The city of New Orleans has secretly been testing crime predictive policing technology that already has support here in Houston.
Police Chief Art Acevedo has been a vocal supporter of using analytics to solve crimes, ane the police union's president echoes that sentiment.
“We have to try to look at every single possibility, every single piece of technology that can make our jobs easier and get our officers in the right place at the right time,” says Joe Gamaldi with the Houston Police Officers' Union.
Some software traces people's ties to gang members, analyzes social media and predicts the likelihood of committing violence.
“It's using information that's all widely available publicly and pulling it all into one place and using it in different kind of algorithms so we can identify the players in the area,” says Gamaldi.
“We're targeting the high-crime areas, we're looking at the people that operate in those areas and we're developing profiles about them so we can identify when a crime happens in a certain area who are the players in that area? Who are the people we need to speak with so that we can get to the suspect quicker and prevent it.”
Houston has yet to adopt the technology, but Gamaldi believes it is only a matter of time.