York Regional Police Prevents Crime, Turns Data into Actionable Intelligence

Outcomes

With more efficient use of resources and assets, York experienced dramatic time savings in collating disparate data and delivering actionable policing. Better analysis is also helping quantify the cost of policing and investigating various types of crimes, as well as calculating time and resources devoted to non-criminal activity.

Challenge

York Regional Police (YRP) has been amassing valuable data for years. Critical police information was stored in a variety of locations, including a dispatch system, records management system, PeopleSoft ERP system, and other sources including Microsoft Excel. Unstructured documents, such as undercover reports and officer observations, also contained vital details that stakeholders needed to tap into.

To support data-driven decision-making, all this information had to be manually aggregated and deconflicted to decide how, when, where, and why to deploy these police assets. The challenge was to bring order to the siloed structured and unstructured data and then harness it for strategic planning, performance management, and operational analysis.

Transformation

YRP's business intelligence unit worked with ibi™ to make law enforcement data accessible through the agency’s real-time operations center. The solution was a data warehouse that became the foundation for a cohesive analytics environment.

Advanced Crime Analysis System

Investigations involve a lot of discrete structured data (name, date of birth, and license plates, etc.) as well as unstructured data from handwritten reports, documents, and other sources that are jotted down, filed, and quickly forgotten. The new system allows detectives to connect the dots, affording analysts real opportunities to spot what is important.

Wellness Analytics

Occupational stress is a serious issue in law enforcement. The Incident Analytics application enables YRP to identify officers whose exposure to traumatic events may lead to elevated stress levels and can affect an officer’s mental and physical well-being.

Officer Activity Analytics

To have the greatest impact on their community’s safety, dashboards now assist officers so they can view their activity in relation to organizational priorities, allowing them to better focus on doing the right things at the right time and at the right locations. Additionally, YRP’s Economics dashboard helps calculate the costs associated with responding to various types of calls.

Benefits

Better analytical applications improved results in crime prevention, resource allocation, member wellness, and organizational performance.

"We view business intelligence and data analytics as a strategic priority for our organization," Greg Stanisci, York's business intelligence and data analytics manager concludes, "ibi™ has helped us leverage our data to detect, suppress, and prevent crime as we turn raw data into actionable intelligence."