A Research Study On Hot Spot Policing

The Kansas City preventive patrol experiment was a landmark experiment carried out between 1972 and 1973 by the Kansas City Police Department of Kansas City, Missouri. It was designed to test the assumption that the presence (or potential presence) of police officers in marked cars reduced the likelihood of a crime being committed. It was the first study to demonstrate that research into the effectiveness of different policing styles could be carried out responsibly and safely. The Kansas City Police Department drew the conclusion that routine preventive patrol in marked police cars has little value in preventing crime or making citizens feel safe and that resources normally allocated to these activities could safely be allocated elsewhere. A significant factor realized was that crime prevention was more highly dependent on the willingness of citizens to report suspicious and/or criminal behavior to Police than the levels or types of patrol.

The varying strategies for policing can be confusing, but is necessary in order to best address crime in a community. By establishing different methods, studying, applying, and then analyzing them, officers are able to refine their activities in order to improve their performance. Also, many of these strategies address different types of issues that may arise in a community. For example, some methods are better for dealing with drunk driving, whereas others work well to prevent violent crimes. My method, titled Neighborhood Focus Policing, combines Community, Hot Spot, and Intelligence Led Policing in an effort to best target and reduce crime.

Although most studies on police officer discretion is focused on racial profiling, it has also been shown that officers patrol hot spots. Hot spots are areas known to have a high rate of criminal activity. Focusing on hot spots is an officer’s discretion, because they are ignoring other areas that could potential produce criminal activities. All surveillance and enforcement efforts are focused on the “hot” area. Not only are officers ignoring other areas, but they have determined those areas are not as important as the hot spot. Hot spots can prove to be problematic if the criminal activity located in the hot spot before it was being patrolled is moved to a new location. The new location is prone to no police surveillance because all resources are focused on the old hot spot (Mastrofski, 2011).

The routine activities theory is based on the concept of the crime triangle. This triangle consists of a “motivated offender a suitable target and the lack of guardianship” (Cohen & Felson, 1979). When Hot spot policing is employed its focus is directed at two of the three elements of the triangle. Those elements are the suitable target and the lack of a capable guardian (Hoover, 2014). Some of the major tenants of this perspective are geographic targeting, focused patrol, saturation patrol, and interactive programs. There are other tenants such as simple visibility and foot patrol but I will focus on the three mentioned above. Geographic targeting uses techniques which address crime based on the “hot spot” theory. Hot spots are another

Beginning in the 1990’s, crime numbers began to fall and and there are many explanations for the decrease in crime. To begin, the police began using new catching approaches by changing aspects such as an increase in enforcement of nuisance activities. Additionally, they began to invest in their technology and started to identify crime hot spots. The hot spots are where crime is found most often but never recognized.

It is my opinion, that Hot spot policing is a fantastic idea orf thought. Personally my worry would be that even thpough crime rate might slow down in the area disignated, that the criminals just caught on to the police coming to a particular area. So these indivuals are probaly still breaking the law just somewhere else. For example if you announce a road block, subrity check point, most of the poeple driving under the influence are going to go another route.

When looking at the Problem-Oriented Policing (POP) website we see that it provides information to law enforcement departments around the country giving them information on how to deal with a significant amount of community problems (Problem-Oriented Policing, 2017). The website of POP shows in details community issues such as vandalism, street prostitution, and domestic violence for law enforcement departments to gain ideas how they can be addressed. There have been large numbers of police departments that have taken advantage of the enormous amount of resources provided to them by the POP two such departments the Oakland Police Department in Los Angeles, and the other being Lindgate Police Department in Nevada (Calgues, 2015).

Kansas City prevention was a patrol experiment; (preventative patrolling). The results of police patrolling in high crime areas did not lessen criminal activity, however the reduction of police patrolling did not result in increased criminal activity. This research shined a new light on policing and helped pave the way for future community policing.

In countless areas there are higher crime rates, and often specific locations stand out and require additional services. Police agencies have spent years trying to find the perfect technique for equally distributing effected resources to advance hot spots. The Mabry agency which is in Harmony, Florida is no different, since their crime rates are on the rise. Which is why we are implementing a new policing program that involves hot spots, and a planned outcome evaluation. The purpose for using hot spot policing in the town of Mabry is to simply cut down the amount of crime in those hot spot areas and the surrounding areas, by adding additional patrol vehicles and officers. This strategy is based on programs such as the broken windows

Hot spots policing involves deploying officers to patrol very specific areas within their jurisdiction that have seen a very high amount of concentrated crime (Lum, Nagin, 2016). The idea of hot spots policing came about “from a striking empirical regularity uncovered by Sherman, Gartin, and Buerger (1989) when they found that only 3 percent of addresses and intersections (“places”) in Minneapolis, Minnesota. produced 50 percent of all calls to the police” (Lum, Nagin; 2016). There were a few other astounding statistics that were seen in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1989. All robberies were reported in only 2.2% of places. All rapes were reported in only 1.2% of places, and all auto thefts were reported at 2.7% of all places (SOURCE).

A continuation of the POP program can be seen in the idea of hot spots. A hot spot in itself, is an area that “consumed a disproportionate amount of police time and effort.” (112) The idea of hot spots soon progressed to the idea of hot spot policing. Which is based on “the assumption that if the police direct focused, intensive efforts at the areas with high concentration of crime and calls for service they can reduce crime and disorder.” All while using the problem oriented policing model of SARA. Such as the experiment that Lowell, Massachusetts conducted. As a result of thirty percent of their crime came from hot spots around the city, they needed to come up with a plan to reduce those numbers. “In addition to traditional police enforcement

POP policy are highly focused programs that try to eliminate the problem by getting to the root cause. However, I think an extra step need to be implemented and that is Hot spot policing. The areas in question are supposedly high crime areas so why not focus on these hotspots. Hot spot policing increases police efficiency in a number of ways. It concentrates the departments attention to the area were crime is mostly likely to occur. It establishes a visible precede. What makes it more effective than the stagey already in place is it provides officer with a means to solve the root cause of the problem through problem solving efforts. Rather than what they are doing now which is focused on the strict implementation of enforcement. Using their

Current models of predictive policing allow police to identify potential areas of criminal activity based on past data, including arrest records, district crime reports, lists of criminals and suspected criminals, and other critical police statistics. Some algorithms identify areas of high criminal activity based on previous incidents, which enables police to follow crime trends and target criminal hotspots. By focusing on the locations of past crimes, police are able to predict future ones and stop them before they happen. They monitor areas of high illegal activity, specifically burglary, break-ins, and car theft, and take action when people appear suspicious. Police can also take preliminary action after a crime occurs in a criminal hotspot.

Crime is all around us, but, unlike the general public, we encounter it daily as members of the law enforcement community. Our job is to do our best in preventing crime and catching the offenders that slip through our crime prevention methods. The following questions often come up: Are our current methods the best? If not, how can we better improve our practices to eradicate crime and catch the offenders? Police strategies are, inherently, reactive, but, recently, the law enforcement community has started to develop more proactive strategies to more efficiently eradicate crime (Groff et al. 2014, pg.23). Among these proactive police strategies is a rather recent practice called hot-spot policing (Groff et al. 2014, pg.23). There are many

Bigger city departments are spread thin on the streets and can 't be expected to respond to calls, track down criminals, and then try to prevent the crime from ever happening. In smaller towns I can see this being an effective program. The police have a bit more resources and can spend the time talking to the citizens.