Mayor Mike McGinn and Seattle Police Chief John Diaz unveiled SPD’s new Predictive Policing software at a press conference today.
The software allows SPD to do a deep analysis of past crime data, and forecast possible locations where crimes might occur in the city, down to a 500-foot geographic area.
With that information in hand, officers can spend more time pro-actively patrolling those areas when they’re not responding to 911 calls.
SPD has already deployed the new Predictive Policing software—which is part of the 20/20 policing initiative—in the East and Southwest Precincts, and should be in place in the rest of the department’s precincts by April 2013.
For more information about the software, you can download this PDF or Powerpoint presentation.