Tag: police

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Virtual Trip

I’m sitting on a public bus directly behind an overweight, aging driver. My goal is to get a prescription filled at the neighborhood pharmacy. Yet it seems to be taking forever to get there, and the noise on the bus is unbearable.

Kids are screaming and laughing. People are talking loudly, their voices overlapping in a maddening roar. It seems as if they’re shouting directly into my ears. I look up at the rearview mirror, and the bus driver begins talking to me in demonic whispers.

I notice that the passengers’ faces seem to change. One minute a little girl is sitting behind me, and then she morphs into a nurse. Then, like a weird acid trip, the bus becomes an ambulance, and I’m alone with the nurse.

“How are you feeling? Are you okay?” asks the nurse, as she looks at me quizzically. I don’t answer, and the ambulance becomes a bus once again.

Suddenly, the real world chimes in as Tony Mitchell asks me to remove my goggles and headphones.

“Do you see what it’s like for a schizophrenic? Can you understand what goes on in their minds?” asks Mitchell, the district manager for Janssen Pharmaceutical, the company behind Virtual Hallucinations Software.

I had been watching a short virtual-reality video intended to teach police crisis officers what it’s like to be schizophrenic, a mental illness marked by distorted thinking and hallucinations. The presentation is viewed through a headset with goggles and headphones attached to a laptop.

About 30 local officers viewed the video as part of training for the Memphis Police Department’s Crisis Intervention Team (CIT), a special police unit developed in 1988 to deal with mentally ill people.

This presentation marks the first time CIT officers have had any sort of virtual-reality training.

“These guys may have heard stories about people hearing voices in their heads, but this puts a whole new perspective on schizophrenia,” says Sam Cochran, who heads the CIT program. “Now officers can say, I know that what you see and hear is real to you.”

Before, officers being trained to deal with schizophrenia would sit in a chair with their eyes closed while three or four of their colleagues would chatter incessantly in their ears.

Janssen developed the video with the help of a schizophrenic who had suffered from the disease for 30 years. Mitchell says schizophrenics have a hard time distinguishing the voices in their heads from voices in the real world. Thus, they have a harder time following orders when confronted with a police scenario.

“I once had to deal with a guy in a delusional state. He was chasing people with a knife, and he didn’t know what was real,” says new CIT officer M.L. Clark, after viewing the presentation. “Now that I’ve seen this, I can sort of imagine what was going on in his head.”

The Memphis CIT was the first such unit in the U.S., and since its formation, other police departments around the country have followed suit in developing their own teams.

Officers from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, were at the training, in hopes of forming a similar CIT team there. This week, officers from New Jersey and Montana will also be in town studying the Memphis model.

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Police State

Don’t expect to see more police officers hitting the streets anytime soon.

Last month, Mayor W.W. Herenton announced a proposal to add 650 new officers to the Memphis Police Department, a move that came in response to an FBI report ranking Memphis the second most dangerous metro area in the country.

But if the City Council approves the 50-cent property tax hike needed to hire more cops, it may still be a few years before the extra officers will be able to make a dent in Memphis’ high crime rate.

It could take as long as two years to get officers from the first batch of recruits onto the streets as full-fledged officers, according to public information officer Vince Higgins.

“You have to recruit the first group, get their background checks and physicals, and get them pre-screened for the job,” says Higgins. “They’ll be at the police academy for 21 to 24 weeks, and they have a year of probation.”

Higgins says the first class would probably include 150 potential officers. Generally, only about 10 percent of applicants qualify for the academy.

The recruitment process — background checks, interviews, physicals, etc. — for the first 150 officers could take anywhere from three to six months. Then, the officers would attend the police academy for five to six months.

“Keep in mind there’s attrition in the class. Some fail the academics. Some fail the firearms. Some are injured during training,” says Higgins. “At the end of six months, we might end up with 125 officers graduating.”

Those who complete the training will enter a year-long probationary period, during which they’ll ride with a partner for nine months and continue to be monitored for another three.

City councilman Ricky Peete says the mayor’s proposal to hire 650 officers within two years is unreasonable given the time it takes to recruit and train.

“It’s highly unrealistic,” says Peete. “I think a much more manageable number is somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 new hires a year.”

Herenton’s proposed 50-cent tax hike includes funds for officer salaries, as well as necessary equipment: cars, uniforms, weapons, and electronic PDA systems.

Last week, the City Council asked the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission to review the mayor’s proposal.

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A Secret Crush

Rich Janikowski isn’t just a criminology professor. He’s the backbone of Blue Crush, the Memphis Police Department’s (MPD) data-driven strategy that identifies concentrations of criminal activity.

Each morning, the University of Memphis professor and a team of three others enter police-incident data into a computer program. The program then creates a map, pinpointing areas where recent crime has occurred.

“The MPD does do some level of their own mapping, but they don’t have every fancy whiz-bang that we’ve got,” says Janikowski. “When they do it, they get a bunch of dots. Often, when they would look at hotspots, they’d look at it by ward. [But our program will show] that it’s just this little area of a ward that’s driving everything up. It’s an apartment complex or a street segment.”

