MENU TITLE: Information Collection for Automated .
Mapping (ICAM)
Series: NIJ Program Focus
Published: July 1996
30 pages
53,931 bytes

The Chicago Police Department's Information
Collection for Automated Mapping (ICAM) Program

by Thomas F. Rich

To better understand the nature and extent of
criminal and social problems in the community and
improve allocation of resources, a growing number
of crime control and prevention organizations are
turning to computerized mapping. A recent National
Institute of Justice (NIJ) study reported that
officials found computerized mapping to be a
valuable tool that had not yet reached its full
potential.1 Because mapping software has a unique
ability to overlay disparate data sets (e.g.,
citizen complaints; police incident data; the
locations of specific sites, such as abandoned
buildings or liquor stores; and census data),
computerized maps can provide a multidimensional
overview of crime and its potential contributing
factors.

-------------------------------

Highlights

Computerized mapping is emerging as an effective
tool to help police departments track criminal
activity in neighborhoods. Combined with a
technique known as geocoding (which verifies
addresses and links other geographic information
with them), computer mapping software can combine
data sets to provide a multidimensional view of
crime and its potential contributing factors.

Although many large police departments are using
this technology, the Chicago Police Department
(CPD) has put together one of the most accessible
and easy-to-use programs in the Nation. Since its
implementation in May 1995, the Information
Collection for Automated Mapping (ICAM) program has
been praised by the city's police officials, beat
officers, and the public. 

Because the mapping program was created in
conjunction with the Department's community
policing program, the maps have been an effective
way to work with residents on addressing problems
in their neighborhoods. The maps are expected to
become regular features of neighborhood beat
meetings with police officers. 

User Friendly

ICAM's unique easy-to-use design can be traced to
the mandate of the ICAM co-project coordinator,
Deputy Superintendent Charles Ramsey, who said the
mapping system should be "so user-friendly, even I
can make a map." The system designers also factored
in the needs of officers. A CPD detective and an
officer spent several weeks at a precinct station
finding out what officers wanted from the
computerized mapping system.

Using a series of clicks made with a computer
mouse, ICAM can produce a map of reported offenses
of a particular type in a specified area, or it can
produce a chart of the 10 most frequently reported
offenses in an area. A keyboard is not required for
the ICAM system. 

The computer hardware and software for ICAM were
developed with a $1 million grant from the Illinois
Motor Vehicle Theft Prevention Council. The council
understood that computer mapping could permit
geographic analysis of the relationship between the
locations of a car's theft and its subsequent
recovery--thus, potentially contributing to
significant reductions in motor vehicle theft and
saving millions of dollars for the insurance
industry.

Planned Enhancements

ICAM currently is not fully accessible to the
public because no program exists to block out
confidential information, such as the names and
addresses of victims. A modified version of ICAM is
being developed that will allow the public to
generate maps and lists of crimes in their
neighborhoods without divulging confidential data.

ICAM is currently limited in its ability to aid
crime analysis. For example, an officer cannot
generate a map of calls for service or arrests.
Major revisions, being made under an initiative
known as ICAM 2, will address these and other
issues. For example, the enhanced system will be
able to map reported offenses within specified
distances of a location (e.g., within 1,000 feet of
a school) and track changes in crime over time. In
addition, a new citywide 911 emergency network will
allow officers to access the data bases of
districts throughout the city.

-------------------------------

Computerized mapping is particularly useful for
police departments with computer-aided dispatch and
records management systems, which store and
maintain calls for service, as well as incident,
arrest, and other data that are potentially
mappable. These systems typically have a geocoding
feature that verifies addresses and associates them
with other geographic information, including police
reporting areas, beats, and districts.

Before implementing computerized mapping systems,
however, police departments are faced with a number
of issues:

o The costs of the necessary hardware and
software can be substantial.

o Commercially available mapping software is
more complicated and harder to learn than word
processing or spreadsheet software and often
requires special multiday training courses. This
limits the accessibility of the mapping software
and often makes police departments dependent on a
small number of specially trained persons.

o The data to be mapped must be available on an
ongoing basis to ensure that maps are timely and
up-to-date. Unless the mapping system can use
electronic data that already exist in the
department's computer-aided dispatch or records
management systems, substantial data entry costs
will be incurred when the data are transferred to
the mapping system.

o Procedures are required to ensure that
addresses of data to be mapped are accurate (e.g.,
street names are spelled correctly). Ideally, an
address would be verified whenever it is entered
into a computer system. However, it may be
necessary, first, to develop an accurate base map;
police departments may want to undertake the
time-consuming, albeit one-time, task of editing
computerized street files of their jurisdictions.
The street files can be obtained from the U.S.
Bureau of the Census or commercial geographic data
vendors, but even these files may have missing or
unnamed streets or incorrect address ranges.

-------------------------------

Mapping Systems in Other Police Departments

Numerous police departments around the country use
mapping software, in most cases, to support crime
analysis activities. The Dallas and Los Angeles
Police Departments are among the more active users
of this technology.

