Just the Facts
The South Bend Police Department has always kept records on all crimes officers respond to, but
analyzing any relationships between individual crimes or identifying any emerging patterns has been difficult.
Working with the City, the police department created the Regional Crime Intelligence Unit (RCIU) to map out
where crimes are occurring. The City made software, training and a manual available. The Bureau of GIS
maintains information on streets and addresses, including an Address Locator Manager that eliminates the
need to manually adjust addresses due to spelling or abbreviation issues. Crimes are entered and weighted
based on the severity of the incident, and maps are produced monthly.
Results
The new tools are used by the police department to:
- Identify neighborhoods with comparatively high concentrations of crime. With this information,
commanding officers can more effectively distribute police resources to those areas.
- Show the impact of police resources in a community. While people's perceptions of police action
can be subjective, the new tools provide objective and quantifiable measurements of crime levels.
- Develop investigative leads to solve burglaries, robberies, motor vehicle thefts and a variety
of other crimes. Without the new tools, police would not have a "map of an attack."
- Map parolees and sexual offenders. This information can be invaluable when there is a sudden rash of crime.
- Quickly determine if drug and weapons violations occur within 1,000 feet of prohibited areas. Formerly, police
would have to physically measure the distance between a drug violation and a school. With the new tools, police get spatial information instantly.