Even engineers can be crime fighters.
A team of University of Virginia researchers and students has created a specialized Web-based tool that allows police to easily analyze crimes in their jurisdiction or in other cooperating localities.
The technology, about four years in the making, is being used by 11 mostly rural sheriff's offices and police departments in the state.
"Most small places don't have crime analysts," said James H. Conklin, a research scientist at the school's Department of Systems and Information Engineering. "This is quick and easy, so almost any officer can become a crime analyst. And the simplicity of it means crime analysis will be done more."
Which they hope means that more crime will be spotted and stopped.
"We're data rich as a society but information poor," Conklin said. "Now we can analyze and exploit the data."
The invention - called WebCAT - allows data on crimes to be entered into a program, including type of crime, date of the incident, location and weapons used, and displays graphs, numbers and charts that allow the data to be easily visualized on the computer.
High-crime areas, crime trends and increases in particular types of crime, especially minor crimes such as shoplifting and car thefts that can get overlooked, are easy to spot.
Conklin said WebCAT "is so easy to use a police officer can look at it before he goes out on his beat to see what's going on."
Using a computer, a beat cop could check on shoplifting in his town, for example. A quick query could tell the officer if shoplifting is on the increase, when the incidents are occurring and what type of stores are showing an increase.
Statewide, for example, WebCAT quickly showed that from 2003 to 2004 there was about an 8 percent increase in shoplifting. Furthermore, the vast majority of shoplifting occurs at department stores and then grocery stores. Most shoplifting occurs on Saturdays between the hours of 1 to 6 p.m.
In Greene County, which has just begun using WebCAT, Sheriff Scott Haas said crime analysis at his department has been done by investigators simply talking with one another or reading crime incident reports.
"There's not a lot of data in it yet, but I think these technologies will be helpful, especially to localities with limited resources," said Haas. "It will be able to pinpoint crimes, and that will be a plus."
The problem for many localities has been that crime data, from shoplifting to murder, has flowed one way - out, to the state police and then to the FBI. Often, one locality has no idea about crime occurring in an adjoining locality.
WebCAT allows any officer to inquire about any crime that occurred in a cooperating locality. Greene County, for example, is cooperating with Fluvanna and Orange counties and the town of Gordonsville in sharing crime-incident data.
"It's a good thing when one jurisdiction knows what the other is doing," said Donald Brown, the chairman of the U.Va. Department of Systems and Information Technology. He oversaw the creation of WebCAT.
DaProSystems, a Roanoke-based company that sells public safety software, licensed WebCAT from U.Va. in the spring. So far, the company has sold the program to the 11 Virginia jurisdictions. The cost is about $15,000. U.Va. is awarded royalties from the sales.
WebCAT is being upgraded. By this spring, information on warrants, arrests, names of those arrested and even calls for service will be available to the jurisdictions that use the tool.
The engineers eventually will add maps that can pinpoint the scene of any crime and the ability to analyze data that will not only detect changes in crime patterns but also alert the crime analysts.
Further improvements in WebCAT also will predict the possible location of future crimes, Conklin said. Jeff Lewis, the sales manager for the company, said those upgrades will be provided free to current customers.
The project was funded through the state Department of Criminal Justice Services, which gave about $40,000 to U.Va. over the past three years.
Undergraduate engineering students and a few graduate students have been able to work on the project, giving them real-world problems to solve, Brown said. About 35 students have worked on WebCAT over the years.
"The students working on this project had the opportunity to see a true technology transfer from the university to the marketplace," he said.
Crime solvers
These 11 Virginia localities are using the University of Virginia's WebCAT crime-analysis tool. They are grouped by the law-enforcement agencies that share data.
New Kent County
King William County
King and Queen County
Town of West Point
Fluvanna County
Greene County
Orange County
Town of Gordonsville
Martinsville
Galax
King George County