Janikowski uses statistical programs to further focus hotspots. For example, they can determine the distance from one offense to another or what days and times offenses most often occur.

This method, dubbed Blue Crush by the MPD, has resulted in 1,477 arrests in the past nine months, and now the Shelby County sheriff’s office wants to do a similar operation. But the job is too big for the small group at the U of M responsible for compiling the data.

“We’ve been talking back and forth with the sheriff’s office, but we’re at our maximum,” says Janikowski. “Soon we’re going to be rolling out maps for every precinct [in the MPD], and there’s only so many of us.”

Currently, the MPD is trying to determine a protocol for training officers on the software so they will not have to rely on the U of M. Public Information Officer Vince Higgins says they would like to have enough officers trained by the next calendar year to work in each precinct. Currently, Blue Crush is only utilized in selected areas of the city due to a lack of trained manpower.

“The police department will need a crime analyst in every precinct and a crime analyst downtown to look at the bigger picture. You’re talking about 12 to 13 people,” says Janikowski.

The sheriff’s office does perform some level of crime mapping, though not to the extent that Blue Crush does. County Public Information Officer Steve Shular says they often use mapping to target car-crash hotspots. Then they send officers out to run radar in those places.

“It’s not like years ago when officers would go out to these honey-holes and catch speeders, say over a certain hill where people might naturally speed,” says Shular. “Now our traffic enforcement efforts are geared in places where we have the most accidents.”

Other cities are also looking at the Blue Crush model. Next month, members of Detroit’s police department will be in Memphis to observe the MPD’s model in action. The city of New York has been using a similar model for the past 15 years, reducing their overall crime rate by 70 percent.

“[New York City has] reduced crime tremendously, going from a time when everyone was scared of New York to New York being an incredibly safe place,” says Janikowski. “People say, why isn’t it down 70 percent here? It took them 15 years.”

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Business Deal

It’s about five minutes until 11 p.m. — closing time at the Kirby Parkway Liquor store — on August 26th. A young man sporting an Afro and a long-sleeved camouflaged shirt walks in, asking for tequila.

He picks up a bottle and heads to the register. As an employee rings him up, he points a pistol at the cashier’s head and screams, “Open the drawer!”

The situation is an increasingly common scenario at local businesses. Through August 31st of this year, business robberies are up 45 percent from last year. Business burglaries are up 29 percent.

“I think there’s increased gang involvement surrounding the business robberies,” says Lt. Jeffrey Polk, director of the Memphis Police Department’s robbery bureau. “Drugs play a heavy factor. We’re seeing a lot of males in their 20s.”

Polk says some gang-related robberies are part of the gang initiation process used by members of the Vice Lords and the Gangster Disciples. Others provide gangs with money to fuel the drug trade. Polk has even dealt with cases in which the money stolen was intended to bond a fellow gang member out of jail. “It boils down to good old-fashioned greed,” says Polk. “To some of these folks, robbery is their job.”

Laura Burgess, an employee at the Kirby Parkway Liquor store, says police suspected the robbery at her store may have been part of a gang initiation.

From January through the end of August, 490 local businesses have been robbed, meaning something was taken by the use of force, threats, or intimidation. Another 2,124 businesses have been burglarized, meaning someone has broken into a building with the intent to steal.

Sharonda Hampton, director of MPD’s burglary bureau, says her department saw a large spike in crime during the summer months.

“Lately, they’ve been hitting the pharmacies. That’s where the drugs are,” says Hampton. “They’re also hitting a lot of beauty supply stores.”

A few weeks ago, a beauty supply shop in Whitehaven was burgled of $6,000 worth of human hair, as well as $200 from the shop’s register.

At Kirby Parkway Liquor store, Burgess says they’ll be extra cautious about keeping the doors locked at night.

“It would scare customers away if we installed bullet-proof glass,” says Burgess. “Those Germantown housewives wouldn’t even come in here.”

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Bad Boys

Last week, three Memphis police officers were arrested for stealing drugs from dealers.

Arthur Sease, who left the department in 2005 for unrelated reasons, was charged in a 50-count indictment that included charges of civil rights conspiracy, distribution and possession of controlled substances, extortion, kidnapping, and firearms violations.

Officers Alexander Johnson and Antoine Owens each face two counts of conspiring to violate civil rights and to distribute controlled substances.

According to U.S. attorney David Kustoff, the trio would convince an individual to arrange a drug purchase. During the exchange, the officers would “bust” the dealers and take their cash, drugs, and jewelry. Then they’d usually instruct the dealer to keep quiet about the incident and let him or her leave without being charged.

The most recent charges bring the number of indicted Memphis police officers to 19 in the past two years. With more than 2,000 officers on the force, that figure accounts for almost 1 percent of all Memphis police officers.

Chip Burrus, assistant director of the FBI’s criminal-investigations division, says this sort of “crooked cop” behavior is fairly common all over the country.

“There’s 18,000 police agencies throughout America, and 99 percent of the officers are doing exactly what they should. They’re obeying the law, following the Constitution,” says Burrus. “It’s the 1 percent that we always worry about.”

