High-Tech Crime Fighting
Reported August 2007
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Fighting crime is a tough job in any city. But now, police have help to track crime, and spot high crime areas faster.
After an arrest, police work isn't done. Cops spend hours storing crime information, but the current storage system is outdated.
"The problem has been that they can't access it very easily", said Jamie Conklin, M.S., who is a systems engineer at the University of Virginia
Now, a new program, called web-cat, allows police to easily access crime data online -- and spot trends that show what types of crimes happen most often, and where.
"It is a tool that law enforcement agents can use to study the crime in their area", said Conklin.
Developed by systems engineers, users can look for crime action by typing in specific dates, choosing types of crimes, choose locations, or find out what weapons are used most. The system then produces graphs, reports, and maps of high crime areas.
"We found that a lot of our residential break-ins were occurring Mondays and Wednesdays … Then we were able to pass that on to the patrol officers", said Joe Mclaughlin, chief deputy at the New Kent County Sheriffs Office
"So, this has been shown to help police officers because if they can get an idea of what's going on, they can make better predictions as to where crimes are likely to happen in the future", Conklin said.
Spotting crimes earlier can help deploy more officers sooner … so you can feel safer.
"We can also provide that to our neighborhood watch, that we're having problems in their areas, so they can become our eyes and ears when we can't be there to enforce", said Mclaughlin
The crime-fighting tool is also being upgraded to predict locations of future crimes. The information from the online tool can also be shared across state and county lines.
Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:
Andrea Nicole Arco
University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science
434-924-7508
Ana8n@cms.mail.virginia.edu
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