Rogers Park’s 24th police district will soon host University of Chicago crime analysts, part of an effort to incorporate historical violent crime trend data, predictive models and mapping software in the city’s self-proclaimed “smart policing” strategy.
Rogers Park will be one of six districts participating in the program by creating a Strategic Deployment Center, a police spokesperson said.
Sgt. Rocco Alioto, from the CPD office of communications, said the city has seen two straight years of reduced crime since the U of C program launched.
“The initiative is motivated by the idea that proactive policing and investigations combined with predictive analytics can help prevent crime from occurring in first place,” Alioto said.
49th Ward Ald. Joe Moore announced the deployment Tuesday. You can read his full statement here.
“The expansion of smart policing to Rogers Park comes at a time of heightened tension in the neighborhood resulting from two recent random murders,” Moore said in the statement.
Moore said police investigating the killings have run down “some promising leads, but no arrest has been made.”
Police suspect the two murders in Rogers Park, which occurred Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, were carried out by the same person. The perpetrator has not been seen since the fatal shooting Oct. 1, police said at a community meeting at the Bernard Horwich Jewish Community Center in Rogers Park.
The crime trend data used in the U of C program pools information such as offender criminal history and past crime incidents into a single platform for analysis and real-time application by on-duty officers, according to Moore’s statement.
The smart policing strategy will place high-definition surveillance cameras in strategic locations throughout the district, and private property owners can connect their cameras to the CPD system if the cameras meet certain requirements, according to Moore’s statement. These cameras, and preexisting cameras, will be monitored by police.
This strategy was used in the 12th district (Near West), and the trend data helped police officers see a 15 percent reduction in robberies, 35 percent reduction in carjackings, 37 percent reduction in shootings and 64 percent reduction in murders in the area, according to Moore’s statement. These reductions were seen within approximately seven months of smart policing strategy implementation.
It is unclear when the strategic deployment center will come to Rogers Park.
Moore also said Chicago will invest an additional $10.4 million in youth mentoring programs through 2019 on top of the $25 million spent toward mentorship for eighth, ninth and 10th graders this year; and, more than $77 million has gone toward after school programs for over 110,000 students this past year. Moore said this multi-faceted approach to tackling violent crime will be more effective.
“This holistic approach to crime fighting — more effective policing strategies combined with investing in youth, second chances and jobs — is the key to making our neighborhood and city safer,” Moore said in the statement.
The 49th Ward is the only ward in Chicago that holds an Expungement Seminar to help people clear their criminal record and break through that employment barrier. The most recent Expungement Seminar took place Oct. 6 at Gale School (1631 W. Jonquil Terrace).
Moore and 24th district Commander Roberto Nieves could not be reached for comment at the time of publication.
