LA Times notices geocoding problem for LA's crime Mapping

On Monday it was a grand theft auto and two robberies, on Tuesday two more robberies and four aggravated assaults. By Friday the toll had risen to 39 major crimes.

And, according to the Los Angeles Police Department's website, that week late last month was pretty typical of the mayhem around the corner from City Hall.

Since the inception of the LAPD's online crime map three years ago, the 200 block of West 1st Street has consistently shown up as the most likely place in Los Angeles to be victimized by crime.

.... More here-

Using ESRI’s Districting Tool in Policing

From the Geography and Public Safety Bulletin



Environmental Systems Research Institute’s
(ESRI) districting tool1 is a free extension
for ESRI’s ArcGIS Desktop that allows analysts
to create new police districts in a city or region.
The redistricting tool initially was designed to
help governments draw congressional district
lines or create school districts, but has been
co-opted to help police departments outline
new beats. It helps them draw boundaries
and review the outcomes (e.g., predict new
workloads and crime rates) for the new districts.
The tool provides summary statistics for every
boundary selection. It does not automatically
create districts from preexisting data; rather, it
can be used to aid police communication and
make geographic information systems (GIS) a
central part of the redistricting process.
Preparing the Data
The ESRI districting tool requires an agency
to have GIS data entered as a polygon feature
class2 with attribute data. These polygons must
be smaller than the intended districts. Analysts
should use polygons that coincide with naturally
occurring boundaries and main thoroughfares.
Police departments must divide a city or region
into discrete boundaries to balance service and
distribute responsibilities into organizational
branches. This task requires departments to join
years of incident data (the point feature class)
to the chosen polygon feature class. This helps
ensure that a proportional number of incidents
is allotted to each geographic region.
The process of joining incident data to
polygons in ArcGIS to achieve a count of
incidents in each region is the same process that
an analyst would use to create a choropleth3
map that depicts different incident counts. To
join incident data to a polygon feature class, an
analyst should do the following:
1. Right-click the polygon layer...
(More Here)

UMD PhD Research: Broken Windows Policing: A Randomized Experimental Evaluation of its Impacts on Disorder, Fear and Crime in Three Cities

The RPD is providing Crime data and committing to this GIS-centric Criminology study with the University of Maryland. This is Josh Hinkle's PhD project.



David Weisburd, Josh Hinkle, Christine Famega, and Justin Ready
Over the last two decades, "Broken Windows Policing" has become a central component of police strategies to combat crime and disorder. But surprisingly, Broken Windows Policing itself has not been subject to sustained empirical examination. In this project, we address this knowledge gap by conducting a randomized, experimental evaluation of Broken Windows Policing in three cities in the San Bernardino Valley area of California. Questions addressed in this study will be whether broken windows policing reduced fear, made residents feel safer, and increased collective community efficacy. This project is being funded by the National Institute of Justice and is conducted in conjunction with researchers at the University of Maryland and California State University, San Bernardino.

Over the last two decades, "Broken Windows Policing" has become a central component of
police strategies to combat crime and disorder. But surprisingly, Broken Windows Policing itself
has not been subject to sustained empirical examination. We propose to develop a block
randomized experimental evaluation of Broken Windows Policing in three cities in the San
Bernardino Valley area of California. Specifically, we would test the impact of a Broken
Windows Policing approach upon approximately 180 street segments (divided equally into
treatment and control locations) that evidence relatively high levels of disorder at the outset of
the study. Our study would examine the impacts of Broken Windows Policing on the actual
and perceived level of minor offenses and disorder at targeted locations; its effects on fear of
crime and perceptions of police legitimacy in the areas that are targeted; and possible impacts on
crime during the study period. The experimental treatment would be delivered over a 6-month
period by special units formed within each of the three police departments. At the outset of the
study, site visits will be made by the Broken Windows Policing Unit of each department to the
"treatment" segments in their jurisdiction to assess the levels and types of disorder problems
present. After this assessment, the unit will meet and develop treatments to deliver to each
segment. The treatments available will include issuance of citations and arrests for disorderly
behaviors and minor crimes; repairs to sidewalks, streetlights and other state maintained items in the treatment segments; issuance of citations for code violations in an effort to induce repairs and clean ups; and general clean-up efforts in the treatment street segments. Our study would rely on two main types of data collection: official data on disorder and crime drawn from the police, and measures of fear of crime, perceptions of disorder and crime, and related features of citizen attitudes toward police legitimacy and community drawn from a panel survey of residents in the study area. Official data on disorder and crime would be provided by the police departments participating in the study. The panel survey will be conducted via telephone at two waves by selecting 10 households from each street segment in the study prior to the intervention, and then re-interviewing the same respondents after the intervention period.

