Presenters / Facilitators:
An increasing number of police agencies have decided to reduce the enormous demand created by false burglar alarms by moving to a form of verified response in which the primary responsibility for responding to alarms is placed with the alarm companies. Proposals to adopt this response have often drawn strong resistance from the alarm industry. In some situations, the proposal has been rejected in favor of some other form of response. The Fremont, CA Police Department moved rapidly, within the past year, to adopting a verified response. The Chief of the Fremont PD, Craig Steckler, who personally led the change in policy, will describe his rationale, the process by which he arrived at this proposal, his strategy for gaining support for it, and how he addressed resistance. Herman Goldstein will comment on the key elements in the Fremont implementation, and, more broadly, on the significance of the Fremont experience for other police agencies as they seek to implement the results of a POP analysis.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department: Belmont Violence Reduction Project PPT
Presenters / Facilitators:
The Belmont neighborhood was plagued by decades of street drug sales, violent crime, and disorder characteristic of some older urban neighborhoods. The community and police believed that outsiders were responsible for most of the problems, and reviewed records to see if this were so. The officers tested the hypothesis that street barriers in the northeast corner of the neighborhood, where the problems were most significant, would disrupt the easy access to the drug markets and reduce the violence it drew. Extensive evaluation, over a five-year period, showed significant crime reductions and the extent to which the barriers account for the success.
Problems in Rental Housing and Condominiums PPT
Presenters / Facilitators:
Over the last decade, Joliet, IL and Fontana, CA applied innovative approaches to turn around problems in rental housing. The presenters will discuss different approaches. Joliet will share how it holds owners of rental property accountable through a licensing and regulation process. Fontana (CA) will report on a study it conducted to try to understand why some condominium complexes in the downtown area appear to present more severe crime and disorder problems than similarly designed apartment complexes in the same areas.
Reducing Vehicle Burglaries PPT
Presenters / Facilitators:
Officers of the Carrollton Police Department were able to reduce motor vehicle burglaries by 13.5 percent citywide in 2004 and further reduce car break-ins in the hardest hit area of town by 80 percent, but this is only a small part of the success story. This problem was identified, analyzed, and responses were planned and implemented by line level police officers who were given broad guidelines. The officers used careful data analysis to focus valuable resources, generate a creative response, and through a representative system, involve the entire patrol division. Supervisors did not mandate this initiative but rather served as support for their officers in removing hurdles and facilitating deployments.
Gas Theft: Opportunity Makes the Thief ZIP
Presenters / Facilitators:
Gas theft remains a problem in some communities, and particularly now, with the rise in gasoline prices, gas theft is increasing. This panel will showcase two case studies about reducing gas theft, one from Kansas City (MO) and the other from Puyallup (WA). The analyses conducted revealed different types of problems in the two places and different approaches were used to turn the problems around.
Getting to ‘No’: Closing Drug Markets in North Carolina PPT
Presenters / Facilitators:
Street drug markets are toxic to communities and resistant to enforcement and prevention. The poor and minority communities in which they appear frequently end up feeling plagued by both drug traffickers and law enforcement. In North Carolina, a version of the “focused deterrence” or “pulling lever”approach has been shutting these markets down almost completely, with the full support of the community and even of many drug dealers. The presenters will discuss the design, implementation and impact of these operations.
Thefts at Home Depot: Hammering Out a New Approach PPT
Presenters / Facilitators:
Crime problems at a local Home Depot resulted in officers working with management to turn them around. Officers identified several individual problems. First, contractors’ trucks were targets of vehicle break-ins in the parking lot. Second, customers generally felt unsafe shopping at the store. Third, the store’s easy return policy allowed for high levels of shoplifting, even drawing in organized rings of thieves. Home Depot’s management and the officers developed recommendations to address these different problems. Among other results, the shrink loss percentage for the store has gone down steadily with each inventory after changes were implemented. Other Home Depot stores have adopted some of the measures, and the project has had impact on other large retail chain stores as well.
