Policing has become an increasingly evidence-based profession in recent decades, and law enforcement leaders and organizations are advocating for the performance and application of research in the field. In one such research effort, the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department (KCPD) partnered with the Rutgers Center on Public Security (RCPS) to implement Risk-Based Policing (RBP).

Defining Risk-Based Policing

Although relatively new to policing, RBP is a reliable strategy that addresses crime, disorder, and other problems faced by police agencies.¹ Leslie Kennedy, Joel Caplan, and Eric Piza, leading researchers in criminal justice, define RBP as “the operational mindset and practice of reducing and managing place-based crime risks to prevent crime incidents.”² With a focus on policing places, not people, RBP equips agencies of any size with data analytics and other tools to solve specific problems encountered in their jurisdictions at root levels.

Risk Terrain Modeling (RTM) serves as the analytical engine for RBP by diagnosing environmental conditions that attract or generate crime or other problems; examples include vacant properties, liquor stores, or parks. RTM shows significant relationships among risk factors and crime locations and maps them, as shown in Figure 1.

Unlike traditional hot spot mapping, RTM identifies both where and why crimes are more likely to occur at the same places over time. The “why” is based upon a “risk narrative”—the way risk factors interact and contribute to crime. Risk narratives add situational context to crime that enables better problem-solving. Additionally, RBP’s strategic focus on places provides opportunities for police to conduct effective crime reduction and prevention measures in civilly just and transparent ways.³

For example, risk factors within one of the KCPD’s targeted intervention areas included liquor stores, abandoned properties, and bus stops. One of these facilities had employees involved in drug sales, which led to soliciting and loitering at the nearby bus stop or in front of the business and the use of nearby abandoned properties as hideouts or stash houses. The particular setting was highly suitable for enabling drug sales. KCPD and its partners worked to address the specific colocated risk factors as opposed to using purely reactive measures such as directed patrol. RTM intelligence encouraged the Kansas City Area Transit Authority (KCATA) to remove the problematic bus stop. This dramatically reduced loitering and cut down on open-air drug sales. Equally important, law-abiding community members were not adversely affected due to two available bus stops nearby.

KCPD’s Deployment of RBP

KCPD’s RBP effort began with RCPS members visiting the KCPD in February 2019 to teach RBP workshops; one for command staff and another for crime analysts. Other training opportunities for frontline staff followed, such as a roll call training video, posters explaining key RBP concepts, group discussions, and in-service training during 2019 and 2020. KCPD leadership wanted RBP to be seen as a viable, sustainable blueprint for crime reduction and prevention across all ranks.

Data gathering and operational deployments started in March 2019, at which point Chief of Police Richard Smith directed four of six patrol division commanders to focus on violent street crime, while the remaining divisions worked auto thefts and car break-ins. The process of identifying focus areas for RBP deployment was straightforward. Commanders were given maps displaying both chronic violent crime hot spots and the RTM model’s highest-risk areas, and commanders selected focus areas based on what they felt they could reasonably address with available resources.

The KCPD designed its intervention in an academically rigorous manner. Much like focus areas, control areas were selected based on violent crime hot spots and high environmental risk. Steps were also taken to ensure control areas matched focus areas as much as possible in terms of general environmental characteristics and geographic size.

Chief Smith prioritized making RBP an easy lift for all involved. One-page intelligence reports were created to direct patrol officers’ risk reduction activities within focus areas, as shown in Figure 2. These reports provided a map of high-risk places, a list of ranked environmental risk factors, and peak days and times of reported target crimes in the area.

A custom computer-aided dispatch (CAD) code, “RTM,” was created for easy tracking of risk reduction activities. Instead of creating lengthy reports, officers were instructed to add a few call notes in CAD to describe actions taken to address risk factors within a focus area. For example, a contact at a convenience store might end with a simple CAD note such as, “Spoke with manager, John Jones; observed no liquor license; called Regulated Industries for follow-up.” A weekly report automatically extracted such CAD incidents to allow easy monitoring and follow-up for commanders.

