Slashdot Mirror
Geoprofiling Moves Into The Limelight
circletimessquare writes "Interesting and timely. A short piece at CNN talks about the software helping to track down the sniper currently terrorizing the Washington DC area. It was the doctoral thesis of a cop, Kim Rossmo, who developed it while walking the beat in Vancouver and reading about the hunting patterns of African lions. Googling, I found an older but deeper piece which mentions more of the tech behind the software, called Rigel. That led me to the website of ECRI, the company that makes Rigel. More good tech there."
There was a great special on this software on TLC not that long ago. Basically, they were able to calculate the odds of the suspect living and/or acting in a certain area based on where the crimes were, etc.
They ended up catching the killer, and he was a cop!
From discussions I'm seeing about these shootings, it may very well be a cop or someone in the armed forces. The ballistics of the gun/ammo being used just don't fit right since people are saying they don't hear the shots, or don't hear very loud shots, so people are theorizing that there's special subsonic rounds being used to minimize noise - not easy to find with these types of bullets, from what I gather.. But I dont' know a lot about guns, so.. yeah...
Anyhow if I remember the name of the TLC special I'll post it here, it was on recently enough that it will probably be on again soon.
http://www.babysmasher.com
http://www.openingbands.com
we'd have a trail from every shot of the sniper.
Doesn't awareness of the geoprofiling model by the suspect make the model less accurate, or is there something built into it that takes this into account?
I'd be somewhat curious if letting the media know that they're currently using this technique to catch the sniper is a good thing. It seems like this guy (or gal) loves the media attention and would certainly hear of this-although given how many times he has shot people in the last few days, I'd imagine it would still be very helpful. Would "security through obscurity" be a good thing here?
Clearly the principles of the software are very sound - and the product has been used successfully in the past.
However, now media is writing extensively about the software and the algorithms involved. A shrewd killer could use such information. He could think again about where to act, perhaps selecting sites at random, or selectively so that they would mislead the program.
Tor
but don't brag about it until/unless it helps you crack the case.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Actually this isn't new, nore is it all that freaking scary.
It's a technique that's been in use for a long long time by police departments, only with a less quantitative aspect. But they dind't call it 'geographic profiling' they called it 'sticking pushpins into the map'...
They're not *tracking* people, they're entering crime data into a GIS.
It all sounds good, but when i read this "Currently, Rigel runs only on a Sun Microsystems UltraSparc workstation. But ECRI is reprogramming it for use on Windows NT workstations and servers".
It all lost it's beauty.
You're running low on virtual memory, pick a smaller town, fewer crimes or reboot yur machine
There has been alot of talk and show these days about all those new computerized profiling technologies. (Face recoginition, et al.)
Finally, here is one that I think is right on the money.
Here is one that makes the computer just another tool in the policeman's tool box. This is in sharp contrast to present trends. For now the computer is helping solve the crimes and prevent future crimes, but it's not laying the blame on people who have yet to commit a crime.
I know this is mostly due to how the creator uses his experience, but (IMHO) that's what makes this soo nice.
How many of those would have been solved without the program? I'd like to see a head-to-head, although I assume most police forces don't have the manpower to devote 2 seperate teams to the same crimes.
My personality is like a coupon, it's 10% off.
Now that the word is out, potential serial killers just need a perl script that generates structured lat/long pairs that mislead the FBI. I guess they're counting on most serial killers to be to crazy to think things out that much.
That's a real small bullet, about as big as a .22 we all grew up with. In order for it to be lethal, it needs to be shot at about 1000 mps (Mach 3 ish).
.223 hunting rifle with a scope, who's taking out his feeling of inadequacy and powerlessness against random people. Needless to say, he's never been laid, either.
It's probably a disaffected, over intellectual loner in high school or college with an M-14 or a bolt action
Hmm, I just described half of Slashdot. I hope you have your alibis
Could he profile himself and then know where NOT to go to find his next victims?
problem is true random ness is not possable. He/she could be following a pattern without being aware of it. And if the sniper is trying to be random probably in doing so is causing a pattern. Humans are way to predictable over a period of time.
pretty much any random way you could come up with of doing what he is doing could leave a pattern that someone would see.
though with that said even when you have a pattern going it's still really hard to refine to being able to knock on his door or no his next move.
But I've been thinking of Lecter's advice to Clarice in Silence of the Lambs: this looks a little too random.
Ever since I first saw the movie I've always wondered how often that is the case: serial criminals who commit the first crime locally, realize it, and then make a point of trying to be "random".
This entire scenario it doesn't look like the case: the first and fifth shooting were very close together and the entire field of action seems to be very localized. But still these sort of things always make me think of that quote. Guess because it was so imporant in the movie.
What is music when you despise all sound?
"Dear Policeman, I am God"
written on it.
Some anagrams for "dear policeman i am god"
go and implode America
Laden doom pig America
impaled good American
magic doomed airplane
megalomaniac drop die
an imperial dogma code
good, an epidemic alarm
Some anagrams for "dear policeman i am god death"
imperial hated and good came
imperial death and good came
I'm a degraded emotional chap
I'm delegated macho paranoid
homicidal dead eager top man
Peter, a homicidal dead man go
dead homicidal game not rape
It's Mrs. White in the library with the revolver
"what if the guy your trying to track is a complete nutcase. Not every sniper is gonna follow a pattern. And I imagine an intelligent sniper will take precautions to avoid doing anything to draw attention to any kind of pattern."
Dude is a nutcase since he is killing other people for the thrill.
Everyone has a pattern, even if we don't see this f*ck's pattern until he (or she) is caught.
