By watching data reports, Shawnee is also helping to take a bite out of crime
The Shawnee Police Department has been taking a common-sense approach to putting dents in crime and traffic crashes, and a recent study shows the method is working.
It’s called Data-Driven Approaches to Crime and Traffic Safety, or DDACTS. The department started using the approach in July 2010 after seeing an increase in violent crime between 2007 and 2009. The department also cut its officer staff by 4.5 percent during that time because of economic conditions.
The idea behind DDACTS is simple: Compile and analyze data about where and when crimes against persons and traffic crashes occur most, and then increase police officers’ presence in those areas at those times.
The approach doesn’t cost the department any extra money because it only requires reallocation of existing officer staff and requires no overtime work, said Greg Collins, the department’s research and analysis manager.
“Existing personnel use discretionary time to focus on targeted areas,” Collins said. “It’s intended to have a deterrent effect based on location.”
The approach has resulted in such a deterrent effect in Shawnee on and near 75th Street between Switzer on the east and Quivira on the west, according to a recent study.
In October 2011, the city received a U.S. Department of Justice grant of about $189,000 to pay for a study of the effectiveness of DDACTS from July 2010 to July 2013. The city worked with Kevin Bryant, an associate professor and chairman of sociology and criminology at Benedictine College, to conduct the research.
The data studied included crime and traffic crash statistics from a control zone in the city, where random enforcement practices remained in place for statistical comparison.
Some of the study’s highlights:
▪ Robberies in the three years decreased 70.4 percent in targeted areas of Shawnee, while they dropped 41.2 percent in the control area.
▪ Vehicle theft fell 40.3 percent in targeted areas and 8.5 percent in the control area.
▪ Commercial burglary dropped 34.8 percent in targeted areas and 33.3 percent in the control area.
▪ Vehicle burglary fell 32.9 percent in targeted areas but rose 0.9 percent in the control area.
▪ Residential burglary fell 27.1 percent in targeted areas and 16.7 percent in the control area.
▪ Collisions fell 22.6 percent in targeted areas and 15.8 percent in the control area.
▪ Total targeted crime fell 25.9 percent in targeted areas and 13.4 percent in the control area.
“This is now the norm for the Shawnee Police Department,” Collins said. “Now, (the task is) essentially monitoring the activity and looking for tweaks. We can be held accountable for what we’re doing.”
Officers give warnings to traffic violators and try to educate them about the department’s new approach as part of the effort, Collins said.
“It’s not necessarily to give citations,” he said. “The point of doing this is to be very visible, deter crime and crashes and educate folks — not to generate revenue. Why are we doing this? Is it to inconvenience or trap people, or is it to reduce harm?”
Police Chief Larry Larimore said that with DDACTS, in a given hour of a police officer’s time, 30 minutes might be dedicated to calls for service, roughly 10 minutes to administrative duties like writing reports and the remainder to the DDACTS method. In the remaining time of a given hour, officers go to the geographic areas where the gathered DDACTS data have indicated targeting is needed, and then they watch for infractions in those geographic areas
DDACTS was first used in a 2008 pilot program in several communities through a partnership among the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Bureau of Justice Assistance and the National Institute of Justice, according to a July 2013 report by the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training.
Other Kansas City-area police departments use DDACTS or similar methods of law enforcement. The Prairie Village Police Department has been using DDACTS for about three years, Capt. Wes Lovett said.
“We’ve seen decrease in crime, as well,” Lovett said. “Oftentimes we’ll have a burglary problem and put more officers there, and it decreases. It’s pretty common sense, but like a lot of things, if you set up a program, you’re more likely to get it done.”
The Lenexa Police Department calls its method intelligence-based policing and has been using it for at least a decade, Capt. Karl Burris said.
“It’s based on current trends, data and statistics, and we try to see where to put our police officers,” Burris said.
Quantifying the method’s effectiveness is hard because of so many variables, he said.
“We still have a traditional approach where we divide the city up,” Burris said. “We give the officers information on a weekly basis based on the area of the city and time of day so they can anticipate problems.”
The Leawood Police Department spends a couple hundred dollars a year to license Google Maps and use it to analyze crime and traffic crash data, Officer Mike Pelger said. The department, and others in the Kansas City area, also use a data-sharing service offered by Overland Park. It enables agencies to see crime statistics in nearby municipalities.
“A shared database is extremely useful,” Pelger said. “You now have the ability to expand your search of crime incidents in adjacent municipalities. It’s one more opportunity to allow your agency to potentially prevent crimes.”
This story was originally published October 7, 2014 at 7:02 PM with the headline "By watching data reports, Shawnee is also helping to take a bite out of crime."