One Week in Heron City: A Case Study (Case A)

• NCJ Number: 227664
• Author(s): Malcolm K. Sparrow, Ph.D.
• Date Published: September 2009
• Length: 18 pages
• Grant Number(s): 2011-IJ-CX-0025
• Agencies: NIJ
• Publication Type: Case Study

Annotation

This is a case study of a fictional city's (Heron City) efforts over the first 3 days of a particular week to facilitate community policing, CompStat (an organizational approach to crime-reduction tasks), problem-oriented policing, evidence-based policing, and intelligence-led policing.

Abstract

On Monday morning, the new police chief met with the mayor to discuss major issues facing the city. The mayor had three issues on his agenda: a highly publicized murder case in the city, car theft, and contingency preparation for pandemic flu. An overview of these issues is provided. Monday afternoon, the captain of the Community Policing Unit met with the chief to discuss the unit's deployment of resources and the surge in car thefts. Tuesday morning, the chief met with the department's head of the Patrol Division, who was brought into the department 5 years earlier to implement the CompStat process, which he directs. Issues discussed were the performance of precinct commanders, the approach to stalker calls, the nature of the Compstat process, and domestic-abuse cases. On Tuesday afternoon, the police chief met with the Director of the Intelligence-led Policing Unit to discuss the unit's involvement in the investigation of the highly publicized murder case, the link between intelligence-led and evidence-based policing, the compilation of suspect lists based on intelligence analysis, and the role of the unit in addressing the car-theft problem. Wednesday morning, the chief met with the department's Director of Information Technology Services to discuss an upgrade in the Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) system as a component of the car theft investigations. Transcriptions of the conversations are provided for all of these meetings.