1. 4th International Evidence Based Policing Conference
A systematic study of Police Patrol using new technology
Neil Wain
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, For those of you who do not know me I am Neil Wain most recently Temporary ACC in GMP responsible for Specialist Operations, Operational Communications and Response. I am a graduate of the police masters programme here at Cambridge and a member of the faculty helping to deliver the MCTP for the Indian Police Service. I am also vice chair of the newly established British Society of Evidenced Based Policing.
What I want to briefly speak to you about this afternoon is about how new technology gives us the opportunity to further develop and more accurately measure what goes on in hotspots and more specifically some information about the embryonic research project that I am about to undertake in conjunction with my own force and Cambridge University. This project will focus upon police patrol and officer activity.
I will give you an overview of some of my early work on this project as it is developing by illustrating how I will be using GPS positioning data such as Automatic Resource Location Systems (known as ARLS) to accurately record the impact of police patrol in hotspots.

2. Where are the police? Tackling Patrol Effectively (1996)
Diary of a Police Officer (2001) only 17% officer time on “reassurance patrol”.
In 2010 HMIC asked this question
In its report ‘Demanding Times’ (2011) only 12% “visible” and “available”
Not just a question of where are they or when are they on? But what are they doing?
The debate about the value of police patrol goes back a long way in the UK and US but in recent times the importance of understanding the effectiveness of any patrol work has taken on much more significance than just its impact upon crime IT IS ALSO ABOUT the day to day management decisions to deploy a valuable, finite and currently dwindling resource.
background to this in a UK context probably started to develop in its modern form with the publication of Tackling Patrol Effectively in 1996 by the Audit Commission, which made a number of recommended management and tactical elements for patrol work and possibly for the first time started to link patrol deployment with cost and effectiveness.
In 2001 a limited study of almost 400 police officers completing diaries undertaken by the Home Office and PA consulting revealed that only 50% of a patrol officers time was spent on the streets and only 17% on what was described as “reassurance patrol” although want that consisted of is unknown (we do not know if that was directed or random).
Since then we had years of Activity Based Costing surveys which sought to capture how officers spent their time and the results of which were linked to the police funding formula for forces.
More recently there has been a focus upon matching police resource to demand and HMIC have asked the question – ‘Where are the police?’ In its most recent report ‘Demanding Times’ it states that on average only 12% of police officers and community support officers are visible and available. The question is available to do what?
ACPO has argued that the HMIC study puts great emphasis on inputs (numbers of people) and very little on outputs or outcomes. It is not just a question of when they are on duty or even where they are but what they are doing?

3. Police patrol the evidence
Visible Policing is linked to public confidence.
Deterrence theory of patrol now proved
‘clear, if modest, general deterrent effects of substantial increases in police presence in crime hot spots … [it is time for] criminologists to stop saying “there is no evidence” that police patrol can affect crime’
(Sherman and Weisburd, 1995)
Philadelphia Foot Patrol experiment 2009
Bratton – “cops on the dots”
What we do know is that Police Patrol does have an impact. A study of all the literature on Reassuring the public by Dalgleish and Myhill (2004) using the Maryland Scientific Methods Scale showed that increased levels of foot patrol in an area is directly linked with increases in public confidence.
We also now know that the deterrence effect of targeted policing in hot spots works, thanks to the work of Professor Sherman and many present at this conference. And whilst we know that the impact of an officers presence is limited by time, we know thanks to Chris Kopers work (on the Minneapolis hot spots patrol data) that there is a strong relationship between the length of the police patrol presence and the amount of time that the hot spot is free of crime and incidents afterwards.
We also now know (through his Koper curve) that the optimum length of patrol presence is 15minutes.
(It has been great to meet Professor Jerry Ratcliffe this week) his work with Temple University on the Philadelphia foot patrol experiment (that we heard about this morning?) where targeted patrol in violent crime hot spots can significantly reduce violent crime levels.
It is therefore really important to get the police in the right place and whilst police chiefs all over the world attempt to do what the former LAPD Commisioner Bratton calls putting ‘the cops on the dots’ it is not necessarily measured. Also how do you know if the cops are actually on the dots?

4. Police patrol the evidence
Albert J Reiss Jr
Systematic Social Observation (SSO)
Police field research in 1960/70’s
One of the early attempts to answer questions about how police work is conducted was undertaken by Albert J Reiss Jr using a social science method called Systematic Social Observation (SSO). SSO was developed to guide field research into police patrol in the 1960’s and 70’s in the US.
In this case trained observers accompanied police officers on patrol and take notes on what they do during their tour of duty. Reiss began with the premise that” observation is an integral part of any science”.

5. How Systematic Social Observation is done.
“. . .it includes selection of problems for investigation, preliminary investigation by direct observation (optional), definition of the universe to be observed, sampling for observation, development of instruments to collect and record observations systematically, provision for measuring error, pre-testing instruments, organization for direct field observations, processing observations,and quantitative analysis”*
*Reiss, “Systematic Observation of Natural Social Phenomena,”
SSO involves techniques that parallel those in other Social Scientific research methods. And the ability to generalize from an observation, like other research methods, depends just as much upon the sample design.

