{"id":327731,"date":"2020-04-07T19:59:19","date_gmt":"2020-04-08T02:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=arcnews&#038;p=327731"},"modified":"2022-06-02T16:23:40","modified_gmt":"2022-06-02T23:23:40","slug":"smart-policing-gets-a-boost-from-enterprise-gis","status":"publish","type":"arcnews","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/arcnews\/smart-policing-gets-a-boost-from-enterprise-gis","title":{"rendered":"Smart Policing Gets a Boost from Enterprise GIS"},"author":5752,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","castos_file_data":"","podmotor_file_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10432,10412,211],"tags":[178702,424992,205632,339372,1811],"arcnews_issues":[430091],"class_list":["post-327731","arcnews","type-arcnews","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arcgis-enterprise","category-arcgis-pro","category-public-safety","tag-analysis","tag-arcgis-dashboards","tag-arcgis-insights","tag-crime","tag-story-maps","arcnews_issues-spring-2020","arcnews_sections-your-work"],"acf":{"short_description":"The police department in St. Petersburg, Florida, has modernized and improved its policing methods using the ArcGIS platform.","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">St. Petersburg, Florida, Modernizes and Improves Policing Methods with ArcGIS Technology<\/h2>\r\nFor years, the police department in St. Petersburg, Florida, relied on paper and spreadsheets to fight crime.\r\n\r\n\u201cEverything was text based,\u201d said Frank Ullven, a systems analyst on the St. Petersburg Police Department\u2019s Information and Technology Services (ITS) team. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have any maps. It was all street names and addresses.\u201d\r\n\r\nUllven remembers how police officers in the Gulf Coast community had to read addresses in columns to figure out where incidents were occurring. Matching a crime to an address was difficult without visual representation, especially when new streets were added to the community or street names got changed."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":327741,"image_position":"right","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"\u201cOfficers don\u2019t have to memorize all that, like this used to be 2nd Street South, but now it\u2019s University Way South,\u201d said Ullven.\r\n\r\nThe police department\u2019s ITS team, which includes a GIS specialist, a systems analyst, and a data specialist, along with a team of five analysts in the Intelligence-Led Policing (ILP) unit, set out to fix this. Together, the group administers the ArcGIS platform and creates the maps and dashboards used by more than 575 officers, detectives, and supervisors at the St. Petersburg Police Department. More specifically, the ITS unit manages the police department\u2019s ArcGIS Enterprise portal, while the ILP unit is a data-driven center that provides support to tactical, strategic, and operational initiatives.\r\n\r\nAccording to Dr. Richard Ferner, Jr., the ILP unit supervisor, several department stakeholders, including the chief of police and command staff, were overwhelmed by the sheer volume of text-based information available about crime. The police department did implement older types of geospatial technology, but they lacked the flexibility needed to support custom, user-friendly visualizations.\r\n\r\n\u201cThose solutions did not promote robust and relevant visualizations,\u201d said Ferner. \u201cUsers had little incentive to utilize those tools when deliberating on a course of action, such as proactive patrol assignments or developing leads in identifying suspects.\u201d This made it difficult for staff and supervisors to gain the meaningful insight they need to make decisions and do their jobs effectively.\r\n\r\nFive years ago, the arrival of a new police chief, Anthony Holloway, marked the St. Petersburg Police Department\u2019s transition to a data-driven organization. Holloway advocated adopting a management model called CompStat, or computer statistics, a policing method that uses timely and accurate information to combat crime efficiently and improve police accountability.\r\n\r\nAt the time, the ITS team realized it needed to move away from a static environment and deliver content in an interactive manner.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe minute I heard Esri developed an enterprise solution that could allow the user community to interact with the content we publish, I knew, unequivocally, that was the solution we needed,\u201d said Ferner.\r\n\r\nIn 2016, the department implemented ArcGIS Enterprise 10.5 and ArcGIS Pro and has kept pace with each upgrade, steadily adding products such as ArcGIS Insights and ArcGIS Dashboards."},{"acf_fc_layout":"quote","image":"","text":"Canvassing a neighborhood no longer requires a six-foot-long paper map and tons of hard-to-decipher markings.","author_name":"Kevin Christy","author_profession_organization":"GIS Specialist, St. Petersburg Police Department"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"ArcGIS Enterprise was key in supporting the department\u2019s need for a secure, behind-the-firewall enterprise platform that powered data management and analysis, especially in the context of law enforcement data.\r\n\r\n\u201cThere\u2019s a level of comfort in knowing that it\u2019s our data on our in-house system and that it\u2019s not located somewhere that we don\u2019t have control over who sees it or what\u2019s being accessed,\u201d said Ullven.