Episode 7: Problem-Oriented Policing in Action: Targeting Crime Place Networks with Joel Vargas

John: Welcome to the Blue Line Project, Real Talk from the front lines of American policing. We cut through the noise, challenge broken metrics, and focus on solutions that keep officers safe, communities strong, and justice real. Blue Line Strong, here is your host, John Gabrielson. Hey, welcome back to the Blue Line Project. I'm your host, Jon Gabrielson, and welcome to the show. I'm so excited about today's podcast and what we're going to do here in episode seven as we talk about place network investigations and problem-oriented policing. Before we get to the show, first, I want to say, hey, like and follow us if you like what we're here, like what we're doing here. The Blue Line Project, it's so important that you guys hit that like button, smack that bell and follow us on any platform that we're available. You can find us on Apple. podcast, Spotify, Rumble, and YouTube. Like and follow, share this feed with your friends. I can't do this show without you guys. I'm excited because I see our audience building week after week. And the more you spread the word and tell people about this podcast, the more we can grow and the more lives we can affect with these awesome things that we talk about and these strategies that we bring to the table. Now, most of us have heard the phrase, hotspot policing. When you think about hotspot policing, Many people think about flooding the areas where your hotspot or your crime is happening full of officers. And then you hope that through this zero tolerance initiative, that crime goes down. But the reality is sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But what if the real problem isn't just a single street corner? What if there's something else happening? What if the violence in that area is being fed by an invisible network that you're completely missing? in your hotspot policing, right? There's a network that quietly enables this type of activity or an apartment complex where drug dealers, they feel safe or that corner store or bodega that the owner or the manager looks the other way or that abandoned lot or abandoned building that becomes a staging ground for prostitution, narcotics, homeless encampments and leading to other things, right? We have to begin to address what this is. This is where what I believe one of the most important powerful tools in policing to come to us today, Place Network Investigations entered in. Place Network, also known as PNI. It's smarter, a deeper way of doing policing. One that treats crime like the complex system it actually is. And today we're going to dive straight into the heart of that problem. I want to look at problem-oriented policing. What is problem-oriented policing? It's a... philosophy that doesn't just react to calls for service, but it actually scans for underlying problems, analyzing them rigorously, creating tailored responses, and then honestly addressing what worked and what didn't work. And today I have a special guest coming onto the show, and his name is Joel Vargas. He's actually a gentleman that works for the Austin Police Department, where I also work, and Joel is one of our data managers, and he's gonna be with us. talking about intelligence-led policing and data analysis. But Joel, what does he bring to the table? He brings 30 years of law enforcement and intelligence. He is not just an intelligence operative and agent, but he served as an actual police officer. He was a crime prevention coordinator and officer. He helped create a program in Illinois where he saw 90 % reductions in violent crime, increase in quality of life, and better community relations. He's worked with the Chicago Police Department. He's worked with federal agencies. He's led all kinds of ⁓ Intel leads, working with Interport police. He worked for a company called Sound Thinking and so much more. is really a wealth of knowledge and has so much that we can gain. And I look forward to getting his insights in this episode. Joel's gonna walk us through place network investigations. He's gonna talk about how to supercharge your Sarah model. We're gonna talk about how to bring better data analytics. to your problem-oriented policing, right? We're gonna learn a little bit about how to scan for hidden place networks, talk about organized crime. We're gonna look at places, we're gonna look at how we can reduce sustained violence and how we can bring better responses and actually disrupt networks. We're gonna talk about results, we're gonna talk about the real challenges we face as police departments, and we're gonna talk about practical lessons that he has learned from the street. Big or small, Joel's gonna help us. We want to move beyond chasing calls, y'all. We wanna start solving problems. We wanna keep communities thriving. We wanna build better trusting relationships. We wanna have programs that work. That's why we're Blue Line Strong, and that's why we're gonna talk about data-driven policing. And at this time, I wanna welcome Joel Vargas to the show. I really enjoy talking about place network investigations and the opening monologue. We hit on a lot of different topics and I introduced at that time Joel Vargas and it's great to have you with us Joel. I talked about, know, how much we've worked together in the monologue and gave the audience some of your credentials. So now that you're on the show, you know, just tell us a little about yourself, little about your background and how you got to where you are today. And then, then we'll just roll into it. Absolutely, John. So, so, I'll, I'll give you the abbreviated version obviously of my career. But I joined the Austin Police Department about a year ago. ⁓ Chief Davis was working at a customer of mine, ⁓ chat spotter in Cincinnati. So basically, you know, when I heard that she came here, I was very interested in kind of scoping up an opportunity here. I have two daughters here. ⁓ One was going to law school and the other one is Texas State. So I figured, know, get closer, ⁓ reconnect with my first marriage and my kids, you know, and things like that. So ⁓ Jeff came up to come and challenge data. They had some real problems with data and I wanted to spend more time in the data lab, you know, so to speak. So prior to that, I did five years with some thinking. If you don't know who the company is, Chatspotter, gunshot detection, famous and infamous. Either way you want to look at it. ⁓ Gantt