Thanks Josh!

GIS Project Proposal #2 MSGIS

Why do this project?
The City of Redlands is an average-sized city that is rapidly becoming a representative example of ESRI’s market base. For this reason, Redlands stands to be the model city for the adoption of GIS technology. GIS has been a part of the police department’s regular business process since the mid 90’s, and there are two crime analysts and a database technician that will be available to facilitate your success with this project.

The City of Redlands holds an enterprise GIS license and is also a user of the Omega Group’s CrimeView, one of ESRI’s most active business partners. There is an explicit need for this project, and there is a culture of acceptance and data sharing with the Redlands Police Department and the City of Redlands. Here is your chance to work with an emerging field of GIS.

There are two very attractive features to partnering with us:
1. We are close enough to meet with frequently.
2. Your client has been through the U of Redlands MSGIS program, and understands what
the MIP process entails. Scope creep will be minimized and we’ll tailor your project to suit
your needs and interests.

20 Years of Crime
Crime analysis units work with pieces of data at a time.
Windows of time. Some procedures group incidents by the
most recent set of a week; some procedures compare one
month to the previous month; some compare 3 recent
months to the previous 3 months. This is a different
approach.

The Redlands Police Department has 20 years of geocoded crime
data, and there have been some changes over the
years. There are 2 sets of Census data available to correlate
values to (1990 and 2000). There may also be a possible
preliminary 2010 Census data set available.
Population has changed. Landuse has changed.
The infinite set of human variables are constantly changing what
is the effect?

Product
There is flexibility for what the data-product will entail.
The MIP and presentation will be the final deliverable, and
ideally we would like to see animations that depict the
changes that have occured over time. We can assist in the
development of these animations.
Support for your MIP will include regular access to our
network and our staff. For this reason, a light background
check will be necessary.

GIS Project Proposal #1 MSGIS

Why do this project?
The City of Redlands is an average-sized city that is rapidly becoming a representative example of ESRI’s market base. For this reason, Redlands stands to be the model city for
the adoption of GIS technology. GIS has been a part of the police department’s regular business process since the mid 90’s, and there are two crime analysts and a database
technician that will be available to facilitate your success with this project.

The City of Redlands holds an enterprise GIS license and is also a user of the Omega Group’s CrimeView, one of ESRI’s most active business partners. There is an explicit need
for this project, and there is a culture of acceptance and data sharing with the Redlands Police Department and the City of Redlands. Here is your chance to work with an
emerging field of GIS.


There are two very attractive features to partnering with us:
1. We are close enough to meet with frequently.
2. Your client has been through the U of Redlands MSGIS program, and understands what
the MIP process entails. Scope creep will be minimized and we’ll tailor your project to suit
your needs and interests.

What is this project about?

Time-based correlative analysis
There are currently 16 cars being tracked by in-car GPS
units in the RPD. The GPS unit is embedded in the wireless
modem and updates the live signal to the server. This produces
a database that is transfered from the UNIX environment
into a SQL table. We regualrly geoprocess this into a
feature class. The table identifies which incidents are being
worked on, or if the officer is on proactive patrol time.
What we need is a time-based correlative analysis to answer
the question: are the officers patrolling the right places at
the right times? Because this is a new process for police
departments and crime analysis units, this methodology
stands to be very repeatable and will be shared with the
broader crime analysis community. We have developed
some concepts, but there will be an opportunity to brainstorm
use case scenarios and produce an original solution to
a new problem.

