Patrol Challenges
Patrol – it’s the backbone of every department. But today’s law enforcement leaders are under budget and community accountability pressures and need precision-policing tools that maximize their resource efficiency.
With ShotSpotter Connect, command staff has a tool that places patrol resources in locations at the highest risk for crime each shift, gives better visibility into where and how long officers are patrolling, and proactively mitigates potential bias in its modeling and patrol recommendations.
Patrol Management Software for Better Resource Deployment Decision-Making
ShotSpotter’s patrol management software uses artificial intelligence-driven analysis to help strategically plan directed patrols that feature consistent tactics designed to maximize crime deterrence with minimal harm to the community.
Directed Patrols Prevent Crime
Research shows that high visibility patrols are an effective deterrent to crime. Agencies receive precise locations to patrol based on AI that is superior to traditional hot spot analysis.
- Boxes represent a precise area (250 meters by 250 meters) for patrol and are color coded by crime type.
- When officers arrive into a box, the directed patrol officially begins and a timer starts so that the area is not over or under patrolled.
- Authorized users such as crime analysts can add or suppress a directed patrol based on late-breaking information.
- The directed patrols can be viewed on an MDT, smartphone, desktop, or printed out.
- ShotSpotter Connect uses historical and continuously updated ShotSpotter gunfire data to create enhanced gunfire forecasts since the community typically reports only 20% of gunfire.
Suggested Tactics for Optimal Outcomes
Data-driven patrol plans put your officers in the right place at the right time while a list of low-touch interventions promote community trust
- As officers enter a directed patrol area, they are presented with approved non-enforcement oriented tactics to use during the patrol.
- The system tracks officer time spent in directed patrol areas and tactics used.
- Tactics are configurable and agencies are encouraged to review their tactics with the community.
Visibility into Patrol Activities
The Shift Report shows where officers were and what they were doing over time.
The Tactic Report measures and evaluates what tactics officers are using to deter crime.
The Officer Report shows how time was spent on each tactic to hold officers accountable.
The Crime Type Report displays average minutes spent on directed patrols by officers for each crime type.
Community First: Mitigating Bias and Over-Policing
ShotSpotter’s unique Community First approach has three protections in place to help establish impartiality when determining where patrols are conducted. First, the system intelligently meters out where patrol assignments occur and limits their duration to reduce instances of over-policing. Second, the system ensures the algorithms that drive patrol recommendations use objective, non-crime data that mitigates potential bias. Third, the system does not use any personally identifiable information to determine where patrols should be assigned.
Intelligent Patrol
Metering
Use Objective, Non-Crime Data
No Personally Identifiable Info
How ShotSpotter Connect Works
ShotSpotter Connect Frequently Asked Questions
How can ShotSpotter® Connect™ benefit a police department and community?
Today’s law enforcement executives are under budget and community accountability pressures and need precision-policing tools to maximize their resource efficiency and promote more positive community engagement. ShotSpotter Connect provides daily AI-driven risk assessments to direct patrol and task force units in a more precise and impactful way to deter crime, improve community engagement and hold their officers accountable. Specifically, Connect:
- Detects areas at highest risk for crime on a shift-by-shift and beat-by-beat basis
- Protects the community by helping law enforcement know the right place and time to patrol to deter crime and in a way that minimizes bias and over-policing
- Connects officer tactics and dosage to their crime impact so police can better measure and optimize their patrol strategies
What crime types does it forecast?
Connect does not model misdemeanor or nuisance crimes that are more susceptible to enforcement bias. Specifically, it models the major crimes that have an outsized impact on the community:
- Part 1 Crimes: Gunfire, homicide, aggravated assault/battery, robbery, burglary, motor vehicle theft, and theft
- Within 800 meters of the provided location
- A few Part 2 crimes such as simple assault and destruction/damage/vandalism
Can it track only crime types that are of interest to an agency?
- Yes, crime forecasts can be configured based on those crimes of interest to a police department. For larger agencies, each district or special enforcement unit may have their own crime type priorities and that can be easily accommodated.
- A separate risk model is created for each crime type enabling the technology to have a unique configuration for each agency and their jurisdictions that use it
- However Connect will not model crimes that are largely susceptible to enforcement bias
What data feeds into the crime risk models?
- Connect uses historical ShotSpotter detected gunfire incidents, historical crime incidents, seasonality, time of day, day of week, census data, upcoming events, and environmental features (e.g., density of bars, density of vacant parcels, etc.).
- ShotSpotter Connect does not include any race or educational data
- ShotSpotter Connect does not use any personally identifiable information about specific residents, such as whether a neighborhood has a certain number of parolees or sex offenders or its demographics. It is focused on creating risk assessments for where and when crimes will occur, not who will commit them.
What kind of protections does Connect have to minimize bias or discrimination?
ShotSpotter seeks to reduce crime with its solutions, but that capability alone is not enough to make a public safety solution of benefit to a community. The product must provide more benefit than harm. The company has incorporated technology and policy protections to mitigate bias and discrimination yet still yield a significant public safety benefit. These protections include:
- We use crime data that is least susceptible to bias – Our models only use data for crime types that are typically called in from the community and not driven by police presence. We exclude misdemeanor and nuisance crimes that can create negative feedback loops with enforcement bias. These loops can occur in other modeling approaches when police presence in an area can repeatedly return police to the same area.
- We supplement crime data modeling with non-crime data and exclude people data – We also work to reduce bias by supplementing reported data with multiple sources of relevant data from independent, open sources. Typical examples include seasonality, time of month, day of week, time of day, holidays, upcoming events, weather, and locations of liquor establishments.
- We maximize the reduction of harm – We do not make predictions about the actions of people – that means no arrests, social media, or personal data is used. We limit the time an officer patrols and the occurrence of patrol assignments in the same location to prevent over-patrolling
- We prioritize oversight and accountability – We log data input used and outputs generated by each model. We also log patrol activities including time, place and tactics used.
- We are proactively transparent – We are committed to being transparent about how our system works and use third parties to provide objective assessments. We proactively, self-volunteered for an audit by New York Law School’s Policing Project, which is in progress. We are adopting their recommendations to strengthen and enhance transparency and community protections.
