Technology helping MPD set course for fewer homicides

DC police are on track to hit a 3-year-old goal of less than 100 homicides in 2012, after finishing January and February with fewer deaths than last year. They have help from a nationwide drop in violent crime, but the department also benefits from emerging technologies that help quell crime, and new research promises even more assistance.

The department, and others around the nation, have experimented with a wide variety of techno­logical tools. Some have worked, while others have turned out not to have much impact at all. Many also raise significant questions about civil liberties, when police deploy them widely against citizens without probable cause.

In New York, police are working with the Pentagon to develop weapon-spotting technology. A recent New York Times article reported, “The tool would operate as a sort of reverse infrared mapping tool by reading the energy people emit and pin­pointing where that flow is blocked by some object, like a gun.”

The technology, similar to night vision, has not hit the streets yet. Tests at a police shooting range have demonstrated the technology’s effectiveness is limited to around 5 meters, but NYPD would like to achieve 25 meters.

DC is not involved in similar research.

“Our best bet is that the Secret Service develops it and then lets us use it,” said Kristopher Baumann, Chairman of the Fraternal Order of Police’s Metropolitan Police Department Labor Committee.

Baumann praised Ray Kelly, NYPD’s Commissioner, for advancing his department’s use of new technology to improve public safety. “Ray Kelly and NYPD are 100 years ahead of us,” Baumann said.

But the Metropolitan Police Department has made investments in other technologies under Police Chief Cathy Lanier.

Public listservs now include more than 10,000 members and allow citizens to read arrest and crime reports in almost real time. MPD has installed speed cameras around the city, added closed-circuit television cameras, and ShotSpotter devices, which immediately alert police to the sound of gunfire, in high-crime areas.

Not all technology investments are working, however. A 2011 study by the Urban Institute concluded the city’s more than 70 neighborhood crime cameras do not have a measurable effect on crime.

Surveillance of the city’s foreboding corners and hardscrabble courtyards began in summer 2006 by Chief Charles Ramsey, now police chief in Philadelphia, with funds from the DC Council to install nearly 50 cameras. Cameras are reportedly monitored from a single control center with a police officer at the rank of lieutenant or higher present at all times. They retain footage for 10 days.

According to the study’s analysis of DC’s network, “[B]ecause the video cannot be zoomed in after-the-fact without distorting the image, the footage is often too granular to make positive identifications. Cameras are also sensitive to changes in weather and lighting and do not always maintain a continuous flow of coverage.” The study cited the “limited use of camera footage in court cases” as evidence that cameras don’t help solve or prosecute cases.

Another weapon police have used in recent years to combat crime with mixed results is the Global Positioning System. While ankle monitoring bracelets have been in use for nearly three decades, in recent years these devices have been equipped with GPS. To a determined executioner in the Barry Farm neighborhood this gadget was of no consequence; while equipped with a court-mandated GPS ankle bracelet prosecutors believe Alonzo Marlow committed two murders.

Last month the Supreme Court issued a ruling against the MPD and law enforcement agencies across the country, deciding that the warrantless use of a tracking device on a suspect’s vehicle to monitor movements on public streets violated the Fourth Amendment. In response to the Supreme Court decision, the FBI announced last week they were turning off nearly 3,000 GPS devices, many of them stuck underneath cars.

In 2009, Chief Lanier declared, “We’re targeting for under 100 [homicides], and I think we can do it if we give everything we’ve got.” With 132 murders recorded in 2010 and 108 last year, Lanier is knocking at the door of her stated goal.

At this time last year, there were 15 homicides in the city. This year there have been 12.

According to the most recent statistics, MPD has recovered 311 illegal firearms this year. Last year, 1,919 total guns were recovered, the fewest recovered since 2003.

A DC law enforcement officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity envisions where and how new gun-spotting equipment could be used throughout our region. “It could prevent a lot of the violence at the Go-Go shows. You could single them out one by one,” the officer said. “It could make everyone safer.”