Los Angeles Police Department: Safety in Numbers
March 3, 2006
Another person interviewed for the change agent paper was Paul O’Connell.
As a former NYC police officer, attorney, and now a Professor and Associate Dean at Iona College, Paul’s expertise spans many areas. Paul is an authority on one of the great innovations to take root in the law enforcement community since the 1990’s, namely, the Compstat police management system. We featured a great quote from Paul in the change agent paper in the section on listening (page 9). He points to the Compstat system which the New York Police Department successfully utilized to reduce crime over the past decade. O’Connell is quoted:
"Sometimes you need to use an existing mechanism or create a new one to standardize the listening function and the ability to view and understand the entire organizational landscape."
The "new mechanism" Paul refers to is the analytics and accountability system, which was pioneered by NYPD under former Commissioner William Bratton. This Compstat behavior model and technology platform is now emulated by law enforcement leaders throughout the US and around the world. And Bratton is back at it again, this time as LAPD Police Chief. This month’s Baseline Magazine features a great article on the success of the Compstat program in Los Angeles.
Change agents, as discussed in the paper, must be effective communicators and good listeners in order to be successful, and the Compstat system forces police officers to take accountability for crimes committed within their immediate areas. Bratton attempts to create the next generation of change agents within the LAPD by cutting through the bureaucracy to enable better communications and improve the "listening" to what goes on in Los Angeles. The Compstat system enables localized action to solve local crime problems within hours and days. The article closes with Bratton describing how Compstat helps to re-allocate decision rights and authority for those officers closet to the problem.
"The idea is to inspire the creativity of the captains by empowering them with some degree of autonomy to assign their resources and address local priorities," Bratton says. "They all have crime problems, but the nature of crime differs from area to area."