Dallas. The Dallas Police Department has developed
what might be called a "text-only" version of ICAM.
Located at each police substation, a
"walk-up-and-use" system produces a list of
reported offenses that meet specified criteria.
Once a list is generated, the user can export it to
a general purpose mapping software package (the
Department uses MapInfo) that can be used to map
the list of offenses. A "handful" of officers in
the Department--and at least one civilian at each
substation--know how to use MapInfo.2

Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Police Department
contracted with MapInfo Corporation to develop a
custom software application that allows users to
generate maps of reported offenses meeting
specified criteria. The options for querying the
data base of reported offenses are extensive--a
user can specify crime types, date and time ranges,
modus operandi, points of entry/exit, property
descriptions, weapon descriptions, suspect
descriptions, vehicle descriptions, victim
descriptions, and narrative key phrases. The
application is installed at all 18 area stations,
where it is used by the area crime analyst. The
analyst uses the application to produce crime alert
bulletins, "in-custody" bulletins, and "wanted"
bulletins. The application is also used to enhance
cases, to respond to officers' requests for crime
maps, and to generate crime maps for area biweekly
tactical planning meetings.3

-------------------------------

The Chicago Police Department (CPD) has overcome
these obstacles and put together a mapping system--
Information Collection for Automated Mapping
(ICAM)--that can be used by police officers
throughout the agency. While a growing number of
law enforcement agencies have highly sophisticated
mapping systems (see "Mapping Systems in Other
Police Departments"), it appears that only CPD has
a system that enables officers with little or no
special training to create and quickly retrieve
their own maps of crime and community conditions
and share them with the community. This Program
Focus discusses ICAM in terms of its development
and implementation; current features, usage, and
impact; planned enhancements; and implications for
other police departments.

-------------------------------

The Context for ICAM: Community Policing

ICAM was developed as part of CPD's far-reaching
and ambitious community policing strategy. Unlike
many other community policing programs that are
limited to a single unit in the department, the
Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS) is
departmentwide. The strategic plan for reinventing
CPD describes CAPS as a "wholesale transformation
of the department, from a largely centralized,
incident-driven, crime suppression agency to a more
decentralized, customer-driven organization
dedicated to solving problems, preventing crime,
and improving the quality of life in each of
Chicago's neighborhoods."4 In fact, CAPS is really
a city program with strong support from the Mayor's
office and close involvement of city agencies,
which have been directed to give top priority to
"CAPS service requests" that affect crime and
neighborhood safety.

CAPS was launched in April 1993 in 5 prototype
police districts; it has since been adopted in all
of the city's 25 districts. CAPS revolves around
the beat officer, who is assigned for a minimum of
1 year to a single beat within his or her
district.5 Beat officers are instructed to focus on
problem solving, and dispatch procedures have been
changed to limit the time they spend responding to
calls for service outside their assigned beats.6
Beat officers are also required to attend regularly
scheduled "beat meetings" with community residents.

The evaluation of CAPS, partially funded by NIJ,
has focused on the program's implementation in the
five prototype districts.7 The 1995 report stated:

[Many] prototype district residents detected
positive changes in policing during its first year
of operation, and residents of most of the
prototypes thought the police had grown more
responsive to community concerns. There was also
evidence that the program led to a significant
decline in crime-related problems in three
prototypes, drug and gang decline in two districts,
and significant decreases in levels of physical
decay in two areas. Many of the changes in
perceptions of crime problems in the prototype
areas were mirrored declines in officially reported
crime and survey measures of victimization.8

Wesley Skogan, director of the evaluation effort,
called the results of CAPS "among the most
substantial I've seen" compared to other community
policing programs in the country.9

-------------------------------

ICAM's Relationship to CAPS

In 1995, officers in all of Chicago's 25 police
districts began using ICAM to better understand the
problems in their assigned areas and to develop
strategies to address them. The officers also began
to share ICAM maps with residents, improving
police-community relations and giving citizens a
chance to help police cut down on crime by
providing data for joint police-community
problem-solving efforts. Developing ICAM was thus
an integral part of Chicago's community policing
approach.

The superintendent's strategic vision for ICAM. The
importance of using and sharing information through
technology was a key element in the
superintendent's 1993 plan for implementing CAPS:

The Department must continue to seek out and apply
new technologies, as it has done in the past with
AFIS, Live-Scan, and other systems. New
technologies must go beyond finding better ways to
detect offenders and respond to crimes: they must
provide the information and analytical capabilities
that help police officers and the community
identify and solve problems and, therefore, prevent
crimes.

Information is power. To support our new,
decentralized approach to decisionmaking, the
Department must establish a new, decentralized
approach to data collection and analysis as well.
Systems should be put in place to give officers the
information they need, when and where they need it.
Where appropriate, these systems should also
provide community members with up-to-date
statistical information to help them in identifying
and targeting problems.10

The superintendent also emphasized the importance
of accessibility as a feature of any new
information system: "In many cases, computers will
need to be moved out of the back room, where they
have served as specialized tools, and into the
operational levels of our organization, where they
can become more flexible and far-reaching tools of
the police."11

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Development of ICAM

Using the superintendent's strategic vision as a
guide, Officer Jonathan Lewin (24th District) and
Detective Larry Soltysiak (Area 4 Division) took on
the challenge of developing a system that would
provide useful information directly to the beat
officer. At the time, beat officers relied on
handwritten offense reports to determine the level
of criminal activity in their assignment areas,
which took days to analyze in any detail.
Computerized incident data were kept on CPD's
mainframe, but the system was accessible only to
trained computer operators.

