Slashdot Mirror
Big Screen for NYPD
Roland Piquepaille writes "With millions of emergency calls every year, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) decided to invest in a new command and visualization center in order to keep up with the ocean of data it has to deal with. According to this article from BusinessWeek Online, the display system consists of hundreds of Mitsubishi digital light-processing (DLP) monitors covering three walls. The NYPD thinks it will help it to also manage the hundreds of thousands of annual arrest records and to further reduce crime in the city. You'll find more details and references in this overview, which includes impressive pictures of former visualization centers built by Imtech, which will integrate the NYPD one."
What exactly is the advantage over having, say, four or so monitors on a desk? Since the people are sitting pretty far away from the wall display, wouldn't you be only getting an effective resolution about a tenth (or less, depending on distance) of what you'd have from being right in front of the display?
Anyone remember that show? Some guy took over as the chief of the Washington DC Capital district and enacted major changes. The police department used a huge real time statistics tracking system and displayed it on a huge display. I think the idea was kind of revolutionary to the average joe like me; but I don't know if police were using a system like that before then.
:D
I wouldn't mind seeing systems like this implimentated in say, elected public offices to keep track of opinion areas, ethnic densities, crime rates, poll results, average pay. etc. To help them keep better tabs on what they need to improve and how to vote on what bill.
Oh, did I mention I plan on making a run or two for public office?
You don't think they have trouble managing their data?
The statute of limitations for rape is 5 goddamn years in part because of all the data that needs to be retained. Many different precints have files on different rapists that years later are proven to be the same perp.
It means that everyone is reading from the same page - yes, everyone does still have their own monitor, but no matter what task each individual is performing, the main overview is displayed on the wall.
Besides, it looks good.
liqbase
Doesn't this remind you of the police station in that movie? Next we'll have tickets automatically being printed out of our parking meters.
In the 1990s, the NYPD developed an intensely data-driven style of policing centered around a program called CompStat, which basically tracks crimes and their locations, times, etc. This allows the police to see where things are heating up and deploy more and better-targeted resources to the area. It's been extremely effective, and crime has dropped about 60-70%.
Obviously, visualization tools mix well with this kind of system, but why a big board? One possible answer is that there is a whole culture of public accountability that goes along with CompStat -- local commanders are called in to group meetings and are expected to know the figures for their area and discuss plans for dealing with them. When you get a group talking about the same visual data, a shared image is really helpful. Since the idea seems to mesh well with the culture, and the culture has been successful, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt.
Kill, Tux, kill!
Here's an example, with a similar picture - 60-feet wall of monitors:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2070312.stm
We're now living in a Big Brother world, aren't we? Of course, if it helps catching criminals, then so be it.
I really think this could come in usefull to help corelate seperate calls faster, especially since many operators may be handling calls in the same area and not even know it. One quick look at the screen and you can see a series of disturbance calls moving in a line, or a growing cicrle.
paul reinheimer
I respect your honesty in stating that you work for a vendor. I was a specialist in Geographical Information systems and have very deep experience in that field. Nonetheless when I analyzed the utility of GIS for police work I came up largely empty-handed. Not a single official or officer could come up with a good proactive use of the technology. Now remember that I wanted this to be useful: I was initially an advocate of this technology. But my conclusions didn't prevent higher-ups from purchasing multi-million dollar systems (most are still present today but unused) however. There is a gee-whiz aspect to GIS that causes police officials to say to themselves "Wow this looks so great, there must be some way we can use it." But sober analysis does not support the use of GIS in police work for real-time intervention. Again, it is useful for the usual statistical analysis: but it won't tell officers anything they don't already know. And there is much that they know that is not captured in any computer system.
Now a command center is a good thing because it helps coordinate police activity in special events and when trying to corral suspects, but such a center only needs a simple map display that shows where police units and incidents are. It doesn't need a wall of displays or 100's of personnel doing statistical analysis realtime.
Nonetheless, be assured that, without such a central command unit, police units would still very quickly coordinate their actions using their peer-to-peer communications systems (walkie-talkies, cellphones, etc.) and provide the same level or better of coordination. I've seen it happen over and over again.
Mapping display systems are fine and good, but they're no better than a pin map on a wall. And well before you do any computation, the detectives in the precinct are on top of the situation. So IOW any useful analysis is post-incident and useful mostly for post-mortem analysis of "crime trends".
The big systems are merely showpieces for politicos and money troughs for contractors.
The only way to reduce crime is by educational, economic, and cultural means, not by taking police state measures.
Look at Japan.