We are very pleased to announce that Esri will be attending the 2012 Omega Training Summit.
The Omega Group and Esri have long had a partnership that was formed on the basis that Esri would focus on core technology while The Omega Group would build industry-specific solutions for law enforcement and fire/public safety.
The Omega Group is a gold level partner in Esri’s Partner Network—a worldwide community of companies that develop and deliver cutting-edge geographic spatial solutions and services based on Esri technology. Esri and The Omega Group collaborate to support end users through successful GIS implementations and repeatable solutions.
In the earliest days of our 16-year partnership, Esri and The Omega Group made the decision that we would never let a customer fail. We never walk away, we never stop listening, and we never stop looking for ways to improve as a team. This clear set of objectives, trust in each other, and commitment to our customers is what makes our partnership a unique approach to the market.
Please visit Esri at The Omega Group Training Summit in San Diego, California, May 23–25, 2012.
20 days to the big event, don’t delay and sign up today!!!
Hurry and Register!!
We are running out of available rooms at the special group room rate of $179! Once this lot of rooms has been taken, the rate per room will increase by at least $40.00/room/night.
This year’s Training Summit will showcase exciting new products as well as highlight the many improvements to our desktop products, dashboard applications and more! You will have the opportunity to hear from notable speakers from Law Enforcement agencies, Public Safety agencies, Fire Fighting agencies and others. Learn from your own peers and take advantage of the opportunity to ask them questions about their departments, future plans and give your thoughts and ideas for future products and development. Be a part of this new, dynamic era in public safety technology and thought leadership!
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- Five heated pools
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- Fire pits
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The Omega Group recently conducted a series of surveys, interviews and a literature search to identify exactly what small town police chiefs and rural county sheriffs had in common when it comes to identifying the major obstacles that they thought existed in their communities. The following priority themes emerged from that effort:
1. Officer Location & Safety
An overwhelming concurrence on what was the number one concern of chiefs and sheriffs across the country was tracking officer location and its impact on officer safety and dispatch. Large geographies and diverse topographies present a challenge to accurately relay officer positions and/or respond to calls that occur in unique locations. Inaccurate addressing and misdirection also make it difficult to locate incidents and evacuate victims, impacts response times and impedes the speed with which service can be provided.
2. Crime Prevention
Nearly all small town and rural policing leaders express crime prevention as a priority for their departments. In the past, these leaders were more confident that they intuitively knew the status of crime activity in their respective jurisdictions. Given staffing cutbacks, the difficult nature of their current policing challenges and the new economic realities that they all face, all acknowledged that newer technology-enabled proactive policing approaches were now necessary for their organizations to remain effective in reducing crime.
While crime prevention is a very general objective, these small town chiefs and rural sheriffs had very specific crime priorities in mind when it came to prevention goals. Specifically, proximity-based crimes topped the list of priorities including crimes connected to highways and transportation nodes such as rest stops, property crimes of which 25% of the victimizations take place while the resident is away, theft of agricultural equipment/ livestock/grain, vice, gangs and gang influences in schools, crimes against the elderly and production/transshipment/distribution of drugs within their jurisdictions. Crimes committed by juvenile offenders were also a common priority identified by small town police chiefs and rural county sheriffs.
3. Situational Awareness
Smaller law enforcement agencies are concerned about developing an increased level of situational awareness. Simply stated, this is the ability to be aware of what is happening in the vicinity in order to understand how information, events, and one’s own actions will impact policing outcomes. To understand what is happening in the vicinity, small town and rural officers need the following types of information:
- Current location of the officer/deputy
- Current activity relevant to the officer or deputy’s location
- Location of other officers
- Improved communications between officers/deputies across large jurisdictions
- Critical information known about locations, events or persons-of-interest in the vicinity
- Alerts of unusual situations
4. Cut Duplication of Effort & Improve Productivity
As with larger cities, small town and rural law enforcement agencies must deal with a level of regulatory requirements and form filling which must be completed by staff. Given the amount of time spent in vehicles, covering broad expanses of jurisdictional geography with a limited number of officers, it is difficult to find the time back at ‘headquarters’ or their home offices to properly comply. Given the large proportion of time spent by patrol officers in vehicles, chiefs and sheriffs realize that any mechanism which would take advantage of down-time in the field would be extremely productive. Facilitating remote data capture and reporting would provide the following benefits:
- eliminate the need to return to headquarters or a home office
- reduce manual paperwork requirements
- increase officer/deputy visibility in the community
- Increase officer/deputy time on patrol
The Omega Group has been providing law enforcement agencies with cutting edge tools to help increase productivity and effectiveness for over 19 years. Having studied the common needs for small town and rural law enforcement agencies we truly feel that we have not only identified the most important challenges that are being faced today but that we have a comprehensive affordable solution that can help these agencies achieve their goals.