CPD's prior experience with mapping. Developing
ICAM was not CPD's first attempt to implement
computerized mapping. Two earlier collaborations
between researchers and CPD had demonstrated both
the feasibility and utility of such an approach.
The first effort in 1988, an NIJ-funded project,
involved CPD, the Chicago Alliance for Neighborhood
Safety (CANS)--an umbrella organization that trains
community residents in problem solving)--and
researchers at the University of Illinois at
Chicago and Northwestern University in creating a
rudimentary map-based crime analysis system in one
CPD district. In their report, the researchers
stated that the system had an impact in a number of
areas, including:

[In] combining data from different sources, in
providing an institutional memory of a beat, in
providing detectives with the ability to search for
patterns more readily, in permitting proactive
management by the district commander, and in
improving community relations between the police
and community organizations.12

Warren Friedman, executive director of CANS,
believes that initiation of the ICAM project was a
particularly significant step toward obtaining CPD
acknowledgment of the importance of working with
community organizations.13

Later, in 1991, researchers at the Illinois
Criminal Justice Information Authority and police
officials in CPD's Area 4 teamed up to implement a
map-based system for studying street gang crime.14
The study helped identify those areas with the
highest risk of gang-related violence. This effort
was notable because it combined police data with a
wide variety of community data, including the
location of rapid-transit stops, schools, youth
organizations, public housing facilities, parks,
liquor stores, and demographic data.15 These maps
could depict not only "hot spots" and other
locations where crimes were committed but also an
array of associated and possibly contributing
factors.

To build on these previous efforts, in 1993 Officer
Lewin and Detective Soltysiak first spent several
weeks in the 11th District (Area 4) interviewing
beat officers and detectives and testing various
formats to determine the presentation and type of
information that would be most useful to officers
and detectives. The consensus was that maps--
"simple, clear, and easy-to-read"--would be the
most useful format to display crime information.

Obtaining funding. However, one obstacle to
developing the computerized mapping system was
cost. For a comprehensive system to be put in
place, money was needed to pay for the hardware and
software at all 25 police districts and specialized
CPD units at the area level, which included a work
station for running ICAM, a server for network
maintenance and support, and a laser printer.

CPD applied for and received a $1 million award
from the Illinois Motor Vehicle Theft Prevention
Council (IMVTPC) to buy the necessary equipment.
IMVTPC, created in 1991 by the insurance industry,
envisioned computerized mapping as an effective
tool for auto theft investigators because it would
allow a geographic analysis of the relationship
between the location of a car theft and the
location of the car's recovery. IMVTPC supports a
variety of vehicle theft prevention programs; for
example, they provided funds for mobile data
terminals for CPD patrol cars in 1992, which
enabled patrol officers to query State and national
stolen vehicle files.

If computerized mapping could reduce the number of
auto thefts in Chicago--where two-thirds of the
State's auto thefts occur--IMVTPC believed it could
save the insurance industry millions of dollars
each year. IMVTPC made the award even with the
understanding that the mapping system would cover
all crimes, not just those related to
automobiles.16

From prototype to implementation. With funding
secured, Lewin and Soltysiak, then joined by Gene
Chin, a senior systems analyst in CPD's Data
Systems Division, began developing the mapping
system. But after attending a workshop on using
computerized mapping for crime analysis at the
Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority in
August 1993, the team realized that although many
police departments had sophisticated crime mapping
systems, no department had a system that was
accessible to beat officers.17 Thus, the team had
to create a unique prototype. In late summer 1993,
the development team set up its first model in
CPD's 24th District. The results were
disappointing. Beat officers found the system too
complicated to use, and the 10 to 15 minutes
required to generate a map was considered
unacceptable.

Then in summer 1994 CPD Deputy Superintendent and
CAPS Co-Project Director (then Deputy Chief)
Charles Ramsey made an unannounced visit to the
24th District. Ramsey issued a challenge to the
development team: Implement a system "that is so
user-friendly even I can make a map."18 The team
focused its efforts on developing a system that, in
terms of ease of use, more closely resembles an
automated teller machine (ATM) than standard office
automation software. In addition to changing ICAM's
hardware and software platforms,19 the team decided
that ICAM would not require use of a keyboard (in
fact, ICAM PC's do not even have keyboards).
Instead, all user selections and commands would be
issued with a mouse.

In October 1994, an ICAM prototype was set up in
the 24th District. By May 1995, ICAM was installed
in all 25 districts.

-------------------------------

ICAM Features

When the ICAM computer is turned on, the main
screen automatically appears (see "ICAM's Query
Screens"). The two main tasks that ICAM performs
are indicated in the boxes containing the "Do It!"
buttons: ICAM can produce a map of reported
offenses of a particular type in an area, or it can
generate a list of the 10 most frequently reported
offenses in a beat.

ICAM allows a user to generate a map in as few as
three mouse clicks. A simple query can be modified
in a number of ways, each of which requires a few
additional mouse clicks. As shown in exhibit 1, the
user can change the default query parameters by
specifying one or more secondary classifications of
the primary offense, changing the desired
geographic area, changing the date and time range,
or specifying a particular type of location.

The ability to map offenses meeting these criteria
is a standard feature of any map-based crime
analysis system. What is unique about ICAM is the
way in which the user formulates the query. By
default, ICAM maps offenses occurring in the past
10 days. However, any date and time range can be
selected (e.g., the past 2 days or midnight to 8
a.m. during the past month). The simplicity of the
method for selecting a date and time range
illustrates the efforts made by the ICAM
development team to ensure ICAM's accessibility to
officers. Since keyboards are not attached to ICAM
PC's, the traditional way of specifying a date and
time range--typing in the starting and ending dates
and times--could not be used. Instead, a calendar
screen is displayed, and the user simply clicks on
the desired month, day, and year for both the start
and end dates. There is a similar screen for
selecting the time range.

