It is a simple fact of life that when we talk about community governance we often make comparisons with other times or places. If the talk is on economics someone always quotes Alberta. If the talk is on the environment perhaps it is California. When it comes to crime, Winnipeg is the place everyone remembers not because it is good but because it is awful. Being the crime capital of Canada and it is not a title anyone should be proud of. That brings us to policing. When it come to policing there are very useful comparables which are worth looking at.
Several police chiefs ago, when Winnipeg adopted the very successful American model of policing called CompStat they were looking for published results that dropped the rate of serious crime by 75% since 1993. http://home2.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/cscity.pdf The local version termed CrimeStat did not get anywhere near that result. In fact the only major result was a drop in auto theft which could much more correctly be attributed to MPICs efforts at electronic ignition locks. There are darn good reasons why Winnipeg failed. They tried to inject social spin into the program taking pieces that they wanted and omitting others they did not like. In fact there are four distinct areas where Winnipeg’s Crime data system differs from the those very successful ones in other jurisdictions:
First is the concept of attacking the small stuff before it gets bigger. This principle is clearly entrenched in workplace health and safety. It works something like this – if you have 1000 incidents – you probably get 200 accidents - which means 10 injuries and – one death. Now the exact proportions do not have to be accurate but the concept is that there is a numerical relationship between the number of incidents and work lost days or deaths. The way safety programs work is to attack the number of incidents and try and get them lower. You might say the same about sales management. The idea is that for most industries there is a ratio between doors knocked on, pitches given, demos made, closes offered and sales completed. Again sale people are told “ Want more sales? Knock on more doors!”
The principle applies in CrimeStat too. If you do not let the small stuff get overlooked , you will slow down and catch much of the escalation. It is not just a theory. Dozens of jurisdictions have adopted this idea and for example in the city of New York, one of the early adopters, crime dropped roughly 75%. This idea means that the police need to pay attention to residential theft break-ins and attempted break ins in cars and garages. What is so difficult about that? Today Winnipeg police simply give you an incident report and tell you to go see your insurance company. That is not good enough. Tracking and checking out these simple cases is not rocket science and often can stop petty criminals before they advance to become hard core.
The second principle ignored by police is that area managers have to be accountable for their area performance. In the USA, area mangers get promoted or disciplined for their area’s performance. As a consequence they take a serious personal interest in the outcomes.
The third idea that is missing is honesty in reporting. Winnipeg has a bad habit of arbitrarily deciding what is a crime and what isn’t and how fast it should be reported. Timeliness and honesty of data produces information which is much more valuable for management of resources. (like a pattern of car break ins in a neighbourhood)
The fourth concept, which is not directly a police responsibility, is some very basic policy direction to courts on gang violence, drug related crime and especially repeat young offenders.
The major difference between Manitoba United and the NDP is that crime issues do take some priority. The difference between Manitoba United and the PCs or Liberals is that we are not just about generalities – we will show openly what concrete steps can be taken to change things and policing is one area that desperately needs new direction.
It is a simple fact of life that when we talk about community governance we often make comparisons with other times or places. If the talk is on economics someone always quotes Alberta. If the talk is on the environment perhaps it is California. When it comes to crime, Winnipeg is the place everyone remembers not because it is good but because it is awful. Being the crime capital of Canada and it is not a title anyone should be proud of. That brings us to policing. When it come to policing there are very useful comparables which are worth looking at.
ReplyDeleteSeveral police chiefs ago, when Winnipeg adopted the very successful American model of policing called CompStat they were looking for published results that dropped the rate of serious crime by 75% since 1993. http://home2.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/cscity.pdf
The local version termed CrimeStat did not get anywhere near that result. In fact the only major result was a drop in auto theft which could much more correctly be attributed to MPICs efforts at electronic ignition locks. There are darn good reasons why Winnipeg failed. They tried to inject social spin into the program taking pieces that they wanted and omitting others they did not like. In fact there are four distinct areas where Winnipeg’s Crime data system differs from the those very successful ones in other jurisdictions:
First is the concept of attacking the small stuff before it gets bigger. This principle is clearly entrenched in workplace health and safety. It works something like this – if you have 1000 incidents – you probably get 200 accidents - which means 10 injuries and – one death. Now the exact proportions do not have to be accurate but the concept is that there is a numerical relationship between the number of incidents and work lost days or deaths. The way safety programs work is to attack the number of incidents and try and get them lower. You might say the same about sales management. The idea is that for most industries there is a ratio between doors knocked on, pitches given, demos made, closes offered and sales completed. Again sale people are told “ Want more sales? Knock on more doors!”
The principle applies in CrimeStat too. If you do not let the small stuff get overlooked , you will slow down and catch much of the escalation. It is not just a theory. Dozens of jurisdictions have adopted this idea and for example in the city of New York, one of the early adopters, crime dropped roughly 75%. This idea means that the police need to pay attention to residential theft break-ins and attempted break ins in cars and garages. What is so difficult about that? Today Winnipeg police simply give you an incident report and tell you to go see your insurance company. That is not good enough. Tracking and checking out these simple cases is not rocket science and often can stop petty criminals before they advance to become hard core.
The second principle ignored by police is that area managers have to be accountable for their area performance. In the USA, area mangers get promoted or disciplined for their area’s performance. As a consequence they take a serious personal interest in the outcomes.
The third idea that is missing is honesty in reporting. Winnipeg has a bad habit of arbitrarily deciding what is a crime and what isn’t and how fast it should be reported. Timeliness and honesty of data produces information which is much more valuable for management of resources. (like a pattern of car break ins in a neighbourhood)
The fourth concept, which is not directly a police responsibility, is some very basic policy direction to courts on gang violence, drug related crime and especially repeat young offenders.
The major difference between Manitoba United and the NDP is that crime issues do take some priority. The difference between Manitoba United and the PCs or Liberals is that we are not just about generalities – we will show openly what concrete steps can be taken to change things and policing is one area that desperately needs new direction.