Project Centurion, Reducing Crime and Disorder in a Downtown Entertainment Area PPT
Presenters / Facilitators:
Three years ago, 28 percent of all recorded crime in the Isle of Man occurred on the Douglas Promenade in an area representing only 3 percent of the island’s geographic area. The Promenade, a center of the nighttime and weekend economy in the Isle of Man, accounted for 41 percent of the Isle’s reported assaults, 46 percent of all recorded public order offences, and 19 percent of all criminal damage reports. The Project Centurion partnership grew out of this and the partnership team took a POP approach to turn the disproportionate level of problems around. The analysis revealed contributory factors, such as inadequate and inefficient transport service from the Promenade to visitors’ residences. The partnership tailored highly specific responses, resulting in a 33 percent reduction in targeted crimes.
Safer Sex Works Prostitution Project PPT
Presenters / Facilitators:
Safer Sex Works was developed as a pre-emptive POP approach to secure additional sustainable reductions to problems associated with street prostitution in Preston, Lancashire. An earlier project achieved reductions but this one aimed at making even greater inroads. The project relied upon detailed analysis and innovation, and interestingly, was even less reliant on traditional enforcement responses. Defining problematic behavior and prioritizing interventions with partners ensured reductions in calls for service and the numbers of active sex workers in the area. The project resulted in increasingly responsible behavior by a majority of the street sex workers, and a managed zone of increased community tolerance where non-problematic street sex work co-exists in one small geographic area in Lancashire, UK.
Community Development and Its Role in Crime Reduction: Building Our Way Out of Crime PPT
Presenters / Facilitators:
Are you growing tired of winning departmental kudos for high-arrest rates at your town’s hot spots while you and the community know you’re hardly denting the persistent problems? Suppose you could find a problem-solving partner who, recognizing that these “dens of iniquity” are also dens of inequity, can do something to transform these problem locations? When we asked Herman Goldstein what he thought about police creating long-term strategic alliances with community development organizations to “build their way out of crime problems” that they can’t arrest their way out of, he welcomed this initiative as “mega problem solving,” where the problem to be addressed is the urgent need for community revitalization. Based on 10 years of work in the trenches of police-developer partnerships in a dozen cities, this panel will share lessons learned about the power of these partnerships to create crime-preventive revitalization.
Vehicle Crime Reduction Update: Portsmouth Constabulary, the Sequel PPT
Presenters / Facilitators:
Operation Cobra, an analysis driven vehicle crime reduction effort developed in Portsmouth, England, won the top Herman Goldstein award in 2004. The presenters will briefly review the original approach, and then focus on the results from the project since, including15 months of sustained decreases in contrast to vehicle crime data from other comparable areas. Finally, the presenters will show how an analysis of bicycle thefts built on the vehicle crime analysis and how the lessons were then transferred to areas of violent crime, including rape.
Bringing POP Guides into the Classroom: Gun Violence and Speeding Vehicles
Presenters / Facilitators:
POP Guides continue to be popular tools for police officers throughout the country. In Virginia, they’ve taken them off the shelf and brought them to life in the classroom. This workshop highlights the efforts of the Virginia RCPI to transform two POP Guides: Speeding in Residential Neighborhoods and Gun Violence among Serious Young Offenders into innovative, interactive eight-hour training courses. Come see how a great resource can become even better!
Reducing Hate Crimes and Theft against a Neighborhood Store: The Happy Shopper Project
Presenters / Facilitators:
The Callon Housing Estate was in the top 2 percent of deprived communities in England. The only store on the estate, named The Happy Shopper, was the only shop serving the community. The store experienced high levels of theft, daily racial crime, and anti-social behavior. Gang activity scared away legitimate customers. The owner lived in the stockroom afraid to leave the business. Police initiated a multi-agency problem-solving approach reversing a terrible situation, nearly eliminating the racial crimes, reducing the shoplifting, and reinstating the Happy Shopper as a neighborhood store.