chat detection is one of the, probably the top of the line right now with artificial intelligence, and all that stuff. Detects with precision a Gantt chat outdoor. ⁓ I spent five years with them as a subject matter expert. We call it trusted advisors. So basically I dealt with chiefs or police, command staff from 180 cities to just give an idea. New York city, one of them. ⁓ Biggest cities in the United States were my customers. ⁓ Anyone who had Chats Potter basically ⁓ was my customer. Outside the United States, Uruguay, ⁓ Cape Town, South Africa, another customer of ours. Now Cape Town, South Africa, hopefully we'll come back to it. Very science-driven, very data-driven. Hopefully we'll touch on that. ⁓ Prior to Chats Potter, how I... ended up with Chaspar is because I went to a retired from policing in 2017, went to work for the Chicago PD and as an intelligence analyst, they were revamping or restarting their intelligence program. Uh, they had disbanded since 1969, 1968, somewhere around there after the riots that they had. Uh, so I went in there to rethink intelligence analysis, data analytics, uh, consent decree. don't know if you remember, you know, it was, it was a big mess. So I went in there to. to rock their boat and change things and look at data. ⁓ Prior to that, I did 10 years straight with the Bensonville Police Department right outside of O'Hare Airport, where I actually was allowed to do contracting on the side. So I took a contract with ⁓ the Five Eyes Alliance, with Interport Police, and I was the assistant director for intelligence. And then two years, the last two years as director, I was at the same level interacting with director of the CIA and directors of All kinds of places assigned to them actually for five years, ⁓ doing, ⁓ threat assessments for Obama to make sure that nobody, ⁓ you know, army and everything. So I did that a lot of data, as you can imagine, ⁓ I had the data, had NSA basically that was my computer. I always tell people, you know, that was my laptop, you know, basically NSA, but I had analysts from all over the world working for me. Prior to that, obviously contracting, ⁓ I started in the big data business. I got recognized by the 9-11 commission in 2012 for my work post 9-11. I'll be thinking, got a good chance to work for Jay Grant, one of the founders of the Department of Homeland Security. So I was his data analyst, intelligence analyst. So basically we spent together a significant amount of time. You talk about your mentors, man, Jay Grant, fabulous guy. You should have him here one day, you know what? Yeah, bring him out sometime. I would love to get them on the show. you have that contact, Hey, I would love that. you have, I love to them on the show. Absolutely. We want to interview all kinds of people. got it. And that's pretty much in a nutshell. mean, I immigrated from Mexico when, when I was 17 during the Iran-Contra situation, my family was involved in that. So we had to leave Mexico. So that's how I ended up in the U S you know, I don't know where. Okay. I got you. Well, that it's a vast background and You had quite the career and I got to see your resume and it was really quite impressive and you are truly, ⁓ you know, really good at what you do when it comes to data analytics and your background tells it. We've been talking about on the blue line project, a myriad of topics, but we've been talking about police metrics, especially in our first episode, we talked about use of force and even some of the metrics that come around that and how to be better at, at that. then, ⁓ now we're getting into where I. kind of my nut and bolts, my where I've cut my teeth in the last, you know, seven years within the office police department. And I've been a cop myself for 21 years is place network investigations as it relates to problem oriented policing, which is really wanting to bring you on you because with problem oriented policing and place network investigations, it's all about the data and that network. so understanding, you know, disrupting of criminal networks within places and changing our focus to a place based policing, more of a model. How does place network investigations fit into the broader problem of problem oriented policing and what makes place network investigations a distinct type of problem worth prioritizing over like traditional hotspot policing and maybe just give a definition of traditional hotspot policing versus what we're doing. But really in your experience, what makes this distinct of what we're doing today and how we can change law enforcement? Absolutely, John. Thank you. So basically the way The easiest way ⁓ to understand the concepts, all the different concepts, whether you're looking at stratified policing, which is one of the newest, ⁓ latest right now, which makes us a lot of different science, a lot of evidence-based. The way to think about it is the effects over policing that we've been dealing with as a cop myself, or policing. What's the thing I did every single day or most of my time, you know, when, when I went into law enforcement back in 2001, 2002, um, because that was, we were told, Hey, this is a hotspot. This is the area. Go there. Hit him hard. Every day, handcuffs, people in handcuffs in the back of my squad, da da da da, going out to fights, going out to all kinds of stuff. Hotspot policing created significant turmoil in communities, especially disadvantaged communities. ⁓ because it was a shotgun approach, hit everybody, ⁓ do, do, ⁓ sobriety tests, do all kinds of crazy stuff, you know, to, to, to attack the criminals. But within that vast net that you do with the hotshot policing, you get good people and you start affecting their morale and especially the children. Right. So, so, ⁓ place network investigations and, and, and, know, problem oriented policing. What it did is, okay, let's not put a big net. Let's not put a big spot where we're going to do a lot of law enforcement over police that hack out of the area. Let's think about how can we approach singular problems where there is one property that has an issue or an area that has an issue. Who are the players? Who are the, you know, you make a distinction there with the place, North Korea investigations and the other place oriented. You know, a solution or problem. so many definitions that they use. The way, the way to think about it is when you're, when you're implementing a program like Crown Free Multi-Housing. It's a place network investigation. You