Sent from your iPad.
Note: I work at ECRI, but I'm not speaking for my employer. I will answer basic questions in the comments here, though I can't always go into detail.
Applying purchasing patterns of average citizens (the only thing I can think of that a corporation would want to do with this idea) would reveal nothing new. For example, meet Joe.
Joe is a 35 year old male with a wife and a 3 year old son. Once or twice a week, Joe goes out to a restaurant near his work for lunch with a couple work acquaintances. Joe has been tasked with the weekly job (done on Thursdays) of doing the family grocery shopping. Joe pays their bills on the 27th of every month. He fills up with gas and buys a pack of smokes X times throughout the week on his way to or from work. Occasionally, maybe twice a month, Joe also stops to pick up a case of beer. At the same time (roughtly) every year, he goes out and buys another present for his wife because it's her birthday. He does the same for his son. He does this again predictably (which would only have been discovered through the use of patented software) the week before Christmas, at the reminder of his wife. Joe and his family go on vacation every year to the same place, because Joe's wife has family there. All of this, except the vacation, happens within a 1km radius from either Joe's home or his work.
"No alarms and no suprises..." (Radiohead for the uninformed)
Joe's probably not that far from 95% of people either. There's no holy grail of purchasing patterns to be discovered that would increase Walmart's revenues by another 100%. The funny part is that Walmart and all the boys will still try to license this technology to have this fact pointed out to them once again, and just for the fun of it since they can.
This doesn't scare me much at all. I'm a law-bidding citizen on one hand with nothing to fear, and I'm also a privacy/indie/free speech zealot as well, but I don't think this is quite the technology that will put automatic identity checks in the doorways of retail stores, or that will improperly accuse me of some heinous crime. Now required ID cards and all this DMCA garbage, that's another story.
putfwd.com - 1GB Free file storage with a twist
GEO-PROFILING: POTENT NEW POLICE TECHNIQUE
Cracking the Toughest Serial Criminal Cases
Dec. 31, 1998
By Jim Krane
SAN DIEGO (APBnews.com) -- Picture a small city in eastern Canada whose residents were rarely touched by violent crime. Then, startlingly, a serial rapist began attacking women, injecting a dose of fear into a normally tranquil community.
By the time the assailant sexually assaulted his 11th victim, police were desperate. They compiled a list of 300 possible suspects and prepared to conduct expensive, laborious DNA tests on each one, hoping to match DNA residue taken from victims.
Vancouver Police Detective Kim Rossmo
That's when Det. Kim Rossmo got a call.
Rossmo, a detective inspector with the Vancouver Police Department, developed an investigative technique called geographic profiling. Using geo-profiling, police try to trace a serial criminal to his home or workplace by computing distances with geographic clues he's left -- such as dead bodies, sites of attacks and other known locations the lawbreaker visited.
Rossmo explained geographic profiling to attendees at the International Association of Crime Analysts here recently, giving criminal analysts a window into one of law enforcement's newest and least-known investigative techniques.
Rossmo's methodology would come in handy on the serial rapist case and many others.
Valuable search tool
As part of his doctoral research at British Columbia's Simon Fraser University, Rossmo developed an algorithm -- a mathematical model of repeated calculations -- that targets serial criminals by the spatial patterns they produce.
Since then, Rossmo's algorithm has been computerized, allowing it to make hundreds of thousands of calculations that pinpoint a criminal's hideout within a fraction of the crime site area.
Priority: danger
Rossmo most often gets a call when a serial criminal is on the loose. Since many agencies -- in Canada, the United States and Europe -- seek his services simultaneously, Rossmo said he gauges which community is most at risk.
In the eastern Canadian sexual assault case -- Rossmo didn't want to divulge the location -- his geographic profile turned out to be remarkably accurate. With 300 suspects on their hands, the local police could only look forward to a lengthy period of laboratory testing.
The red peaks in this image identify the probable location of an offender's residence in Vancouver, British Columbia.
But Rossmo's geo-profiling technique helped the police get their man much more quickly. The Vancouver detective visited crime scenes, read reports, and talked to victims and investigators. He analyzed the data using his computerized algorithm and found a neighborhood hot spot to focus on.
Seventh time's a charm
Instead of hauling suspects in alphabetically by last name, police matched suspects' addresses against Rossmo's findings and tested those who lived nearest the hot spot's peak. The seventh suspect lawmen tested was a positive DNA match. Police arrested the man and cracked the case.
"If they didn't have geographic profile prioritization, they might've started with Archer and ended with Young," Rossmo said.
Lazy to a fault
Despite its complicated mathematical calculations, geographic profiling is based on a simple theory. Criminologists say most humans -- criminals included -- are inherently lazy. Just as a person will shop in the grocery store nearest his or her home, a predatory criminal usually picks his victims in familiar areas -- except for a small buffer zone around his home, says Rossmo.
Thus, when an arsonist sets a series of fires, police can estimate his whereabouts (usually a residence) by dumping the addresses of buildings burned into the computer and calculating the location most central to the crime scenes.
Crime as topography
In reality, Rossmo's crime-busting technique is more complex. He walks through crime scenes, conducts interviews and reads police reports. With years of investigative experience under his belt, Rossmo puts emphasis on certain locations based on his psychological assumptions about the quarry. At the same time, he discards or discounts other locations that he believes might skew his findings.
Rossmo then keys his data into the computer. The machine converts street addresses into latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates and creates a three-dimensional "jeopardy surface" or topographical model of the data. The jeopardy surface looks like a mountain range, with colored bands of peaks and valleys that show where the addresses converge -- the peaks -- and where they don't -- the valleys.
