As we noted earlier this summer, HPOU’s publication Badge & Gun ran an article by Alan Helfman, Jay Wall, and William A Wolff, who have been pushing for the adoption of CompStat, the statistical tool for fighting crime employed by William Bratton when he was police chief in New York. In that same issue, the Badge & Gun editorial page also endorsed the use of CompStat.
In the September 2007 issue (no link available), Chief Harold Hurtt responds to the Badge & Gun editorial board and Helfman, et al., as follows:
After reading the article by Alan Helfman and others which touts the COMPSTAT policing model as the answer to all of Houston’s crime issues, I would like to provide some balance to the issue. This model is only one of many management tools available to the law enforcement community that is used by some large metropolitan cities throughout the United States. At the Houston Police Department our focus is not to model an exact replica of another city’s style but to find the best practices and make them our own. After all, we must tailor our policing efforts to the needs of our community. This is why so much emphasis is put into crime prevention efforts. It is unrealistic to assume that any policing model is a panacea capable of solving all of Houston’s crime problems.
Notwithstanding a name or title: accurate and timely intelligence, rapid deployment, effective tactics and relentless follow-up and assessment are all things that the Houston Police Department does routinely. COMPSTAT requires commanders to react to changes in the crime rate on a weekly basis. The Houston Police Department is forward-looking, focusing on ways to prevent criminal activity rather than analyzing its aftereffects. We must continue to address crime proactively rather than reactively. I have given division commanders the discretion to direct policing efforts by utilizing crime analysis data, pin-pointing crime and targeting the hot spots of their particular communities. This strategy has been effective and as of July 2007, Part 1 violent crime is down by six percent citywide per 100,000 population.
I am very proud of the men and women from all ranks and classifications of the Houston Police Department and their efforts to address the public safety needs of our city. Despite the recent retirement of a large number of officers and an unprecedented influx of new citizens, the members of our department have had a major impact on reducing crime and making Houston safer. Mayor White and the City Council have given us the resources and support to sustain our crime prevention strategies with funding for overtime initiatives. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of our men and women in blue, Houston is a safer city.
The bolded excerpt suggests that Chief Hurtt is dismissing a proven crimefighting tool because he seems not to understand it.
CompStat is a comprehensive approach to collecting and organizing crime information in a timely manner so that patterns can be discerned and crime can be addressed proactively. It is not merely analysis of the “aftereffects” of crime, as Chief Hurtt asserts incorrectly. Rather, it is advanced statistical analysis of crime aimed at preventing future crime — analysis that HPD currently cannot conduct because of antiquated record-keeping systems and limitations of its current technology. Since HPD cannot simply throw more bodies at the crime problem (thank to the manpower issues we have been documenting for several years now), the smart/technological approach is of even more potential benefit in Houston, since it allows existing resources to be used more effectively.
Chief Hurtt’s assertion that he has “given division commanders the discretion to direct policing efforts by utilizing crime analysis data” misses the point. What Helfman and his colleagues — along with the Badge & Gun editorial board — have urged is leadership from the top in implementing an advanced statistical approach to crimefighting that has been proven to work in New York City (when crime was out of control there). The issue isn’t about empowering local commanders — although certainly advanced statistical collection and analysis would benefit HPD at all levels — but about leadership from the very top of HPD and City Hall.
Unfortunately, the Arizonan who is HPD’s leader doesn’t even seem to understand the issue at hand or the tool he is dismissing.
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