The MO Project - Lesson One

As promised, this is the first "lesson" in tracking MOs in crime patterns for working analysts. Those of you who are not working analysts may want to follow along to learn more about the work of crime analysis.

The purpose of this method of tracking is to anticipate questions and gather the answers before you need them. If you can do that, your future work will be much easier. The more experienced you are as an analyst, the more likely you will know what sorts of questions you might be asked in the future - you will understand the reasoning behind collecting so much data. Next week I will discuss the concept of anticipating questions more thoroughly.

Here is the introductory "workbook" from Google documents. It is not Excel and is thus somewhat limited. There are 3 worksheets. The first illustrates how easy it is to set up a worksheet to track crimes. The second provides you with relevant crimes to track - one workbook (not worksheet) for each. Create a folder called "Tracker" on your computer and create these workbooks to store inside the folder. Organization is KEY. The third gives you ideas for extracting data from your RMS if you have a good system, so that much of this process will simply be copy and paste for you (the lucky analysts).

You can and should track other crimes relevant to your jurisdiction. Do not be intimidated by the quantity of crimes tracked. Trust me - it will pay off!

To use this tracking method, you must enter data daily into Excel workbooks that you have pre-designed. Excel works better than Access because you can add fields more easily and share data more easily (as you will learn in future lessons.) Excel allows the process to be more dynamic and adaptable as you find new ways of your own to make the data work for you. The daily collection process will appear time-consuming, but ultimately will be time-saving and effective for identifying emerging crime aeries and trends, as well as potential suspects.

If you prefer not to do this daily, you can schedule different crimes to collect on various days of the week. I found that doing this first thing in the morning often helped me decide where to focus my energy the rest of the day. You can even do this once a week, but if you do so, you will lose track of urgent matters that will be discovered in the process of data collection, collation, and organization.

If you have to type in all the data yourself (if you do not have crime report narratives to copy) then you must be succinct in collecting the most important data.

This is Lesson One! Use the comment section below this post if you have questions. (But I will be away at Mardis Gras so be patient if it takes me time to respond - my responses also will be in the comment section below.)

All the information collected in the type of work addressed by the "lessons" is already known by a police department and the criminal justice system somewhere in the process of answering 911 calls, collecting crime report data, in legitimate investigations, as well as in parole and probation records - this is a method of gathering it in one place for more effective analysis. (It is legal and does not infringe on civil rights.)