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5 Tools
5 Tools
CitiStat
Waste Busting Tool
©2000 CBS Worldwide Inc. ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED
Craig T. Nelson meets
Jack Maple. Maple whose life experience in crime fighting (as well
as eccentricities) is the basis of Nelson's character on
The District,
also helped produce the show before his passing. |
citistat
is a bureaucracy-breaking system which was developed in the City of Baltimore. It was the brainchild of
Mayor Peter O'Malley and former NYPD deputy chief, the late Jack
Maple. Maple proved in New York City that crime could be reduced by mapping criminal
patterns of behavior and like unique evidence in order to gain timely intelligence
to help an investigation.
This system, which started for Maple as large sheets of
paper covering the walls in his office to a sophisticated computer
program.
ArcView GIS from ESRI,
is the computer software in what eventually became
"Comstat."
An
example of the use of Comstat was given by Jack
Maple in his book
Crime
Fighter. A prostitute was strangled, a particularly gruesome
murder. She was hog-tied and gagged with a pink towel.
When Comstat was beginning, statistics dug up had found a
previous similar murder. When a third murder of the same sort
occurred, it showed a definite pattern,
as well as displaying an isolated part of the city where the
similar offenses were occurring.
Police then followed this pattern by
canvassing prostitutes in that part of town and eventually got the
tip that helped to catch this serial
killer.
Finding
even the most minute patterns quickly--out of mountains of data--as
well as
being able to visualize and digest the information easily on large
screen monitors is what gives progressive police
forces using the Comstat model an edge.
Minute details that used to take hours or days to sort through
filing cabinets to retrieve are
now entered into a database and connected in a meaningful pattern,
using software and posing "what if" scenarios.
The similar information, such as some unique piece of evidence, could then be displayed
on demand as colored push points on ArcView's map software for use at a
crime solving strategy meeting.
Its use in NYC helped dramatically reduce crime during the Giuliani
administration and make New York America's safest big city.
ComStat has been studied by policing agencies for replication all
over the world. Former Mayor Guiliani is consulting on solving crime
with Mexico City at present.
Comstat becomes Citistat
Comstat turned into the CitiStat model in
Baltimore. It has already saved the taxpayers millions of dollars
there. Citistat's premise is similar to ComStat: regular accountability meetings and graphical data a few
clicks away.
As an example of usage one mappage in Baltimore has
displayed real-time snow plows (using GPS on each truck) that
light up the map as they move around the city, showing lit up on
the computer screen like little Pacmen.
Getting a successful handle on the information crunch in
a part of the Roads Department of activities in Baltimore has resulted in
the ability for the mayor to make a
pledge to pave any pothole reported by citizens within 48 hours.
(Effective pothole repair is the first defense against premature
deterioration of the road, saving on major repair costs later.)
Like Comstat, officials from
all over the world have made the pilgrimage to Baltimore to
study this successful system. A number of cities are also adopting
major portions of Citistat. |
Click on
photo to enlarge
©2000 CBS
Worldwide Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Chief Manion (Nelson) with Deputy Chief Joe Noland
(played by Roger Aaron Brown)
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"For the
department as a whole to become a powerful
crime-fighting organization, it needed the detectives to
operate at all times with two thoughts in mind:
1) Every case is a big case.
2) The initial arrest is not enough."
̶
Jack Maple
from "The Crime Fighter" |
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