Group seeks to forecast crime

Trio in city hopes to track high-risk areas

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By Karl Henkel

khenkel@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Operation Forecast is seeking to reduce crime by joining three forces: the Youngstown Police Department, Youngstown Metropolitan Housing Authority and social-services workers.

The group uses a system similar to weather forecasting to track crime in specific areas of the city. It met for the third time Thursday.

The plan, which the group hopes to implement this spring, would use Operation Forecast technology that has existed since 2009 to highlight problem areas or houses based on crime type. Police, along with YMHA, would work with social services to head off problems.

“The social services is like the gravy,” YMHA CEO Clifford Scott said. “The law-enforcement aspect is like the bread and butter.”

Scott, Craig Tame of the U.S. Department of Justice, DOJ consultant Elsie Day, Youngstown Police Lt. Kevin Mercer, Quality Control Officer Jim Winston and City Prosecutor Jay Macejko, among others, discussed how to take data from areas such as Westlake Terrace, Brier Hill Annex, Rockford Village, Victory Estates and other public housing and use trends to try to reduce the number of incidents.

Crimes in those locations are now documented and mapped based on offense type, such as critical (homicide, rape, shooting, etc.), person reports (assaults, domestic violence) and property reports (thefts, criminal damage, burglary) all the way down to simple 911 hang-ups.

The data is then sorted on a spreadsheet, and officers can track whether a specific crime repeatedly occurs at the same location.

“We’ve gotten to a point where we’re able to successfully examine where our problem areas are just based on the spreadsheets,” Mercer said. “Our challenge is on the social-services component.”

Most of the discussion centered on how to incorporate social-services intervention — whether counseling or psychiatric help — and under what circumstances, especially considering resources could be light at the beginning of the project.

Day said it was important to focus on a smaller area because the group doesn’t want to get in a situation where it can provide services to some, but not all, in the model.

The discussed model broke down three potential categories: the geographic area of the incidents, the type of call and who is present at the time of the crime, such as children. The group discussed when it thought an intervention should occur and as a result of what crime type, but no decision was finalized.

Scott said there is someone already on staff who can fill the social-services role for now, and the group expressed interest in a $750,000 anti-gang grant currently sought by Youngstown and Canton. If the group is able to finalize a plan of action with Operation Forecast before the mid-March deadline, it could use its plan to help win the grant.

“It does require resources, it does require knowledge and expertise,” Day said. “It’s a challenge but it can be done.”