are combining, you're combining ⁓ problem solving, policing. You're combining a lot of different, different ways of approaching the situation. That'll be more of a place kind of, you're looking at a place and you want to improve what's, what's going on there. So the challenge to data. ⁓ the challenge, my experience with those five years, working with many, chiefs of police and command staff all over the United States, not only that, but the cops that were actually doing the work is that they will look at, they will look at the, ⁓ the program. They will, they will decide, you know, what to do and what not to do. I always went against that. I would say, you know, this is a playbook. If you're going to implement any of those things. This is how you need to develop it. If you're going to follow the Panda model, follow it from beginning to end. Oh, I don't have an analyst. Well, let me train you to be an analyst because you're going to have to gather data. You're going to have to digest data. So a lot of those challenges, go down to the fact that we piecemeal the implementation. go and learn basically how to do it. But we get down to the police department or the city or whatever, and we start choosing what to implement and what not to implement. I think I'll you an example of the LPR, the license plate reader program that we implemented here as a pilot. Poorly implemented, poorly gathering, you know, the evidence, the data, right? what happened? What happened? We lost the program. Yeah. We lost the program. Exactly. Open source. You're not going to get in trouble. It's out there. No, we're not. Everybody knows. Everybody knows. Everybody got grill on that. So, if you're going to run a pilot program, number one, follow it. Know what data you're going to be using. Know the prescription or what, kind of areas, what kind of situation you're going to be getting into right from the get-go. You have to have the data in front of you and then continue to monitor your progress. and follow the Panda model. As you are progressing, each one of those checkpoints is going to require you an analysis of some kind of data. Follow it, do it, commit to it. Don't just do it in pieces, because it's not going to work. So following up with that, you follow data. So what happens, we're doing some kind of an initiative, even if it's not a full-fledged place network investigation, whether it's just addressing a problem. What happens when we don't follow the process or we try to skip steps in the process? What does that lead to? mean, we know it ultimately will probably lead to failure, but what else comes from that when we choose to pick and choose how to implement these programs rather than following tried and true methodology given to us by researchers? Well, I'll tell you what, I know there's a lot of resistance and I talk about the drama that comes with, with when there's just start cutting corners. When you start ⁓ doing things that are not adequate, when you start not collecting the data, you know, that you're supposed to, and then, and then you're held accountable. Now you have to prove that what you're doing is actually working. Secondly, best practices. Are you implementing best practices? What has worked in other cities? Or are you just going to win it? ⁓ I don't want to do the whole thing. I'm just going to do this. Well, you're going to have drama. You're going to have. ⁓ When I came here last year, I started seeing firestorms every single day from the fifth floor based on data stuff. Firestorms, working weekends, working 12 hour days, literally. John, I kid you not. Putting out fires every single day with requests from data, this and that. ⁓ Did you have a dashboard before I got here? Nope. No, we didn't have anything. scale everything. started scaling things. You know, this is a, this is a thing I want to empower everybody in my, in my police department to have a dashboard. So a lot of that has to do with being very active. Lack of literacy on the data and lack of implementation of best practices when it comes to any pilot program. If it's follow with poor, poor. ⁓ practices, you know, with, with, with horrible, uh, ethics, know, because you're going to do this. I'm not going to do that. Oh, uh, pilot is ending and I'm going in front of the city council. Can you make this valid? What do mean valid? Can you make it look like it's working? Uh, no. Sorry. It's been a year. You didn't collect any data. Where am I going to get the data? Right. So success basically comes down to. Following these practices, implementing the models the way they are intended because they're saying, I know, I know people, know chiefs are like academia. Oh, yeah. These guys are, I don't want to talk to them. Listen, they follow their lead. Just like a pilot checklist. You know, you don't look at the checklist. You're going to, you're going to, you're going to land without the landing gear. Right. So you got to think of that in that, in simple terms, but also, you know, understand. If you do it right, you're going to get results. Absolutely. And you use the pilot analogy and I know Jerry has used that analogy, but you're actually a pilot. I am a pilot. you talk about checklists, when you do your pre-flight check, there's a reason why you go through that list. And in fact, we just had a class today where we're teaching crime analysts and police officers that are in community engagement, problem, ⁓ problem oriented policing. Today we did a whole segment on place network investigations alone, and we talked about not going through the list. And it was interesting. I was talking to Andrew. about that. And Andrew says that his boss and they're there in investigations, his boss will skip, you know, like, let's say you're doing a plate, he'll do let's collect, let's collect some data. And then let's jump right to a solution. Right. And so you skip, you know, you have two blocks, right, you have two blocks, and then you're skipping that, you know, everything that's in the middle. And that and that's a bad thing when when we do that. So we, we don't want to miss that. So I agree with you. When scanning for problems, because this is a part of it, whether you're talking Panda or Sarah, how would you say that's the best way to identify locations that form a network? And then one of the questions that came up in class today, how do you find the non-obvious locations or those covert settings or comfort spaces that may not be generating police calls? How would you use