When Rossmo superimposes the jeopardy surface onto a street grid, the result isn't an exact map to the killer's house, but it's something close to it.
Method used in 80 cases
Since 1990, Rossmo has used his geo-profiling technique in more than 80 cases, representing 1,800 crime locations. He believes his work helped crack about half of those cases.
But Rossmo doesn't measure his success only by cases cleared. He's interested in geographic accuracy.
In cases where an arrest has been made, Rossmo's been able to estimate the location of the offender's home within the top five percent of the search area. That means, if police believe the offender lives somewhere within a 10-square-mile area, Rossmo can tell investigators which half-square-mile section to search.
In some cases, he's more accurate. In the Canadian rapist investigation described above, Rossmo's suspect lived within the first 2.2 percent of the area searched.
The more a criminal strikes, the more clues Rossmo can enter into his computer. Theoretically, that makes his predictions more accurate. But Rossmo's computer doesn't spit out a name and address. After the computer does its thing, Rossmo writes a report suggesting strategies for capture.
"It's the investigator that solves the case. Our role is to support him or her," Rossmo said.
Cops, meet Rigel
Rossmo's algorithm has been incorporated into a software program called Rigel, manufactured by the Vancouver firm Environmental Criminology Research Inc. (ECRI). Rossmo is a member of ECRI's board of directors and acts as the company's chief scientist.
Currently, Rigel runs only on a Sun Microsystems UltraSparc workstation. But ECRI is reprogramming it for use on Windows NT workstations and servers.
The software isn't cheap -- ECRI president Barry Dalziel priced a copy at $70,000, which includes some training and help with installation.
Rigel, emphasized Dalziel, isn't perfect. For best results, it should be used by a police investigator or crime analyst who undergoes a year of training, some of it under Rossmo's personal tutelage.
"If it sends them off on a wild goose chase, police investigators aren't likely to use the system again," said Dalziel.
It's a Canadian thing
Besides Rossmo's Vancouver Police, two other agencies have been trained in geographic profiling with Rigel: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada's national police force, and the Ontario Provincial Police. Rossmo said the British National Crime Faculty, another national law enforcement agency, will be certified in 1999.
No U.S. law enforcement agencies are on Rossmo's training list -- even though he's been invited to help crack dozens of cases in the States.
The real Robocop
If its geo-profiling uses weren't enough, Dalziel said investigators will be able to use a new version of Rigel to predict a serial criminal's next crimes, including dates and crime locations.
And cops will be able to predict and monitor the likely "hunting grounds" of paroled sex offenders by plotting past crime data and behavioral traits into Rigel, said Dalziel.
"Say there were crimes in that area that matched [a parolee's] M.O., his name would pop up," Dalziel said.
Jim Krane is APB News staff writer (jimk@apbnews.com).
I wear pants.
For anyone curious, the .223 is about the same diameter as a .22 LR, but there the similarity ends. The .223 weighs in between 50 and 64 grains and travels at 2700-3300 fps. I think the .223 NATO round is 55 grains and moves at like 3100 fps. A .22 LR is 40 grains and travels at around 1050 fps. I might be a little off in my numbers, so don't quote me. The two are night and day as far as lethality and ballistics go, however.
It's probably a disaffected, over intellectual loner in high school or college with an M-14 or a bolt action .223 hunting rifle with a scope, who's taking out his feeling of inadequacy and powerlessness against random people. Needless to say, he's never been laid, either.
The M14 is .308, not .223. You mean a Mini14.
But I get your point. Feet first into the mulcher is too good a fate for this ass clown. Shooting old men and children and women. In the back. I'm having a hard time coming up with suitable retribution...
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Kim Rossmo was also one of the first to suggest vancouver had a serial killer [robert pickton,pig farmer],which the VPD dissmissed promptly.The VPD also drummed Rossmo out via the old boys network because of interdept politics/powerplays.
I heard Jack In The Box is working on similar software that can determine where you work and how large your cubicle is based on the hours and locations you visit them. They insist they'll only use it to help them staff their restaurants more efficiently during the graveyard shift...
Perhaps its because security cameras aren't as pervasive as everyone likes to think they are.
I hold a patent on sigs...
Well, geoprofiling narrows it down to a few blocks.
Pushing stickpins into a map rarely allows such insight.
When one has already shown them self to be a anomaly how effective is any given method of prediction/profiling?
Let's face it, you don't go killing people as a habit. Any results from a given "profile" are not the best answer, they are merely a suggested solution to a given set of criteria, some of which we've yet to know.
If the person meets the criteria of a given profile, then yes, they are more likely to be in X place or be X person.
But we *must* keep in mind people can do other than what they would be expected to, even if we know nearly everything about them. And if they've already broken the social and moral bounds of killing their fellow man, seemingly without cause I'd say then that they are even less likely to fit a given profile.
True, they are likely to meet some criteria and be "standardized" in that aspect, but we can never know which criteria are the ones that fit their profile.
With that said we can *never* rely on just one method for a single case. We need to use many methods, often contradictory, in the hopes that one of those profiles is the correct one.
In this kind of case over confidence in our methods literally becomes a killer.
*shrug* look at people like the Uni-Bomber. If I recall correctly, the only reason he was eventually found was because his brother turned him in after recognizing his style of witting reading the manifesto.
Sorry if this isn't more eloquent. This case is actually pretty close to home for me (both geographically speaking and emotionally.) People who go out of their way to try and kill children... I really want this person gone.
