Police Accountability and the Efficacy of Crime Analysis
Begins with an Open Input Process

by Andrew Garsten
andrew.garsten@sbcglobal.net

April 3, 2003

As Chief Bratton continues to develop the high tech COMPSTAT system to track crime statistics and deploy resources in a more real-time manner, a fatal and unglamorous flaw of the system may remain unnoticed and unimproved. This is the "input," or reporting side of the system for both crimes and tips.

While 911 emergencies (ultimately) get through and into the crime reporting system, post-incident/non-emergency reports or tips are dependent on reporting into the local station, and in particular to the "Desk." If my experiences are any indication, calls to the "desk" are often unanswered, or the number is busy beyond reason. Tipsters may fear speaking to a person because they want to be anonymous, thus never calling with important information regarding clues or evidence.

The effect of this is that people give up. And when they give up, the statistical impact of that crime is zero. Tips never come in.

Accountability begins by allowing ordinary people to always be able to get through and make a report. No report, no accountability.

The following are two suggestions where the reporting bottleneck can be opened up effectively by avoiding the most likely cause - the human operator. If solutions can be implemented to divert 20-30% of the incoming reports, the person working the "Desk" should be better able to answer ALL the calls that remain.

Automated Crime Reporting Method 1: Voice Menu and Recording

By using voice prompts and either state-of-the-art voice recognition or even good old fashion touch tone key responses, a citizen should be able to place a call and file a report, without speaking with a human operator. Traceability can be achieved through Caller ID. Anonymity can be achieved at caller's request by stripping Caller ID from the record.

Automated Crime Reporting Method 2: Web Base Reporting

This might be the easiest of all. Go to a web page for your local station, or even one for LAPD city-wide, and complete a written report. If we can get building permits through the web, we should be able to file a crime report. Traceability can be optional, with the user adding only the contact information they wish.

Benefits

	If the reports have certain fixed menu responses, like "1 for auto theft," "2 for personal property theft," "3 for vandalism," and "4 for graffiti", some reports will have automated classification.
		Automatically Classified Reports should be able to go immediately into the COMPSTAT system,
		Automatically Classified Reports should be able to automatically be queued into the right detective's inbox,
		Response times could be increased.
	Voice and Web Records are digital, with no possibility of transposition errors or generational degradation from copying.
	Full anonymity is possible, allowing these systems to doubles as a full time crime tip systems.

Quickly Implement A Try-Before-You-Buy Program

Both these ideas should be quickly tried as one-off experiments at different stations. These are not expensive systems to deploy. Limited experimentation with a real solution is a better option than wasting the taxpayer's money with nine months of studies and debate that will no more likely assure success. None of these ideas could possibly make things worse, and learning from real experience will give LAPD the knowledge to effectively design a department wide system for bid that addresses real life issues effectively.

Conclusion

Implementation of Automated Crime Reporting And Tipping Systems (ACRATS) will remove some of the bottlenecks currently associated with non-911 reporting methods, thus encouraging a higher percentage of crimes to be reported. The more crimes reported the more realistic COMPSTAT data becomes. The more realistic the COMPSTAT data is, the more effective LAPD is in reversing crime trends through precise resource deployment.

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Andrew Garsten

andrew.garsten@sbcglobal.net

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Other works by Andrew Garsten, a frequent contributor to LA Community Policing who resides in Echo Park, can be found through the following LACP link:

Andrew Garsten
Echoing about community involvement