The Billerica Police Department has applied for this year’s Community Innovation Challenge (CIC) grants through the Executive Office for Administration and Finance with the Burlington, Bedford, Tewksbury and Wilmington Police Departments. Burlington Police Department is the lead applicant entity. The application was prepared by Captain Greg Skehan of the Burlington Police Department and Lieutenant Greg Katz of the Billerica Police Department.

CIC grants will provide financial support for one-time or transition costs related to innovative regionalization and other efficiency initiatives in local governments. By improving the effectiveness of shared programs and services, the Commonwealth is able to spend taxpayer money more efficiently, maximizing the impact of every dollar spent.

The purpose of the grant proposal is to combine the resources of the five applicants to form a larger, regional web presence which would include a greater level of current news and communications from all five departments.

One of the key elements to this proposal is the inclusion of public crime mapping and alerting for all five jurisdictions. While public facing crime map applications and websites are not uncommon it is rare that five communities would offer a regional space for citizens to take in a larger landscape in regards to crime activity and trends. Residents that may occupy a home near the border of a participating town would now be provided real crime data from the neighboring jurisdiction. In the past, only the crime data of their jurisdiction would be available. Address searching, date range filters and 27 crime categories will make it easy for the public to view the crime information that matters to them. Meaningful analytics, including a time of day and day of week graph, helps the public interpret crime activity so they can take action and stay safe. Automated neighborhood watch emails keep the public up-to-date on recent crime activity near their home, school or other place of interest.

In addition to the crime data available to residents, the ability for anyone to submit an anonymous tip to the respective agency directly from the crime map is a convenient tool for both the public and each agency. This functionality is included with the public facing crime map to be implemented as part of this project.

Public facing crime mapping is immensely valuable to the public but this project takes mapping a step further and includes agency facing analytical data and tools. These tools will allow authorized personnel in each agency access to data across all five towns. Meaningful graphs help users visualize crime patterns and trends across jurisdictional lines. Crime hotspot maps and custom predictive analytics can be created with one click against any data on the map, including data spanning all five jurisdictions. Patrol officers will now be able to monitor their specific patrol areas and have valuable data available from the neighboring jurisdictions.

For more information on the mapping technology please visit BAIR Analytics and the RAIDS Online map.
Grant recipients will be announced by the end of February.