No, I think he's just got a lot of "stuff" around him (grass, bushes, etc) and is pretty far off. Cities are loud places, much more so than out in the woods. You'd be very surprised how quiet even a big hunting rifle is from a couple hundred yards off. And sound can echo off things fairly effectively in a city (although I've never shot a gun in a city, I've shot quite a few of them in the country, so I'm partially guessing here). If the victim was hit a second or two before the shot was heard, that confuses things even more. You'd pretty much have to see the impact to know where it came from.
Whatever he's using, I can't think of a fate bad enough for this guy. There's a special place in Hell for those who shoot women and children in the back. I just hope he's found soon.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
To quote Tyler Durden:
The illusion of safety.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
This technique was demonstrated in "Badge of Deceit" - The Randy Comeaux Case, a "Forensic Files" episode on CourtTV.
Kim Rossmo got his Ph.D. in criminology at SFU. The ideas in his thesis weren't just sudden inspiration -- they came from his many years as a police detective working on investigations, and from rigorous academic study and research.
I live in Vancouver, where Kim Rossmo got his Ph.d and started his geoprofiling.
He was very successful, and it led to his rapid advancement in the Vancouver Police Department. But like most police departments, it's still old-boys, and alot of them resented an educated individual rising through the ranks so quickly.
Finally, they told him they weren't extending his contract when he was promoted too far. He sued. During the trial, the senior VPD members were made to look like fools for lying under oath.
One of the interesting things that came out was that he suspected (back in June, 2001) that a serial killer was involved in the disappearance of 20 to 30 Vancouver women. Well, he was right. The Vancouver police are conducting a huge investigation at a pig farm in the Vancouver area, and Robert William Pickton is now Canada's most prolific known serial killer with 16 or so charges in the works, and more pending as they find more DNA at the farm.
I don't know much about the technology (or psychology) involved, but I do know that when he applied his software to some of Canada's other serial killers (Paul Bernardo, Cliffard Olsen, etc) his software picked a 4-block area which included the killer's home. It was also used to catch a killer in Abbotsford.
Thanks to a bunch of fat old men who's ego has extended past their intelligence, Vancouver has lost what appears to be a top-rate talent.
I know it's human nature to find patterns in random data, but this seems just a wee bit far fetched to me.
Chances are s/he just wanted to say that s/he's god, and because of that has power over life and death (with no way for them to stop s/he).
Sometimes a nutjob is just a nutjob.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
How does this work?
.... etc.
:)
Alittle bit about geographic profiling works. Essentially, what this software does is it assigns a weight to different attributes of a crime and based upon past crimes determines a probability that the crime was commited near someone's home or an area they know. Throwing in some additional variables such as where an individual works, what route they probably take to work, etc, helps identify a person's individual daily path.
Throw in a couple more factors like how far most criminals go from home to comit a crime - i.e. bank robberies tend to happen at banks individuals don't know, further from home, though rapes and murders happen in areas people are more comfortable - near an area they know - so that if discovered they know where to run (read: no unexpected dead end roads, good alleyways etc). Without getting into the whole theory of why this is - basically its because someone near their home doesn't stand out, they've probably been seen on the street before, maybe a neighbor knows them, they dont pose a threat - and dont' look out of place. Think about yourself - if you had to go walking around alleyways to stake out a location to dump a body or commit a rape, would you feel more comfortable (and look less shady) in an area you know, or some place out of town?
So take some basic variables - what was the crime? when was the crime?
Now, take the location of your crimes and cross-reference it with just the areas that would match given crimes. You end up with an area of probability that usually circular in nature around each crime... as these areas intersect, you get "blotches" of red, yellow, orange, etc..
That done, start to take other factors into consideration. You probably don't have a database with everyone's job, route to work, schedule, etc - what you probably do have is income ranges and general demographic information for specific areas. (Ok so I mentioned all this stuff about individuals above, I'm getting there).
Using that data, you can modify the predictions futher. For example, something like a string of gang shootings... There are several areas (chicago for one, im sure you can think of one near you) that have affluent or up-and-coming areas near or next to ghettos. For chicagoans, think near west side vs. cabrini greens. For those who don't know, 2 bd 2ba condos in near west side go for about $300,000 to $500,000. Go about five or six blocks down the road though and you'll run into section-8 housing. I'm getting to a point here, bear with me.
Having run your first analysis, you may find that there was a gang shooting in the "nicer" area, but it isn't really likely the shooter is from there... more likely than not, he's from the crummier side a few blocks away. Up to this point, the system knows nothing about Street Y vs Street X. Street Y might be a few blocks from Street X, but STreet Y might be primarily a six figure area... This information exists - if not directly, it can be found through housing prices and general crime level.
Ok, so now what? We have a big red blob that winds around. Feed the system the data on population type, ethnicity (yup. Not too PC, but its there), income, average age... etc. With this new info, it starts to eliminate or decrease the red areas, building a smaller search section.
Now I'd talked about all those individual factors - I'm finally getting to them. Remember those? Where does person A work? Person B?
What does this person do? (Truckers and transients dump bodies far away, most employeed people dump them near work or home)
Usually in cases like these you have hundreds of leads. Everyone is followed up - some are easy to eliminate some don't really lead anywhere. Some sound like good potentials. Say you get a tip that joe shmoe did this crime. A quick check reveals he has no alibi for the time in question... does he fit the (geographic) profile?
Obviously, you are going to go see joe shmoe. You ask some pretty basic questions that sound pretty boring... where do you work? You drive to work? Take the bus? What time do you leave? Do you eat lunch at work or outside? Simple stuff. You bring it up in conversation like nothing was - and for the most part it isn't anything.
