As we ride along with police the scanner sounds. “Attention zone 1, I have a larceny in progress…” The dispatcher goes on with a description of the suspect, because someone saw him steal whatever it was he stole.
But, police don't always have the luxury of being notified when there's a crime in progress.
“We've got some red boxing gloves here that represent aggravated assaults, we've got some masks that represent robberies, we have guns that represent weapons offenses,” explains Jennifer McKeldin, crime analyst for Roanoke Police.
What she’s demonstrating is the next best thing to actually seeing a crime. It's a 24-thousand dollar software system called Dashboard. An upgrade to existing crime tracking software, it allows officers to see a daily picture of crime. Before, they needed McKeldin to do it for them.
“I'm only in here Monday thru Friday 8-5 and you know the PD is a 24 hours operation so this is a great opportunity for them to have that date available to them after 5 pm and on the weekends,” she said.
Lt. Todd Clingenpeel checks Dashboard every day in his office. He says in the two months it’s been in place, it's already been a big help.
“We noticed we were having a series of burglaries, commercial burglaries within this district, so we came in and monitored where they were occurring. It allowed us to set up either patrols in this area or surveillance in the area so we cold apprehend the suspect.”
That suspect he said admitted to several of the crimes. The suspect and the location are not being revealed in this story because the case has not yet gone to trial.
Eventually flat screen television monitors will be installed in several locations within the police department -- The idea would be to take the data from dashboard and put it on these monitors all the time -- scrolling though in a slide show so the entire police department would be aware of the hot spots in the city.
That will come with time. Police eventually will also put the technology on the desks of more officers, and when they get the bugs out of the system – in patrol vehicles.
In the meantime they are already watching more closely than ever.
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