East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Hillar C. Moore III and LSU researcher Tracey Rizzuto are in upstate New York today addressing more than 250 law enforcement officials from around that state about the early success of the Crimes Strategies Unit, a multi-agency initiative in Baton Rouge that uses a data-driven approach to fight crime.
The CSU, which is modeled after a highly successful program in New York City, was launched in the fall of 2015 and is spearheaded by the district attorney’s office in partnership with LSU. The unit includes assistant DAs and investigators from the DA’s office, as well as representatives from the U.S. attorney’s office, the National Guard and students from LSU’s criminology department. Together, they analyze a variety of crime data and social networking sites to try to solve crimes and prevent future incidents from occurring.
The unit also works closely with the Baton Rouge Police Department and the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office.
In the year or so since the CSU was launched, Moore says violent crime in Baton Rouge has decreased, especially homicides, which were down 18% at the midyear mark. Given high-profile incidents like the Alton Sterling shooting and the ambush killing of three law enforcement officers in late July, it may not seem like violence was down in 2016. But it was, according to Moore, who credits the CSU as well as the Baton Rouge Area Violence Elimination program, or BRAVE.
“I really believe our numbers—at least up until November—were so good because of the CSU and the ongoing efforts of BRAVE,” Moore says. “We normally average five homicides a month. This year, we were averaging three.”
Moore says the approach utilized by the CSU is effective because it is “people- and place-driven.”
“We look at how criminals network and how police reports show us who’s teaming up with who and who’s beefing with who so we can try to identify, through data, who are the most active and dangerous folks,” he says. “That way, we don’t have to pick up 30 folks. We may only have to pick up one to interrupt the violence in a particular neighborhood.”
Moore and Rizzuto are speaking on “applying social network analysis to better understand violent crime and criminal networks” at the two-day conference, which is hosted by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services.
Rizzuto is associate director of the LSU School of Human Resource Education and Workforce Development.
—Stephanie Riegel
