In an urban location like Penn, the answer to more effective on-campus crime prevention sometimes lies beyond campus.
Recognizing this principle, the Division of Public Safety introduced GeoCAMS in 2002, an extensive crime-mapping and analysis system updated daily with information about all crimes reported to the Philadelphia Police Department within DPS’s patrol region — both on and near the Penn campus.
According to PennComm Operations Director Mitch Yanak, GeoCAMS has now enabled DPS to receive information “within 24 hours” on all crimes reported to city police.
“Twenty years ago, law enforcement never received such timely information,” Yanak said, adding that the immediacy with which the system downloads and displays crime data allows DPS to “make strategic decisions right away.”
The most significant feature of the system, however, lies in its ability to alert DPS to crime patterns in nearby neighborhoods likely to impact the University City area.
“If anyone in West or South Philadelphia has a crime problem and starts to address it, we want to see it before it starts coming toward Penn,” he said. “When you start to see — especially at the beginning of the school year — burglaries on the west end of campus, you can see quickly what the patterns are west of 43rd Street and whether that starts to move toward campus.”
Vice President of Public Safety Maureen Rush, DPS activates the Penn Police task force periodically in response to crime trends revealed by GeoCAMS.
“Crime mapping helps us visualize where the problem is so we can target that zone with security and police,” she said. “We’re able to jump on things before they outnumber the resources we can send.”
All DPS officers and dispatchers at PennComm have been trained to read the maps GeoCAMS generates, the latter of whom perform “aggressive” video patrols of areas in which crimes occur most frequently.
Every month all police commanders — who base their street patrols on the crime mapping results — attend a meeting where they discuss with Penn Police Chief Mark Dorsey methods of combating crime in their designated patrol areas, according to Yanak.
“With maps people can’t hide — officers are now more accountable and have become more informed,” Yanak said.
In addition, the mapping system also features both prisoner release and active warrant data for all defendants. Over time, GeoCAMS has revealed that most arrested individuals do not live far from Penn.
The system allows DPS to import information from other sources, such as the prison system. This “not only shows us where crime occurs, but lists people recently released from prison, active warrants and where offenders live with regard to where the arrest was made and its distance from Penn,” he said.
He added that the system is also utilized for resource-deployment planning prior to major events like Hey Day, Spring Fling and graduation. With the aid of GeoCAMS, DPS can release maps ahead of time detailing where officers will be stationed.
“If we have a command post set up at 35th and Walnut, I can put an icon there,” he said. “We have a better picture of where all the resources are around that post, especially while working with other state and city agencies.”
While GeoCAMS maps are not accessible to the general public, maps based on the same city police data can be found at citymaps.phila.gov.
“We’ve come a long way from law enforcement 30 years ago, when we put color coded pins on a map,” Yanak said.
