When the changes are unveiled, according to Interim Police Chief Randy Hundley, the city will be broken up into nine patrol zones, each of which will mirror the districts used by the City-Parish Council. There are 14 patrol zones now.
With the reorganization, the zones will be lumped into three major districts within the city and district chiefs will be appointed to oversee all activity within each area.
Before it can be implemented, however, the change must be approved by the City-Parish Council.
That shouldn't be a problem though.
Hundley said he expects the City-Parish Council to be supportive of the change.
"I'd be surprised if they wouldn't," he said. "There's two things. One, it shows them where their problems are within a district and then we can formulate a solution to have a permanent solution to the problem, rather than the Band-Aid effect that traditional law enforcement has."
At the heart of the change is COMSTAT, a program designed to make law enforcement more effective.
Crime mapped on screen
Sgt. Brian Butler, head of planning and research, sat at his desk Thursday. In front of him, facing the other way, lay a flat-panel computer screen. From across the desk, on another computer he pulled up COMSTAT onto the flat screen. On it were various options that allowed for custom searches of a database.
He located an area of interest, isolated it, dragged his mouse across it, and zoomed in. The area grew larger and individual streets became identifiable.
Symbols, such as a little green bag of money, dotted the artificial landscape. He clicked on one and it pulled up another screen which listed all the burglaries within that area within a specified time.
COMSTAT is the brainchild of Jack Maple, a former N.Y.C. transit cop. According to an article in Government Technology magazine, Maple was frustrated with just responding to crime instead of fighting it, so he created a 55-foot-long map of all the train stations and trains, listing the locations of all of the crimes. Using the data he gathered, he was able to track where most of the crimes occurred. Within two years of the charts' implementation, felony crimes had fallen by 27 percent in the subways.
The program has since been adopted by departments throughout the country.
'A large step for law enforcement'
"COMSTAT is a process by which crime statistics are collected, computerized, mapped and disseminated quickly," said Cpl. Mark Francis, public information officer for the department, quoting its creator.
Cpt. Rick Peterson has his own view of COMSTAT.
"It's a thought, or an idea," he said. "It's a management tool is all it is."
With it, Hundley said, he can better use the department's resources. The ability to map out where the crime is, where it's going, and when it's happening will allow the department to decide when officers are needed. Now, a typical day brings 17 officers to the morning shift and 17 to the evening shift, with a squad of five or six more officers to help out in the evening.
With COMSTAT, the department will be able look at when the crime is happening and decide when to schedule more officers.
For the last five years, the department has slowly purchased the equipment needed for COMSTAT, such as laptops for the officers and other upgrades throughout the department.
The program has taken a large portion of Sgt. Brian Butler's time. Butler, who heads planning and research for the department, has been consumed by the program, and all of its components.
"This in itself is a wonderful breakthrough for us," Butler said. "When I came into the department three years ago, any research, any crime data that the captains or majors needed could take two, three, four days just to get the technical portion of it, the numbers."
He said that didn't include any of the number-crunching, mapping or other aspects of gathering and displaying the data.
"To come from that to being here so that in a second you can have all the information, all the details... that's just a large step for law enforcement," Butler said.
Officers stay ahead of crime
The program has the department excited. Now, it will have a database where everything a department does is stored away and can be retrieved immediately, which means crime patterns will not be detected through word of mouth, but rather through hard data that will be printed out every day.
"The great thing about this is that nothing is permanent ? the data will always dictate what goes," Francis said. "Every day, you're going to have a printout of what's going on, what times the crimes are, where's the crime at and what you're dealing with."
This will allow officers to focus more on problematic areas.
"A district chief will have all the resources he needs in his district, from an investigator, to a regular street cop," Francis said. "Whatever he needs to accomplish the task in his district, the resources will be there for him."
Francis said this will also mean that if the job doesn't get done, then someone will be held accountable.
"The great thing about this is accountability. People will be accountable for their areas," he said.
Francis said the idea behind COMSTAT was to make the police become part of the community, rather than just servicing it.
"We really believe that this is a win-win situation, not only for the officers but for the city as a whole," he said.
Change welcomed
If it works as well as they say it will, Theresa Lindon said she'll be supportive.
Lindon lives on 13th Street, in an area that will become known as Zone 5 within the department. It's an area that she said could use more community policing.
"They need to clean up the area, drugs and everything," she said. "Somebody's gotta step up, you know, to have a safe place for those children to play."
That's what prompted the New Orleans Police Department to re-evaluate how it worked. In 1996, they found that solution in COMSTAT, according to Deputy Chief Marlon Defillo.
Defillo said since its implementation, the city has seen crime drop drastically.
"In comparison to the early 1990s, it's probably 50 to 60 percent less than what it was," Defillo said.
"What it does is it makes the commanders more aware of what's happening in their districts," he said.
And that, according to Francis, is exactly what the department is aiming for.
Some of the members of the department are already using the technology.
Recently, Faye Grimmett, a shift supervisor, sat in a chair in the communications room at the station, three computer screens before her, lights blipped on one, and police codes flashed on another one. On the third screen, furthest to her left, a map was visible.
The map was an aspect of COMSTAT, Francis said. On it were small rectangular images, which represented police units.
Grimmett highlighted one of the areas and zoomed in on one particular unit.
"It's very useful," she said. "I know where my officers are at and I know where they're going."
Before, she said, it was like feeling around in the dark because "you didn't know where your officers were at."
