PredPol’s Background

PredPol grew out of a research project between the Los Angeles Police Department and UCLA. The chief at the time, Bill Bratton, wanted to find a way to use CompStat data for more than just historical purposes. The goal was to if if this data could be able to anticipate these crime locations and times could allow officers to pre-emptively deploy and help prevent these crimes.

Working with mathematicians and behavioral scientists from UCLA and Santa Clara University, the team evaded a wide variety of data types and behavioral and forecasting models.

The models were further refined with crime analysts and officers from LAPD and the Santa Cruz Police Department. The three most objective data points collected by police departments provided the best input data for forecasting:

• Crime type
• Crime location
• Crime date and time

The current PredPol platform represents a significant investment of over 70 research-years of PhD-level analysis, modeling and development. It has been tested and proven in dozens of departments of all sizes in multiple countries around the world.

How Predictive Policing Works: We Provide Guidance on Where and When to Patrol

Using only three data points – crime type, crime location and crime date / time – PredPol’s powerful software provides each law enforcement agency with customized crime predictions for the places and times that crimes are most likely to occur.

PREDPOL DOES:

• Increase Law Enforcement’s odds of stopping crime
• Predict WHERE and WHEN crime is most likely to occur
• Work for both large and small agencies
• Help new officers on-board quicker
• Make it easy to access predictions anywhere and anytime

PREDPOL DOES NOT:

• Map out past crimes or another ‘hotspot’ tool
• Predict WHO will commit crimes
• Use PII, eliminating civil liberties issues
• Replace law enforcement veterans or analyst’s’ intuition and experience
• Require additional hiring or new hardware in order to use

PREDPOL BENEFITS EVERYONE

• Crime Analysts: Using PredPol’s technology, analysts spend less time making crime maps and more time conducting the sophisticated analysis and intelligence work for which they are trained.
• Patrol Officers: Newer officers are brought up to speed faster in unfamiliar patrol areas, and veteran officers are given additional, high-risk places to patrol that take them beyond their usual target areas.
• Command Staff: Command staff can set crime-specific missions by beat, shift and day of week. The Patrol Heat Map feature allows command staff to see aggregate patrol levels across their jurisdiction.
• Agencies : Law enforcement agencies deploying PredPol are experiencing marked drops in crime due to increased police presence in areas deemed to be at greatest risk. Agencies are able to allocate the limited resources they do have more effectively.
• Communities: Mostly important, communities are seeing fewer victims, reducing the tangible and intangible impacts of crime. A. In the building and allowing law enforcement to be more transparent with the communities they serve.