Law-enforcement technologyPolice use of technology drives property crime to 20-year low
Law enforcement authorities say that the growing use of technology once accessible only to a few large agencies allows officers to conduct real-time analyses of burglaries, petty thefts, and car thefts; the result: U.S. property crime has fallen to a 20-year low despite the sour economy
Reported property crime has fallen to a 20-year low despite the sour economy, a trend police officials attribute in part to increasingly available technology that helps officers identify patterns of crime in particular neighborhoods.
The FBI estimates 9.3 million property crimes were committed in 2009 — 3,036.1 property crimes for every 100,000 people. This is down from a high of 13 million such crimes in 1991 — 5,140.2 property crimes for every 100,000 people. Data for 2010 are not yet available.
USA Today’s Kevin Johnson writes that growing use of technology once accessible only to a few large agencies allows officers to conduct real-time analyses of burglaries, petty thefts, and car thefts. Departments can redeploy officers to threatened areas, known as “hot spots,” to stop potential crime sprees.
Rob Davis, president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, says the “technology gap” has narrowed to a point where communities of all sizes are reaping the benefits, helping to drive property crimes and some other offenses to their lowest levels in two decades.
“We’re using technology in a different way,” he says. “We’re getting information faster because people are calling from their cellphones as things are happening, not waiting till they get home to use the phone, and we’re moving our resources faster.”
Johnson notes that the FBI reported this month that violent crime dropped for the third straight year in 2009, while property offenses declined for the seventh consecutive year.
The reductions surprise some analysts, who expected that high unemployment and cuts to police departments would spur increases in crime.
“This is a hard one,” says Carnegie Mellon University criminologist Alfred Blumstein. “All of the indicators point to trouble.”
In an informal survey of twenty-three major and midsized cities that Blumstein has tracked for five years, murder declined in nineteen of the cities in 2009, while robbery was down in twenty-one.
Blumstein says the reduction in property crimes and other offenses can be explained in part by “a whole culture of innovation” in law enforcement, including crime mapping technology. But, he says, the technological advances do not explain everything.
Richard Rosenfeld, president of the American Society of Criminology, says policing strategies generally have a “limited” impact on crime. He says crime rates could have softened because the recent financial downturn was not accompanied by high inflation.
In Phoenix, police are able to shift their schedules and locations based on their analysis of property and violent crimes before those activities escalate. “Hopefully, we’re getting (suspects) before they commit the next crime, because the next one could be murder,” Phoenix Police Sgt. Steve Martos says.
Phoenix reported a 20 percent drop in all property crimes in 2009, while murder dropped 27 percent, FBI data show. In Atlanta, property crime dropped 12 percent last year and murder was down 24 percent — the lowest murder total since 1989.
Police Chief George Turner says of his department’s use of rapidly advancing crime mapping technology: “We’re doing things as close to real time as you can get.”
