- The basics of American policing, chasing and catching criminals, hasn’t changed much in the last 200 years, but technology has inspired various nuances to the tactics of “chasing” and “catching” criminals. Patrol officers see “crime fighting” as a very basic and simple process, while the managers of policing agencies complicate the process by trying to reinvent the wheel for various political and self-serving reasons. Much has been made about the perceived ability of law enforcement to prevent and reduce crime. Politicians, police chiefs and public safety directors, mistakenly believe they have the ability to drastically affect crime, while more rational experts declare that law enforcement can only affect crime trends on the margins.
They extensively cover “The Crime Numbers Game: Management by Manipulation” by John Eterno and Eli Silverman and concur with the conclusions drawn by the authors, one of whom is a retired NYPD Captain and knows all the tricks of CompStat.
The storm continues to brew.