument that neighborhood context can influence the formation and context of spatiotemporal crime patterns

Why getting tough on crime in hot spots may not be the answer

What is the best way for law enforcement to deal with crime 'hot spots'? In recent years, police forces have tended to favor tougher enforcement strategies which proactively focus on the most problematic places. In new research which studies policing strategies in Newark, New Jersey, Eric L. Piza finds that what he calls 'guardian actions' such as citizen contacts, business, taxi and bus checks were much more effective at reducing the likelihood of violent crime compared to enforcement actions like arrests and interrogations

The crime prevention effect of CCTV in public places: a propensity score analysis

This study measures the effect of CCTV in Newark, NJ across three separate crime categories: auto theft, theft from auto, and violent crime. CCTV viewsheds, denoting camera line-of-sight, were units of analysis. Viewsheds for treatment units were created by digitizing live CCTV footage within a geographic information system (GIS). Control viewsheds were created with GIS tools and aerial imagery from Google maps. Treatment cases were matched with control cases via propensity score matching (PSM) to ensure statistical equivalency between groups. Effect was measured via odds ratios and average treatment on the treated statistics. Findings offer modest support for CCTV as a deterrent against auto theft while demonstrating no effect on the other crime types. These results suggest that CCTV appears to be a viable option for jurisdictions wishing to target auto theft. Agencies suffering from other street-level crime problems may not benefit from CCTV and may need to deploy CCTV alongside other evidence-based strategies, rather than as a stand-alone tactic, in order to achieve crime control benefits

Joint Utility of Event- Dependent and Environmental Crime Analysis Techniques for Violent Crime Forecasting

Violent crime incidents occurring in Irvington, New Jersey, in 2007 and 2008 are used to assess the joint analytical capabilities of point pattern analysis, hotspot mapping, near-repeat analysis, and risk terrain modeling. One approach to crime analysis suggests that the best way to predict future crime occurrence is to use past behavior, such as actual incidents or collections of incidents, as indicators of future behavior. An alternative approach is to consider the environment in which crimes occur and identify features of the landscape that would be conducive to crime. Thanks to advances in geographic information system technology and federally funded (free) software applications such as CrimeStat III or the Near Repeat Calculator, these methods have recently been made more accessible to “average” users. This study explores the information products that each method offers for the purposes of place-based violent crime forecasting and resource allocation. Findings help to answer questions about where, when, and why violent crimes occur in a jurisdiction. Ways in which event-dependent and environmental crime analysis techniques can be utilized as complementary instruments in a crime analyst’s tool kit are discussed in detail

Place-based correlates of Motor Vehicle Theft and Recovery: Measuring spatial influence across neighbourhood context

Social scientists have long shown great interest in the spatial correlates of crime patterns. A subset of the literature has focused on how micro-level spatial factors influence the formation of crime hot spots. At the same time, tangential research has highlighted how neighbourhood disadvantage influences crime occurrence. The current study focuses on the intersection of these perspectives through a spatial analysis of Motor Vehicle Theft (MVT) and Motor Vehicle Recovery (MVR) in Colorado Springs, CO. We begin by conducting a Risk Terrain Modelling analysis to identify spatial risk factors significantly related to MVT and MVR occurrence. We then test whether the spatial influences of the criminogenic risk factors differ across traditional measures of neighbourhood disadvantage. Findings suggest that while a citywide effect is evident for multiple risk factors, their spatial influence on crime significantly varies across neighbourhood contexts