A Baltimore Police Department lieutenant oversees the
Planning and Research Department which includes strategic planning.
This strategic planning concerns crime trends, crime movement, crime
mapping, and other related analytical tools, which are used by the
Police Department to develop and set priorities, make resource allocation,
and predict crime.
Over the last year, the department has been targeting
open air drug markets. Over this time, the lieutenant has noticed
a significant increase in
drug-related incidents and arrests for the first half of the year followed
by a dramatic decrease in arrests over the last half of the year. Meanwhile,
he has seen robberies and murders remain stable for the first half
of the year and then begin to rise in the second half of the year.
These
trends are counter to Baltimore’s historical trends where robberies
and murders tend to decrease with a crackdown on drug trafficking.
The
lieutenant uses N DEx to map the occurrences of robberies and murders
that occurred in the city over the last half of the year. He then
uses N DEx to map all Baltimore city addresses for people, vehicles,
and
other entities identified in drug related incidents occurring in
adjacent jurisdictions
over the last half of the year. The results show a pattern where
the areas in the city with an increase in murders and robberies are
consistent
with the areas where addresses are identified from drug related incidents
occurring in the adjacent jurisdictions.
Based on this information,
the lieutenant concludes that the city's crackdown on drug trafficking
is leading users and dealers who resided
in Baltimore
to go to adjacent jurisdictions to buy and sell drugs. This increase
in drug demand in adjacent jurisdictions is causing the price to
increase. As a result, Baltimore city users’ drug cost increased.
To pay for this increase, users are conducting more robberies to
acquire the
additional money needed to purchase drugs. Meanwhile, Baltimore city
dealers are attempting to sell more of their drugs in adjacent jurisdictions
where other drug dealers already operate resulting in more drug-related
murders.
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