Pretty soon, you've got a list of 50 individuals who could all be involved. None of them have alibis, and you need to figure out who to focus on. Here we go again.
Your now narrowed red area can take into account what these people do, where they work, how do they get to work, etc. Put those in and usually, you end up with 10 individuals who fit the geographic pattern. Those are the ones you go see again. And again.
The rest? They don't fall off the radar, but you are no longer dedicating half your team to them. It's a game of probabilities. Now with your 10 "likelies", you've got the resources pointed in the right direction.
Combine this with an FBI Profile of an individual and you've taken your 10 and shaved off 3 or 4. Now, you've got a handful of people to really focus on. At this point, you've got your search warrant if you want it - no alibi, meets the profile, fits the area, etc.
The search warrants usually lead to a few more clues and narrow it down to one guy. Then you just got to figure out how to prove it was him.
How does this work? Alittle bit about geographic profiling works. Essentially, what this software does is it assigns a weight to different attributes of a crime and based upon past crimes determines a probability that the crime was commited near someone's home or an area they know. Throwing in some additional variables such as where an individual works, what route they probably take to work, etc, helps identify a person's individual daily path. Throw in a couple more factors like how far most criminals go from home to comit a crime - i.e. bank robberies tend to happen at banks individuals don't know, further from home, though rapes and murders happen in areas people are more comfortable - near an area they know - so that if discovered they know where to run (read: no unexpected dead end roads, good alleyways etc). Without getting into the whole theory of why this is - basically its because someone near their home doesn't stand out, they've probably been seen on the street before, maybe a neighbor knows them, they dont pose a threat - and dont' look out of place. Think about yourself - if you had to go walking around alleyways to stake out a location to dump a body or commit a rape, would you feel more comfortable (and look less shady) in an area you know, or some place out of town? So take some basic variables - what was the crime? when was the crime? Now, take the location of your crimes and cross-reference it with just the areas that would match given crimes. You end up with an area of probability that usually circular in nature around each crime... as these areas intersect, you get "blotches" of red, yellow, orange, etc.. That done, start to take other factors into consideration. You probably don't have a database with everyone's job, route to work, schedule, etc - what you probably do have is income ranges and general demographic information for specific areas. (Ok so I mentioned all this stuff about individuals above, I'm getting there). Using that data, you can modify the predictions futher. For example, something like a string of gang shootings... There are several areas (chicago for one, im sure you can think of one near you) that have affluent or up-and-coming areas near or next to ghettos. For chicagoans, think near west side vs. cabrini greens. For those who don't know, 2 bd 2ba condos in near west side go for about $300,000 to $500,000. Go about five or six blocks down the road though and you'll run into section-8 housing. I'm getting to a point here, bear with me. Having run your first analysis, you may find that there was a gang shooting in the "nicer" area, but it isn't really likely the shooter is from there... more likely than not, he's from the crummier side a few blocks away. Up to this point, the system knows nothing about Street Y vs Street X. Street Y might be a few blocks from Street X, but STreet Y might be primarily a six figure area... This information exists - if not directly, it can be found through housing prices and general crime level. Ok, so now what? We have a big red blob that winds around. Feed the system the data on population type, ethnicity (yup. Not too PC, but its there), income, average age... etc. With this new info, it starts to eliminate or decrease the red areas, building a smaller search section. Now I'd talked about all those individual factors - I'm finally getting to them. Remember those? Where does person A work? Person B? What does this person do? (Truckers and transients dump bodies far away, most employeed people dump them near work or home) .... etc.
Usually in cases like these you have hundreds of leads. Everyone is followed up - some are easy to eliminate some don't really lead anywhere. Some sound like good potentials. Say you get a tip that joe shmoe did this crime. A quick check reveals he has no alibi for the time in question... does he fit the (geographic) profile?
Obviously, you are going to go see joe shmoe. You ask some pretty basic questions that sound pretty boring... where do you work? You drive to work? Take the bus? What time do you leave? Do you eat lunch at work or outside? Simple stuff. You bring it up in conversation like nothing was - and for the most part it isn't anything.
Pretty soon, you've got a list of 50 individuals who could all be involved. None of them have alibis, and you need to figure out who to focus on. Here we go again.
Your now narrowed red area can take into account what these people do, where they work, how do they get to work, etc. Put those in and usually, you end up with 10 individuals who fit the geographic pattern. Those are the ones you go see again. And again.
The rest? They don't fall off the radar, but you are no longer dedicating half your team to them. It's a game of probabilities. Now with your 10 "likelies", you've got the resources pointed in the right direction.
Combine this with an FBI Profile of an individual and you've taken your 10 and shaved off 3 or 4. Now, you've got a handful of people to really focus on. At this point, you've got your search warrant if you want it - no alibi, meets the profile, fits the area, etc.
The search warrants usually lead to a few more clues and narrow it down to one guy. Then you just got to figure out how to prove it was him. :)
(reposted since I did it as anon by accident)
what if the guy your trying to track is a complete nutcase
Well, I'd say he's certainly some kind of nutcase. Examination of his method, however, reveals a few interesting things. First, he acts like a military sniper; that is he selects a target, takes 1 shot, and then (presumably) leaves his position, taking everything (like shell casings) with him. In other words, all the work is in preparing his site, and leaving it. The actual shooting doesn't take much time or effort. Second is his selection of target. It appears to be random, although shooting a kid going to school could be designed to cause fear. Its almost as if the target is secondary to the location; this nutball may be picking sites from which he thinks he can get someone, and then killing whoever shows up. If this is the case, this location software may be just the thing; on the other hand, his criteria for picking a site might not have anything to do with where he lives. Anyway, I hope they catch this bastard soon, and I really don't care how they do it.
