This week I am going to write about things that worked (and what didn't work) for me when I was an analyst. Since I left work last year, I should do this before I forget what works when working!
It took me years to realize that it would be best if I was proactive and kept information gathered from queries on reoccurring types of crime problems that lead most often to patterns and series. The key word here is proactive and it doesn't just apply to crime pattern analysis - it would work for any type of subject,
This is how I became proactive in gathering crime pattern data:
-I made a computer folder for crime pattern tracking
-I made an Excel Workbook for each type of specific crime type I thought worthy of tracking based on my experience and knowledge. Examples: sex crimes with unknown assailants, theft of copper/metal, delivery-related robberies, vehicle break ins, cat burglars (burglars that come in your house when you are sleeping), home invasions, bank robberies, commercial burglaries, counterfeiting, impersonation, theft of construction equipment, restaurant-related crimes, etc.
-When reviewing crimes everyday in the morning I would put any crime that fell into my various specific crime pattern types and then I WOULD NEVER HAVE TO SEARCH FOR THEM AGAIN. Some crimes went into MULTIPLE categories - for example: a pizza delivery robbery committed by a masked robber might go into delivery robberies and robberies with disguises. New categories could be easily added and the historical data gathered and updated over time.
-Once the crime information was entered into my Excel spreadsheet I could code it any way I wanted, add fields, use the spreadsheets for mapping by copying the data needed and saving it elsewhere as a dbf file. Using Excel made the data very easily shared - it could be emailed to a detective (perhaps modified and copied into Word), modified and put into bulletins, etc.
-Each Excel Workbook could contain numerous spreadsheets in addition to the main data collection spreadsheet - persons arrested for this crime type, calls for service related to the crime type (gangs, guns etc), previous crime series of this type, pawn shops/scrap metal dealers, addresses for all restaurants in the city - whatever was relevant to the specific crime problem.
-This method did not REPLACE existing databases - it gave me a format to save whatever I had gathered in the past and to proactively add to the subjects whenever I had free time or needed a break from a project. I would also be able to see if I new crime pattern was emerging and identify a possible series of crime as soon as possible.
-Excel also allowed me to use pivot tables to chart the amount of crimes such as home invasions, to show what day of week, what hour, to see how many involved guns or disguise since I coded for that - all this analysis in truly less than a minute!!!
-The crime pattern tracking folder was made available to anyone working in crime analysis in our computer network and they could add to it as well - so rules had to be agreed upon. The spreadsheets always were copied and pasted elsewhere for any data analysis/use - a master spreadsheet on each subject was only added to - not changed in other ways unless the change was to improve it.
-This method gave me an opportunity to collect historical and in-depth data on crimes that I was tracking - I used my down time more effectively and also was easily able to answer questions about any of the specific subjects I was tracking. It sometimes seemed time consuming to keep up but the time invested paid off in reducing the time needed for ad hoc analysis and data searches.
This method could be use for tracking gangs or criminal groups - anything you are examining in depth for future analysis.
No comments:
Post a Comment