Officers Derik Jackson and Matt Callahan peer out the windows of their patrol car as they cruise the quiet residential streets in the Spanish Lake area. They check backyards and eye a man lumbering down the street, pull over a minivan with no license plate and back up teammates on a traffic stop that ends with an arrest.
Their watchful patrol comes less than an hour after Sgt. Mike Bradley, the commander of their unit, reviewed a dizzying amount of crime data with other commanders in the dim basement of the St. Louis County police's North Patrol precinct headquarters.
Despite slide after slide of numbers, Bradley and the intelligence analysts quickly deciphered a pattern: residential burglaries continue to be a lingering problem in the sprawling precinct.
Immediately following the statistics meeting, Bradley directed his team to pinpoint neighborhoods hit hardest by recent burglaries, which is why Jackson and Callahan are so focused on the rear windows of houses, vacant properties and pedestrians seemingly wandering aimlessly through neighborhoods as the officers roll through the streets in their marked patrol car.
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"In the past, we'd just hand off the car keys and say, 'Go patrol,'" North County precinct commander Capt. Troy Doyle said. "Now what we do is make the job a little easier and say, 'Here's exactly what's going on in your area and what to look for.'"
Statistics-driven police patrolling is nothing new, but with an arsenal of new computer programs, mapping technology and officers trained to instantly tailor their patrols to the data, so-called hot-spot policing is changing the way departments operate. The goal is to thwart future crime and more quickly track down suspects.
Officers have experienced success with the techniques in North County, and hot-spot policing has made a dent in crime numbers in Jennings since 50¶È»ÒÊÓƵ County police took over there in March. Municipal departments such as Town and Country use the technique as well, constantly shifting officers as reports change.
"It's a proactive and professional approach. I wanted to take it to the criminals rather than sit back and wait for it to happen," said 50¶È»ÒÊÓƵ County police Lt. Jeff Fuesting, the Jennings commander.
Departments on the West Coast are currently experimenting with the next step beyond hot-spot policing, using a computer program based on earthquake prediction technology to "predict" where crimes will happen next. That will take money and manpower to bring here. But even without the technology, hot-spot policing oftentimes turns out to be prescient.
In North County, officers noticed that thieves were targeting area car lots to steal catalytic converters. Officers set up a sting at one of the car lots not yet hit, caught the thieves in the act and made the arrests. In Jennings recently, officers were patrolling a hot spot when they responded to a burglary in progress nearby. Officers arrested two men in the act, and cleared 15 burglaries after the pair confessed to a wave of crimes.
"Stopping crime before it happens is the goal," Fuesting said.
Every morning, Fuesting reviews the crime data, looking for trends among the categories of crimes, times and locations of the happenings of the last 24 hours. Each incident report within city limits is plotted on a map of the city, so Fuesting and the other commanders can easily identify any hot spots.
At every roll call meeting before police shifts begin in Jennings, supervisors review freshly compiled crime trend data with beat officers. A whiteboard reminds officers of the focus spots and the location of recent crimes.
Then, Fuesting said, "We deploy resources to those areas, lots of resources."
In areas identified as hot spots, beat officers will make rounds every hour, sometimes focusing on areas as small as a few blocks. If special enforcement units are available, they will supplement the beat officers.
By patrolling in areas recently hit by burglars, for example, officers try to stop additional break-ins and have a better chance of developing tips on those who committed the crimes. Plus, Fuesting said, the saturation patrols make an positive impression with local residents, who are potential witnesses and the best tipsters.
The very crime statistics the officers are using to develop their patrol strategies show the methods are making a difference. Since the county police took over Jennings patrols in March, overall crime is down 14.7 percent. A year-to-year comparison of March to November 2010 and 2011 shows crime down 22.6 percent.
"Part of my motto here is to be disciplined about our strategy and stay focused on our strategy and work as a team on our strategy and at the end of the day we will be successful," Fuesting said.
In Town and Country, where the demographics are starkly different from Jennings or North County, the nagging crime issue is the same: home burglaries. So department commanders map out where the burglaries are happening, and direct officers there immediately, eliminating idle patrolling in low-activity areas.
"You find out where the crime is occurring and that's where you put your cops," said Capt. Gary Hoelzer. "We're trying to take the random patrol out of our repertoire."
Sometimes, at neighborhood meetings, residents will question why they haven't seen more police cars near their house. Hoelzer will respond, "That's good, because you haven't had a burglary in your neighborhood in 10 years."
Like Jennings, Town and Country has a crime map posted in the squad room, and officers are briefed daily on recent crimes and areas of patrol emphasis.
"We're changing the culture and changing the way we look at things," said Hoelzer, who helped implement the system about three years ago. "Any size agency can and should implement this."