CHICAGO PD TRIES HIGH-TECH APPROACH TO CURB VIOLENCE

The city’s new strategic centers combine surveillance video, gang database and software to predict where crime will occur

By Shibani Mahtani

The Wall Street Journal
May 12, 2017

CHICAGO—In a stuffy room crammed with computer screens, a group of police officers monitored high-tech tools that could hold the key to calming surging crime in this city’s most violent neighborhoods.

On one screen, they watched a live feed from a surveillance camera of a drug deal happening on a nearby street corner. “We’re building a case,” one officer said.

With a few clicks, they can pull up mug shots of known gang members to try to identify the dealers, or run a check on the license plates from nearby cars.

Maps on the adjacent screen track shots fired in real time, bypassing 911. On another screen, color-coded squares mark locations where a computer algorithm has predicted a homicide, shooting or robbery might happen next.

“This is our new one-stop shop,” said Chicago Police Deputy Chief Jonathan Lewin, who heads the department’s technology solutions. “We have never tracked this information with this specific granularity.”

The Chicago Police Department hopes its new Strategic Decision Support Centers—modeled on efforts in Los Angeles and New York that have curbed crime in recent years—can help stem the surge of violence that has brought national attention to the city.

After Chicago recorded 762 homicides and over 4,000 shootings last year, President Donald Trump threatened to “send in the Feds” if the city was unable to quell the bloodshed.

The center in Englewood, on the city’s South Side, is one of six that have been set up so far this year in the city’s most violent neighborhoods under a new $6.8-million program.

Early results show promise. In Englewood and Harrison, on the West Side—the two districts responsible for over a third of 2016’s violence—shootings have fallen by 30% and 39%, respectively. Citywide, the drop is 15%, even in the face of a recent surge in shootings by gangs using high-powered weapons that can penetrate police armor.

Some academics are skeptical of the program, however. They note that the idea of predicting where crime will happen isn’t all that different from focusing on hot spots where crimes have happened before.

“The evidence for predictive policing is not very strong yet,” said David Weisburd, a leading criminologist and professor at George Mason University who developed the hot-spot theory in the mid-1990s.

Civil liberties advocates worry about police following algorithms to target people for arrest or questioning. “People should be concerned that they will be stopped because the computer told the police to stop them,” said Matt Topic, a lawyer with Loevy & Loevy who has sued the Chicago Police Department over civil-rights violations.

Critics say that Chicago police are leaning heavily on data because they are unable to get cooperation from the community in identifying and solving crimes. Earlier this year a Justice Department probe found that the police had a history of using excessive force. The percentage of homicides solved last year was 29%, less than half the national average—in large part because too few witnesses are coming forward.

But Chicago police official say the tools will make officers more present on the worst blocks and therefore bolster public trust.

“Officers are not just riding along and looking for things now,” said Kevin Johnson, commander of the Englewood district. “They are targeting specific areas and seeing specific results; it affects how they see themselves and their role.”

There is no data yet on whether the technology has helped the clearance rate. But police point to success stories. In one case, a sergeant monitoring a surveillance camera saw a man grabbing an object in the front waistband of his pants. Correctly guessing that it was a gun, he instructed officers in the area to stop and search the man, who was out on parole and was arrested on a gun charge.

Chicago police worked with the Los Angeles Police Department, which has been experimenting with an algorithm to forecast crime since late 2011. Their software, PredPol, pulls historic crime data to predict where something might happen next.

Chicago is using a similar predictive tool, HunchLab, among others, to build out the Strategic Decision Support Centers. Every officer in the district has to spend time at the center, Commander Johnson says, so they can understand how the technology works.

Chicago has also invested heavily in ShotSpotter, which detects gunshots as they happen and feeds that information into the police department’s technology platform. ShotSpotter, which is used by law enforcement in over 90 cities across the world including New York, Minneapolis and Miami, allows police to respond immediately to a shooting and know the exact location, rather than waiting for a 911 call.

The New York City Police Department, which is rolling out the technology across all five boroughs, says ShotSpotter helped police recover 57 guns and make 55 arrests in 2016.

“We’re still seeing many shots-fired incidents, as they go unreported to police, but ShotSpotter alerts us to them,” said Jessica Tisch, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of information technology.

Police in Minneapolis say ShotSpotter, which covers about 4 miles of the city, has helped them recover eight times more casings since the technology was rolled out in early 2008.

In Chicago, the centers are helping police get illegal guns off the streets. “We are responding better to crime and are more visible in these areas,” said Englewood’s Commander Johnson. “Citizens are telling us they want us there, they are telling us to help in these problem areas.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: Chicago recorded its 200th homicide last Tuesday. More than 1,100 people have been shot in Chicago this year. Three people were killed and at least 13 others wounded in shootings across the city between Friday evening and Sunday morning this happy Mother’s Day weekend, with Sunday’s toll yet to be counted.

From where I sit, it sure doesn’t look like that high-tech approach is curbing much violence.