Crime Fighting Computers (and Police)

Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly announced the opening of the Real Time Crime Center, a sleek $11 million project that "will conduct rapid analysis of homicides and shootings Citywide." The benefit to the police is that all crime information will be centralized, with databases that "offer 5 million state criminal, parole and probation records; 20 million city criminal complaints and summonses, including 911 and 311 calls about specific locations; 31 million national crime records; and more than 33 billion public records." Police Commissioner Kelly waxed poetic, saying, "This crime-fighting center is harnessing the power of information technology and putting it into the hands of our investigators to fight and solve crime." The power of information technology! Gothamist wonders if the Intel or Windows music signatures were cued up when he said that. The crime center looks fancy, sort of like a TV control room meets what Hollywood thinks police departments look like (but usually only in futuristic films, like Judge Dredd). Mostly, as much as this is good for the NYPD, this also sounds like the Mayor's answer to CompStat, which was Mayor Giuliani's claim to dramatically decreasing NYC crime. Hello, election year!