rightwinger
Award Winning USMB Paid Messageboard Poster
- Aug 4, 2009
- 289,033
- 170,986
- 2,615
'Small world of murder': As homicides drop, Chicago police focus on social networks of gangs - U.S. News
Murders are down this year by almost half in his district and about 20 percent citywide, according to department data. It’s the equivalent of more than 80 lives “saved,” as the commander puts it, and the lowest Chicago murder toll in a half century.
The switch was thrown quietly in May 2012, hidden inside a 16-page directive, “Gang Violence Reduction Strategy,” and largely ignored amid a 60 percent rise in murders in the first quarter alone. With less than a year on the job, McCarthy had already disbanded two special task forces, roving teams that muscled neighborhoods into submission. Now he was betting on what he calls “the next phase of community policing in this world”: an emphasis not on the traditional “hot spots” for crime, but on the “hot people” who commit most criminal acts. Chicago Police Department committed to using the new science of social network analysis — the same tools that allow Silicon Valley to predict who you know and what you might like to buy — to detail the city’s “small world of murder,” as one researcher put it, and use that knowledge to stop the next bullet before it's fired.
Murders are down this year by almost half in his district and about 20 percent citywide, according to department data. It’s the equivalent of more than 80 lives “saved,” as the commander puts it, and the lowest Chicago murder toll in a half century.
The switch was thrown quietly in May 2012, hidden inside a 16-page directive, “Gang Violence Reduction Strategy,” and largely ignored amid a 60 percent rise in murders in the first quarter alone. With less than a year on the job, McCarthy had already disbanded two special task forces, roving teams that muscled neighborhoods into submission. Now he was betting on what he calls “the next phase of community policing in this world”: an emphasis not on the traditional “hot spots” for crime, but on the “hot people” who commit most criminal acts. Chicago Police Department committed to using the new science of social network analysis — the same tools that allow Silicon Valley to predict who you know and what you might like to buy — to detail the city’s “small world of murder,” as one researcher put it, and use that knowledge to stop the next bullet before it's fired.
Last edited: