The Prairie Village city council asked police leaders two months ago to take a look at whether increasing departmental staffing could help curb area crime.
The department’s answer: for now, at least, let’s see if we can address the issue with the resources we’ve got.
Over the past few weeks Prairie Village police have been working implement a crime prevention technique called DDACTS (for “Data Driven Approach to Crime and Traffic Safety”). The method, introduced through the collaboration of the Department of Justice and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), has been successfully implemented in other area municipalities like Shawnee.
Essentially, the technique provides police departments with guidelines to help identify “hot spot” crime and traffic accident locations, and then prescribes a series of tactics to increase police visibility and reduce crime and traffic accidents.
“Basically, it’s about concentrating your resources where the majority of the problem is,” said Capt. Tim Schwartzkopf. “We’re looking to be able to deploy resources to the hot spots on a sustained basis.”
