Information Builders > Case Studies > Charlotte-Mecklenburg PD Fights Crime With Predictive Analytics

Charlotte-Mecklenburg PD Fights Crime With Predictive Analytics

Customer Company Size

Large Corporate

Region

America

Country

United States

Product

WebFOCUS
iWay DataMigrator
WebFOCUS RStat

Tech Stack

Business Intelligence
Predictive Analytics
Data Consolidation

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Productivity Improvements
Cost Savings

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics
Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration

Applicable Industries

Security & Public Safety

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Use Cases

Predictive Maintenance
Predictive Quality Analytics
Real-Time Location System (RTLS)

Services

Data Science Services
System Integration

About The Customer

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD) provides police services for Charlotte and the unincorporated areas of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. The department, which has 1,716 officers and 530 civilian staff, serves a population of more than 700,000 citizens. The goal of the department is to make Charlotte one of the safest large cities in America. To do that, it continually advances strategies to prevent crime and increase public safety. This philosophy recently led CMPD to deploy intelligence-led, predictive policing technology from Information Builders.

The Challenge

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD) had been collecting data on criminal activity for many years. However, the department relied on a manual process of sifting through 13 disparate data sources to analyze crime statistics, identify trends, and model resource allocations. This process was inefficient and time-consuming, making it difficult for the department to make sense of all the information. Users typically had to run multiple queries to be able to drill into the data and answer specific questions. CMPD command staff recognized the need for improvement and sought funding through an Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) Homeland Security Grant. During the RFP process, they asked the chief, line officers, and other personnel what they wanted to see from an information system and what types of information they wanted to provide to officers in the field. Based on this feedback, they established guidelines for the project and sought proposals from technology vendors.

The Solution

CMPD engaged Information Builders Professional Services to implement their vision of the repeatable Law Enforcement Analytics (LEA) solution. They began by loading an operational data store (ODS) that combines information from the department’s records management system, computer-aided dispatch data, employee data, and pertinent information about special events, weather, and school calendars. Information Builders used its ETL architecture for transferring both operational and historic data for analysis by combining real-time and batch integration techniques. iWay DataMigrator loads this operational data store and refreshes it with current data on an ongoing and nightly basis. Next, they used WebFOCUS to create a series of dashboards and up-to-the-minute graphical reports, provided directly to police officers in their patrol cars. The intelligence-led policing solution includes web-based key performance indicators (KPIs), operational dashboards, interactive-mapping capabilities, predictive analytics, and data-mining algorithms to spot trends and predict future outcomes.

Operational Impact

Patrolling officers have real-time information they can act upon while in the field.
Supervisors can assign officers to areas that have a high likelihood of criminal activities, lowering operating costs and streamlining crime-fighting efforts.
The officers on patrol particularly like the Priority Offender report, which gathers information about priority offenders and makes it available on laptop computers in the patrol vehicles.
Officers can also get all-points bulletins (APBs) and mid-shift information updates so they can be on the lookout for certain people, places, or events.