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Abstract
Despite advances in police practices, national case clearance rates of violent crimes are at an all-time low. One recent trend in American policing involves the rapid deployment of various technology-derived information sources to police prior to, during, and immediately after their initial response to crime incidents. Housed within centralized local-level police department units, these often called “real-time crime centers” (RTCCs) have capitalized on technological innovations to harness a host of information with the intention of improving the ability of police to manage crime. To date, however, very little is known about their ability to improve police practice or their impact on crime solvability. This study entails the first to assess the impact of RTCC technologies on violent crime incident case clearances and time-to-clearance using a multi-method, quasi-experimental design. Results indicated after controlling for neighborhood, crime type, and case-level characteristics, RTCC-assisted cases had 66% better odds of being cleared compared to a randomly drawn control sample of cases not receiving RTCC support. Further, after controlling for case-level characteristics, no significant differences were found between the clearance times of RTCC-assisted and control sample cases. Implications for police practice are discussed.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the work of the Miami Police Department personnel who developed and maintained the Miami Real-Time Crime Center of which this evaluation was the focus. They include Major Jose Rodriquez, Lt. Jaime Ramirez, Sgt. Alejandro Gutierrez, and Dr. Joelle Lee-Silcox. We also thank Dr. Ken Novak and Mr. Christopher Sun who provided guidance and support on the research project.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Funding
This research was supported by grant number 2019-WY-BX-0005 awarded by the USDOJ, Bureau of Justice Assistance. Points of view or opinions in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Appendix A. Total violent crime incidents and proportion receiving MRTCC support, 2019 to April 2022.
Notes
1 The Chicago Police Department maintains several decentralized RTCCs that are housed within community neighborhood areas as opposed to one centralized RTCC like that of Miami.
2 External CCTV evidence pertains to video footage acquired from surveillance cameras owned privately, located at residences or business establishments, rather than from a CCTV system owned and operated by the Miami Police Department.
3 The process of obtaining valuable private video footage from owners presents considerable challenges in terms of both time-sensitivity and the risk of data loss due to deletion or overwriting (Cook & Berglund, Citation2021). The MPD is actively collaborating with prominent business establishments to incorporate a unified intelligence platform (fusus.com) to mitigate these limitations.
4 The CSI unit is mandated by the Miami Police Department's departmental orders to respond to capital offenses and major crimes. All other incidents are left to the discretion of the patrol officers present at the scene and subsequently triaged by the CSI unit.
5 These scores are far below the area of concern for VIF where convention dictates that scores of 5 or greater suggest the presence of multi-collinearity among independent measures.
6 The costs linked to setting up a durable infrastructure for RTCCs vary among different departments, with larger police agencies typically necessitating an initial investment of more than a million dollars. To illustrate, the Norfolk Police Department encountered initial expenses totaling $1.96 million, alongside anticipated recurring costs of $661,500 for personnel and operational needs (Arintok, Citation2022).