For additional information go to http://info.theomegagroup.com/introducing-the-industrys-first-proactive-policing-mobile-application/
It is not uncommon for public safety agencies or any organizations for that matter to take a cautious approach when introducing new information technology internally. This model of gradualism usually focuses on instructing a small core of staff in the new functionalities who then proceeds to disseminate this knowledge to the other organizational levels through training days and seminars.
The premise of this approach is that the technology must be learned before it can be readily leveraged or used. Although applicable with many other applications or solutions, this assumption does not apply whatsoever to FireView™ Dashboard, as demonstrated by the Detroit Fire Department’s debut of this powerful geospatial information technology in late 2011.
Soon after acquiring FireView™ Dashboard, Detroit Fire decided to put it front and center of its information reporting and decision-making process. There was no thought of wading slowly into the technology before delving into deeper waters.
Instead, Executive Commissioner Austin employed it immediately for the department’s highest profile yearly operation known as Angels’ Night.
During Angels’ Night, Detroit Fire coordinates the information management of this complex multi-agency effort to combat the unfortunate spike of arson activity on the days surrounding Halloween. This period receives widespread media attention and successful mitigation is crucial to the community building efforts of city leaders. Consequently, FireView Dashboard’s introduction would be under the spotlight.
FireView Dashboard’s unveiling essentially occurred in the Angels’ Night policy command center where all the key city leaders comprising the Angels’ Night command center team including the mayor, police chief, head of homeland security, and directors of utilities were watching. After just a few test runs prior to Angels’ Night, Commission Austin and his staff were confident that FireView™ Dashboard would rise to meet the challenge of continuously feeding near real time information concerning suspicious building fires, vehicle fires and rubbish fires. There was no need to have an analyst interpret or sort the data for them. It was readily clear and actionable. Indeed, the 2011 Angels’ Night resulted in a 44% reduction in arson.
Commissioner Austin emphasized that he likes FireView™ Dashboard because instead of spending time learning the technology, the department can immediately begin using it to learn about its response environment. Indeed, he is making FireView™ Dashboard available at all the fire stations, so that his firefighters can see the same data as what he sees, but for their particular zone of operation, making for safer and more efficient deployments. You can read more about Detroit’s use of FireView Dashboard and Commissioner Austin’s insightful comments here: Angels Night Operation in Detroit Guided By FireView™ Dashboard, from The Omega Group.
In order to implement effective Proactive, Predictive and/or Intelligence-led strategies you must have good source data. Make that excellent data. The more accurate, complete, timely and available the crime data are collected and kept at a police agency, the better job they can do with it in fighting crime. In a recent blog post regarding success, Tom Casady noted that “While the software these agencies inquired about is great, it is the quality and quantity of data behind it that allows us to be so successful with CrimeView and our other information resources”. This is very true.
Accuracy. One of the most important duties of a policing agency is to maintain accurate records of their activities, primarily the crime data they collect: calls for service, crime reports and persons. They need these data to be accurate for investigations, crime analysis and any legal implications. Garbage in, garbage out is the mantra. The less accurate the data collected the more work investigators and crime analysts must do to ensure its accuracy before they can use it. Systems allowing for too much flexibility in the data entry process will find at least a fair amount of poor data for names, addresses, etc.
