This report addresses the features and effectiveness of the Shawnee Police Department's (Kansas) implementation of Data-Driven Approaches to Crime and Safety (DDACTS) in countering an increase in violent crime (primarily rapes and robberies) and a simultaneous surge in traffic-accident hot spots.
In 2011, the Shawnee Police Department (SPD) received funding from the U.S. Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) under the Smart Policing Initiative (SPI), which supported the implementation of the DDACTS model. This model is based in several guiding principles that highlight collaboration, data-driven decisionmaking, hot spots policing, and ongoing program assessment and dissemination of findings. It uses temporal and spatial analysis to identify areas in a jurisdiction that have disproportionate incidences of both traffic accidents and criminal activity. Increased police presence and high-visibility traffic enforcement are then deployed to those areas through a targeted enforcement strategy. SPI funding enabled a rigorous evaluation of the impact of the DDACTS model on crime and automobile crashes in Shawnee. The evaluation showed that DDACTS strategies produced statistically significant decreases in robberies (88 percent), commercial burglaries (84 percent), and vehicle crashes (24 percent). 4 tables and 3 figures