Predict Technology – Preventing Crime Before it Happens

Using data analysis technology can now tell police officers how to prevent a crime before it happens. With the help of the Predictive Policing company, called PredPol (a team of mathematicians and social scientists) have now expanded its technology to prevent against gun violence.

How does this work? The PredPol team combines existing crime data with what PredPol calls a sophisticated algorithm to target where crime is likely to happen.

“Most people might think that homicide would be the best precursor for future homicides,” said Joyce Shimizu, PredPol’s chief operation manager. What is cool is that the algorithm identify precursors such as battery, gun violation as well as assault.”

Santa Cruz Police Dept one of the many law enforcement agency stated, “that just after six months of implementing this program, burglaries and auto theft dropped anywhere from 12 to 25% compared to the previous year.”

However, there are skeptics such as Analicia Cube, with the volunteer based “Take Back Santa Cruz,” is not convinced yet.

“I think our police department should look at it from an unbiased perspective,” said Cube. “They should be quantifying it–checking it out and making sure it works before they are touting it as a success.”

Gun violence prediction is something Santa Cruz Police hasn’t tried yet. But research done by PredPol shows this method outperforms current practices by 66%.

LAPD has applied the technology to one of its division and shows 13% crime down during the 4 months it was rolled out compared to an increase 0.4% in the rest of the city where the rollout had not happened.

Here’s closer look into PredPol, Predictive Policing is:

[jcolumns inbordercss=”1px dotted gray”] IS NOT
– Mapping of past crimes
– Profiling of individuals
– a replacement for veterans’ intuition and experience
– new hardware or additional hiring [jcol/] IS
– a tool to increase your odds of stopping crime
– a technology for any jurisdiction of any size
– a way to bring newer police up to speed more quickly
– information available immediately where and when it is needed [/jcolumns]

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Precise::

• The technology predicts where crimes are likely to occur in place-based prediction boxes as small as 500 feet by 500 feet. Officers are briefed at roll call on the highest-probability “hot spots” for that day and devote extra attention to those areas—as much as fifteen minutes every two hours.
  In contrast to technology that analyzes and maps past crime for some hints at the future—a kind of “rear view mirror” policing—PredPol tells law enforcement what is coming.
• Traditional mapping tools are calibrated less frequently, rely on humans to recognize patterns, and allocate resources based on past crimes rather than predicted future offenses.
• Traditional mapping tools are calibrated less frequently, rely on humans to recognize patterns, and allocate resources based on past crimes rather than predicted future offenses.

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Intuitive::

• For officers, PredPol’s information is accessible from any tech device or on paper.
• For analysts, PredPol’s tool can be set up within days and generates its actionable predictions in one click of your mouse.
• For managers, there is no new hardware, no additional technical staff, and no budget-busting installation fees. Training is simple, short, and intuitive. A very competitive annual subscription cost keeps the program running.

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Secure & Reliable::

• The tool is run on a secure, cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform.
• Personal information about victims, offenders, or law enforcement is NOT collected, ever.
• All our data processing facilities employ key card protocols, biometric scanning, and round-the-clock interior and exterior surveillance.

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Policing Meets Big Data
PredPol mission is simple: place officers at the right time and location to give them the best chance of preventing crime. To accomplish this, PredPol processes crime data in order to:

1. assign probabilities of future crime events to regions of space and time
2. present estimated crime risk in a useable framework to law enforcement decision makers
3. lead to more efficient & more accurate resource deployment by local law enforcement agencies

 
Bottom line is that the program takes in all of the crime data specifics to the geo location. This gets categorized, filtered and correlates any tell tale footprints that leads to a specific crime based on the query.
 

Source:Jake Reiner – http://www.kionrightnow.com/story/22936548/predictive-policing-technology-turns-to-gun-violence
PredPol.com

Transcribed by Jon Hines