STATISTICAL INFORMATION
The Crime Analysis Team at the Santa Rosa Police Department was started with funds from a Career Criminal Apprehension Program (C-CAP) Grant funded by California's Office of Criminal Justice Planning. The grant funds three years of the three and one half year program and provides funding for personnel, operational expenses, and equipment. The C-CAP grant program focuses on the implementation and integration of a Crime Analysis Section into a department.
Traditionally, agencies have provided three functions: Administration, Investigations, and Patrol. The Crime Analysis Team provides a fourth function: "Centralized Information Management." A number of internal and external sources are used to provide the vast array of products and services to the Department.
The Crime Analysis Team provides a process for collecting, categorizing, analyzing, and disseminating timely, accurate, and useful information. Bulletins, crime summaries, statistical analyses, crime maps, tactical action plans, suspect leads, profiles, crime forecasts, and reports are a few of the information dissemination end-products.
The Crime Analysis Team supports a number of department functions including:
- Patrol deployment
- Special operations and tactical units
- Investigations
- Planning and research
- Crime prevention
- Administrative services
Crime Analysis is used to identify crime patterns and trends, assist operational and administrative personnel in devising strategies for decreasing and preventing criminal activity, and aid in the investigative process. There are four types of analysis a Crime Analysis Team can provide.
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Crime Data Analysis aids in identifying those offenders who commit many similar crimes, in a geographical area, time, or manner (modus operandi).
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By focusing on relationships between people and organizations involved in crimes, Intelligence Analysis assists in developing leads regarding who is doing what with whom.
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Operational Analysis provides information on how the department utilizes its resources for personnel deployment and workload distribution.
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The most specialized type of analysis is Investigative Analysis. When investigating unusual or serial homicide or rape cases, crime scene evidence and victim information is used to develop a general physical, behavioral, and psychological profile of the suspect(s).
The Santa Rosa Police Department Crime Analysis Team consists of two positions currently, one Crime Analyst and one Crime Analysis Technician. Occasionally, there are interns working on special projects as well. All crime analysis work begins with data, therefore a large portion of the work involves data entry and collation. The data entry and retrieval involves working with computers as does producing products for dissemination. Staff working in the Crime Analysis Section must learn a variety of computer applications.