On Wednesday, the Santa Cruz Police Department is giving out lists of where crimes are likely to occur and asking residents to keep their eyes open and stop criminals in those areas.
It's part of the first "PredPol Day of Action" and was spearheaded by the Kent, England Police Department, where Santa Cruz Deputy Police Chief Steve Clark spent a week earlier in the year to spread the doctrine of tracking crime before it happens through computer models.
On Wednesday, the department will release the most likely crime spots to groups including Santa Cruz Neighbors and Take Back Santa Cruz. It will also post them at http://santacruzpolice.blogspot.com/
"The plan is to get as much positive and healthy activity and prescence in each of the PredPol zones," said Clark, in a press release.
"Our goal is to maximize presence in and around these areas and have a positive impact on crime and the overall quality of life" said Clark in a press release. "We won’t know the locations until that morning when PredPol runs the reports for that day. "
Here is an example of a predpol report.
Developed by mathematicians at Santa Clara University and UCLA, the program analyzes crimes based on where they occurred before. Its creators compare it to earthquake aftershocks and say that burglars are likely to strike near their homes and in areas where they were successful before and are familiar with.
Here is one of the first articles written on PredPol and an interview with one of the creators.
Here's PredPol's website, which doesn't give many details about how the program works, but shows studies that it was twice as effective as predictions made by crime analysts.
Here's an article about another predictive policing model used in Santa Clara County, which claims to be more effective.
Santa Cruz was the first city in the country to adopt PredPol and Los Angeles followed. It's now in use in Seattle, Alhambra, Carlsbad, Norcross and Kent, England.
So far, the models focus on property crime, but there are new ones in the works that can predict gun violence.
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