data to then determine that? I know Joel Kaplan had risk-train modeling, which I actually believe in, but What, what says you on that, on that side of things? Well, uh, having spent a lot of time in Chicago, obviously looking at organized crime, uh, in, 2013, it's been, uh, did some research. I'll share the research with you on the border, uh, corruption on the border, know, with, cartels, you know, recruiting folks, you know, from, uh, the law enforcement community, judges, you name it, border patrol, all that good stuff. Um, I learned that the more organized. The criminal group is the less attention they're going to be drawing, period. Whether you go to Las Vegas, which was my customer as well, whether you go to any of those big cities that attract a lot of ⁓ tourism and stuff, you're going to have those very organized, quiet places that are not going to have any calls for service. If you go to McAllen, Texas, or Edinburgh, or any of those places on the border, rear end of valley, very low crime. But from time to time, somebody will see a guy grabbing somebody, put him into a vehicle and drive in through the other side, right? And then the mayor will say, ⁓ nobody reported anything. I don't know. Maybe they're doing a movie, you know, things like that. So, so, so a lot of times that's what it is. Houston is known to have a very well organized groups working that you're not going to see them. You know, you're not going to see the activities, the money laundering side of stuff, you know, you're not going to see. So detecting those are going to be a little more challenging. They're not going to drive you for calls for service. You're going to have to, like you, you're going to make connections. You're going to make, you're going to talk to people. You're going to find operations that are hidden from the eye. The early detection with, you know, with calls for service or reports and things like that. Um, are going to happen with like Michelobos, you know, things like that. You're going to get those because they're going to be outside the place and things are going to happen. So you're going to, you, you're going to get called to the, to the scene. like you just mentioned surveys. Um, we talk about surveys, commu getting that community input when you go out to a place, you know, having the, your, your units do these surveys to gather that data so that you, that you have it. Um, I think I agree with you on that. But I think, you know, it came up today in class, you know, they were asking, well, how do we identify those comfort spaces? I think we gave them some ways to do that. When you're talking about identifying those places, what role then with data analytics play in uncovering those secret places? Was there a way to use your data to kind of point you in the right direction, not just to surveys? You know, how would you use data to uncover those networks? Yeah. Well, when you're, ⁓ your analyst, like I have a team of analysts that work with the investigations, right. And I have a team of analysts that work for the fusion center, right. As you know. ⁓ and then I have the patrol analysts that are day to day helping you guys and everything else. ⁓ what I'm doing this year is basically relieving some of those tasks they have, the investigative analysts to become more proactive. To continue to work with organized crime. Organized crime is going to hear what's going on. If they have the bandwidth to do the research and do the fact finding, mean, today, Andrew James, know, one of my guys, my supervisor for the fusion center, he gave a tremendous presentation today, Alexis, the crime center, which I think you need to start using. haven't used it. Let us give you some training. ⁓ you're going to love this. It pulls like a credit report. When you run somebody, checks everything. Residences, associations, friends, family. That's what you're talking about. ⁓ How we, how we detect ⁓ cartel operations or money laundering operations, terrorism, things like that. It's tools like that. You're to get the tip. You're going to find out what's going on. Some research needs to take place after that because you're going to go to the computer one, two, three main street, not a single call for service. one. But then you look at receipts, income tax bills. You what did they pay? Oh, money laundering then, you you started seeing a million dollars in deals, a million dollars here, two million dollars there. One deal, I'll show you next time I see you, an operation right here in this area that I actually cleared in 2007, 2008, was $375 million operation. Oh my land. Yeah. So, so. Not a single ticket. The target had no tickets, never got in trouble, never had any situation. But the tip came in, we grabbed the tip, we did some research. And that's why I'm saying, you know, we're going to give you access to that amazing tool. Because when you get those tips, rather than just going to level one, looking at the RMS stuff, you go to level two, intelligence gathering. Let me prove or disapprove, let me prove this is a fact or if it's not, move on. Next. So that's how you do it. mean, you, we have those operations here running like crazy. My people did not have time. I wish they did. And I'm working very hard to make sure that we peel off some of those administrative activities so they can have more time, you know, to find things. Wow. That, that's, I know that a lot of our detective units has used some of those technologies. When I was in backgrounds, I was in recruiting and backgrounds I used, I would call Intel. and give them and they would use those tools, those level two tools. I had a soldier up at Fort Hood that had applied and I found out that he had like 15 different aliases. And I also found out that he had multiple arrests in Colleen, but he was using different names and no one ever made the connection. And then when they did the level two, they realized that he had ties to the Latin Kings and he had actually infiltrated the U S army. And then he was trying to infiltrate law enforcement and So needless to say, we disqualified him. And then I turned that over to the provost up there at Fort Hood and they did what they did. And I don't know what happened on the court martial side of things when they did the article 15 based on our research. So I know that these things work. so I use it in backgrounds. I didn't personally do it. I sent it to Intel. Now, when you're talking about a problem in a problem place, now you're doing the