Melanie Bates: Being Strategic about Fighting Crime

Before the city invests in the addition of more police officers to the city streets, citizens deserve to know what effect the additional 60 that were added in the last budget are having.

• What measurable goals were set by City Council to determine the success of the increase in force?
• Who is collecting data on the measures and studying the results?
  
• Is an additional increase in force warranted based on data?

Council members are touting that preliminary raw data from 2007 compared to 2006 indicates that crime is dropping in Cincinnati. Have they been provided with the detail as to why that is occurring? Have career criminals moved out of the area, or are they "taking up shop" elsewhere in the county while the heat is on?

A practical and focused approach to fighting crime is crime mapping, and this is a strategy that Cincinnati needs to examine seriously. Crime mapping is used to fight crime by identifying crime patterns and trends and identify hot spots. A small percentage of people are criminals; crime mapping would enable law enforcement to strategically target those who are engaged in criminal activities and where they offend.



Adding more police officers to the Cincinnat streets seems like a worthy goal. However with the reality of an extremely tight budget, using research-based initiatives such as crime-mapping would be a way to maximize the effectiveness of law enforcement.