Okay, let me mention one. This has been fairly well documented by a researcher from Harvard University. Maybe you've come across him. His name is Anthony Braga. He is the research partner for the Smart Policing Initiative in Boston. He engaged in an analysis of crime in what he calls “micro places” in Boston. He identified over 8,000 street segments in Boston and he was able to collect 30 years' worth of violent crime data sorted and analyzed at these different micro places.
He was able to identify with some precision where the hotspots were in Boston, and it wasn't just the hotspots; it was very small geographic areas that had been hot for the better part of 30 years consistently. The stability of these troublesome areas, these hotspots, was incredible. They developed a safe street team approach, kind of a problem-oriented approach to policing in these hotspots. He studied them extensively. One of the more interesting things he found in studying them is when left to their devices, the safe street teams who developed problem-oriented approaches to these problems were more likely to develop kind of social engagement approaches, and not necessarily traditional police suppression approaches. They were very successful through a comparative analysis in reducing street robberies and violent street crimes by about 17%.
I can just tell you from the work that we've done up there that in the case of Boston, you have a researcher who is embedded in the police organization, who has the ears of the police commissioner, as well as the sergeants, lieutenants, and captains. He does analysis on how things are going in the streets of Boston, and they change their tactics and their approaches based on the analysis that Dr. Braga provides them. That's an example of smart policing.