analysis, right? So How do you then go beyond just mapping the individual crime incidents to truly understand the dynamics actually happening? Because we've already got analysts that'll say, okay, this is the trend. But now how do you go beyond the trend to get to the true dynamics, to the why? ⁓ What would be some of the questions that you would be asking for that to really get to the why of a place, whether you're talking place network investigations, probably policing? ⁓ You know, what say you as an analyst, how would you describe to our listeners that are listening, what would be ways that they could do that effectively? Yeah. So, so at one level, what you have is you have the, uh, crime prevention efforts that are occurring on a daily basis. You know, the stuff that, you know, the little reports here and there, uh, what we see in, when you see a spike of cultural service in certain areas, you know, or, places that are having issues, right? You start detecting those things and then you put them on the radar. ⁓ the first thing you must do is a crime prevention effort. And that's why right now you have access to all those nightclubs that are trouble. Yes. Kind of like what we have one, right? ⁓ the other ones I've already put them on a dashboard. So you can go in right now and look them up and see what's going on historically. That's number one. That's, that's, that's elementary, so to speak, you know, because that opens up the opportunity for the sworn like yourself to dig in. to see what else is there, who else is doing what, who is participating, who's the manager, ⁓ who's calling the shots, who's getting arrested for what, if you have an arrest, who is getting arrested for what. So those things you need to start compiling to understand the whole operation. From the individuals that are running the show, you wanna know everything in there. You want to run plates. You want to do constant running of plates. Before the place gets too busy, you got to go in, like take license plates. I used to go to the, with a phone, know, pretend that I'm on a call and then just, ⁓ sweep the whole place up, go to the back of the building, do the same thing, get the plates, get the plates. ⁓ I was in a place in Florida, ⁓ two years ago or three years ago. Yeah. Two years ago. ⁓ and I'm the, I'm giving a class to, to a fusion center there. A lot of organized crime, a lot of narco traffic in there. And they say, wow, there's a place, you let's go for lunch. I want to show you a place. And this gentleman is dressed in police uniform. So as soon as we were walking, all eyes were on us. Literally. And he goes, is this suspicious or do you feel like they're looking at us? I go, yeah, they're definitely looking at us. So we went and I gave him a lesson. say, let's take a drive to the back. Let's get plates, escalates, BMWs. mean, a little Mexican restaurant, you know, with 15 tables. on. Hello. They had a thing, you know, to have parties, you know, kind of one of those fiesta places, you know? Yeah. ⁓ And I said to the guy, have you ever looked at the receipts of this place? The tax receipts. It's like, what do I find there? You find my landlady. That's what you find. Sure enough. Million dollar a month deal. Million and half sometimes, you know, during Christmas or December, $2 million in one month. They're paying the tax. They're happy, John, to pay the tax. And then you say, you know, do an audit, like the IRS, go check. Now let's look at the food service. How much food are they buying? Nearly zero. Just to maintain, you know, the tacos and whatever they're selling. So that's how you catch them. That's how you, how you investigate. mean, you want to go in that route. That's how you do it. Place network investigation gives you the basic elements. Additional intelligence led policing allows you to go deeper than that and start building cases for huge, bigger networks, organized crime, things like that. You won't be able to do that on a level of analysis, you know, just for crime prevention purposes. You have to implement additional layers. Absolutely, you have to bring in the layers and one of the things I talk about in that process is understanding intelligence-led is a part of a greater methodology and I personally build around what Jerry Ratcliffe uses hype, right? Harm-focused, intelligence-led, problem-oriented and evidence-based and I believe if you build around that methodology bringing in your data analytics, you get kind of a total framework. When I'm thinking about this analyzing process and how important is What do you think and how important is the place manager? Do you feel that we overlook place managers when we're talking about this kind of data analytics and place managers can both be good and bad because within a place, they can be also helping facilitate the crime. So how important in your opinion is the place managers and what they do? And then can you share any examples of where you've seen the place management help you get to a root cause of some kind of violence or other crime? Absolutely. Yeah, you got to keep in mind the more again going back to the more organized they are The more sophisticated the operations, right? ⁓ I'll give you one example running operations in the LA port Right. Okay when I was at Interport police, know, obviously, you know ports and seaports and airports were my portfolio Against the triads Chinese organized crime There are no voice cuts. I'm going to tell you right now. All right. So whenever we went to do a ⁓ search or a knock and talk. Excuse me, let me call my lawyer. Baker and McKinsey, know, top 10 law firms in the world. Yes. I'm so and so Baker and McKinsey. You know, what are you doing with my client there? ⁓ we just came to talk. Yeah. Do you don't talk to him? When do you want to come and talk to him? I'll be there. End of story. The common criminal, you're to have the public defender. The more sophisticated they are, you're going to have the lawyers, top lawyers basically representing them. There is a guy that I want you to interview. There's two people, Jay Grant I tell you, but you need to interview the sheriff of King County, Illinois. I would love to. it County, Cook County, of city of Chicago. He and I, we go back a long time, but this individual, this sheriff, let me tell you, he's a sheriff of a big county. Yes. He master organized crime, going after organized crime. Money chipmunks, you know, from Chicago to the border. Man, he was phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal. I