Completeness. These data are typically collected and housed in Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) and Record Management System (RMS) databases. All of the information collected should be stored, even notes and narratives when possible. If modus operandi (MO) data are known, they need to be entered in to the appropriate tables or at least included in the narrative. Addresses should include street types and directions. If used, abbreviations should be standardized.
Timeliness. Workflows are vital to making sure that a crime report gets completed, reviewed and approved. It is also vital that these processes are conducted in a very timely manner so that the analyst and the rest of the agency have the latest records. These records may be part of a significant trend or vital information about a particular field interview made available to patrol, etc.
Availability. The RMS should be the analyst’s friend, providing search, query and reporting capabilities to meet the needs of the agency. But we know that this is not always the case. Regardless of the reporting capabilities of the crime data repository, access to the raw data in these systems is vital. Many modern agencies perform their own data processing to get all of their source data sets into relevant tables in a data mart database so that all software and processes that need these data do not have to access source systems. Sophisticated agencies also do some data transformation and/or cleaning during this process as well.
Crime Mapping. One place all records management systems fall short is GIS and mapping. Crime mapping has become an essential component of modern crime analysis. The local jurisdiction (e.g., city, county) can typically provide at least some local GIS layers, digitally mapped streets, police boundaries, etc. This is where we come in. We combine the crime data and GIS sources to create relevant crime layers in a geodatabase that can be used by the agency in mapping, analysis and reporting applications.
Extract-Transform-Load. What does it really take to get these source data resources into robust data layers for use in a crime mapping environment? The Extract-Transform-Load
(ETL) process is very important to any agency. Extracting data and transforming it into the formats and schema needed for the best results typically happens with SQL queries hitting the source data. There are a myriad of data preparation processes that can be performed, such as creating a full name or complete address from their parts stored in various fields, joining tables to add additional attributes and specialized date-time fields. The process also needs to support the use of custom lookup tables unavailable in the source databases to categorize crime types or add description fields. Reconciling expunged or orphaned data records has also become a critical capability to ensure accuracy. Cleaning data during this process, especially the address fields, is necessary to achieve data consistency and high geocoding rates. Geocoding is an art requiring many passes using all of the reference information possible to get the crime data located in the right places. A high geocoding rate (99% if possible) is required for completeness and accuracy for any spatial analyses, such as hot spots and other crime patterns.
Automation. All processes that can be reasonably automated need to be automated. Automation is vital for three key reasons: data timeliness, data consistency and saving human resources. With an established process that requires no human intervention, it can be run once or multiple times per day for any particular data layers. It will produce consistent data every day, assuming the source data formats do not change. The biggest return on investment (ROI) is the savings of analyst’s time in getting data in shape for analysis and dissemination. Many departments still spend one or two person days each week to perform the ETL process. Assuming even a conservative cost to an agency of an analyst’s time, this can translate to a range of $20,000 to $40,000 per year of personnel costs. A one year savings can cover most if not all the cost of a robust crime mapping implementation for a small to mid-sized agency, including the ETL process. Some larger agencies even spend more time per week. Investment in automation provides the best ROI for a police agency, especially in times of tighter budgets. Equally important, it saves analysts’ time, allowing them to analyze and not be encumbered by the rigors of data import processing.
Dissemination. Command staff need timely data summaries for strategic planning, middle management require specific crime data for directed patrols, patrol officers need up-to-date information on persons of interest, the analyst wants to discover crime patterns and series, as well as disseminate crime statistics and actionable results and we can’t forget the public. Once these robust data layers are available to a police agency, what are the best ways for disseminating these data to who need it? The analyst is typically the biggest consumer of crime data. Their primary environment for analysis has become their desktop GIS, allowing them to mix data from their geodatabase layers with all of the other resources they have available to them. However, they now have the ability to leverage dashboard environments to disseminate automated queries and lighter analysis results. In addition, these dashboards can meet the needs of a much broader audience and their various levels of data sophistication, from simple summaries and comparisons to targeted data mining results. Data can be made available to the public through an agency web site or through inexpensive crime mapping sites in the cloud. Also, now becoming critical, is getting these crime data out to patrol through mobile devices like smart phones and tablets.
