The Philadelphia Police Report From A Police Department

Ratcliffe, J. H., Taniguchi, T., Groff, E. R., Wood, J. D. (2011) focused on hotspots in Philadelphia. To find these hotspots the researchers used violent crimes such as homicide, aggravated assault and robberies from the Incident Transmittal System (INCT) database of the Philadelphia police report from 2006-2008. These measures have face validity since these are common violent crime that large cities have. The database used is a valid way to estimate crime, but also does have limitations. The researchers were able to use a t-test with linear regression models to find the impact of footpaths while taking into consideration of extraneous influences. The limitations of using official data from a police department are the unreported crimes†¦show more content†¦The actual style of policing the foot patrols did vary from community oriented to proactive policing. Ratcliffe et al,. (2011) sampled more than 200 foot patrol officers and used geographic information systems (GIS) to c reate randomized controls for crime hotspots. Previous studies had lacked this GIS technology, which could be a reason for different results. Results showed significant reduction of violent crime in the experimental group after 12 weeks, and when including the control group there were 53 violent crimes that were prevented. Contradicting previous findings this showed that foot patrols are actually effective in preventing violent crime in crime hotspots. When differences in the starting level of violent crime were accounted for there was no significant differences in treatment and control areas. The unit of analysis was the Voronoi network which consists of areal units. There were 120 foot patrols found which the police would have patrols in 16 hours a day, 5 days a week, and used officers recently out of the academy. These officers who are recent academy graduates may have different tactics than other officers since they may want to prove themselves and are excited to be a new police officer. This use of new officers may be a mechanism at work reducing crimes as well. The researchers used a quasi random number generator to assign and control