learned a lot from him. I went to visit him when the cartel was going after him. basically through some connections, you know, we found out that they wanted to do something to him, right? ⁓ So, you know, I started talking to the guy and we became friends. He ran for sheriff and my family supported him and he became sheriff. So that's where we encounter challenges, John. When we think capacity of reducing crime at a local level, place, apartment buildings, locations, areas that we want to change and transform. we leave all those managers or those folks that are running the show and we forget who's the network behind those folks. Who's behind them. Remember, they're always going to put somebody in front and then there's someone behind. ⁓ And we found out recently. So there's always those kinds of relationships that we need to start paying attention to. That's why you look at the phones, look at who they're talking to, at their connections, their relationships, their properties. I have one case that I can show you next time I see you. Totally overlooked, ⁓ drug operation in the area of 200 million a month, literally. ⁓ my land. Okay. These dudes get arrested. These brothers get arrested for ⁓ possession. They didn't call Haida. They didn't de-conflict the case. They screw up our case, literally. And let me tell you, I ended up three years ago, I ended up going to DC to teach and talk to the Haida directors all over the United States and say, you guys get into it. Get committed. If there's a transnational investigation. Don't let the locals mess it up. Yeah. Don't don't let them. Yeah. get out. They get out. They get arrested. They get out on bond. ⁓ my. And they were in Mexico the next day. And, and, and I have pictures of their homes where they will bring in 18 wheelers right, right on the border. El Paso, you know, they're either, and I'm a guy's 200 million dollar operation. $200 million and month operation and you guys just. Yeah. I mean, but you know, you could use like some of these place networks and these networks, these criminal networks, they are very organized and I've, I've read about a time and I've, I've experienced it. mean, I was a street cop for years and you knew you couldn't really go after the organized ones. Right. So you went after the local middleman, low level street dealer who was, you know, you had time, a dozen, but. Is it true? Like I think of Al Capone, I mean, they brought him down with tax evasion or other charges. I think I don't, I don't want to get too into it, but the case that we're working at Mitchell Lobos, right? We're using a lot of other leverage outside of violations and we brought a lot of players to the table. Again, it's an active investigation, so I don't want to talk too much about it, but you know, we used a lot of different leverage, not just Simple normal what you think of criminal acts we won't be on that but you can bring in code enforcement You can bring in fire marshals. You can bring in comptroller's office for taxation and different things like that You can bring in, you know the tobacco and bureau, you know firearms commission, whatever you bring in there's bring in the feds ⁓ You know, whatever you need. So, you know, you've got to be ⁓ Focused on that but understand that data and analytics are gonna drive that When you talk now about community policing itself, I know from the analytical world, a lot of community policing's crime prevention units, they get cut because they can't quantify and qualify their existence. How can we use data and metrics to better qualify and quantify what a crime prevention unit is doing to make it valuable to achieve? I say change it to crime reduction unit, but whether you change the name or not, how do we use data? And these metrics to make our units more relevant so that they're not the first to go in a budget crisis situation and things like that. And how does data play a role in that Joel? John, you just hit it right on the head. 2017, my career got short because Trump came in and cut down community policing funding. So I was literally, I was already leaving, but I had to leave like a day before. I wanted to leave technically. You know, I wanted to publish the research that I did for community policing in 2017. So I ended up ⁓ continuing with Interport police until the end of the year, until I went to work with Chicago PD. ⁓ It is a very complicated area, ⁓ you know, activity. Remember, outreach can be measured. Inclusion of communities. So measure outreach. it. Measure outreach. Remember what I told you? Positive Community Interactions is a program I implemented in Chicago. Caps What do you mean? Define positive programs for my listeners and just define that for me when you say positive interaction programs. Positive Community Interactions. So we had an issue where most of the interactions with the police that we were measuring were negative or enforcement related, right? You had the small business checks, know, business check. All right, clear. They're gone. ⁓ so when I went to Chicago, we had a perception issue, right? Okay. So, so we went to New York city and we brought in their neighborhood, kind of like what you do the neighborhood liaison person program into, I implemented it, ⁓ with best practices with the university of, I think it was university of New York or somebody or John Jay college. I don't remember exactly. Nevertheless, I follow it to the. I mean, step by step, everything that they say, we do it. One thing that we're missing is the documentation of activity that's relationship building, that's positive. So what I did is I implemented a program where positive community interactions will be documented by calling in on the radio, positive community interaction, one, two, three, Main Street, and I'm clear. Boom, documented. If you've seen. The report that I did that I used to do for Chicago is like every community interaction gets documented. Those positive community interactions relay a message for crime prevention purposes. Relationship building. First year in Chicago, it made in one of the most dangerous districts, 25th district, 250,000 people. I dropped violence thanks to this methodology, this program of documenting and getting people to. to do have conversations with human beings and be nice with them and not try to put handcuffs on them every time they run into them. 50 % we cut in half, shootings in Hamstays by half. Wow. 50%. 