Cleveland Police is making use of analytical mapping technology to give greater information to officers as to what is happening locally.
By combining three software programmes, IMAP, ECINS and NICHE, Neighbourhood Police Teams are able to greatly improve their knowledge of what’s happening in a specific area and where the vulnerable members of their community are, mapping places of interest so that officers have background information ready at their fingertips if there is a need to attend a location. For example, the force now has places of worships mapped out should there be a reason to visit and give advice, say regarding a specific threat.
Historically the Force has used IMAP to look at Crime and ASB locations to determine trends and plan resources around the deployment of assets. Officers specify a geographic location, the time period they wish to examine and the type of incident they want to look at e.g. ASB, crime, public safety etc. Incidents are plotted on a map and linked through to NICHE which enables officers to receive full details of each incident by mapped location.
By introducing ECINS into the process the force are adding a crucial layer of information that provides officers with a far greater level of knowledge. As a multi-agency case management system, ECINS enables the Force’s partners and support providers to add information on victims, offenders, vulnerable individuals and premises that they are working with. All cases on ECINS which have Police involvement are plotted on IMAP using a layering system so that every member of Police staff (predominantly Neighbourhood Officers) can view where there is/has been an issue before they patrol in a particular ward.
Darren Birkett, Temporary Chief Inspector at Middlesborough NPT said ‘As far as I am aware, we are the only Force who are using mapping technology in this way. The last thing we want to happen is that PCSO’s walk past an address that is being targeted by youths and because their colleagues are owners of a case, they are unaware of that issue.
‘By logging into IMAP at the start of their shift they can see all the issues in the ward they will be patrolling in that day. We plan to add more and more to ECINS such as Troubled Families and in turn that will increase our staff’s knowledge base of the key locations they need to look out for when in that area.’
‘As you click on each icon, there is a hyperlink that takes you into the ECINS case so the officer can find out the full facts of the case, shown below.
‘We have colour coded each case as red for live, black for archived and gold for “what works well”. Archived cases remain on IMAP for 1 year and we are in the process of turning more of the archived ones into “what works well” so we can share best practice across all of our local policing areas.
Darren continued ‘It has raised officer awareness in terms of which vulnerable people are residing in the area that they will be Policing and that is the main benefit of the connection between E-CINS and IMAP. It’s building that bigger picture of an area and having all the information in one place that a PC or PCSO requires for them to be more effective.’
