South Bend PD Maximizes Limited Patrol & Analyst Resources to Build Community Trust and Promote Effective Crime Prevention Tactics

Like many law enforcement agencies across the US, the South Bend Police Department (SBPD) experienced a decline in staffing that was impacting community r elations and made effective patrolling difficult.

Prior to deploying ResourceRouter, SBPD’s crime analysts spent six hours each week analyzing data to produce one week-long persistent hotspot for the entire agency. Since deploying ResourceRouter, the same analysts spend approximately 45 minutes per week reviewing and enhancing ResourceRouter’s automated directed patrols that are produced daily, by shift and beat, across the jurisdiction. This process not only creates an 80% time-savings for analysts each week, but also offers a more precise and impactful approach that optimizes analyst and patrol resources. “I no longer manually pull data from multiple resources to analyze as ResourceRouter does it for me,” explains Crime Analyst Brianne Denton. “I spend my time focusing on value-add investigative work that is more beneficial to the department.”

Maximizing efficiency and impact is more important than ever before given that SBPD has 15-20% fewer officers than they did just two years ago. Despite those staffing challenges, with ResourceRouter, the department is now maximizing the impact of its resources by driving more effective and precise directed patrols that are positively impacting a spectrum of crime across the entire jurisdiction such as robbery, aggravated assault, larceny, property crime, and homicides.

South Bend Assistant Chief Dan Skibins finds the ability for command staff and supervisors to quickly assess officer compliance with daily directed patrols very useful. He also credits increased community trust to ResourceRouter’s ability to fill prior gaps in patrolling. “People feel safer because they’re seeing officers on the street,” says Skibins, who noted a dramatic decline in citizen complaints about a lack of police presence since starting with the system. Overall, ResourceRouter has enabled automated patrol plans that put officers at the right place at the right time in a way that limits potential bias, enhancing community confidence. SBPD has seen a 14% reduction in Part 1 crime since deploying ResourceRouter despite limited staffing.