It all begins with accurate, complete and timely crime data, made accessible to the entire police agency in an automated fashion. Once that system is in place, an agency can make these data and results of analyses available to all of its users in the various formats where and when they need them to get their jobs done.
More accurate data in the hands of the right persons leads to more effective Proactive, Predictive, Intelligence-led and/or any other strategies an agency wishes to implement in their crime fighting efforts.
Look at the web site of any vendor of law enforcement and/or public safety software and you will find a cornucopia of policing buzzwords that will make your hair hurt! I am probably as guilty as the next individual in my use of ‘buzzwords’ as a shorthand way to express a complicated concept.
The problem with buzzwords is that as they become overused, they largely become devoid of any meaning. This leaves a great deal up to individual perspective and interpretation that leads to confusion. Confusion muddles the ability for anyone to process, understand and apply the very concepts the buzzwords were meant to express.
It is in this light that I believe the concepts of ‘Proactive’, ‘Predictive’ & ‘Intelligence-led’ policing have reached a buzzword ‘tipping point’! The abyss of futility is right around the corner. To avoid the abyss, let’s better define our terms and set the stage for the ongoing dialog we hope to have here on the Omega blog.
In the past two years, Omega has been privileged to work with hundreds of law enforcement agencies ranging from the largest of major metropolitan departments with sworn officers numbering in the thousands, to small town and rural agencies with less than 25 officers. Our on-premise and cloud-based analysis, mapping and visualization solutions have been forged under the heat of a broad range of agency crime and business priorities. During that time, we have listened intently to our clients and have evolved our own understanding of what proactive policing means to them, and in turn to us, as they attempt to navigate the new realities of today’s difficult crime fighting environment.
Proactive policing is not new. There has always been a natural preventative counterpart to the demands of police reaction and response to incidents of crime. The practice of developing information about crime, designing strategies for its suppression and engaging persons-of-interest before they commit a crime to prevent its occurrence in the first place, has been followed in one way or another, since the beginning of the modern policing era.
What IS different today is the myriad of sophisticated computational approaches we can now cost-effectively employ to develop insights about crime and criminals, design suppression strategies based on those insights, direct patrol work to execute those strategies and monitor/assess the outcomes.
In the following short Omega videos, we will try and move…Beyond the Buzz…to share our understanding of proactive policing and how the concepts of ‘predictive policing’ and being ‘intelligence-led’ fit.
The Police Department has begun using sophisticated software that allows officers in the field to get immediate information on crime trends.
Police Chief Tony Farrar said the system "puts data at the officer's fingertips."
It allows the officers to monitor crime trends by day, time, location and type.
The ultimate goal is to allow officers to allocate resources in a more efficient manner. It will allow officers to more accurately identify where crime is taking place, Farrar said.
Police analyst Jennifer Krutak worked with the development staff of San Diego-based The Omega Group to tailor its CrimeView Dashboard computer software to the needs of her department.
Rialto is among the first.
30 police departments across the United States to begin using the software, Krutak said.
One of the many advantages of the system, she said, is that it allows officers "real time" access to crime information instead of waiting for a system update.
"Now an officer can initiate basic crime analysis," she said.
"It should lead to a quantum leap in the allocation of resources," she said, by allowing watch commanders to develop schedules that match the number of officers to peak crime times and locations.
In an interview earlier this month, Farrar said he plans to announce additional police technology aids in a few weeks.
The Omega Group is proud to share with you a story that aired on Channel 5 WNEM in Bay City, Michigan on Friday, March 2, 2012 where they showcased Bay City Police Department using The Omega Group‘s CrimeView® Dashboard.
If you have a couple of minutes, please click on the link below.
Bay City PD gets new software to fight crime, save money
If you have any questions or comments, please call The Omega Group at (800) 228-1059 or email sales@theomegagroup.com.
To see how this product will work in your agency click here.
Paradise Point Resort & Spa, San Diego, CA
May 23 - 25, 2012
 Our 6th Training Conference will explore new strategies, tactics and supporting technologies to deliver analysis-led
proactive public safety outcomes with less resources and cost.
