Demonstrating the Analytical Utility of GIS for Police Operations: A Final Report

• NCJ Number: 187104
• Author(s): James L. LeBeau Ph.D.
• Date Published: 2000
• Length: 93 pages
• Grant Number(s): NIJ 97-LB-VX-K010
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)

Annotation

This report discusses a three-part project involving a partnership between the Charlotte-Mecklenburg, NC, Police Department and Southern Illinois University at Carbondale to demonstrate the analytical usefulness of geographic information systems (GIS) for police operations.

Abstract

The first project examined a different manner for visualizing the distribution and change of crime and calls for service by changing street segments’ size, color, or both according to their intensity of crime, calls for service, or both. The project focused on intoxicated pedestrians and arrests for drug law offenses. The project called this approach the Safe Streets approach. The second project involved two models for assessing, analyzing, and mapping hazardous space for police work. The project focused on details and locations of incidents or calls where police officers are injured, use force, request immediate help, and are dispatched to potentially dangerous situations. The third project involved using GIS and nonpolice external data for analyzing the police response to special events such as holidays or a natural disaster such as a flash flood. The analysis concluded that the three topics studied require additional research and development and that maps need to be composed to communicate their meaning to the user if they are to be useful. These topics all represent evolving issues in the collaboration between policing and spatial analysis technology. Figures, appended coding information, tables, and 22 references