Efficiency move: SFPD puts crime analyst in station
June 29, 2009
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| Jeff Taylor (Courtesy photo) |
An analyst that will pinpoint crime trends — assaults on city busses and shootings, among others — has been hired to work with one of the police stations in the south side of The City.
Jeff Taylor, formerly a crime analyst at the department’s Bryant Street headquarters, started work last week at the Ingleside Police Station.
Taylor will interpret data daily on crimes, marking the first time the information is kept in a station database and interpreted locally.
The data will be used to shape deployment strategies based on criminal hot spots, violence trends and dangerous intersections.
The Ingleside station was chosen in March as the testing ground for reforms based on a series of studies by the nonprofit Police Executive Research Forum on ways to increase efficiency.
The station covers a police district that includes nearly two dozen neighborhoods, including the bucolic Saint Francis Wood and the Sunnydale housing projects.
Using computer software, Taylor will be able to create daily reports on the top five crimes in neighborhoods.
“We can respond with a more high-visibility patrol. We can reach out to the community and develop a response and solution to a particular crime pattern,” Ingleside Capt. David Lazar said.
The goal is to tackle the problems to a point where police receive fewer calls for service.
“I want to see, based on our computer data, what address we’re responding to the most. Then we’ll do an analysis of the problem and formulate a response,” Lazar said. “I also want to reduce or prevent accidents by learning where we’re seeing the most frequent accidents and the primary collision factor.”