Risk reduction activities vary greatly and rely on officers’ creativity and their relationships with other stakeholders. Some common examples include contacting business owners about risks their businesses experienced or created, working with Codes Enforcement to address property violations, or requesting Public Works to repair broken streetlights.

Changes to existing weekly crime accountability meetings with executive leadership ensured RBP remained a viable and prominent component of KCPD’s public safety efforts. For instance, additional RBP-specific sessions occurred once every four to eight weeks to delve into topics such as project crime metrics, risk reduction tasks performed by officers, or issues requiring more than just police intervention.

The KCPD also uses RBP data at monthly meetings at city hall. Known as “Regulators Meetings,” KCPD members shared RTM analyses and RBP activities with management-level members from municipal departments such as Regulated Industries, Public Works, and the Health Department to prioritize problem-solving efforts. For example, a problematic business with code violations was observed within the same focus area mentioned before. The business was shut down due to the violations brought to the Fire Marshal’s attention by KCPD during a Regulators Meeting. Combined with the KCATA’s removal of the bus stop, this disrupted the risk narrative, reducing crime in the focus area.

Results

Given Chief Smith’s priority on violent crime, RCPS researchers have completed the first formal analysis of the four patrol divisions focused on violent street crime, with analysis of property crimes set to follow soon. A comparison of the same time period pre-RBP and post-RBP indicated the targeted violent crime types decreased by 24 percent overall, or the equivalent of 165 fewer incidents. Conversely, the control areas saw only a combined 1 percent reduction in violent crime. These findings are statistically significant, meaning KCPD has confidence the reduction is due to officers’ efforts as opposed to random chance.

Beyond crime reduction via RBP, RTM shows strong predictive validity. Locations of all homicides and nonfatal shootings from 2019 were compared to the top 1 percent of highest-risk cells comprising the RBP deployment model. Each cell is 233 feet by 233 feet. Half of all homicides and 58 percent of all nonfatal shootings occurred within 1.5 blocks (i.e., 600 feet) of a highest-risk cell.

Challenges

Implementing any large-scale strategy is challenging and the KCPD’s RBP effort is no exception. While the benefits far outweigh any obstacles, there is still room for improvement.

The KCPD has independently performed the majority of risk reduction activities to-date, and convincing stakeholders to consistently deploy resources has been challenging. Regulators Meetings at city hall are valuable, but KCPD is also planning new ways to include these and other partners such as social workers or nonprofit organizations. The Newark Public Safety Collaborative, also coordinated with RCPS, sets an example the KCPD intends to follow to expand RBP.

Another challenge is that officers can fall back on enforcement-related tactics when deployed to high-crime areas. Enforcement is certainly part of RBP, but the majority of tasks are aligned with situational crime prevention. Command and supervisory staff regularly remind officers to strike an appropriate balance between crime prevention and enforcement with the end goal being public safety. Focusing on place-based risks makes the job of policing safer while still enabling officers to perform their duties admirably.

Action Items

Jurisdictions seeking to try RBP should take the following recommended steps:

1. 1. 1. Choose a crime or other problem to address.
      2. Identify environmental risk factors that contribute to the problem.
      3. Create a risk terrain map (visit www.rutgerscps.org/rtm.html for free tutorials).
      4. Design and execute plans for what police officers and other partners can do to reduce risk factors in high-risk places.
      5. Evaluate and share your successes; learn from challenges to improve the next round.
      6. Repeat!

Notes:

¹ See Rutgers Center on Public Safety, “Policing and Public Safety.”

² Leslie W. Kennedy, Joel M. Caplan, Eric L. Piza, Risk-Based Policing: Evidence-Based Crime Prevention with Big Data and Spatial Analytics (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2018), 3.

³ Andrew  G. Ferguson, The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforcement (New York: NYU Press, 2017).

⁴ See, “Diagnose New Crime Patterns During Uncommon Times,” The RTM Blog, March 19, 2020.

Please cite as:

Jonas Baughman and Joel Caplan, “Risk-Based Policing in the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department,” Research in Brief, Police Chief Online, May 5, 2020.