Cincinnati police officers are working with the University of Cincinnati’s Policing Institute to solve crimes and – in some cases – prevent them, says the Cincinnati Enquirer. Students and professors take voluminous amounts of crime data from the department and crunch the numbers. They’re looking for crime trends or to teach officers how to do it themselves. In one notorious case, dozens of gang members who terrorized a neighborhood were rounded up. In other cases, police offer advice to a bank that’s been robbed four times in three years.
Cops are in the classroom. The goal is to bridge the divide between research and practice. Three “chief’s scholars” just graduated with their master’s degrees in criminal justice at UC and three more start school this fall, all on scholarship. “The relationship they have developed is beyond anything we have seen anywhere,” said David Kennedy, director of John Jay College’s Center for Crime Prevention and Control. “It’s very unusual and forward thinking.” The effort won awards from the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the National Criminal Justice Association. Michael Smith, dean of the college of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at Georgia Southern University and a police researcher, has watched the partnership grow and develop. “To have such an on-going intimate partnership, I can’t think of another city like it,” he said. “This really is a model for the rest of the country.”