BMC & Member Jurisdictions to be Featured at International Association of Crime Analysts Conference

(OCTOBER 5, 1999 - Baltimore) - When the International Association of Crime Analysts (IACA) meets at the Sheraton Baltimore North in Towson from October 6-8, representatives of the Baltimore Metropolitan Council and the Anne Arundel and Baltimore County Police Departments will be on the agenda to share their expertise in computerized crime mapping and interjurisdictional crime analysis. In fact, the entire opening day of the conference will focus on the Baltimore-Washington Regional Crime Analysis System (RCAS).

Major Ernie Crist, Baltimore County Police Department, and Mr. Peter Christensen, Anne Arundel County Police Department, will kick off the three-day conference with a presentation on "Starting an Interjurisdictional Crime Analysis System: An Overview of the Baltimore-Washington Regional Crime Analysis System." That afternoon, F.E. "Wes" Westerfeld, Manager of MetroMappingTM at BMC, will present a case study in the use of computerized crime mapping.

"All of our citizens should take pride in the cooperative work of our local police departments and BMC staff that led to the creation of the Baltimore-Washington Regional Crime Analysis System," said Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, who serves as BMC Chair. "The RCAS is one component of a regional approach to fighting crime that earned BMC a Meritorious Achievement Award from the National Association of Regional Councils at its 1999 Annual Meeting in June."

The Regional Crime Analysis System (RCAS) grew out of a rash of crime in the early 1990s known as the "shotgun robberies." Bandits armed with shotguns were holding up supermarkets and other retail outlets on the commercial corridors leading out of Baltimore City, on some days staging hold-ups in the city and on other days in the county.

The Baltimore City and County Police Departments independently called on BMC staff to generate computer-generated maps pinpointing the robbery locations. The crime analysts in the two police departments then decided that they should jointly examine crime incidents on combined Baltimore City and Baltimore County maps. With BMC staff again providing the computer mapping resources, the seemingly random series of hold-ups began to make sense. There was a definite pattern to the timing and locations of the robberies. Armed with this new knowledge, the police were able to anticipate future hold-ups and stake out likely next targets. The police soon apprehended the bandits and this particular crime wave came to an end.

Out of this experience was born the desire to formalize regional crime analysis. In June of 1994, BMC hosted the first regional crime analysis seminar, enabling crime analysts from police departments throughout the Baltimore-Washington region to meet for the first time. The seminar led to the formation in 1995 of the Regional Crime Analysis System, which has grown to include representatives of the police departments in Baltimore City, Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Harford and Howard counties in the Baltimore area; the District of Columbia, Montgomery and Prince George's counties in the Washington region and the Maryland State Police, plus BMC.

The work of the RCAS also attracted the attention of federal officials through the formal participation of the Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) office. Recognizing the value of regional data in the war on drugs, HIDTA made a file server available to RCAS members for uploading and downloading local crime incident data. Uploaded local information can be used by HIDTA to analyze patterns of drug activity. Participating police departments can download data from their own and neighboring jurisdictions while sensitive HIDTA data are protected.

Working with RCAS and with the advice of other police professionals, BMC's MetroMappingTM unit has continued to develop ways to display crime data on its computer-based regional BaseMap. With these improved visual tools, analysts can see detailed patterns of criminal activity against the backdrop of the region's transportation network.

"Criminals used to be able to use jurisdictional boundaries to confound law enforcement," said BMC's Executive Director Paul Farragut. "Using technology to bridge the county lines is making life safer for all the region's citizens, no matter where they live."