-- Rich
Free your mind and your Ass will follow -- George Clinton
Police organizations also regularly hire psychics and check out their "revelations" on cases that go cold. I'm also kind of dubious about psychological profiling, but what do I know.
Can someone with a reasonable knowledge of US geography tell me if the guy in this article is from around there? From my quick search it seems their both near/in Washington. If so it's an odd coincidence if nothing else..
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Speaking of crime data in GIS, it worth a look at your local police department to see what sorts of interesting things they have available in this area. I was surprised to find quite good GIS-based crime info for the Portland, Oregon area:
t ml
Top level link: http://www.portlandpolicebureau.com/crimemapper.h
Top level map
Monster direct link to Portland downtown wide-scale crime map:
detailed downtown Portland crime info showing the locations of individual crimes.
who developed it while walking the beat in Vancouver and reading about the hunting patterns of African lions
Is it just me or does anyone else think they might have more chance of catching the guy if cops dont walk the beat reading a book!!
"I'm tired of all this 'Aren't humanity great' bullshit. We're a virus with shoes" - Bill Hicks
...I would select 10 of the USMC's and Army's best snipers, give them intel of the area, and let them hunt the sniper down. Skilled and experienced snipers should theorectically be able to deduce the most favorable target locations - geography-wise any ways. You let these 10 snipers scope out the most favorable areas in the DC and Maryland area and camp them.
This guy. Ex army guy, formally called Charles Haffey, wanted to change his name to "God", got refused, managed to get his name changed to "I Am who I Am" on October 2nd, the day the first shooting was, as I understand it.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
OK, so I'm a sucker for an AC Troll, but I have to reply:
I live near these shootings. As I type, I hear a police helicopter overhead. My kids complain about not having outdoor recess at school. When I run an errand, I scan the perimeter of the parking lot before getting out of the car, and then jog to the door. But at least I'm not paranoid!
It's not a government plot to stir up anti-Iraq rage because (1) these daylight suburban shootings are too risky for a plot that would need to avoid detection at all costs; (2) the public has had no reason to think that the sniper attacks are related to terrorism, let alone to Iraq (unlike the anthrax attacks of last winter, which apparently were the work of a right-wing kook who wanted to look like an axis-of-evil terrorist); (3) the government has evil elements, but not THAT evil - not hunting rifles against children.
Until less than 24 hours ago, I thought the sniper was probably an Al Qaeda terrorist. No, he hadn't made political demands, but neither did the September 11 hijackers. Far from causing me to favor war against Iraq, though, the prospect of terrorism reminded me that we'll face much more of it if we continue to make war in the Middle East (for no very good reason).
Anyway, the tarot card seems to dispose of my terrorism theory, as well as your government-plot-posing-as-terrorism theory.
Research Report, Mapping Crime: Principle and
Practice by Keith Harries Ph.D. December 1999:
www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/pubs-sum/178919.htm
('lots of other research reports are there for
cost-free downloading, too; including one into
RH Linux 7.1's GNU dd as a disk imaging tool.)
Stop applying Cantor's diagonal method to our government!
I was part of the team that implemented an early version of the Rigel software used by Kim Rossmo.
At least in the early version, the algorithm was very simple. It was so simple you would have though it would never be useful. The beauty is that the algorithm doesn't need to pinpoint the house, just the neighborhood. It was much better to have a simple and easily provable algorithm than get another half a block of accuracy.
The available databases to convert from street address to spatial locations sucked. To me a big part of the magic was converting addresses where a crime occured to a UTM coordinate.
Most importantly, the magic of Rigel and Kim Rossmo is not the geoprofiling algorithms, but the marketting and public relations.
having witnessed a Gem-tech supressor on a .223 at the defcon shoot ( http://www.23.org/dcshoot/ ) if you have an effecttive suppressor you really dont need subsonic rounds.
all you will hear is a "zip" or a "crack" type sound (depending on how close you are and what angle) from the supersonic shockwave. unless you have heard it before you probably wont pick it out in the middle of a noisy street.
That is a good point, This guy hits reliably and doesn't freak out. My own take is that this is someone with military sniper training. What bothers me most about that is that sniping is hardly glamour killing; its boring, monotonous work. I have a very hard time understanding why someone who is killing people for some sick kind of emotional reward would do it this way. It is, however, probably the best way to get away with it. Then again, I worry about anybody who could get inside this guys head. He is very scary.
-- Rich
Free your mind and your Ass will follow -- George Clinton
I prefer Defense Weapons. Those Assault Weapons are just too dangerous.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
i like software titles that have a double meaning and at first i didn't "rigel"... regal... king... lion...
thats clever.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
How accurate has this guy been with the placement of his shots, and what does that tell us about him? As I understand it, all the victims have been shot in the chest area, right? What does military sniper training tell you about where to aim? Has the placement of the wounds been consistent with a military man trained to kill people, or, say, a highly skilled hunter who has only ever shot at game animals?
I write in my journal
That is a good point, This guy hits reliably and doesn't freak out. My own take is that this is someone with military sniper training.
I don't know about that as his kills have been in the chest AND head not to mention he has also wounded his last two victims, one of them by an abdominal shot. Formal training would provide for far better accuracy and the wounding of the last two might indicate he is getting more nervous.
