POLICE TRY NEW IDEA IN CRIME FIGHTING

Pilot Project Combines Officers From Several Units to Launch Massive Attacks

RIDGE MEADOWS I The RCMP detachment has combined its property crime,
community policing and drug units to employ a massive attack strategy
intended to stamp out crime almost before it starts.

The new combined unit employs crime analyst Annette Wilson to help
predict crime trends and focus the unit's activities. New computer
software allows Wilson to combine crime reports, offender data and
intelligence gathered by officers and spot the leading edge of a rise
in crimes such as car theft, predict where the offences will happen
and point police to the likely bad guys. The unit can then marshal
all its resources to eradicate the problem.

The combined-unit strategy is a pilot project being tested in Maple
Ridge, Coquitlam and New Westminster; it was cloned from a national
project in the U.K. (www.crimereduction.gov.uk) that is credited with
lowering crime rates there by 35 per cent since 1997.

Surrey is also planning to adopt some principles of the British
program, after a 12-member delegation led by Mayor Dianne Watts
visited London, Manchester and Liverpool in August. Watts has said
she hopes to have a plan to roll out the new anti-crime strategy next year.

The Ridge Meadows Crime Reduction Unit has been busy in recent weeks
cracking down on prostitution in downtown Maple Ridge. Seven sweeps
by the unit have resulted in the arrests of 20 women and 10 men.
There were only four arrests in the six months before the unit was formed.

In the past, only two or three officers would be assigned to deal
with prostitution, but it was difficult for that small a force to be
very effective, said Ridge Meadows RCMP spokesman Dan Herbranson.

Unlike the two-man unit, the new 16-member team can "saturate" an
area with officers for surveillance and enforcement, putting a real
dent in illegal activity. "It's been a better result," he said.

Founded in August, the team has been particularly effective at
targeting drug dealers and has arrested and charged some of the
area's busiest car thieves. Five car thieves have been arrested or
are under warrant as result of the unit's investigations, solving
dozens of open cases, Herbranson said.

The i2 Investigative Analysis Software software employed by Wilson
also allows the department to chart whether its proactive operations
are having an impact and to detect whether the bad actors have been
sidelined or merely pushed to another area.

The software is so finely tuned geographically that it often narrows
the suspect list down to a single person. Armed with that knowledge
the police can just watch the suspect commit his next crime and make
an arrest, Herbranson explained.

One such arrest was a specialist in "theft from auto" whose modus
operandi was detected across multiple municipalities from Maple Ridge
to Port Moody, a feat of crime-solving that would have been all but
impossible using paper records.

The system can take a single person or even an address and create a
whole web of associations with other known criminals, unsolved crimes
and locations, Wilson explained.

"I take the who, what, where of crime and turn it into useful
intelligence," Wilson said. "In Ridge Meadows we have over 100 police
officers, we have outreach workers, municipal staff and other
agencies all who are out there gathering information, whether they
are conscious of it or not."

Every name an officer records at a crime scene or a call is entered
as data. All those names are associated with each other, with the
address and with the incident, whether an arrest was made or not.
"Every officer is doing this over and over again every day," Wilson explained.

Wilson takes all those loose threads and helps i2 weave it into
something recognizable. "You can't micromanage the data, you have to
let it speak to you."

Herbranson recalled that the theft-from-auto arrest came from a tip
by an officer; i2 was able to tell police who his friends are and
places that he frequents. David MacDonald-Stickney is wanted for
theft under $5,000 related to a string of automobile break-ins,
Herbranson said.

While bad guys arrested and charged are the first proof that new
strategy is working, the Ridge Meadows unit works closely with local
drug treatment agencies and the John Howard Society, which counsels
people who come in conflict with the law, to ensure that the root
causes of crime are also being addressed.

"A lot of people involved in property crimes have substance abuse
problems. So once these people are incarcerated, we fax a form off to
Alouette Addictions and they meet with the client and talk to them
about their lifestyle choices and get them into treatment,"
Herbranson said. "Jail is not the only answer."