After the user clicks "Do It!," ICAM runs the query
against the offense data file and displays on the
screen both a map and a tabular view of the
offenses meeting the specified criteria. The map
displays the specified geographic area (e.g.,
district, sector, or beat), the streets in this
geographic area, the names of major streets, and
icons showing the location of each offense meeting
the specified criteria. If secondary offenses have
been requested, each type will have a different
icon, with all the different icons being shown in a
map legend window.

At this point, the user has several options (see
exhibit 2), including printing the map or tabular
view of the data, displaying community data,
performing other geographic analyses, or returning
to the ICAM Main Screen and formulating another
query. A list of the ten most frequently reported
offenses in a beat in the past 10 days--the "Top
Ten" feature of ICAM--can be obtained with just
three mouse clicks. The default time period of 10
days can be changed by accessing the date and time
selection screens.

-------------------------------

Exhibit 1

ICAM's Mapping Features: Query Components

Primary Offense: Only one primary offense can be
selected per map.

Secondary Offense: For the selected primary
offense, up to 10 secondary classifications can be
selected. For example, if robbery is the primary
offense and the secondary offenses are "with a
knife" and "with a gun," then only robberies with a
knife or a gun are mapped. 

Geographic Area: The choices are the entire
district, one sector, or one beat. The default
selection is the entire district.

Date Range: Both a start and end date are selected.
The default selection is the past 10 days. 

Time of Day Range: Both a start and end time are
selected. For example, if the user is only
interested in offenses occurring during the day
shift, 800 to 1600 would be selected. The default
selection is all day. 

Type of Location: The type of location includes
those categories listed on the CPD General Offense
case report--examples include on a bus, in an
apartment, at a business, and at a church. If "in
an apartment" is selected, then only offenses
occurring in apartments would be mapped. The
default selection is all types of locations.

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ICAM Implementation and Training

An official unveiling ceremony accompanied
installation of ICAM at each of the city's 25
districts as the development team introduced the
system to district police officials and residents
during the period from October 1994 to May 1995.
Although ICAM was designed for easy accessibility,
training in its use was still needed by police
officers at the district stations. The ICAM
development team produced an 8-minute instructional
video to be played during roll call at all district
stations. Detective Soltysiak also spent 2 days at
each district station demonstrating ICAM to
officers and training district administrative
managers, who would then serve as contact persons
to provide assistance to district personnel. Thus,
the development team adopted a "train the trainers"
approach to ICAM instruction.

The development team also wrote an ICAM users'
guide and prepared a one-page "Quick Map"
instruction sheet, which was posted next to the
ICAM PC's in each district station. The ICAM PC's
were placed in a common area (e.g., behind the
district desk), rather than being locked in an
office, to make them accessible to police personnel
around the clock.

Quality of data. The availability of timely and
accurate data is key to ICAM's effective use. One
of the potential obstacles that police departments
face in implementing computerized mapping systems
is the added cost of entering the data.
Fortunately, ICAM was able to "piggyback" onto
existing data-entry procedures in the districts to
minimize costs. Data-entry procedures are
standardized. At 6 a.m. in each district, offense
reports written during the previous 24 hours are
entered in a PC-based data base package--a practice
instituted long before ICAM for the purpose of
producing district "24-hour" reports. To enhance
the data consistency, the user selects values from
predefined lists rather than simply typing in
values. For example, if the offense is a burglary,
the user selects "burglary" from the list of
offenses rather than typing in the word "burglary."
Once these data are entered, the data-entry clerk
follows a three-step procedure: (1) executing a
"geocode" routine on the data, during which the
latitude and longitude of the location of each
offense are computed; (2) executing a "copy"
routine that extracts the offense data and writes
it to a diskette; and (3) executing a "load"
routine that copies the new offense data from the
diskette to ICAM. These procedures ensure that ICAM
data are, at most, 24 hours old.

The importance of the geocode step in this process
should be emphasized. As noted earlier, some
addresses stored in police files may be initially
unmappable because the underlying street maps are
incomplete or inaccurate. A team of researchers
from Loyola University in Chicago encountered this
problem in 1991 when they attempted to map the
location of homicides in Chicago using the U.S.
Bureau of the Census computerized street files
(i.e., TIGER files). The researchers found missing
streets near the boundary of the city, unnamed and
misnamed streets, and incorrect or missing address
ranges. They corrected these problems and added
important landmarks to the TIGER files.20

The researchers provided these improved files to
the ICAM development team, who refined them even
further. About 95 percent of the offenses entered
at the district stations are geocoded automatically
by the computer.21

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Use and Impact of ICAM

ICAM has fulfilled two of the key requirements for
successfully implementing CAPS; it has provided:

o Police officers with an automated tool for
analyzing timely and accurate crime information.
o An effective and convenient mechanism for
sharing information with the community. 