Higher Up the Food Chain: Putting Cops Where They Belong PDF
Presenters / Facilitators:
Nick Ross is one of Britain’s best-known broadcasters. He has presented Crimewatch (the show which led to America’s Most Wanted) for 20 years, as well as news and political programs. He routinely works closely with the police, serves on UK government crime reduction boards, and advises the charity Victim Support. He created the new discipline of crime science to explore new ways to cut crime. He founded and chairs the board of the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science (at University College London) - named after Jill Dando, his Crimewatch co-presenter, who was murdered in 1999.
Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide, Neighborhood Burglary Reduction Effort ZIP
Presenters / Facilitators:
Operation Dodger was formed in the Brighton and Hove area of Sussex to address the problematic behaviors of what had come to be called, “the street community”. Activities ranged from criminal offences, including assault, to anti-social behavior, such as street drinking and panhandling. Residents, retailers, and tourists expressed concern about the behaviors. The project aimed at addressing the number of problematic street drinkers, as well as street drinking hotspots. The Constabulary conducted a baseline street audit, and then an audit every month thereafter to measure progress. Over the course of the project, using a comprehensive approach, Sussex Constabulary achieved tremendous reductions in both the number of street drinkers and panhandlers, as well as the number of hotspots.
False Burglar Alarms: The Need for Careful Homework, Rigorous Analysis and Skillful Advocacy
Presenters / Facilitators:
This workshop will afford attendees the opportunity to explore, in a more detailed manner than will be covered in the preceding plenary session on this topic, the experience of the Fremont CA police department in moving to adoption of verified response. Chief Steckler will fill in some of the details of his experience, including the presentation of the data that were developed; the department’s consideration of alternative responses; the process by which the department decided on its new response; and the strategy it employed for gaining support for and implementing that response.
Presenters / Facilitators:
Sheboygan (WI) was late to experience the crack-cocaine epidemic. Crack houses popped up but there was no adequate follow-up against these drug houses that had embedded themselves in the community. As a result, Sheboygan studied the problem, initiated a planned effort involving police, community volunteers, local politicians, and business leaders resulting in neighborhood residents compiling daily drug activity diaries, and volunteers administering door-to-door pre- and post-test fear surveys. The collaborative gained support block-by-block, neighborhood by neighborhood, and used innovative tactics to drive away the drug dealing. In just under two years, the effort resulted in the elimination of over 60 separate drug houses and achieved dramatic reductions in fear.
Operation Cloak and Dagger, Street Violence Reduction Effort
Presenters / Facilitators:
A one-mile square area of Boston accounted for 40 percent of Boston’s gun-related homicides and 20 percent of the City’s shooting incidents. The media dubbed the Morton-Street-Talbot Avenue Corridor the “Murder Mile”. Many of the shootings (as well as knife assaults) occurred between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m., much of it spillover violence from late night parties. Officers interviewed youth about gun carrying and devised a strategy in reaction to what was learned during the analysis, ultimately reducing shooting incidents by 63 percent and homicides by 87 percent after 9 months.
Scamming the On-Line Hotel Booking Industry and Hotels: Turning Around an Internet Fraud Problem ZIP
Presenters / Facilitators:
Anaheim Police found that computer literate criminals booked hotel rooms in Anaheim, the home of Disneyland, using independent travel web-sites, such as hotels.com, with other peoples’ credit cards. Since these web-sites prepay hotels in full at the time of the booking, hotels honor the reservation with only a confirmation number. Criminals then commit other crimes in the resort area while staying at a hotel for free. Between the reservation process, the check-in process, and the criminal investigation process, weaknesses existed which allowed these types of crimes to flourish. Anaheim is a global tourist destination and crime increases can have a severe impact on the Anaheim economy. This project describes the problem solving approach used by the Anaheim Police Department, in partnership with Expedia.com, Hotels.com, and Anaheim’s hotels/motels, to combat this form of internet fraud.
