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As the fiscal year 2023 is wrapping up, the Smart Policing Initiative (SPI) will have many new final reports that will be posted to the SPI website. Before those final reports are posted, here is a spotlight on a recent SPI site and their final report and findings. Stay tuned for more spotlights of new SPI final reports!
Through the Bureau of Justice Assistance’s SPI program, the Miami, Florida Police Department developed a Real Time Crime Center and expanded their use of crime analysis in the department. The main goal was to tackle gun violence and violent crime through technological implementation and data analysis.
Project Overview: The Miami Police Department (MPD) developed a Real Time Crime Center (RTCC) in response to the rise in violent crimes taking place in the city. The RTCC developed was a centralized platform within MPD that allowed the agency to capture and deploy a plethora of information to officers, detectives, and Neighborhood Enhancement Team (NET) commanders in real time to improve responses to violent crime offenses. MPD partnered with Florida International University (FIU) to evaluate metrics associated with effectiveness of the new system.
Research Design: To understand the impact that Miami’s Real Time Crime Center (MRTCC) had on police practices, researchers utilized a mixed-methods study design consisting of three parts. First, researchers utilized a qualitative survey distributed to the frequent users of the MRTCC technologies to understand the role that they played in various MPD assignments and gauge officer perceptions of its benefits. Next, researchers designed a network analysis of violent crime case components to visualize and determine how MRTCC technologies have become integrated into case processing within the Miami Police Department. This allowed for researchers to evaluate how MPD utilizes and integrates MRTCC products within their case processing. Lastly, a quasi-experiment with relevant controls was conducted to understand the impact of MRTCC technologies on clearance rates and the time it takes for the agency to clear a case.
You can download the final report here.
A quick summary of Miami’s findings can be found here.
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