Support for ICAM. As a result, ICAM has earned
enthusiastic support from high-ranking city and CPD
officials. Mayor Daley, who attended 10 of the 25
district unveiling ceremonies for ICAM, has said,
"ICAM is the best thing to come from the police
department in years."22 CPD Superintendent Matt
Rodriguez has pointed to ICAM as the epitome of
decentralized decisionmaking: "[ICAM] goes a long
way to making the officer the chief of police of
his beat."23 CAPS Co-Project Directors Barbara
McDonald and Charles Ramsey have seen ICAM as
critical to the success of CAPS. ICAM, Ramsey said,
has been "a linchpin of the whole strategy."24

Of equal importance has been the reaction at the
district stations. Although no formal survey of
officers has been taken, in general, they have
praised the simplicity of the system and said it
helps them in performing their jobs.

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Exhibit 2

ICAM Mapping Features: Options Once the Query is
Run

Panning and Zooming: The section of the map shown
on the screen can be moved in any direction
(panning), or the distance across the displayed
section of the map can be changed (zooming).

View Details of Offenses: A tabular view of the
data is produced (see "ICAM's Information
Screens"). The data elements include: address,
house or apartment number, case report number,
crime code, primary offense classification,
secondary offense classification, whether the
offense is a Part 1 index crime, date, beat, start
and end times, location code, type of location,
number arrested, four analysis fields used to flag
special offenses (e.g., domestic violence,
gang-related offenses), offender description or
name, vehicle make, vehicle model, vehicle year,
and the beat in which the vehicle was taken.

Print Map: The map can be printed. A disclaimer is
shown at the bottom of the printout indicating that
the classification of the offense is based only on
the facts known at the time the offense was
reported. Printed maps can be shared with the
community.

Print Tabular View: The tabular view of the data
can be printed. However, because the offense
information available of Data in ICAM is
unverified, printed tabular views of the data are
not shared with the community.

Add Vacant Buildings to the Map: The locations of
vacant buildings can be added to the map.

Add Schools to the Map: The locations of schools
can be added to the map.

Add Establishments with Liquor Licenses to the Map:
The locations of establishments with liquor
licenses can be added to the map.

Add "EL" Stops to the Map: The locations of Chicago
Transit Authority elevated (EL) railway stops can
be added to the map.

Radius Select: A list of all offenses within a
specified distance from a specified location on the
map can be generated (e.g., all offenses within
1,000 feet of a school) and displayed in a table.

Area Select: A list of all offenses within a
specified beat within the sector or district can be
generated and displayed in a table.

-------------------------------

Data on ICAM usage. The actual number of CPD
officers who are using ICAM is not known. The
development team estimated that 20 percent of all
officers use ICAM regularly, 60 percent use ICAM
occasionally, and 20 percent use it rarely, if
ever. One measure of ICAM use--the number of
queries run at each district (a query results in
either a map or a "Top Ten" list)--can be tracked.
From June 26, 1995, to July 25, 1995, a total of
6,689 queries were run citywide--an average of 223
queries per day citywide, or 9 queries per day in
each district. Even more revealing is the
increasing use of the system over time. The number
of queries in the period's fourth week was 34
percent higher than in the first week.

Crime analysis. In general, the most common use of
computerized mapping in police departments is for
crime analysis. Crime analysts use mapping software
to prepare crime alert bulletins and other reports.
Because of ICAM's simplicity, all CPD officers have
access to analytic tools that are unavailable to
police officers in other departments. No
determinations can be made of the number of crimes
ICAM has helped to resolve, but anecdotes of ICAM's
effectiveness as a crime-solving tool for CPD are
plentiful (see "ICAM in Action").

ICAM also helps beat officers to make decisions
about their work plans. Officer Valeria Mac, a beat
officer in the 24th District, said she regularly
uses ICAM as an aid in deciding where to
concentrate her foot patrol activities. When Mac
returns to her beat after a few days off, she
prints out ICAM maps so she can see where crimes
were committed.

Beat meetings. Since the success of CAPS depends on
police-community partnerships, beat meetings are a
primary mechanism for soliciting community
involvement. These meetings, which occur regularly
in each of CPD's 279 beats, are intended to be "the
forums in which officers and residents jointly
develop plans for tackling neighborhood
problems."25

The cornerstone to developing strategies that
address neighborhood problems is the availability
of timely and accurate information on their nature
and extent. ICAM is helping to fulfill this
information need as officers routinely bring maps
to meetings and distribute them to residents (see
exhibit 3). However, the tabular view of the data,
available to officers using ICAM, is not made
public because it is not fully verified (i.e., ICAM
contains information recorded on the initial
offense report that has not yet been validated by
detectives or other followup investigators). In
addition, exact street addresses of the offenses
are excluded to prevent identification of victims.
However, the maps allow residents to see the
approximate locations where offenses occurred and
provide an overall understanding of crime in the
area.

One neighborhood relations officer in the 24th
District, Athena Mullen, who routinely distributes
ICAM maps at beat meetings, has noted, "everybody
likes the maps." In one beat, community residents
had already been producing hand-drawn maps, so they
were especially appreciative of ICAM. In many
beats, community residents call Officer Mullen
prior to the meetings and request that she bring
certain maps, particularly those depicting offenses
that residents find most problematic.

