Taking “It” To The Street
The Chicago Police Department collaborated with Oracle to deploy a powerful crime fighting tool called CLEAR, the Citizen Law Enforcement Analysis and Reporting system, in April 2000.
CLEAR is essentially a vast database that speeds up the delivery of information and also links information in unique ways for city police and agencies across Illinois.
The CLEAR system now features a database bigger than 200 GB, which at any given time is used by an average of 1,200 users who process more than 7,000 queries daily. Officers can use a patrol car’s laptop computer to enter an address into CLEAR’s system to retrieve any incident reports related to that address, all within seconds.
A search on a nickname will pull up arrests as well as photographs, providing victims with an easier way to identify suspects. CLEAR is also being used by a 20-officer division called the Deployment Operations Center (DOC) to anticipate areas of potential conflict. The DOC relies on the database as well new as CLEAR mapping tools to search for areas of possible gang clashes, for example, allowing CPD to deploy additional officers in particular areas.
With the help of CLEAR, CPD officers are now solving nearly one out of every three reported crimes, compared to one out of four in 2001; the city’s crime-solving rate is higher than the national average and those of the eight largest U.S. cities.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from the CIO (02/15/04); Pastore, Richard .
