Police sensing crime before it happens
By FRANK MAIN Staff Reporter/
[email protected] Jan 21, 2011 05:09AM
It was a bit like a scene from “Minority Report,” the 2002 Tom Cruise movie that featured genetically altered humans with special powers to predict crime.
In October, the Chicago Police Department’s new crime-forecasting unit was analyzing 911 calls for service and produced an intelligence report predicting a shooting would happen soon on a particular block on the South Side.
Three minutes later, it did, police officials say.
That got police Supt. Jody Weis thinking.
He wondered if the department could produce intelligence reports even quicker. Next time, officers might have an hour’s notice before a shooting — instead of just a few minutes.
The solution: Weis is now consolidating the department’s various intelligence-gathering units under his direct command to improve the flow of information.
The Deployment Operations Center, which gathers gang intelligence, will move into his office from the Bureau of Investigative Services.
The “DOC,” created in 2003, tracks human intelligence on gangs and holds a daily conference call with department leaders to decide where to deploy roving teams of officers.
The so-called 24-hour “fusion center,” which opened in 2007, also will move under the superintendent’s office.
The fusion center is one of dozens that opened across the country in response to a 911 report that called for better sharing of federal, state and local intelligence on terrorism.
Read the rest here: [
link to www.suntimes.com]
/
United States
for the late nite crowd