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Measuring the Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Police Proactivity

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Abstract

Objectives

To measure where officers engage in proactive, self-initiated activities, how much time they spend being proactive, and whether their proactive activities coincide with crime patterns.

Methods

This study uses Andresen’s Spatial Point Pattern Test to compare the spatial similarity between police proactivity and crime, as well as regression modeling to explore the relationship between proactivity and crime and the time spent on proactivity and crime.

Results

In the jurisdiction examined, high levels of proactivity are noted. This proactive activity is more likely to occur in places where crime is most concentrated. Additionally, the number of proactive calls and the proactive time spent per crime-and-disorder call remain high and stable across spatial scales. For each crime call received at a street block, police initiated 0.7 proactive activities and spent approximately 28 min carrying out proactive works.

Conclusions

This study develops a way of measuring proactive activity by patrol officers using calls for service data. We find that not only do officers in this jurisdiction exhibit higher levels of proactivity to prevent crime (compared to reacting to crime), but they also do so in targeted, micro-place ways. Agencies may consider using similar techniques to gauge the levels of proactivity in their agencies if proactive activity is a goal.

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Notes

  1. The city’s population estimate is 853,328 based on 2014 census information, and is predominantly white, with blacks representing about a third of the population, and other racial and ethnic groups accounting for only small shares. The census shows that 17.3 % of the city’s population live below the poverty line, and the city has high rates of crime compared to the average of other cities with similar populations. Visit http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/12/1235000.html for more information.

  2. The average time spent on each police-initiated case with arrest is 112 min, while the average time for police-initiated cases in our final sample is 38 min.

  3. After excluding events from our analysis, we analyzed the excluded events. Traffic-related events accounted for over 30 % of the data excluded from the analysis, followed by events labeled as “administrative issues” (17 %). Both of these categories were overrepresented in the excluded data compared to the original data. This is likely due to traffic-related cases lacking address information (60 % of excluded cases were traffic-related). Further, nearly all administrative cases (with the exception of those marked “special assignment”) were excluded as they could not be considered either crime or proactivity. Finally, the non-crime category was also overrepresented in the excluded data for the same reason. All of the other categories of events were underrepresented in the excluded data.

  4. In 2013, the city of Jacksonville had 174 census tracts, 490 block groups, 14,904 census blocks, and 54,832 street segments.

  5. The “dissemination area” is a small area composed of one or more neighboring dissemination blocks, with a population of 400–700 persons. All of Canada is divided into dissemination areas, which might be compared with census-block groups in the United States.

  6. Since the data were originally recorded at the hundred-block level, no spatial join process and thus no shapefile at the hundred-block level are required for the temporal OLS regression analysis. On the other hand, Weisburd et al. (2004) created a hundred-block shapefile based on the street database in Seattle. We did not adopt the same strategy for the Jacksonville street database, because house numbers associated with the odd and even sides of street segments tend to be inconsistent. For example, if we reorganize the street segment based on the house number on the even side in Jacksonville, we tend not to get consistent numbers on the odd side.

  7. It is important to note that, however, the absolute difference between crime and proactive calls at places may not be large. For example, at the hundred block level, in 90 % of places, the absolute difference between proactivity and crime is within 17. Only in 0.5 % of places, the absolute difference between two measures exceed 100. A handful of places experienced over a thousand more proactive calls, whereas places with more crime calls experienced more modest contrast with the maximum difference being 477. The average difference is 5.9 when crime outnumbers proactivity and 5.1 in the opposite direction.

  8. A linear function is assumed between crime and the factual proactive work.

  9. The local relationship is graphed by performing the lowess function in STATA. Lowess carries out a locally weighted regression of the dependent variable on the independent variable. It creates a new variable that, for each y i , contains the corresponding smoothed value. The smoothed values are obtained by running a regression of y on x using only the data (x i , y i ) and a few of the data near this point. The regression is also weighted so that the central point gets the highest weight and points that are farther away receive less weight. The subset used in calculating y is indices i− = max(1, i − k) through i+ = min(i + k, N), where k = [(N* bwidth −0.5)/2]. The weights for each observation are tricube, \({\text{w}}_{\text{j}} = \left\{ {1 - \left( {\frac{{\left| {x_{j} - x_{i} } \right|}}{\Delta }} \right)^{3} } \right\}^{3}\) where ∆ = 1.0001 max(x i+ − x i , x i  − x i−). The smoothed value is then the weighted regression prediction of x i . For more information, see http://www.stata.com/manuals13/rlowess.pdf.

  10. Regression models were also performed using the percentage of crime and the percentage of proactive events at each location. Results are similar to the ones presented in that both the monomial and binomial terms of the percentage of crime are significant across spatial units.

  11. A concern related to polynomial models may be the potential for large error resulting from the high covariance or dependency between parameters. To minimize the math error, we centered the model by subtracting the mean from the independent variable and performed the regression analyses again (a technique used by Bradley and Srivastava 1979). Results of the centered model remained unchanged for p value and R square, while increases were seen for coefficient values. Each crime is now related to slightly higher proactivity or proactive time police allocated at places in the centered model, making it safe and reliable to conclude that JSO is highly proactive and place-based in allocating its patrol resources. We also test spatial autocorrelation, a general issue in spatial-oriented analysis that describes the degree of dependency between the spatial location and the variable measured at that location (Chainey and Ratcliffe 2005; Ratcliffe 2010). In plain terms, spatial autocorrelation suggests that places near each other are more alike (positive correlation) or less alike (negative correlation). Failing to account for spatial autocorrelation in the dependent variable will tend to underestimate the real variance in the data, increasing the likelihood of a Type I statistical error (Ward and Gleditsch 2008, as cited in Ratcliffe 2010). There are many ways to control for spatial dependency. In this article, we test it with Lagrange Multiplier test and control for it by running a spatial error model. Even though significant spatial dependency indicators are observed in some of the models, results for our variables of interest do not change much.

  12. We report the median value since the mean is distorted by crime calls—like homicide investigations—which may take up a great deal of allocated time.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminology, Law and Society, Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy, George Mason University, 4400 University Drive, MS 6D12, Fairfax, VA, 22030, USA

    Xiaoyun Wu & Cynthia Lum

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  1. Xiaoyun Wu
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  2. Cynthia Lum
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Correspondence to Cynthia Lum.

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Wu, X., Lum, C. Measuring the Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Police Proactivity. J Quant Criminol 33, 915–934 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-016-9318-5

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