My column last month explored the fact that we, as a society, analyze sports more than we analyze crime. This column explores the possibility of becoming more strategic as police agencies. Successful sport teams develop complex strategies for winning. They study their opponents in depth prior to engaging in a game. They define what they will do if certain events happen during a game. They have contingency plans and design alternative courses of action, to be put into play as needed. They leverage their strengths and downplay or correct their weaknesses. They base their strategies on in-depth analysis of the facts they know so far. Understanding the past and present is what helps them predict the future. It requires analysis.
The average police department is like an emergency room mostly involved in triage. We come in emergency situations and run to them literally day and night. We seldom think ahead to develop comprehensive strategies to make lasting changes in the crime environment. When we do develop strategies, it is often because of some particular funding stream; when the money is gone, so is the strategy. When we analyze crime, it is often to solve immediate problems rather than to develop strategies that will have lasting impact.
Strategy involves setting clear goals, extensive premeditation and a systematic plan of action. While many police agencies have planning units, planning, itself, is not the kind of strategy sports teams employ to win in a sports season. Their strategic thinking is creative and evolving, fluid in response to the opponents' actions with built in processes to modify plans. It is not something to be time-stamped and thrown in the file cabinet. Strategic thinking in sports has a sense of direction and a sense of discovery. What new useful thing can we know in order to perform better? That is a question asked after every game. The team knows its goal is to win. How many police agencies really believe they can impact crime? That should be our goal.
If a commander wants to develop strategies to reduce and prevent crime, he or she must specifically task analysts to study the problems that the agency wants to prioritize. The leader should know what it is he or she wants to know. This is often an obstacle to success since law enforcement leaders generally do not have any training in understanding analytical work, and thus may not know how to direct analytical staff. Managers need to be engaged with analysts in order for the analysis to be meaningful to the process of developing strategies. A foundation in understanding what analysis can do is necessary for building a "winning" law enforcement agency. Decision-makers who are strategic rely on their analysts.
So where can you begin? One place to start being strategic is to examine your "hot dots" of crime. Your analysts can find them. These are the locations that are the source your reoccurring problems. They drain your resources as you run to the same locations, year after year, without trying to impact the underlying problem. While reducing demand in these calls may not significantly reduce crime statistics, it is strategic to find ways to free up your officers by reducing demand. This way you will have more officers to direct to other strategies.
Hot dots can be a particular bar, a specific apartment complex, a motel, a certain drug corner, a store with high volume shoplifting calls or a house with repeated domestic violence calls whatever location type depends on the nature of your jurisdiction. Sometimes solving a hot dot problem can be as simple as finding appropriate social services for a mentally ill individual who is calling fifty times a month. Repeat victimization is also another possible explanation of a hot dot problem. Strategies to work with repeat victims, such as prostitutes, can be designed to reduce these problems. Working with store staff to target-harden against shoplifting can reduce that hot dot larceny problem. Traditional enforcement tactics alone usually cannot solve these issues.
Hot areas of crime, those chronic problem areas, need strategic initiatives. Analyzing intelligence information, crime analysis information, and any other relevant information to get total situational awareness of the problem is mandatory. Solving underlying problems in chronic hot areas usually require partnerships with non-law enforcement entities. Tracking what is done by your agency and your partners is necessary, as strategies often have to be modified before success is achieved. You have to know what works and what doesn't. Keep a record of that, just as a sports team would. Hold after-action meetings to assess the effects of your actions on the criminal environment. Have protocols that involve regular assessment of progress or lack of it.
Strategic thinking involves thinking in different timeframes than most police agencies operate. Since political cycles often determine who will lead a police agency, a police leader may be thinking only in terms of the next few years, rather than long-range. Many communities have hot spots of crime that have been around as long as decades. Effective strategies that result in a lasting reduction in crime in these areas may take many years of effort. You have to think in terms of the future. Engaging in scenario-planning is one strategy to assist you in envisioning long-term possibilities. If you target one drug market, will it move to another area? Scenario-planning also assists you in uncovering what might happen crime-wise if certain events occur, such as an increase of population in your jurisdiction or the closing of your city's main employer.
Working with proactively risky facilities (as identified in the online resource Crime Analysis for Problem Solvers in 60 Small Steps), including convenience stores, gas stations, banks, schools, bus stops and parking facilities, is strategic. The key word here is "proactively." Consider surveying these entities in your community and target harden them before they become problems that would be strategic thinking and action in play.
Identify the "hot products" in your community. As copper theft continues to be a global crime problem, look at the facilities that might be targeted for such theft in your jurisdiction. Locate scrap metal dealers. Think of strategies to reduce and prevent this sort of crime in your area. Educate your citizens in how to prevent theft of GPS devices, laptop computers, and all the other things that might not be stolen if your citizens were more vigilant. Look for the markets where stolen goods are being fenced or otherwise resold. How can you disrupt these markets? Strategic thinking is necessary to lower property crime rates, since catching thieves is often more difficult than catching other criminals. Plus, even when such criminals are caught, they are swiftly back on the street to steal some more. Think of those stolen-goods markets in your area. What can you do to change the way they operate?
Know your crime attractors. Your entertainment district is likely to be a crime attractor. Seasonal events, such as sports events, concerts, and festivals are crime attractors. How will you strategically prevent crime in areas you know will attract it? That is your mission to come up with strategies that work. Thefts from autos in a certain park may happen in the same locations within the park year after year. What strategies have you employed to stop this?
Gather intelligence on the organized crime groups in your area along with crime analysis information. What street level crime is really related to a bigger, more insidious problem of organized crime? What players are running your drug markets? How do they do their business? How do they stay in business? Who are their competitors? Effective strategies to address these problems depend on you knowing the answers to these sorts of questions. Fill in your intelligence gaps. Working with the other law enforcement agencies in your jurisdiction, and those agencies surrounding it, is crucial for successful outcomes. Coordinating strategies may not be easy, but it is strategic!
Analysis is essential to becoming strategic. So is imagination. While you can and should look at the research to see what has worked in other jurisdictions to address similar problems, it is up to you to find what will work in yours. Don't give up. Be creative. Think big picture and think to win. Believe that you can reduce and prevent crime.
Next month's column will cover another strategy for winning identifying and targeting your worst criminals. Ideas from a variety of agencies will help you think of your own new strategies to get those bad players off your streets once and for all. It is possible, if you think strategically.