Hot Times, Hot Places and Crime: Understanding More about Crime Hotspots PDF
Presenters / Facilitators:
There is sometimes a tendency to charge ahead with a crime response as soon as a hotspot is found. However hotspots can have different temporal patterns and spatial characteristics, and a suitable response had better pay attention to these. This session will show three simple spatial and temporal patterns, and demonstrate how crime responses can be tailored appropriately. Examples are drawn from burglary and vehicle crime in Australia, and street crime in the UK.
Nightclub Responsibility: Dancing to a New Tune
Presenters / Facilitators:
Some bars and nightclubs are not very problematic but some make up for the rest, accounting for high levels of assault, disorder or other harms. Rusty’s Last Chance Saloon and the Blue Haven Nightclub were places where the police felt that fun times were overshadowed by the fights, the drugs, and for one of the clubs, by prostitution. Presenters from the Shawnee (KS) and Chula Vista (CA) police departments will describe how they analyzed the problems in these two nightclubs, what they found in each, and how they ended up applying different solutions that matched the circumstances of each place. Also, in this session, Shawnee, KS will show you how easy it is to follow a POP guide to turn around assaults in and around bars/nightclubs.
Examining an Emerging Internet Fraud Problem: Who Has Responsibility and What Should Be Done? PPT
Presenters / Facilitators:
The Raleigh Police Department is seeing an increase in the number of victims falling prey to a ‘work-at-home’ scam involving repacking and reshipping of items. Credit cards are used fraudulently to purchase the goods sent to these re-packagers/re-shippers. Raleigh P.D. has made many attempts to catch the offenders but as of yet have not been successful at finding the perpetrators or reducing the opportunities for future crime. Raleigh Police would like to share what they know about the problem and seek any assistance in identifying effective responses to the complex crime of repackaging fraudulently purchased goods and reshipping these goods to international locations.
Training Tomorrow’s Problem–Solver: Creating a New Kind of Police Recruit with Problem–Based Learning and the Police Training Officer Program
Presenters / Facilitators:
Many POP training programs are add-ons with limited long-term results. In response to this persistent obstacle, the COPS Office has funded a project to implement state-of-the-art education methods into police training. Known as problem based learning (PBL) the program began 5 years ago with a field training program called PTO in 6 pilot agencies. In this session, Gregory Saville will describe how they created and taught the program to 5 other agencies across the country, including the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police. Also in this session Sgt. Brian Cunningham will describe its implementation and how it promotes POP. As a demonstration of some of the tremendous success of the program, he will also introduce one of the recent PTO recruits from Charlotte-Mecklenburg who will show some of his recent work on the street.
Getting the Best Out of Crime Analysis: Lessons for Police Leaders and Managers PPT
Presenters / Facilitators:
This workshop is for police leaders and managers who want to get the best out of their crime analysis units. Drawing from real-life examples of the nation’s best crime analysis, this session provides practical advice and tips on balancing short-term tactical analysis with longer-term strategic analysis. Presenters will offer guidance on developing and managing a crime analysis unit, explain critical differences in key crime analysis functions, and share ways to encourage innovative analyses that can address emerging as well as chronic public safety problems.
Implementing POP: Giving it Backbone with Organizational Support
Presenters / Facilitators:
Police departments are highly complex enterprises. Could it be that adopting problem-solving is the easy part compared to sustaining it in an organization and advancing the capacity of the organization to engage in it? In this session, you’ll hear perspectives from people in different agencies and various positions -- two chiefs, a crime analyst and a problem-solving advisor - about things their departments are doing and things they think need to be done to move their agencies towards problem-oriented policing.
Preventing Terrorism - What Role for Local Police? PPT
Presenters / Facilitators:
Should local police have a role in combating terrorism beyond that of first responders? What can local police do about protecting us from terrorism? Is every location at risk to the same degree? If we can’t protect everything, what should we protect, and what is the role of local police in doing so? How should police chiefs and administrators prioritize home security spending? These and other questions will be considered in a discussion format workshop drawing on experience of the participants. Professors Clarke and Newman will open the discussion with an outline of their forthcoming book, Outsmarting the Terrorists.