6. How Systematic Social Observation is done.
“Where” – Geographically defined study areas.
The “When” – specific tours of duty
The “What” – police and citizen behaviours
The “Who” – officers in the beats at selected times.
In terms of recent use of SSO such as in Mastrofski and Parks work on Policing Neighbourhoods in Indiana and Florida (in the 1990’s) the key questions were who, what when and where. The where was a set of geographically defined police beats the ‘who’ being patrol officers. The ‘when’ question was specific shifts or tours of duty. Whilst the ‘what’ were police activities and encounters. Common data elements for the activities included amount of time spent in the location, presence of other officers, contact with supervision and the nature of the problem dealt with.

7. A systematic study of Police Patrol using new technology - method
Study in GMP
Utilise ARLS, xReplay and FOXi
The proposal here for this new research would be to utilise SSO for a new study in Manchester exploring the impact of police patrol and general deterrence theory on crime hotspots, where instead of utilising fieldworkers the intention would be to use new technology to observe and measure police behaviour and its impact.
The technology would be ARLS and software to interrogate it. GMP first started using Automatic Resource Location (Resource means Vehicles & Individual officers) in our control room, showing dispatchers where their resources were on the control room mapping display and providing them with information to dispatch the closest, most appropriate resource(s) to manage an incident. 
This was used for day to day dispatch and also for major events such as the policing of the political party conferences in Operation Protector. 
While this information improved the real-time operational management of the force, all of the information on resource movements was also logged providing a rich data store of to understand where resources had been across the force. 
This information can be selected and replayed using a replay tool, X Replay, allowing historic events to be reproduced and stepped through on an equivalent of a control room screen. 
We worked with the company Northgate who produced this product to also create intranet reporting, called FOxi, which allowed us to define an area on the screen and then review which resources had entered this area and how long they had spent in it. 
This can be simply retrieved and then exported to Microsoft Excel for further manipulation and analysis.
The proposed work is to link this understanding of resource movements to both target activity to address high priority areas  but also to understand the impact that active patrolling has on crime in that area by review of the patrol activity that actually took place and also any change in criminal behaviour in that area.
Northgate have offered their support to help this research project.

8. A systematic study of Police Patrol using new technology - method
“Where” – Set of Police beats/Priority neighbourhoods
Volume of crime
Calls for service
Sociodemographic data
“When” –Specific tours of duty
“What” specific tasked or directed patrol
“Who” Police officers and PCSO’s on patrol.
The analysis that I propose would involve identifying a set of police beats or priority neighbourhoods based upon long term crime hotspots and monitor over a period of months the activity of police officers and community support officers tasked to patrol those locations, taking regular snapshots during tours of duty. The data set could be a major breakthrough in analysing police patrol behaviour as the next step on from the work of Albert J Reiss Jr.

9. A systematic study of Police Patrol using new technology – outcomes?
Analysis of patrols tasked to patrol crime hotspots and priority neighbourhoods.
Revealing:
Where police patrol?
Length of time?
Any relationship with crimes/incidents?
Any crime reduction?
Cost effectiveness?
Limitations?
These snapshots should show where the police cluster which may or may not be near to hot spots of crime, how far they are from incidents, and how close they are to their directed patrol assignments.
In terms of specific directed patrols it would reveal the length of time that police officers patrol and would also help to understand the deterrence effect of those patrols by looking at the relationship between patrol presence and crime and incident data. The results of such a study would move us on significantly from the current measures of availability and visibility and would have great value in ensuring VFM deployments in the current age of austerity.
I recognise at this early stage that there would be limitations in the data as it would not show (as a pure SSO experiment would) exactly what those police resources are doing but the theoretical premise of general deterrence theory only requires that officers be visible in uniform or marked patrol cars.
What I would like to do now is to show you loosely how this may happen taking an as example a directed patrol plan to tackle a burglary spike in Rochdale in Manchester that occurred last month.

10. A systematic study of Police Patrol using new technology
The Rochdale Division have recently run Operation Ulysess which was a 2 week Burglary operation between 24/05/11 – 05/06/11. It ran each day between 1900hrs -0200hrs.
The following data was taken from the 01/06/ hrs hrs,
This is a snapshot taken from the divisions electronic briefing site from that afternoon which was given to the afternoon response officers.

11. A systematic study of Police Patrol using new technology
The map shows one of the 3 hotspot beats where response officers should concentrate their patrols between calls for service. The map illustrates burglaries that had taken place over the previous 4 weeks.

12. A systematic study of Police Patrol using new technology
This map shows the other two areas and burglaries and car crime that has occurred over the previous 4 weeks.

