Introduction to Crime Analysis Methods of Data Collection

1. Introduction to Crime AnalysisMethods of Data Collection Unit 3 Professor Hilton

2. Questions?

3. This Week Chain of Command Data integrity Correcting problems

4. What is Chain of Command? • A police agency is a paramilitary organization. • It is important to know who reports to whom. • For example, in my organization, the structure is as follows: • Chief • Deputy Chief • Lieutenant • Sergeant • Officer

5. What is Chain of Command? • Civilians fit into the chain-of-command, too, and it will be dependent upon your organization’s structure. • Supervisors • Subordinates to either civilian or sworn

6. Chain-of-Command • Issues that can (do) occur if you go around the chain-of-command: • Learn of your activities from someone else • Jump to someone else’s supervisor: • The supervisor should know if there are issues with one of his or her employees. • The employee may not respect what it is you are trying to convey. • No record of the conversation between you and someone else’s subordinate will be documented, thus adding to accountability issues down the line.

7. What is dirty data? • It is data that contains flaws that make it unreliable or unusable. • Examples include: • Misrepresenting problem addresses • Spatial analysis • Spatial statistics • Missing points • Search errors.

8. What are origination errors? • These are the most universal problems with data: • Empty fields • Typos • Punctuation • Abbreviations • Omissions • Aliases • Invalid entries

9. What are management errors? • These occur when a database cannot hold all of the data that is being entered into it (record truncations). • Also, when a field is not built large enough to capture all pertinent information (field truncations) • When data is changed from one type to another (field conversion) • Physical data corruption, such as when a hardcopy of a report is lost or destroyed.

10. What are retrieval errors? My biggest headache in the world. These occur when query or reporting functions are problematic.

11. How are these problems addressed? • Start with documenting the problems. • You want to be able to show what errors you are finding. • With those errors, see if you can identify the source. • Is it officer create? • Data entry problems? • Quality control at a supervisor level?

12. How are these problems addressed? • Develop ideas for solutions. • Problems are more readily addressed if you have ideas for solutions. • Try to suggest ideas that will have minimal extra work, if any, on any data collector’s part (officer). • (example, criminal damage to property reporting) • Even if your solution isn’t adopted, it gives those people working on fixing the problems something to work from. • (The best way to have one good idea is to have many ideas)

13. How are these problems addressed? • Present through the chain-of-command what the problem(s) is (are) and what you think will correct the problems. • Start with your chain before you start working through other chains. • You don’t want someone else to tell your boss that you are on a mission. You want your bosses support or your plan will not have buy-in. • Keep a record of your conversation with your boss.

14. How are these problems addressed? • Request a meeting through your supervisor that will include the primary division that you are having problems with. • Sometimes your supervisor will tell you to go ahead and work around him or her, and that is fine. • Include him or her in all emails and meeting notifications, anyway, to keep them in the loop.

15. Brainstorm When you have your meeting – present your information factually and without blame. Present your proposed solutions, but ask for other ideas, too. If costs are involved, make sure those costs have been evaluated.

16. Implementing Solutions • Buy-in needs to be established from the top down. • Every solution for data needs that fails most likely had little or no support from supervisory or administrative personnel. • You need to clearly demonstrate why your mission is important and how it will positively impact the agency. • Changes that require all personnel should be presented in some type of formal training session, such as in-service or roll call training.

17. Other things you can do to help your agency • Seek additional training that will help you work as a database administrator would • SQL training • Crystal Reports

18. What is SQL? • As long as your records management system is in a SQL database (somewhat of an industry standard) whatever information you are inputting, you should be able to retrieve through SQL scripts. • “SQL Training is a free website designed to help you learn SQL. Having at least basic SQL knowledge is a must for every IT professional, because databases are the backbone of every IT system. SQL Training tutorial will assist you with your SQL preparation, giving clear explanations of SQL concepts, accompanied by plenty of SQL examples.” • www.sqltraining.org

19. What is Crystal Reports? • Once you run your SQL query, this is a powerful report building tool that will help you display that data in a meaningful way, and on a repeated basis. • http://www.crystalreports.com/

20. What are some industry standard Records Management Systems? • New World Systems • http://www.newworldsystems.com/ • OSSI / Sungard • http://www.sungardps.com/products/ossipublicsafetysolution.aspx/ • Intergraph • http://www.intergraph.com/publicsafety/recordsmgt.aspx • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REklVxDjRDI • Visionair • http://www.visionair.com/products/recordsmanagementsoftware.aspx

21. Can an automated system have a positive impact on the community? • Automating the data process can streamline information flow to and from the public, too: • Coplogic

22. Questions?