In many districts, ICAM is relatively new, so the
impact of ICAM-produced maps among residents is
still unknown. Also unknown is the extent to which
residents are using ICAM to develop new strategies
for improving their neighborhoods. A recent CANS
publication encouraged residents attending beat
meetings to take advantage of the maps to
prioritize neighborhood problems, develop and plan
a strategy for addressing problems, and, later, use
ICAM to assess whether the problems are
recurring.26 Warren Friedman, of CANS, a longtime
advocate of police-community partnerships, is
pleased that CPD now routinely shares information
with the community. ICAM "helps to facilitate
discussions with the police department," Friedman
says. But he cautions that it is too early to tell
if the technique will help residents develop more
effective and appropriate strategies to combat
neighborhood problems.27

Court Advocacy project. ICAM is important to
another component of community involvement in CAPS-
-the Court Advocacy project. Court Advocacy units
exist in every police district. Their purpose is to
"identify crime problems within their police
districts--especially those...which negatively
impact upon quality of life--and to follow those
cases in court in order to actively participate in
and have an effect on the criminal justice process.
The intended outcomes...include: encouraging
police/citizen participation in fighting crime
[thus] sending a strong message to judges,
prosecutors and others in the criminal justice
system that the community is involved and
watching."29

Eileen Donnersberger, manager of the Court Advocacy
project, sees ICAM as "a useful tool for deciding
what types of cases to follow."30 For example, an
ICAM map might show a series of prostitution
offenses occurring at a particular intersection;
tracking these cases through the criminal justice
system might be an effective strategy for
addressing the prostitution problem at that site.
Use of ICAM in Court Advocacy units is still new,
but Donnersberger sees ICAM as having "tremendous
potential." While the advocacy units currently rely
on CPD to provide them with ICAM maps, they will
soon have direct access to the system.

Current ICAM limitations. Although ICAM represents
a major improvement in information delivery systems
for CPD, its capabilities are still limited.
Reported offenses are the only police data that can
be mapped--data on calls for service and arrests
are not included in the system. Moreover, the
offense classification is based only on the facts
known at the time the offense was reported. If,
after further investigation, the classification
changes, a modification would not be reflected in
ICAM. In addition, only one offense can be mapped
at a time; a map showing the locations of
burglaries and drug offenses, for example, cannot
be generated. Finally, district personnel can map
offenses occurring only within their district. A
host of reasons account for these limitations,
including time and resource constraints and the
requirement that the system be as simple as
possible to use. Recognizing ICAM's successes and
limitations, CPD plans to expand usage and training
while making major revisions to the system.

-------------------------------

ICAM in Action

Anecdotes of how ICAM has been used to help solve
crimes include the following:

o In March 1995, three officers in the 10th
District caught three teenagers in the act of
burglarizing a home.28 The surrounding area
recently had experienced a rash of burglaries, and
the officers suspected that the teenagers were
responsible for many of them. The teenagers
confessed to committing several of the burglaries,
but they could not remember the addresses of the
homes. Back at the district station, the officers
used ICAM to generate a map and a list of all
burglaries occurring in the past 6 months in the
general vicinity of where the teenagers were
operating. With the map and list as a guide, the
officers then drove the teenagers to specific homes
to determine which ones they had burglarized. With
just a few hours' work, 11 burglaries were cleared,
and residents were able to recover their stolen
property, which had been stored in the home of one
teenager.

o In the 22nd District, officers learned of a
rash of burglaries occurring at schools and used
ICAM to map the exact locations of these burglaries
and determine patterns about the times they were
occurring. Officers then established surveillance
at the appropriate times and locations and soon
arrested a burglar as he was fleeing a school.

o In the 3rd District, residents at a beat
meeting complained about an increase in criminal
activity. Using ICAM, officers spotted an area in
the beat that had experienced an increase in
burglaries and robberies. Tactical officers set up
surveillance and arrested three offenders for armed
robbery.

o Tactical officers in the 24th District
received a complaint from residents that drugs were
being sold at a particular street corner. Using
ICAM to check crime conditions at that corner, the
officers found there had been numerous prostitution
arrests, but no drug activity. Further checking
revealed that one particular female--who matched
the description provided by residents--had been
arrested several times at this corner. In this
case, ICAM revealed the true nature of a suspected
problem in a neighborhood.

o In the 7th District, an ICAM map showed that
the locations of recovered stolen vehicles were
clustered around specific abandoned buildings.
Armed with this information, police officials
worked with the city's Department of Planning to
expedite demolition of the buildings. 

-------------------------------

Future ICAM Enhancements

A new CPD directive being implemented in 1996
requires beat officers to bring ICAM maps to
monthly beat meetings. ICAM is also being included
in the CPD training academy curriculum, so that
candidates will be instructed on its use. Other
enhancements planned for ICAM will make it more
accessible to the public and to the CPD command
staff.

ICAM 2. The overhaul of ICAM began in September
1995 with a new system dubbed ICAM 2. As CAPS
Co-Project Director Barbara McDonald explained:

The current version of ICAM has fulfilled its
original purpose and has achieved national exposure
as an innovative, cutting-edge law enforcement
application. It continues to assist in the
day-to-day problem-solving activities of police
officers and members of the community and is a
critical component of the CAPS model, providing
useful information directly to the hands of users.
However, we now propose a complete overhaul of the
ICAM system. When complete, the new system will be
known as ICAM 2. It will become more powerful, more
flexible, more useful, and more innovative than the
current version, yet [it] will become even easier
to use.31

Superintendent Rodriguez subsequently approved the
ICAM 2 development plan. ICAM 2 made its debut in
May 1996 in the 3rd and 12th Districts, and
citywide installation should be completed by
October 1996.32 Key enhancements include:

o Increased public access to ICAM. Because ICAM
terminals are located in secured parts of each
district station and certain information available
in ICAM cannot be revealed to the community (e.g.,
the address where the offense occurred), the system
is not directly accessible to the public. A
modified version of ICAM, one with certain features
disabled and some data elements blocked out, is
being developed to be made available through two
new and innovative ways. One is through public
information kiosks. Chicago currently has 50 such
kiosks in the city, which provide (via a touch
screen) information on city services and the CAPS
program. A prototype touch-screen version of ICAM
was recently demonstrated in the 19th District, and
an 85-year-old resident (who had never before used
a computer) generated a crime map of her
neighborhood in less than 1 minute.