50 % documented is in my LinkedIn. You can see it. I have the documentation because I was following the data. I was documenting every data. If you don't document the data, you got to see where you are right now. The base. model, you talk about the data, document your base model. This is where you are. This is what I'm implementing. My job as an analyst to tell you, we're going to monitor on a regular basis, on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, impact, positive impact or negative impact. Are we improving or are we going the other way? How do we do this? Another example. So what happens when you document positive community interactions? You seal your, your, your, your foot in the door because now you have maps, heat maps. can show directed patrols. What am I doing? I went to chancellor, ⁓ your boss, your big boss. don't know if he's your boss, he's my assistant chief. sir. Okay. And I say, listen, directed patrols have to be event based. Don't open one call for service and have 200 of your cops go to that one call. Each transaction is transaction. So it's transactional. It's spreadsheet. It's all transactional. Now I can document it as an analyst. I can show you where you are, where you're going, how many conversations you're having. What are you doing? Outreach is a second component. mean, outreach is a big component. Inclusion is where you go to places that have been disadvantaged or they have not had any attention. You guys do a tremendous job there. You go out. You talk to people, document those, document them. Open up a for service. Like for me, I can go, if I'm in my patrol car, I can go over there, open up a call for service, put myself on a special assignment or whatever title code you give me. And then now it's documented that when I arrived, how long I was on scene, I can put notes in the call like I would any other call. That's what I hear you saying. Correct? Absolutely. So, so you want the nurse like me to be able to access the data and pull the data easily. You know, and it's got, it's a public record now. It is documented. It's there. I mean, we're going to be able to see it. You know, we're going to be able to document it. So, I mean, bottom line is you want to make sure that you're following best practices. Secondly, you want to document every activity. Inclusion is a big deal. Get out, talk to people that you haven't talked to, that you normally don't talk to. And you guys do a really great job there. You have outreach and then you have comprehension. That was part of my research I did. Crime prevention efforts, every opportunity you have, you talk about crime prevention. Why do you think we have such a low number of motor vehicle thefts right now? Burglars to motor vehicles, you guys are killing it. You guys are getting it is a lot of our interactions. really do. We've had a lot of his interactions. know. I believe, even though I have 30 properties within the crime free housing program that are in various stages from phase one to phase two, right? I only have like four properties that are actually completely certified quote unquote as crime free. But even in the properties that aren't fully certified that are participating in the program and holding people accountable and forcing their, their, ⁓ know, lease agreements and things like that, we have seen reductions in call for services and things and, we're able to track that. And when we go out. Just like you said, we're catcalls for each one of those things, putting it into either direct to patrol, problem-oriented policing, some kind of title code. So I personally am living in it and I'm seeing the benefits that are coming from that. Now the good news is crime trends are down overall in the entire nation. And I think there's a lot of explanations for that and that's for a whole nother show. But we're getting down to the end here and we've got to wrap up. ⁓ For departments that are really just starting to really discover problem-oriented policing, place network investigations, the departments and chiefs and administrations that are looking to move beyond traditional hotspots as we've been doing them for the last 15, 20 years, what would be the biggest pitfall that they should avoid? And what's the single most important first step? It's kind of a twofold question. What is the most important pitfall they should avoid? And what is the single most important first step? in applying this kind of a mindset with data analytics, data-driven intelligence led problem-oriented policing. Final words on that Joel. Yeah. ⁓ hire good training. Number one, get good training and don't just train one person, train everybody. Everybody has to get training. I mentioned last night, you know, ⁓ I make sure when I went to Detroit, Detroit, after I left, year after that, the biggest drop in violence. I went to train everybody. Data driven ideas, data driven ideas, missions, all the different things that you can do with data. That was it. Operation Summer heat in Miami-Dade, 1,500 arrests in two months. Huge. Yep. Yeah. Huge impact. I mean, you talk about operations summer heat. I didn't mean to cut you off, but you talk about operations. I mean, I what the FBI did last summer under the Patel and the Gino administration, what over 8,600 arrests of violent criminals and gang members. Right. I mean, how many pedophiles and pedophile networks did they break up? I mean, I mean, what is it, you know, several thousand children that they recovered. So when you go after criminal networks and you bring the federal government coupled with. law enforcement. The other thing that I read about that they did in that is a streamlined a task force. So instead of taking say two years to get local, right. You should think about two years from what I, from what I read, took about two years for them to get someone through and, uh, Bon Gino and Patel while, while they were there at the FBI, they streamlined the 90 days. That's it. I why didn't we do that 15 years ago? Because the locals know what's going on. better than the feds in a million years to disrupt this network. so training, implement good training for everybody. Don't isolate just your, your, your one group that makes you look good. I'm talking to a chief right now, you know, ⁓ don't just have the guy that makes you look every, every, because I was that guy for 10 years. you know, and I do that now for chief Davis, right? ⁓ I make the speeches and stuff like that. So, so, so bottom line is you got to make sure. that you're going to train everybody. So