Attendees will learn:
- How major metropolitan, suburban, small town & rural departments are leveraging cost-effective advancements in analytics, mapping, internet cloud, mobile applications & GPS to transition their agencies to new proactive policing and fire service models.
- How proximity-based public safety is emerging to become a cornerstone for progressive police and fire departments across the country.
- How the crime analysis unit is evolving to support the new proactive policing models.
- Specific new analysis & mapping-led approaches to:
- Directed Patrols/Focused Deterrence
- Border Crime Suppression
- Data-driven Analysis of Crime & Traffic Safety (DDACTS)
- 1710 compliance
- COMPSTAT
- Special Event Planning
- Predictive Policing
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Attendees will experience ‘deep dive’ sessions on Omega’s CrimeView® & FireView® dashboards and have a good look at our new location-aware NEARme™ and NEARus™ mobile technologies.
Attendees will also get a 'sneak peak' of the forthcoming updates to our CrimeView® Desktop solution for crime analyst power users and our new CrimeView® Predictive Analytics.
All this while experiencing the hands-on training and problem-solving opportunities you have come to expect at past Omega Training Conferences.
Paradise Point Resort & Spa sits on a picturesque island in Mission Bay, San Diego and offers the following first class amenities:
- Five heated pools
- Two onsite restaurants
- Kayaking
- Boating
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- Fire pits
- A miniature putting range
- Bike rentals and
- A tropical atmosphere
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The Crimeview Dashboard is featured in the September 2011 issue of Law Officer Magazine.
Law Officer Magazine September 2011 Issue
By Eugene Mueller
A critical consideration for most parents preparing to send their children to college is the degree of public safety on and around campus. Parents are scrutinizing the crime and disorder statistics of prospective schools as part of their selection criteria. Federal law requiring this information to be made readily available and accessible backs up the concerns of parents regarding public safety records of colleges and universities.
The Clery Act is a federal law that is enforced by the U.S. Department of Education that mandates that colleges or universities that participate in federal student financial aid programs disclose detailed information and statistics regarding campus public safety. It is named to honor the memory of Jeanne Clery who was murdered in her university dormitory in 1986. Among the numerous requirements of the Clery Act is that the campus police or security department provide a public crime log of all crime incidents occurring on campus property or areas under the control of the college or university even if not located on the central campus.
CrimeMapping.com by The Omega Group provides the features that allow for compliance with the required elements for the public crime log under the Clery Act. The critical elements include: (1) the date and time the crime incident was reported;(2) the date and time the crime occurred;(3) the nature and description of the crime incident;(4) the approximate location of the crime or alleged crime;(5) the disposition of the complaint, if known;(6) maintenance of records for all incidents for a minimum of past 60 days. CrimeMapping.com goes well beyond these minimum requirements by using technology that verifies the accuracy of the data and allows for retrieval of the previous six months.
Campus public safety or police departments can immediately implement the public crime log utilizing Crimemapping.com through its Web based service. Crimemapping.com automatically extracts crime incident data from department information systems and displays the data with simple graphics in the form of interactive maps, charts and reports. Furthermore, by registering their email address online, students, parents, faculty and support staff can receive timely alerts from Crimemapping.com about campus crime activity with all the appending critical elements. They can also download a free IPHONE application that provides the same data on a mobile platform.
Colleges and universities use the Crimemapping.com Agency Links feature to provide a connection or linkage to their Clery Act status page of crime incidents so that campus stakeholders can monitor the law enforcement outcomes of these incidents whether these are field interviews, arrests or prosecutions. Consequently, campus community members are well informed about the resolution of incidents.
Choosing where to attend college or university is an arduous process for most students and their parents these days. Trying to find the balance of academics and extracurricular activities that will be the right fit involves a close examination of many factors. The high cost of higher education makes this choice all the more important. CrimeMapping.com is an integral part of the commitment of institutions of higher learning to protect this invaluable investment in our future.
FEATURED IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL AND USA TODAY
If you would like more information about CrimeMapping.com please contact us at:
sales@theomegagroup.com or call us toll-free (800) 228-1059
www.theomegagroup.com