April 2008
The Answer to "The Big Two"
In the previous issue of Corona Quarterly we discussed how Staff Wizard 2008 is used to calculate how many patrol officers you need to provide the desired service level. This time, we will explain how to answer the second question of the Big Two, "What is the best deployment for the number of officers I expect to have?"
First, we will accept the premise that you probably do not have enough officers to do everything you want to do. But given that premise, the task remains to do do the best you can with what you have. That is handled with the Allocation function in Staff Wizard.
We accept and promote the philosophy that patrol deployment should be proportional to the patrol workload. The workload is usually associated with citizen-initiated calls for service. When analyzed, we find a pattern which cycles over a week, with Friday nights usually being busier than Sunday mornings. This is called the demand profile and will usually be consistent for an agency week after week. Our task is to match the proportion of available resources with the proportion of the demand for each period (usually one hour) of the average week.
Before the Allocation function is called, it is important to ensure that Staff Wizard Input Statistics are correct. You may want to adjust the Calls For Service numbers to reflect the expected rate in place of the historical rate. Further, you will probably want to enter your Non-CFS time, replacing the historical time. Using the historical time for your planning is actually counter-productive and will tend to add officers when you least need them. As a manager, you want to control your deployment so that your officers will have the necessary time for proactive work along with their administrative duties.
Adjusting the Non-CFS time also allows you to concentrate more time during periods when you want your officers to be able to attack crime patterns or traffic enforcement. Remember that the call comes in well after the crime has been committed in most cases, so deploying just for call response may not allow officers the time to prevent or interdict the actual commission of the crime.
The Allocation process is rather simple. Again, the data preparation is the key. Enter the number of officers you have, the number of hours per week each officer works, whether to use your Operational Goals (see previous newsletter), select the Allocation Variable, and allocate your units.
The calculations in Allocation start with a total of available resources (officers * hours per week). The statistics for the selected Allocation Variable for each period of the week are re-examined, and the period with the "worst" value and assigns the next unit to that period. This continues until all the units have been assigned, resulting in the nearly equal values for that statistic across all periods of the week.
From this point, you can return to Statistics to see what your operations will look like with this allocation, and you can export your dataset for use in the Staff Wizard Scheduler. Of course, you can always override the allocation, change your input statistics and rerun the process at any point.
It only takes a few seconds to allocate your staff, so feel free to try different variables, adjust your inputs, or change your Operational Goals. This is where your baseline for everything else is set, so you need to be confident in your results. As always, please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.
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New Customers
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Innovative Uses of CADmine
AURORA, CO - Finding a Sex Offender - Crime Analysis notes: "About a year ago I was reading CAD calls when I read a call for indecent exposure at a health club. There was no case report, and not much information. A week later, I read another CAD call, same location, again no case report. There was a license plate listed in the notes and a good physical description. The next day there was another CAD call, again no case report, at a grocery store not far from there, same physical description.
I pulled the license plate info and gave the info to the Police Area Representative. The officer went to the health club and found 4 more victims that didn't report it, and an employee who had seen the vehicle there several times. I did a date/time probability search in CADmine and created a map for the officers. Officers did surveillance on the health club on the dates/times suggested and observed the suspect drive through the parking lot. He was contacted and confessed to 7 incidents there as well as several others.
If I had not had easy access to the CAD info, this would not have been discovered until/or when an officer wrote a report, and none of the responding officers advised the PAR officer or me of any of these incidents. We got him before he could escalate into something worse as he admitted that he tried to get two teenage girls into his car."
Tech Tip - CADmine
Have you ever wanted to find specific keywords within the dispatcher's text in a CAD incident, but you did not have the ability to access that data in CAD? Maybe you are looking for a particular person related to an incident, a partial license plate for an investigation, or need information on a specific incident. Digging into the detail of the incident narrative is not easy with most CAD systems.
In CADmine, one of the most frequently used features is keyword search. You can easily access the detail of a CAD incident and find what you need in seconds. Simply enter the text string, choose a call type if needed and select an approximate date range. CADmine will immediately produce a list of the incidents with your search terms highlighted in each.
Quiz - Average Speed
One of the Input Statistics in Staff Wizard is the average response speed calibration function. Whether you use our default numbers (validated by field tests), or the calibrated speed, or your own choice, it helps to understand something about "average speed".
Here is the question: All officers in the academy must qualify in pursuit driving on a one-mile closed course track. To qualify, they must make two laps averaging 60 miles per hour. Officer Recruit Fubar is trying to qualify. He has finished the first lap, but after a spinout and getting lost in the cone pattern, his average speed for the first lap was 30 mph. How fast does he need to drive on the second lap to qualify with the 60 mph average speed?
For the answer, read the 3rd Quarter Newsletter
