It’s said that once is accident, twice is coincidence and three times is a pattern (analysts: feel free to disagree here!) and so it is with ‘predictive policing’ at the moment.

The first predictive policing thing to catch my eye recently was the work that Spencer Chainey from UCL’s Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science (twitter: @SpencerChainey) has recently undertaken with the Trafford BCU of GMP  exploring how predictive analysis on burglary could be built on and transferred to other crime problems.

Second were comments made by Met Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe at his recent London School of Economics lecture when he described the need for Met Police technology to ‘move from green screen to iPad’ and talked about having too many systems that produced lists of things that had been done, whilst wanting more agile, predictive, systems that helped him be proactive in reducing crime and catching criminals.

Third was a Policy Exchange (@policy_exchange) event in London yesterday ‘Pre-Crime and Predictive Policing’.

The well attended event, chaired by Professor Roger Graef and with NPIA Chief Exec Nick Gargan on the panel, featured a presentation from Captain Sean Malinowski, Commanding Officer of the LAPD’s Real-time Analysis and Critical Response Division and Professor George Tita, Dept of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California.

LAPD have been working on predictive policing for seven years and forecasting for four years. They define ‘predictive policing’ as:

‘a place based approach to crime analysis that utilises algorithm-driven crime forecasts to inform decision making to prevent crime’

The essence of the system is a number of geographic 500 foot x 500 foot ‘boxes’ into which crime is mapped and predicted. Capt Malinowski argues that their approach allows deployment and proactivity that is evidence based rather than gut feeling based, stating that ‘It’s forecasting rather than retrospective compstat based, so we’re not just chasing the dots’.

There has been a six months pilot carried out in LAPD’s Foothill Patrol Division and there are plans to roll out the approach to other divisions.

Key question: does it work? Well they are claiming that their results show that using predictive policing is 8% to 16% more effective than existing best practice. However there are a number of issues to be considered before you all rush off to LA to get your predictive policing fix.

The trial is only run Monday to Friday as there are no analysts available on the weekend, and it is run on three crime types only. There are also issues with telling whether officers actually are ‘in the box’ as they are supposed to be and when they are supposed to be, as LAPD cars aren’t GPS enabled. The number of crimes involved in the trial area are also relatively low. However, as both Capt Malinowski and Nick Gargan pointed out, there have been substantial reductions in crime levels over recent years and continuing big reductions year on year are less likely.

Capt Malinowski is of the opinion that cops have too much data thrown at them at pre patrol briefings and that they are overwhelmed by it all, so the LAPD are looking at how ‘just in time’ data push can be used more effectively and they have plans for an iPad app that will be geofenced to particular boxes (i.e. it will trigger and show when the officer – or at least the iPad – is ‘in the box’) and will produce predictive maps of that area for that shift.

The final and most crucial element of the whole trial is the same as with any initiative: officer buy-in. Bottom line: if you can’t convince the cops who are going to work the street and deliver results, all the predictive technology in the world isn’t going to make it happen for you. Culture rules.

Powered by augmented reality firm Kishino, people can use computer terminals now located in seven Tesco stores across the UK to scan a product code or Tesco Direct catalogue.

Tesco has said that it hopes the use of augmented reality on customers’ home desktops will reduce the number of returns, as people can get an idea of the size of the product before ordering online.

Tesco is pushing hard in terms of integrating technology into the shopping experience, using semantic tagging within its product searches online and trialling wifi in some of its stores.

You can go to Audi and look at a new car on their AR system

so it got me wondering about police uses for AR…

AR codes on your fixed penalty notice that, when viewed, show you a licence being ripped up, or someone walking to work in the rain. AR codes on ‘don’t drink and drive’ material that show an image of the cells or (being sensible for a moment) AR images of recovered stolen property that people can view over the web, thereby saving visits to the police station and huge amounts of staff time. The additional bonuses are that you are potentially increasing the number of people who view the items and, by definition, the chances of reuniting property and owner (and getting a detection in the process).

Worth a thought. Any innovators out there?

In some policing areas in the UK English is very much the second language and the variety of languages spoken is overwhelming. This poses real problems for all aspects of policing, as essentially, policing is about people and people are about effective communication. No communication = ineffective policing.

Over the last few years the blog creation process was essentially about something noteworthy catching my eye, me digesting it, coming to a view and writing about it. In short an old fashioned creative process that took a lot of time and only really allowed me to focus on a few key things.

However, the communications world and the technology that supports it, has changed considerably over the last couple of years and a faster, more nimble, more eclectic approach to publishing is now possible. Great iPad tools such as storify.com enable not only searching and clipping across platforms such as twitter, facebook, flickr, youtube and google, but Storify also enables web clipping from any online source and ‘drag and drop’ copy building.

Secondly, the information available to me and the way that I can access it has also changed considerably. Great apps such as Flipboard provide me with the content that I’m interested in, and deliver it to me in the way that I want and at a time that I want. This improved search funnel provides me with a much richer vein of relevant material to bring to you.

Thirdly, the way that I work has changed. One of the buzz words of the moment is ‘content curation‘ which, according to Google, is ‘essentially the organising and sharing (some might even say ‘repackaging’) of content in ways that are meaningful to a specific target audience’.

I am an active twitter user (follow me at twitter.com/openeyecomms) and every day I curate and share information that I think is relevant and meaningful to my followers and to this particular niche. The problem for me has been that most of my twitter followers aren’t subscribers to the blog and most of my blog subscribers (roughly 1,000 of you) don’t follow me on Twitter. therefore I have two largely separate audiences to service with information and, hands up, in building my twitter follower base (I like the immediacy and it’s one of the best real time search engines there is) I have neglected the blog because it takes considerably more time to do.

Fourth. Overwhelmingly most of you who subscribe to my blog do so by email. In the past this has meant that I have had to write with email in mind and largely without being able to include so much of the really great multimedia web based content that is available to me.

Fifth. Most forces now have desktop web access rolled out to all staff. In the past this wasn’t the case. So the capability of you the reader has changed too.

Taking all the points together, I have come to the conclusion that maintaing the current way of doing things is not really sustainable anymore.

If I want to retain your interest and support, and I do! (an increasingly difficult task in a world of multiple channels and limited time) then I am going to have to change the game and step up the pace.

What all this is leading up to is a new style of Open Eye Blog that brings with it a change of content material (more video, twitter clips, images)  drawn from across all the sources and more frequently updated. More of a focus on providing multimedia information and less of a focus on what works in an email delivery environment.
Changing things is a big risk. I will stay focused on the issues and style of stories that you have found relevant and useful over the last five years or so and I hope that you will stay with me.

Let me know if you have (or foresee problems) with the delivery of the new style blog updates to you. Remember: if you can’t get it at work because of internet access issues, you can always sign up at home!

As always, it would be great to hear your views and feedback. Message me on twitter.com/openeyecomms or email me mike@openeyecommunications.com (and don’t forget to pass this on to someone you think may find the blog useful).

Oh, one last thing. Don’t forget that toplical and relevant Government and agency reports are still regularly uploaded to the Open Eye Communications website. Go check them out.

Queensland Police: Disaster management and social media case study

Home Office Report: Tackling organised crime through a partnership approach at the local level

Local to Global: reducing the risk from Organised Crime (Home Office Organised Crime strategy)

Baroness Newlove: ‘Safe and active communities’ progress report update

HMIC Report – ‘Adapting to Austerity’

They can all be found here