FBINAA JANFEB MAG.2019

THE CLEAR VALUE OF DATA SHARING STUART K. CAMERON

F B I N A A . O R G | J A N / F E B 2 0 1 9

Suffolk County is located on Long Island, one county removed from New York City. Suffolk is the sec- ond largest county in New York State with 912 square miles of land area. The majority of the roughly 1.5 mil- lion residents of Suffolk County are served by the Suffolk County Po- lice Department which was formed in 1960. With approximately 2,500 sworn members the Suffolk County Police Department is one of the larg- est municipal police departments in the United States and the largest in New York State. T he Suffolk County Police Department was created after a referendum vote to combine five town and several village departments into one unified county agency. Other areas of the county continue to be served by five other town departments and thirteen village departments, however over 1.3 million of the county’s residents are served by the county police, who also pro- vide some services countywide, such as aviation and homicide services. Part of the impetus to create the county department was three homicides that had been committed in what were at that time different jurisdictions. A lack of cooperation and information sharing by the individual departments that were handling each investigation confounded and impeded solving these crimes and apprehending the offender. Fast forward fifty-nine years and you will note that effective internal data sharing has led the Suffolk County Police Depart- ment to achieve record low crime rates, with violent crime down over twenty-two percent in 2018 alone. The department had ad- opted an intelligence led policing model several years prior and it continues working to make it better and more effective. Crime trends and crime patterns are rapidly identified and the informa- tion is effectively pushed out to the field to allow officers to be much more effective than they have been in the past.

Crime trends are clearly delineated criminal activities, not necessarily uniquely committed by a single individual or group of individuals. Crime trends are often regional and they can be na- tional and even international. An example of a widespread crime trend is the dramatic rise in metal thefts that occurred several years ago which was spurred primarily by the increase in the value of scrap metal. Various individuals were motivated to steal items ranging from copper plumbing in unoccupied homes to manhole covers and catalytic converts. These items were converted to cash by metal recyclers and were often fungible and difficult to trace. Crime patterns on the other hand are formed when similar modus operandi are observed indicating that an individual or group are committing similar crimes in a defined area. Statistics show that a handful of individuals commit a large amount of the crime. Detecting these patterns, analyzing available data and pushing it out to front line personnel to act on can result in laser focused policing and dramatic crime reductions. Crime patterns can exist within defined crime trends, such as the theft of catalytic converters using a similar method, which can be identified from among various other metal thefts. Similar to many other municipal law enforcement agen- cies in the United States, the Suffolk County Police Department has prioritized overall crime reduction, targeting gang activity and combating the effects of the opioid crisis among the critical objectives for the department. A great deal of success has been achieved on all three issues by utilizing a well-structured internal data analysis and sharing model. Thirty years ago patrol officers in the department would re- ceive periodic “daily” bulletins that would provide raw informa- tion on several types of felony crimes that had been committed in the precinct in which the bulletin was prepared. These bulle- tins were often updated three or four times a week and simply contained a raw list of certain crimes that had occurred during a defined period with no additional details or analysis. Aside from manually identifying the crimes that had occurred in your patrol sector this information was of very limited use. Crimes are now analyzed by the department’s Criminal Intel- ligence Section looking for commonalities that may indicate that a crime pattern is underway within the police district. Once a de- termination has been made that a crime pattern exists detailed briefing reports are prepared summarizing each incident in the pattern, including when and how they occurred and highlighting similarities. Recently the department’s Information Technology Sec- tion created an information portal to more effectively distribute information to the officers working in the field. This portal was continued on page 10

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