13. A systematic study of Police Patrol using new technology
The briefing information also provides specific information about modus operandi and suspected burglars who live within the area and have committed offences there.

14. A systematic study of Police Patrol using new technology
Tonight’s focus
OLDHAM ROAD ROCHDALE
(MARKED TO WORK THIS ROAD THROUGHOUT TOUR-BELIVED STOLEN AUDI AND OTHER CARS TRAVELLING THIS ROUTE)
TOWN HEAD, ROCHDALE, P1A beat
(Burglary hotspot)
Descriptions from 2 breaks on this area:
3) KIRKHOLT AND KINGSWAY, ROCDALE, P2H & F beat
In addition to the Electronic briefing a tasking document was produced for specific directed patrols who were specifically allocated to the operation. These included traffic and Neighbourhood officers.
86 Rugby Road
Looking For "Jack Jones" Before Walking Off Towards Yorkshire Street.
She Described The Male As Years Old, About 5'4" Height, With A Slim
Wiry Build. Not Further Described.
This Male May Or May Not Be Connected To The Incident But Is Included For
Information Purposes.
XX Stanley St (27th) - P1A4
White Male, Slim Build, Late Teens, Approx 5'6" Tall, Dark Black Hair, Possibly Wearing A Black Ed Hardy T-Shirt And Dark Coloured Jeans. Nfd Sus. No forensics

15. A systematic study of Police Patrol using new technology
Start Date/time:
01/06/ :00:00
End Date/time:
02/06/ :00:00
The policing activity for the evening was run through FOXi and x Replay with the results you can see here
The list on the slide shows the Resources whose radios entered the P1 A beat between 1900hrs – 0200hrs. This list also identifies the individual officers but for the purpose of this exercise, collar numbers have been removed. As can be seen the officers spent only a total a total of 11 minutes in that hotspot area during the whole 7 hours.
This is the same area that showed all the burglaries in the EBS slide.
Traffic officer spent 1 minute, 1 sec
Response officers (inc Inspector) a total of 4 minutes, 3 sec
Whilst one NPT (Neighbourhood) Sgt shows 5 minutes , 56 secs,
Type In
Out
Duration
Response
01/06/ :42
01/06/ :43
00:01:04
01/06/ :44
00:00:57
Sergeant (NPT)
01/06/ :32
01/06/ :36
00:04:01
01/06/ :38
01/06/ :40
00:01:55
Traffic
02/06/ :36
02/06/ :37
00:01:01
Inspector
00:02:02
Total Time
0:11:00

16. A systematic study of Police Patrol using new technology
However, this map shows that the officer was more than likely not in the area but just shown their as a result of an inaccurate GPS signal. (see blue lines. Orange marker in the bottom right shows officer)
If you remove the Sgts time, the amount of time that this hotspot area was meaningfully patrolled totals 4 mins 4 sec, out of a possible 8 hours.
No one individual officer spent more than 2 minutes in the area

17. A systematic study of Police Patrol using new technology
The second hotspot area P2 F beat fared better in terms of resource deployment.
A total of 5 hours, 8 minutes and 51 secs was spent in this area
The traffic patrol spent an approximate total of 1 hour 50 minutes in the area
However whilst some resources spent more time than other patrolling the area on average each resource spent only 9 minutes, 14 secs within the area which is significantly less than Kopers optimal 15 mins to achieve the maximum deterrent effect.

18. A systematic study of Police Patrol using new technology
But we can map the actual patrol undertaken.
What we can do is map the actual patrol route taken.
This table and map shows 3 PCSOs entering the area and where they patrolled. The route is taken from Xreplay and manually overlaid onto the FOXi map. From the route trace it would appear that the PCSOs patrolled together.
What I have not had the time to do is analyse whether these patrol routes took in the locations of recent burglaries or offenders addresses.
The resource lists can be filtered to look at individual Units or officers. However, it will not show their route within the identified areas. This can only be achieved by using Xreply, a problem is that this can be very time consuming as the trace can only be carried out up to 16 x normal speed. Traces are best used for a small number of officers at a time. I will be working with Northgate to see if we can overcome this limitation.
PCSO
01/06/ :43
01/06/ :04
00:20:58
01/06/ :42
00:21:02
01/06/ :41
00:23:09

19. A systematic study of Police Patrol using new technology
These are the results of the operation from the areas examined
This slide claims the overall results of Operation Ulysses over its lifespan. As can be seen an overall success is being claimed. I do not know what other police tactics were deployed during this 159 day period and if they were different from the targeted patrol tactic.
Interestingly the two beats I have shown you saw rises in burglary compared with the same period last year and the period before the operation.

20. A systematic study of Police Patrol using new technology
“I’m asking that more researchers begin to work with us and among us in the real-world laboratories of our departments and cities to help us prove or disprove the beliefs and practices that I, as a practitioner, and most of my colleagues deeply believe, espouse, and practice.”
Bill Bratton former Commissioner NYPD/LAPD