He says the appeal of extra money often gets in the way of a cop’s sense, but better ethics training in police departments can help.

“A corrupt cop doesn’t just one day say, ‘I’m going to be a corrupt cop tomorrow,'” says Burrus. “It’s a gradual baby step toward the line. Sometimes that line is blurry and difficult to determine. But when they cross it, they’ve crossed it.”

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LoJack City

As Germantown police officer Ryan Carter turns on his police cruiser, a female voice sounds from his dash.

“Alert: LoJack stolen vehicle contact received. Reply code: zero, zero, zero, juliet, hotel,” the voice says from a small, rectangular screen affixed to the dash.

“Sometimes that scares me when I turn on the car,” says Carter, “like I’m hearing voices.”

The LoJack Stolen Vehicle Recovery System was installed in his car the day before. The new system, which alerts officers when certain stolen vehicles are in the area, was installed in six Germantown cruisers, 22 Shelby County Sheriff cars, and 40 Memphis Police Department (MPD) cars.

For $695, car buyers can opt to have a LoJack system installed in their vehicle. If the car is stolen, its LoJack system will be activated after the theft is reported to police. If a patrol officer has the LoJack receiver in his squad car, it will beep if the car comes within three miles of the stolen vehicle.

A digital compass on the receiver directs the officer to the stolen car. As the officer nears the intended target, the beeps get faster and higher in pitch.

“We guarantee vehicle recovery within 24 hours,” boasts Patrick Clancy, vice president of law enforcement for the LoJack Corporation, at a joint press conference Wednesday morning with officers from Memphis, Germantown, and Shelby County.

Carter demonstrates the system in action. First, Clancy drives away in a Chevy van equipped with an activated LoJack system.

When Carter turns on his engine, the voice from his dash lets Carter know a stolen car has been sensed nearby. His compass points north, so he drives in that direction.

“This system is great because it eliminates the need for a high-speed chase,” says Carter as the LoJack beeps get higher and faster. “They can try and get away, but we’ll find them eventually.”

The compass begins to point a little more to the right, and Carter turns onto a side street. Up ahead, the van has already been apprehended by another police demo car.

While the system is only useful in locating cars equipped with a LoJack transmitter, Clancy says that over five million have been installed around the country. Since 1986, when LoJack was founded, over 100,000 vehicles have been recovered worldwide.

Last week, when two MPD officers were only 20 minutes into their LoJack training, they found a stolen Nissan in South Memphis.

Since the company depends on police to use the system, it is installed in police cars for no charge.

“In this era of crime, we’ve got to police smarter,” says Shelby County sheriff Mark Luttrell. “This is a method that’s economically efficient with proven results.”

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Borrowing the Car

When “Brad,” a patrol officer at the Memphis Police Department’s West Precinct, goes to work, he has to wait almost an hour before being assigned a car.

The officer, who asked to remain anonymous, says a shortage of working police cars means vehicles are often shared between overlapping shifts.

“About half of our cars are in the shop or not functioning all of the time,” says Brad. “People end up going home at 2:15 p.m. when they’re supposed to leave at 3 p.m. There’s this overlap where there’s not enough officers on the street.”

Brad works the “Charlie” shift, a late-day shift that begins at 2 p.m. and ends at 10 p.m. Typically, that shift shares cars with the graveyard shift (“Alpha”), which spans 11:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. Similarly, the “Bravo” shift (7 a.m. to 3 p.m.) is supposed to share cars with the “Delta” shift (5 p.m. to 1 a.m.).

For the last few months, the officers on the Charlie shift have had to share with officers on the overlapping Bravo shift.

MPD public relations officer Vince Higgins admits that there are shortages of working vehicles in some precincts but says officers don’t need to come back to the precinct very early to give the next shift their cars.

“If a guy’s working the day shift and there’s a guy coming in on the evening shift that needs to use the car, the day-shift officer that’s out patrolling only has to come in maybe 10 minutes early,” says Higgins. “I don’t think that increases any liability. You can make the argument for that, but it’s a stretch.”

But the cars are being driven more, which might compound the problem.

“When Charlie shift shares our cars with Alpha shift, they’re running about 16 hours a day,” says Brad. “But when Bravo shift takes our cars, they’re running 23 hours a day. So they’re going in the shop a lot faster.”

Higgins says the situation should be remedied shortly. Last week, a City Council budget committee approved almost $4.8 million in 2007 for 175 new marked police cars and 62 unmarked cars. The fiscal year begins July 1, 2006.

“These cars generally have a shelf life of about four-and-a-half years,” says Higgins. “They start degrading after that. … So we have to try and replenish the fleet. But we can’t replenish them all at once.”

Higgins blames some of the problem on abuse, saying that the department “has a lot of officers who crash cars.” But he says that the department has little choice but to push cars to the limit due to the city budget crunch. MPD currently owns 800 marked cars, 500 unmarked cars, 36 motorcycles, and 36 crime-scene vans.

“We have our problems with vehicles, but there is not a department in the country that doesn’t have that problem,” says Higgins. “It’s not unique to Memphis, nor is it unexpected.”