Meridian Awards 2012

COMPANY PROFILE

The Toronto Police Service is the largest municipal police agency in Canada with over 5700 sworn officers and 2500 civilian personnel.  They police over 630 square kilometers through 17 police divisions with a total population of over 2.5 million people.

INTRODUCTION

In 2008 Pitney Bowes Softwares developed and implemented a suite of spatial products for the Toronto Police Service (TPS).  The TPS acquired the Envinsa Location Platform to geocode all location data from our legacy systems. This involved a data scrubbing stage as part of the regularly scheduled geocoding process. An additional phase of the project was the development of a web based mapping application using Korem's Push‘N’See and MapInfo Mapxtreme as a portal to access all their geocoded data and perform practical crime mapping functionality.  This state of the art "Crime Mapping and Analysis Portal" has since made crime mapping a standard in crime analysis across all 17 police divisions.

THE CHALLENGE

In March of 2011 a Detective in one of the busy police divisions had an idea of collecting a list of privately operated video surveillance cameras from local businesses and residential complexes.  In the event of a criminal investigation, the idea was to provide investigators with a reference list of cameras within the division.  Officers can then canvas the owners of the cameras in order to determine if images of the offender(s) or even the crime itself may have been captured.  The Detective approached their crime analyst, and subsequently consulted with one of the TPS GIS Specialists to discuss a possible means of mapping the locations.

THE SOLUTION

Since the TPS had already invested in a comprehensive GIS platform, they were able to quickly generate a MapInfo workspace which included the layer of private camera locations with attributes including contact information, location address, description of the viewshed information describing the areas visible from the camera's vantage point.  Using Push'n'see they quickly served up the workspace and produce a quick web based interactive map available to all investigators.  They essentially extended the functionalities of the Envinsa platform. 

BENEFITS AND RESULTS

Not only could the divisional investigators access the interactive maps and determine if any cameras are in the proximity of their crime scenes and have all contact information available immediately, but this new interface is now available to squad investigators such as the Sex Crimes Unit, Homicide Squad, and the Intelligence Division.  Because of the creative implementation of the Envinsa and Push'n'see solutions, TPS is able to go from IDEA to IMPLEMENTATION in a matter of days.  In a climate of fiscal restraints, Toronto Police developed solutions by extending their existing technology investments.

THE PRODUCTS USED

• MapInfo Professional ver.10.5
• MapXtreme
• Envinsa
• Push'n'see
• StreetPro

INVLOLVED

• Det./Cst. Manny San Pedro (Investigative Analyst - Sex Crimes Unit)
• Det. Jack Gurr (Crime Management Coordinator - No. 13 Division)