New Oakland Police Crime Tracker Expected To Speed Response Times
OAKLAND (KCBS) – Oakland's police chief is hoping a high tech approach to tracking crime trends can make a big difference for a department that some say is extremely short staffed.
This comes as the Oakland Police Department received so many calls for help on Friday that officers couldn't respond to all of them. The department has been reaching out to communities especially hard-hit by crime, to tell them about CompStat that they are adopting.
"Our technology when we started wasn't really great, but we've gotten a lot better with some of the software programs we're using to track crime," said Police Chief Howard Jordan.
KCBS' Chris Filippi Reports:
CompStat uses a statistics-based management system to identify crime trends and help the chief to deploy resources. That's especially important for a department that has lost about 180 officer positions since 2009. Jordan said that the system has been used in Los Angeles for a while, and is very fast.
"If a crime happened at 9 a.m., he knew about it," Jordan said of officers in Los Angeles.
Jordan said at a CompStat meeting last month that he's getting Oakland crime trends about one day after they happen, which he says is good for a large city with so much activity.
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