My guess is that this is an emotionally immature individual without any strong emotional attachments who has spent far too much time involved in fantasy and the movies and television. (thus the overly theatrical death card). This individual does not have military training as his shots have actually not been that accurate and he is not killing for the sake of killing. Rather he is doing it for the attention and the power trip that this is providing via the media. He will not have a professional job as his emotional immaturity will not allow for it and the crimes have happened when most professional jobs would be taking place. My guess would be this is a white male with some post high school education but no formally completed degree and he is most likely in his thirties with an emotionally adjusted age of twenty or so. He probably has an fascination with guns, but cannot afford the higher end so he is doing the killings with a commonly available shorter barrel AR-15 derivatives and has most likely spent some time on the internet at the various sniper websites that I am sure are out there possibly even contributing to the discussion groups. As such, that may be a good place to look for clues to anyone in the D.C. area. Additionally, this person most likely has spent some time at local shooting ranges (if there are any. Anyone?) and would most likely be known there. He is likely somewhat talkative to others about guns and technique, but somewhat unidimensional and unimaginitive in his interactions.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
"Judging by the results that this technique has yielded so far, I'd say the results are very impressive, especially given than the Mr. Rossmo takes great pains to point out the limitations and that the software is only truly effective as one part of the array of methods being used in such cases."
That is irrelevant as to whether it is effective in this case.
I'm not saying it is, I'm not saying it isn't.
That is yet to be determined.
"It is apparent from your comment that you have a poor understanding of the large and frightening scope of mental illness. Being mentally ill does not necessarily make the victim totally irrational. Consequently, it is not at all surprising that such a technique might well be effective. If your illness is so debilitating that you effectively behave "randomly", I submit that you would not long evade capture."
Mental Illness has nothing to do with these shootings until there is evidence to the contrary.
Completely rational people are capable of atrocities.
And again I am not saying that a killer such as the one being pursued is random. I'm saying that the baseline predictions are not necessarily reliable if the subject is an anomaly to those criteria.
In other words, probably everyone is predictable in one form or another, but you can't always know what that form is.
This is not a criticism of the software. This is a criticism of putting all your eggs in one basket. (Or perhaps more apt, all your cpu cycles on one process.)
"Regarding the unabomber. Is there any evidence to suggest that technique was employed in that case (I don't think so) ? How do you know if this might not have been effective there ?
"
I don't know. And I didn't say it wouldn't. I was saying the FBI had other software and reliable methods which in the end, were not what caught him.
I haven't looked at the program, but I'm not sure how well it would work esp. given his wide trail.
(Eg, here's 1985 bombings attributed to him)
1985 - Berkeley, CA
1985 - Auburn, WA
1985 - Ann Arbor, MI
1985 - Sacramento, CA
'Cause, you know, it's so damned difficult to navigate cities since they've never made a map with street-level resolution.
They that would sacrifice their
Vancouver's Mayor had more police manpower directed towards a high profile pot shop in the area than the case of the 50 missing women. Rossmo's thesis was pooh-poohed and he was demoted and effectively run off the force.
The missing prostitute case continued to be a willfully low priority of the Vancouver police department until it recieved some publicy (including, I believe, being featured on "America's Most wanted" -- "Vancouver's a great place to be a serial killer -- cops cry '50 missing and all's well!'"
A little over 2 years later, they've charged a guy with killing 15 of those missing women, and are searching for more remains on his pig farm.
From what I've been able to piece together, he abused them, killed them, ran their bodies through a meat grinder (or branch grinder) and buried the ground-up bits on his farm.
In the meantime, Downtown Eastside residents who were formerly unwilling to report mysterious disappearances of friends to the cops have now brought the number of missing women into the 60 person range.
More info on the missing women case can be found on the CBC website.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Shows what you know. The following is based on real analysis, carried out in the UK by a major supermarket.
Basket analysis shows that for stores in Joe's area, there's a certain tendency for people to buy beer and nappies (diapers) together. This sparks some qualitative research, and they discover that it's largely because of men sent out to buy nappies also buy beer to reward themselves.
So as an experiment, the supermarket's store manager places some high-profit brands of nappies next to the beer section. Sales go up, and not only that, more profitable sales go up. Store manager gets a big bonus.
Next, the supermarket expands the test to neighbourhoods of similar socio-demographic profile to the first one. Sales of high-profit brands go up nationwide, because retail behaviour has a strong correlation to socio-demographic profile. That's the GIS bit - which doesn't actually need tying into individual consumers.
Even if total sales of nappies don't increase, the sales of specific brands does. This gives the supermarket leverage with nappy manufacturers to extract fees for putting their brands next to the beer section. (Incidentally, many manufacturers don't know exactly how much they're shelling out in promotional costs... which can lead to big holes in their account - as happened to Bulmers recently - 3m+ spent without anyone noticing)
So while total sales doesn't change, profit does, because there's additional profit from the high-margin brands, and additional shelving fees from the manufacturers.
And that's just one category... most supermarkets have several thousand categories. Profit doesn't have to increase 100% year on year - double digit is fine, especially in the current climate.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
I'd go for ordinary imprisonment. Sure, this and lots of other crimes merit worse, but unfortunately our "justice" system is actually a "conviction" system, and doesn't appear to be batting too high an average on hanging the right guy.
That, plus if I were a weak loner who had committed crimes generally thought of as cowardly, there is NOTHING I would fear more than going to a U.S. Federal Prison. That would be considerably worse than death...
He deserves to die in ways more horrible than humans can imagine.
No, worse. He deserves to live a full life among people who are all fully aware of what he has done, and treat him accordingly.
Do you know how many police stations can afford an UltraSparc for this specific purpose? Pretty none (possibly excluding Beverly Hills, CA). Do you know how many already have Windows boxen? Pretty much every one of them.