In addition, a modified version of ICAM will be
available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.
Chicago currently has a "Web page" that is a
comprehensive source of information on CAPS.34
Chicago residents who do not have access to the
Internet at their home or office can access the
CAPS Web page at the city's public libraries.

o Increased police access to ICAM. ICAM was
initially designed as a tool for beat officers.
Under ICAM 2, officers and detectives assigned to
gang, narcotics, and youth units also will have
access to the maps. A modified version of ICAM--the
Command Information System--will be developed for
the CPD's command staff to support police planning
at the sector, district, area, and citywide levels.
ICAM will eventually be installed on laptop
computers in CPD patrol cars.

o Access to more information. The initial
version of ICAM allowed officers to access only
offenses in their particular district and a limited
set of nonpolice data. But the implementation of a
new citywide 911 emergency communications system
and fiber optic network will link all police
facilities and many city agencies, allowing ICAM 2
to access citywide information from several data
bases, including calls for service and arrests.35
Offense data in ICAM 2 also will be more accurate,
including updated information on offense
classification and case status.

o Analysis capabilities. ICAM 2 will vastly
improve the system's analytical capabilities. It
will allow officials to perform temporal analyses
(e.g., track changes in the level of crime over
time in different geographic areas), exhibit
families of offenses on a single map (e.g., crimes
against persons or crimes against property), map
offenses occurring within a specified distance of a
specified location (e.g., produce a map of drug
offenses occurring within 1,000 feet of a
particular school), and map "hot spots" of criminal
activity.36 The challenge for the ICAM development
team will be to provide these new features while
preserving the system's user-friendly nature.

-------------------------------

Implications for Other Police Departments

Police departments considering a computerized
mapping system have two broad design options:
employing trained analysts to produce maps for
officers or developing a system similar to ICAM. In
the first scenario, trained analysts use
commercially available mapping software to either
produce a set of prespecified maps on a periodic
basis or respond to ad hoc requests by officers for
maps.

The second option allows officers to produce their
own maps. The benefits of the ICAM approach are
clear, particularly for departments implementing
community policing. Since community policing
depends on individual officers taking the
initiative to solve problems and having residents
become active partners in this effort, access to
timely and accurate information is essential. While
developing an ICAM system costs more than an
"analyst-only" system,37 members of CPD, from the
Superintendent to beat officers, strongly urge
other departments to consider developing a system
that gives officers this direct access.

-------------------------------

Notes

1. Rich, Thomas F. 1995. The Use of Computerized
Mapping in Crime Control and Prevention Programs.
Research in Action. Washington, DC: National
Institute of Justice. NCJ 155182.

2. Personal interview with Sergeant Mark Stallo,
Dallas Police Department, in October 1995.

3. Personal interview with Officer Angelo Morton,
Los Angeles Police Department, in October 1995.

4. Rodriguez, Matt L. 1993. Together We Can.
Chicago: Chicago Police Department, p. 13.

5. The CPD divides the city into five areas; areas
are divided into districts; districts are divided
into sectors; and sectors are divided into beats.
There are 279 beats in the city. The size of beats
ranges from 0.31 to 2.54 square miles, with the
average size being 0.82 square miles. Eight to nine
officers are assigned to each beat, with one or two
on duty at any given time. 

6. Responsibility for responding to calls for
service within a beat is shared between rapid
response units and beat officers. Rapid response
units patrol and respond to calls for service
throughout a sector.

7. The two reports are: Chicago Community Policing
Evaluation Consortium. 1994. Community Policing in
Chicago, Year One: An Interim Report. Chicago:
Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority;
and Chicago Community Policing Evaluation
Consortium. 1995. Community Policing in Chicago,
Year Two: An Interim Report. Chicago: Illinois
Criminal Justice Information Authority.

8. Chicago Community Policing Evaluation
Consortium. 1995, p. 79.

9. Criminal Justice Newsletter. 1995. Community
Policing in Chicago Gets High Marks From
Evaluators. Washington, DC: Pace Publications.
Volume 26, Number 16. August 15, 1995.

10. Rodriguez, 1993, p. 17.

11. Rodriguez, 1993, p. 25.

12. Maltz, Michael D., Gordon, Andrew C., and
Friedman, Warren. 1989. Mapping Crime in Its
Community Setting: A Study in Event Geography.
Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice, p.
vi.

13. Personal interview with Warren Friedman in
August 1995.

14. Block, Carolyn Rebecca, and Richard Block.
1993. Street Gang Crime in Chicago. Research in
Brief. Washington, DC: National Institute of
Justice. NCJ 144782.

15. From this effort, the researchers developed a
handbook that describes the data that could be
included in a geographic data base or a geoarchive.
See Block, Carolyn Rebecca, and Lynn A. Green, The
Geoarchive Handbook: A Guide for Developing a
Geographic Database as an Information Foundation
for Community Policing. Chicago: Illinois Criminal
Justice Information Authority, August 1994.

