The Wauwatosa Police Department is shifting gears, focusing on data to tackle crime - and they're not doing it alone. In a collaboration with Northeastern University's Crime Prevention Lab, and guided by Dr. Eric Piza, the department is driving a pioneering project on hot spots policing, an approach that zeros in on specific areas with a high frequency of criminal activity. "National research shows that for any city, about 4-5% of places (street corners or street blocks) account for 50-75% of crime," Dr. Piza was quoted saying in a statement obtained by the City of Wauwatosa's official news release, highlighting the logic behind this strategy.
We're talking about a three-phase crime-fighting project that kicked off with assessing Wauwatosa's existing strategy of targeted policing in high-crime spots in 2024, and it seems the preliminary results are promising: police officers ramped up their presence in these areas, and calls for service didn't just dip, they nosedived, "corresponding calls for service decreased," as per a quote taken from Detective David Cefalu, who doubles as a researcher on the initiative in the initial press release.
The next step in this scientific crime-busting journey is the development of an internal working group dedicated to reinforcing evidence-based policing within the department. "By creating an internal research team, we’re ensuring that evidence-based policing isn’t just a one-time initiative, but a core part of how the Wauwatosa Police Department operates," Detective Cefalu conveyed in the same Wauwatosa news report.
The final act of this research-mingles-with-real-world drama is where findings take center stage, shaping the future of crime prevention both for the Tosa police force and potentially, as a model for other mid-sized departments across the US, “The lessons we learn here are going to be directly relevant for a majority of police departments in America,” Dr. Piza commented, expressing high hopes for the scalability of this project as documented in the initial announcement. With a methodology that meshes data crunching with boots on the ground, Wauwatosa is betting big on prevention over reaction in a realm where the stakes are real, and the outcomes are felt across neighborhoods.