Who cares if they can't feed it all the 10 gigs of crime data. This gets them the basic technology in the first place, helping law enforcement with equipment that is available to them. If they can't get 99% probability but have to settle for 95% due to machine constraints, I'd say that still is a pretty good step ahead.
The biggest problem I see in using Geoprofiling in _THIS_ case is that there is VERY little "Previous data" to start the profile with. Almost ALL previous sniper incidents in the US have been the "Guy locks himself in a tower, and keeps shooting till the cops kill/catch him" type - In fact, I can't think of another serial sniper incident that wasn't a tower type.
That's not to say it isn't a useful tool. Criminal Geo-profiling have a in common with various other GIS systems - ESRI is a big player, a lot of the folks doing this kind of work use SAS. The problem is in figuring out what is significant data vs what is not! It would be REAL interesting to see what a good statistian could do with "regular" crime in developing a model.
Reading the article, it seems that a lot of the variables are on intuition. Sometimes it turns out that variables you don't think are important are, and the reverse is just as often true
Disclaimer - I am NOT a statistican, but I am married to one who used to do some GIS work
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
This individual does not have military training as his shots have actually not been that accurate and he is not killing for the sake of killing ... so he is doing the killings with a commonly available shorter barrel AR-15 derivatives
If this guy is making long shots (500 yds +) with an AR-15, then he is as accurate as the most accurate military shooters (I am assuming no scope here). I know, I was a rifle coach/sniper in the USMC. The bullseye used at 500 yds by the USMC represents a man's head and chest. And not even the best shots hit it every time. To get better than that you have to use scopes and bipods, as well as weapons that are tighter than the standard issue M-16. By the way, I am assuming that this guy is making long shots because of the varying reports as to the sound of the shot.
-- Rich
Free your mind and your Ass will follow -- George Clinton
The ballistics of the gun/ammo being used just don't fit right since people are saying they don't hear the shots, or don't hear very loud shots, ...
.223 M-16. It was noticeably quieter than the other guns (and I had headache coming on so I was paying attention to the noise level), except the .22 pistols, especially since Hollywood has conditioned me to expect that guns would sound like thunder. I could definitely see that you might not notice or recognize the sound from a couple hundred yards away in a moderately noisy urban environment.
I've only fired guns on one occasion - at a friends bachelor party - but one of the guns was a AR-15, the civilian version (more or less) of the
"Bugger this, I want a better world." - Jenny Sparks
I find it highly offensive that this company has wangled an news interviews to take advantage of these killings. If anyone thinks they haven't, you have no idea of what marketing is about and how they do it. Since, I live in the 'affected' area, I'll be a whole lot more impressed if this wonder software actually finds the guy(s).
.sig is brilliant and funny, but I left it in an another discussion thread.)
(My other
Not to mention the ability to make mistakes a million times faster!
What do you think about the guy leaving a shell casing behind? I think this would be a terrible error for a military trained sniper, but I'm just a civilian. Obviously the caliber and barrel marks can be gathered from the round, but there could be other evidence on the casing. Is my perception of this overrated? Do you think he was just being cocky by leaving it behind?
Maybe they should go arrest that guy in Florida who yesterday asked a judge to legally change his name to "God". The judge refused and they agreed on the name "I Am Who I Am". Since the killer in MD claims that he is God, maybe they should show up at I Am's house and ask him a few questions...
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
This shithead is such a pansy that he's shooting people from great distance, in the back, and is STILL too scared to take a shot at someone who could concievably fight back!
:(
I think it has more to do with a form of cruelty, a theory advanced by one of the other replies... he's "sending a message", the message being that he's really one sick fuck.
deus does not exist but if he does
The guy has to be silencing it somehow. My guess is he's shooting from inside a vehicle, out a small port cut out for the purpose. I think he's using his vehicle as a silencer.
And my vote for punishment (as if anyone had asked?) Life in a solitary cell, bright white light 24 hours/day, white noise pumped in, food and toilet paper served via conveyor belt, no human contact, no human voices. For the next 80 years.
John
And why would you assume "no scope"? This whole thing sounds like a guy with a hunting rifle, and scopes there are as common as mosquitos. If he's shooting from a vehicular blind (as I guessed above) then he's also got the advantage of a pre-set-up steady rest. Of course, having the police find a shell casing doesn't fit the vehicular blind theory now, does it? Damn.
I think the only advantage the police have here is that they know what kind of gun the guy is shooting; and if it's a bolt-action .223 then he'll be easier to take alive. And they want him alive. They'll need a trial and a conviction to make the community feel safe again.
John
You see/hear an impact, then hear a shot (or -- even spookier -- you hear the whine of the bullet going past you followed by the sound of the shot a bit later; the disconnect between the two is freaky). You'd have to be looking directly at the shooter to know you were being targeted. If you could manage to see him shooting at you, you probably could duck. Maybe. 900 yards is a long shot, though. In fact, it's probably too long for a .223 to be very effective. Anyone shooting at that range would get something more powerful (heavier bullets not being swayed by wind as much, retaining more energy at impact, etc.). A .308 or 30-06/7.62x54R would do (assuming you stick with military cartridges). That's still a long shot... too long for your average gun owner. A heavier round would be moving slower, though, so it might get there about the same time.
BTW, the lag between impact and the sound of the shot is one of those things very few movies get right. Although when they do, it makes for much scarier scene.
(As a disclaimer: I've only been shot at a few times, and not once in any sort of combat-type situation. So I'm probably not the best judge of what it's like to be shot at from long ranges.)
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.