16. Personal interview with Gerard Ramker and Mark
Mattozzi of the Illinois Motor Vehicle Theft
Prevention Council. IMVTPC believed that if the
50,000 annual auto thefts in Chicago could be
reduced by 10 percent, a $24 million savings could
be realized (assuming a $4,800 insurance industry
cost per stolen vehicle). 

17. This conclusion is consistent with the findings
of a recent NIJ assessment of computerized mapping
in crime control and prevention programs. See Rich,
1995.

18. Personal interview with Deputy Superintendent
Charles H. Ramsey in August 1995. 

19. The development team decided to change the
hardware platform from Sun Unix work stations to
PC's running Microsoft Windows. This improved both
the speed and ease of use of the system. Microsoft
Visual Basic, MapInfo for Windows, and MapBasic for
Windows were used to develop ICAM. 

20. Block, Richard. 1993. "Geocoding of Crime
Incidents Using the 1990 TIGER File: The Chicago
Example" in Proceedings of the Workshop on Crime
Analysis through Computer Mapping. Chicago:
Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority. 

21. For ICAM and most other mapping applications,
geocoding is a two-phase process. During the
"automated" phase, the mapping software attempts to
assign geographic coordinates (e.g., latitude and
longitude) to as many addresses as possible. Next,
during the "manual" phase, the user examines those
addresses not geocoded during the automated phase
one-by-one and attempts to geocode as many as
possible. With ICAM, 95 percent of offenses are
geocoded during the automated phase. After the
manual phase, virtually all the offenses are
geocoded.

22. July 27, 1995, memorandum from CAPS Co-Project
Director Barbara McDonald to CPD Superintendent
Matt Rodriguez. 

23. Personal interview with Superintendent Matt
Rodriguez in August 1995.

24. Personal interview with Deputy Superintendent
Charles Ramsey in August 1995. 

25. Chicago Community Policing Evaluation
Consortium. 1995, p. 26.

26. Hennelly, John. 1995. "You Can ICAM" in
Neighborhoods. Chicago: Chicago Alliance for
Neighborhood Safety. Summer 1995.

27. Personal interview with Warren Friedman in
August 1995.

28. This story was featured on Chicago CrimeWatch
`95, the CPD's cable television program (Karl
Productions, Show No. 25, May 1995).

29. Chicago Community Policing Evaluation
Consortium. 1995, p. 75.

30. Personal interview with Eileen Donnersberger in
September 1995.

31. July 27, 1995, memorandum from CAPS Co-Project
Director Barbara McDonald to Superintendent Matt
Rodriguez. 

32. Many of the key enhancements are being funded
with a grant from the Justice Department's
Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) office.

33. The icons do not necessarily equal the number
of incidents because more than one incident
occurred at the same address.

34. Chicago's Web page can be accessed by pointing
a Web browser to http://www.ci.chi.il.us.

35. In light of CAPS, including calls for service
in ICAM is particularly important, since calls for
service often more closely reflect citizen concerns
regarding fear and disorder than reported offenses.

36. ICAM 2 will eventually integrate a software
package called STAC, developed by researchers at
the Illinois Criminal Justice Information
Authority, which locates clusters of criminal
activity in an area.

37. The ICAM development team had to write software
to allow officers to formulate a query and to
manipulate the generated maps. The development team
recommends that other police departments allow four
person-months of time for this software
development, assuming the police department has or
can gain access to skilled programmers. Development
of ICAM required expertise in Visual Basic
(Microsoft Corporation), MapInfo for Windows
(MapInfo Corporation), and MapBasic for Windows
(MapInfo Corporation). This time estimate does not
include time to develop systems requirements or to
test and install the system.

-------------------------------

About This Study

This Program Focus was written by Thomas F. Rich,
an associate in the law and public policy area of
Abt Associates Inc. Interviews for this article
were conducted with the following members of the
Chicago Police Department:

Matt Rodriguez, superintendent; Charles Ramsey,
deputy superintendent; Barbara McDonald, director,
research and development; Officer Jonathan Lewin;
Detective Larry Soltysiak; Gene Chin, senior
systems analyst; and the following staff from the
24th District--Commander Thomas Byrne, Officer
Valeria Mac, Officer Athena Mullen, and Officer
Jerry Martin. 

Interviews were also conducted with Warren
Friedman, executive director, Chicago Alliance for
Neighborhood Safety; Richard Block, Loyola
University of Chicago; Carolyn Block, Illinois
Criminal Justice Information Authority; Jill
DuBois, Chicago Community Policing Evaluation
Consortium; Eileen Donnersberger, project manager,
Court Advocacy Project, City of Chicago; Sergeant
Mark Stallo, Dallas Police Department; Officer
Angelo Morton, Los Angeles Police Department; and
the following staff from the Illinois Motor Vehicle
Theft Prevention Council--Gerard Ramker and Mark
Mattozzi.

-------------------------------

This report was supported by Research Applications
contract #OJP-94-C-007 from the National Institute
of Justice to Abt Associates Inc. Points of view
and opinions in this document are those of the
authors and do not necessarily reflect the official
position or policies of the U.S. Department of
Justice.

The National Institute of Justice is a component of
the Office of Justice Programs, which also includes
the Bureau of Justice Assistance, Bureau of Justice
Statistics, Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention, and the Office for Victims
of Crime.

NCJ 160764         July 1996