\r\n\r\nBefore implementing ArcGIS Enterprise, analysts at the St. Petersburg Police Department created static content that was distributed through email and posted to a file sharing system and Microsoft SharePoint. Disparate tables, charts, and graphs did not tell the whole story, and there was no way to customize dashboards to visualize data and come up with a common operating picture.\r\n\r\nSince moving to the ArcGIS platform, however, analysts have been able to create dashboards and story maps that focus specifically on what each unit needs to know. That way, people don\u2019t get overwhelmed with irrelevant information.\r\n\r\n\u201cNow that we\u2019ve evolved onto the Esri platform, we can carve out highly nuanced, relevant data that matters and answers questions,\u201d said Ferner. \u201cIt helps the staff and supervisors carve out a strategy and set of tactics for immediate application.\u201d\r\n\r\nThese days, data is refreshed 45 minutes before each shift, which allows watch commanders to detect emerging crime trends and evaluate initiatives on the go. Analysts use the Crime Analysis configuration in ArcGIS Pro along with ArcGIS Insights to analyze data and then share interactive content via story maps and dashboards made with ArcGIS Enterprise.\r\n\r\n\u201cCanvassing a neighborhood no longer requires a six-foot-long paper map and tons of hard-to-decipher markings,\u201d said Kevin Christy, the ITS team\u2019s GIS specialist.\r\n\r\nInstead, an app created using Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS made the process more targeted and efficient by allowing detectives to live track the addresses they visit. And Survey123 for ArcGIS enhanced the department\u2019s Eagle Eye program, a public camera registration website, by making it easier to geocode addresses and maintain an up-to-date camera locator app.\r\n\r\nIn one example, the command team was looking for information about parking meters being destroyed in downtown St. Petersburg. Analysts pulled crime data for areas around parking meters, used ArcGIS Pro to predict a crime risk area, and published this data on a map within ArcGIS Enterprise. Staff were then able to use the prediction to plan operations."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":327751,"image_position":"left","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"The data to make the prediction was acquired from the records management system, where detailed accounts of crime around each parking meter location were documented. Analysts then geocoded each parking meter location in ArcGIS Pro and subsequently published the content as a hosted feature layer in ArcGIS Enterprise.\r\n\r\nArmed with this analysis, police officers patrolled the risk area identified in the prediction and encountered the suspects, who were arrested as they prepared to commit more crimes. Prior to implementing this vast array of ArcGIS technology, doing this kind of analysis and making such a prediction were not possible.\r\n\r\nNow, more officers are requesting specific dashboards from the ILP and ITS units. They want to see what ArcGIS technology can do, and when they get a tour of it, their eyes light up, according to Christy.\r\n\r\n\u201cI see their wheels turning,\u201d he said. \u201cThe big thing is tailoring it for exactly what the end user wants. Whether it\u2019s \u2018I want these metrics in my dashboards\u2019 or \u2018I want these colors\u2019 or \u2018I want an app that does x, y, z,\u2019 it\u2019s all about giving them what they want. If they don\u2019t get exactly what they want, they\u2019re less likely to use it.\u201d\r\n\r\nFerner also noted that having a growing number of younger police officers has contributed to a critical mass of users in the department.\r\n\r\n\u201cOne of our biggest challenges was the cultural dynamic in giving them access to these products and assigning accountability to the metrics,\u201d he said. \u201cThe workforce here is also becoming younger, and we\u2019ve discovered that they are more adept with using different technologies. Even if we had a product 10 years ago that is as sophisticated as this one is today, I don\u2019t think the staff then would have been so accepting of these technologies.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe move from static maps and data that officers couldn\u2019t fully engage with to a more <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/arcgis\/products\/mapping\/overview\">interactive mapping platform<\/a> has transformed the department.\r\n\r\n\u201cEsri allows officers to have a customized product that really presents them with geospatial data that prompts questions,\u201d said Christy. \u201cThey can look at the data, they can ask questions, and now they are getting more insights than they had in the past. It\u2019s really helping to drive better policing.\u201d"}],"references":null},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.9 (Yoast SEO v25.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Smart Policing Gets a Boost from Enterprise GIS | ArcNews<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The police department in St. Petersburg, Florida, has modernized and improved its policing methods using the ArcGIS platform.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/arcnews\/smart-policing-gets-a-boost-from-enterprise-gis\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Smart Policing Gets a Boost from Enterprise GIS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The police department in St. 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