everybody's on the same level of mindset. Secondly, if you have issues with data analytics, outsource it or get good training. I'm not talking a weak training. I'm talking you hire an organization like, like, like you. CRI. There you go. To be consistent and follow through for a whole year to make sure that things are going to get implemented properly. The metrics are being captured properly. ⁓ if something is failing, you fix it right on the spot. ⁓ and, last but not least, if you implement things incorrectly, piecemeal the processes, you're going to fail. Period. End of story. Wow. It is going to cost you thousands of dollars. And in some cases you're going to be paying a hundred million dollars in overtime because you're failing at your, at your data. implementation of your programs. So I've seen that, Yes. time. So that's, think, the critical piece. Great. mean, Joel, that is, I mean, I believe in training everybody. mean, we have a course called Crime Prevention on Patrol that we teach at CRI. We have it online as well, available today if you want to go take it. Just for a patrol officer to introduce these ideas into their daily activities on patrol, because I believe that it has to be a culture change within the department. You're a hundred percent right. so any chiefs that are out there listening to this or administrators or supervisors, sergeants, lieutenants, or community members that care, please push these, these ideas and with your agencies, go to your town hall meetings and ask your departments to get involved with these kinds of data analytics. And, and I think you're going to see a success. Joel, I just want to thank you for coming on the show. I've really enjoyed getting to know you over the last year. It's a pleasure to work with you and you know, I'm still a little officer. at the bottom end, ⁓ I love my job and I believe that I can lead. I try to lead from the bottom up and do good work to support my commanders and my sergeants. And ⁓ I appreciate what you do. Are there any closing thoughts that you want to leave with the audience as we close? I just want to say that, you know, you're in the right place. I've seen, I work with thousands of cops. mean, Chicago PD, had close to 15,000 officers, just to give you an idea. Mexico City projects are run there, you know, with 70,000 officers. New York City, somewhere around the same number. You're one in a million, I'm going to tell you right now, one in million. Thank you. Who's willing to ⁓ look at data, be objective, and be flexible, and understand, you know, basically the dynamics. ⁓ Officer, ⁓ commander, you can be anything. You can create the greatest impact. I think I honestly believe that what you're bringing to the table right now for this police department, ⁓ because all I do is pick your brain and then I just go do something that makes your life easier on my side. but what you're contributing, ⁓ to this city is tremendous. And I appreciate your, ⁓ your relationship and the value that you bring in here. You do a ⁓ hell of a job and we really like working with you. I appreciate that. just, I have a passion for it. Thank you. You know, I wasn't officially for a compliment, but thank you. I really appreciate those kind words and, and same to you. I appreciate what you do, brother. I do. ⁓ and, and I've seen my agency come a long way. I know that there's some in our ranks that would disagree, but I believe the Austin police department is heading in right direction. And, you know, this show isn't here to promote them, but I will tell you that I'm going to be leaving in about 19 months. when it's my time to retire and you know, I want to leave whether I know I'll be forgotten. I'm a number five, three, four, two. That's when I leave that number will be forgotten, but I would love to know in my own heart that we've moved in the right direction. I've been a positive influence in the department, in the agency. So yeah, that's, that's something that I think every servant leader should strive for is leaving a legacy, not, for their own. glory, but to know that they're helping others behind them, building others up. And that's really what it is at end of the day. Joel, thank you for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. And we're going to be down just so y'all know, folks, we're going to be down at the Chiefs Conference this weekend, Corpus Christi at the Texas Police Chiefs Conference. Joel and I are going to be talking about data analytics and what Crime Reduction Institute can do for you. We're basically putting together a product just for this, for police chiefs to improve their data analytics. And, you know, you can outsource a lot of that to us. Moving forward and we're going to be talking about that down there and introducing place network investigations as a part of that. So check us out, check out the website, Joel. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. I'll see you at work and ⁓ you know, I'll see you soon and we'll look forward to going down to Corpus with you. So you're next week. All right. All Have a good night, sir. Yes, sir. Thank you for being here. Thank you. Yep. Folks, there he goes. And I just want to say thank you to Joel. and what he's done and. All the things that are going on right now. Y'all, if you like this podcast and you like what we're doing here, please, please, please like, follow, share with your friends, share the link. You can find us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Rumble, YouTube. Hit that like button, smack that bell, whatever it is, whatever you see there, put comments in the, you know, in the, in the comments section, tell us what topics you want. Guess you might want to have on the show, whatever it is, but please share that with us. Would greatly appreciate it. and I couldn't do this show without you. You guys are awesome. I know we're a small audience, but we can grow with your help. We'll continue to grow and I'll try to bring you guys the best topics. I always say we want to be Blue Line strong. We want to build trust and things within our community. We want to hold ourselves accountable and we're going to try to strive to do that here on the Blue Line Project brought to you by the Crime Reduction Incident Network. I will be heading down to Corpus next week. There will be podcast coming out. But I appreciate you being here today. Again, thank you to Joel. And signing off for the Blue Line Project is your host, John Gaberson. See you all next week.