Over the past three years, Louisville’s police department has refined its COMPSTAT crime data-reporting system to track crime in a more timely fashion. That allows commanders to better understand what is happening in their neighborhoods in a timely way. Statistics police look at are current within two weeks of an incident, says the Louisville Courier-Journal. Residents can see crime statistics, which are public records, in several ways – either by monitoring the newspaper’s Web site, looking at incident locations on the city’s Web site or requesting specific data from the department.
The effort to arm police commanders and citizens with information seems to be working. This year, overall crime in the city is down about 7.7 percent. That includes declines in both property and violent crimes, except homicides. The number of homicides is up 11 as of July 2. Police Chief Robert White has consistently set goals to reduce overall crime by 3 percent each year since he took over the merged city-county police department in 2003. It has just been in the last year that the goals have been met overall.