A rash of burglaries in Petaluma over the past several months have rankled residents and, at times, been a challenge for a police department strained by staffing shortages.
Besides warning people to make sure doors and windows get locked and take other security measures, the police found themselves reacting to crimes that had already occurred. If only they could figure out when the burglars were going to strike next. And where.
Turns out, they pretty much can. And did.
Using software specially designed to find and analyze patterns of crime, police were able to identify neighborhoods in the city where burglaries were likely to happen next -and at what time of day they were likely to occur.
As a result, says Petaluma police Lt. Ken Savano, the number of burglaries dropped.
“Although the patrols did not result in an arrest, we feel they impacted the trend,” Savano said.
The department hopes that trend will continue now that they are hiring a full-time crime analyst, contracting with Colorado-based BAIR Analytics, which already provides software and other services to the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office and the Santa Rosa Police Department. Last week, the Petaluma City Council approved the department’s request to add the $111,000-per-year position, using funds from casino impact fees, asset seizure proceeds and state grants that help local jurisdictions track low-level offenders as part of the recent prison realignment.
In gauging how the program would work in the city, Petaluma police used the recent break-ins of homes and cars as a test case, giving the data to the analysts to see if they could find patterns.
They would then focus patrols on areas and at times that the analysis suggested would be hit next.
No arrests were made as a direct result of the analysis, but the data did reveal that burglaries went down when known suspects were taken into custody. Savano said they wouldn’t have seen this trend otherwise.
“While in custody the burglaries went down,” Savano said. “This is yet another example of the value and the power of the analysis of the data.”
It’s allowed police to pay closer attention to crimes that may not even appear related, because they will be able to run an almost endless amount of data searches.
“We are paying attention to new offenders to try and link them to any of the patterns that we have seen,” he said. “This is a constant effort and the analysis portion will make us even more effective in the future.”
Until this program, police have had to base a lot of their understanding of crime patterns on hunches. Now, Savano says, they’ll be able to see what the data is really telling them.
“We’ll have someone with eyes on the activity at all times and be able to connect the dots and draw these connections and provide intelligence and data that we can use,” he said.
The data is culled from information inputted by officers when they take police reports.
The analyst will be able to take the raw data and generate any number of reports, including setting up special searches called “virtual fences.” In those programs, data is entered for specific areas, which means anything that happens within the borders defined by the program will go into the analysis.
While Petaluma has had access to data generated by the sheriff’s office, police haven’t been able to run their own specific internal searches. Once the new analyst is on board, they’ll have that capability.
“Having our own analyst will allow us to set up our own queries, our own reports, and do our own analysis,” Savano said. “Crime analysis and traffic safety analysis can help us in any area for any crime pattern or any traffic collision pattern. As crime trends change and criminals get more sophisticated, the power of a crime analyst is to catch those changes and bring them forward and put actionable and intelligent data in the hands of law enforcement officers.”
In addition, Savano said, the department will be able to publish data results and crime statistics online that will be available to residents.
“Homeowners and business owners can access that data online to empower themselves to be aware of what crime trends are occurring in their neighborhood,” he said. “That information, combined with the information that we would push out through social media as well as regular media outlets, will help raise awareness and empower our residents and business owners to help us be more vigilant to detect and deter crime from happening.”
(Contact Elizabeth M. Cosin at elizabeth.cosin@arguscourier.com)
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