Newark Police Department: Championing community engagement and crime prevention

“It’s my responsibility to reduce crime, and Peregrine is the foundational piece for our overall crime reduction strategy.”

Cpt. Jolie Macias

Newark PD, California

More data than ever before

Police departments are inundated with data, and an agency’s information can “live” in multiple, siloed systems. For example, data about a single individual can be in a record management system (RMS), a citation system, and a warrant service system.

In recent years, police departments have responded to new and varied challenges with new technologies like body-worn cameras (BWC) and automated license plate readers (ALPR). These new technologies collect data alongside decades-old legacy systems like computer-aided dispatch (CAD) systems and RMS that are storing information but don’t empower most users to access it in a meaningful way – beyond running basic searches.

The introduction of additional data sources has created a problem for community engagement and crime prevention. Because departments are managing more data across more systems than ever before, they cannot easily provide information on crime trends or develop true, data-driven crime prevention strategies without a way to bring all that data together.

“Very manual” data collection before Peregrine

The Newark, California Police Department works diligently to engage with members of the community to share crime trends as well as prevention and intervention strategies.

Spearheaded by Newark Police Department’s command staff and Community Engagement Manager Jada Chiu, the department regularly meets with homeowners' associations and neighborhood watch groups to share updates on crime trends within specific neighborhoods relative to city-wide trends and educate community members on potential solutions to mitigate crime.

Before Peregrine, Captain Jolie Macias described data collection as “very manual.” Macias explained their records and case management system — which includes everything from people and vehicle records to use of force reports, known offenders, collision investigations, and warrant information — couldn’t search and collate the kind of information they needed to most effectively engage with the community and foster trust between the department and the people they serve.

So, Newark Police Department would “print out a spreadsheet of each incident and present data in lists. It was hard to collect and even more difficult for our community to understand,” Macias continued. Macias, Chiu, and other members of the department would manually categorize incidents by location, type, time of day, and other relevant variables. The process took dozens of hours — hours that should be spent serving and protecting.

Peregrine makes data “crystal clear”

“What’s so obvious to us now is how Peregrine makes the data we want to share crystal clear,” says Captain Macias. “With Peregrine, we can easily collate reports with maps and real-time dashboards on crime trends in easily digestible formats for community groups and local government officials.”

Captain Macias continues, “We also didn’t have access to up-to-date maps. We were relying on Google Maps or old maps from our [computer-aided dispatch system]. With Peregrine we can now see, as plain as day, where incidents are happening. We can make easy and clear recommendations to members of the community and give them awareness and education on crime trends.”

“Ultimately, we use Peregrine to better engage with our community and make better decisions on crime reduction strategies, like where to add cameras or automated license plate readers.”

Community engagement is a crucial aspect of modern law enforcement. Public safety agencies of all sizes must be prepared to articulate the strategies and tactics the department is deploying to mitigate and prevent crime. To build true relationships with the communities they service, departments need more than spreadsheets – they need to be empowered with clear and accurate reports and visual aids that community members and elected officials can easily understand and digest.

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Peregrine is built on AWS GovCloud.