Police warm to predictive analysis crime fighting tools

good news, the question remains as to what degree Blue CRUSH is largely or even partly responsible. The Justice Department reported last week that violent crime nationwide declined in 2009 by 5.3 percent, the third straight yearly decline, and property crime is down for the seventh year in a row.

“A decline in reported offenses is not necessarily the result of software predicting where crime is likely to occur or any other police strategy,” Sullivan writes. Law enforcement experts say it could reflect a growing unwillingness on the part of the public to call for police assistance, demographic shifts, already-bulging prison populations keeping criminals off the streets, or even the recession.

Beyond that, they say, some policing is common sense and carried out every day, without computer assistance, by attentive patrol officers and their supervisors. Much police work is artful and intuitive and will never be replaced by science.

J. D. Sewell, president of the Memphis Police Association, the union that represents most Memphis officers, said he believes Blue CRUSH is working, “but I don’t believe it’s to the extent they’re proposing.”

“To get the true effect of Blue CRUSH, subtract all the other cities’ crime rates, and take away the national trend, then you’ll get a more accurate figure. Of course you want to fight crime and you ‘re willing to spend money, but how much are you willing to spend especially during a financial crisis when they’re talking about laying off police officers?” Sewell asked.

Williams acknowledged that Blue CRUSH assignments are often done on overtime, and Sewell said his members like the overtime. But he said it’s another factor.

“Look at peer cities and if they increase their overtime — does it reduce their crime rate without calling it Blue CRUSH?” Sewell asked.