Product
There is flexibility for what the data-product will entail, but
the ideal situation will include a series of geoprocessing
tasks and a series of ArcGIS Server mapservices to be
shown through intranet-based applications and desktop
clients.
Support for your MIP will include regular access to our
network and our staff. For this reason, a light background
check will be necessary.

Who should I contact about this project?

Philip Mielke
Interim GIS Administrator
City of Redlands
pmielke@cityofredlands.org
909-335-4784
redlandsgis.blogspot.com
gis.cityofredlands.org

Flash for Animated Crime Maps

This is a earlier example (much earlier- 2002) of using animation to tell a story within a mapping environment. This is a gallery of animated maps showing burglary, assaults, all incidents, and vehicle thefts year-by-year. Also included is an example of an hour-by-hour analysis of traffic collisions.

Methodology
This is completed by exporting individual layers into Macromedia (Now Adobe) Flash. Flash is a perfect medium for this because it is able to handle raster and vectors with different levels of compression. In these (old...) examples, the densities(rasters) are vectorized, reducing the size substantially. What would be a 30-100MB avi file exported from ArcScene is an 80kb swf file.
I teach a class about this, and have since (2005) developed a way to incorporate Modelbuilder to create and symbolize the densities automatically.

Redlands GIS News, Issue 1

Welcome to the first installment of the Redlands GIS News. In these communiqués the City will not only outline how GIS technology is currently being utilized within the City, but also provide status on current implementations and identification of future plans for extending GIS throughout the enterprise.

The focus of this initial edition will be to provide a brief overview of the GIS products currently available within the City and to summarize the current GIS projects staff is working on.

EXISTING GIS CAPABILITY

City Website
The City currently utilizes ArcIMS to provide many products through the City GIS website which is at http://gis.cityofredlands.org. The departments supported and some of the data provided include the following:

Municipal Utilities
Capital Improvement projects, Water System, Storm Network, Sidewalk Survey, Traffic Sign and Signal inventory
Police
Incidents, Arrestees, Collisions, Citations.
Redevelopment
Businesses, RDA & CDBG boundaries
Fire / EOC
Fire Demand Zones, High Fire Hazard Areas, HAZMAT locations, Response zones
Quality of Life
City owned trees, groves, street network, parks, trails, solid waste areas
Community Development
Zoning, General Plan, FEMA Flood Plain

Other support
GIS also provides data to the City’s new One Stop Permit Center, supports other ongoing services such as map generation, and supports applications such as CrimeView, GeoNotify, Veritracks, and provides data to the Police Department’s Crime Analysis Unit.
CURRENT MAJOR PROJECTS

CityWorks (Azteca) – This is a new project at the City to provide a common map-based Work Order solution to the enterprise. It is anticipated to be rolled out first to the Quality of Life and Municipal Utilities and Engineering departments.

CAD system upgrade (Spillman) – The Police Department will be utilizing a new ArcGIS Server addressing system to support dispatch. This will facilitate new created and mapped addresses to immediately show up in the PD’s addressing system.

WebEOC (ESi) – This system provides an electronic method for data entry and dissemination within the City’s EOC to better communicate during an incident. These electronic boards will replace the current use of white boards currently around the EOC.


IN SUMMARY

We look forward to communicating on our progress utilizing GIS technology within the City of Redlands on a regular basis in the future. We hope that this provides a window into how the City of Redlands plans to use technology to better serve not only the city staff, but the residents and visitors to Redlands. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.


David Hexem, Chief Information Officer
dhexem@cityofredlands.org
Philip Mielke, Interim GIS Administrator
pmielke@cityofredlands.org

City of Redlands Information Technology
35 Cajon
Redlands, CA 92373