NAMPA, Idaho — In the year since Nampa police adopted a more proactive approach to policing, the department saw a significant decrease in property and violent crimes.
Part of that effort was adopting a nationwide program called CompStat, Nampa Police Chief Joe Huff said. The program helps sort real-time data to spot crime patterns, trends or problems, which police departments then work to fix.
“It’s more focused police work, and we’re seeing a difference in this community,” Huff told the Idaho Press. “We’ll never know if the decreases we are seeing are directly related to CompStat, but we are clearly doing something different.”
Last year, the city’s part 1 crimes — such as burglaries, rapes, thefts or assaults — dropped by about 27% from 2018, according to preliminary data. In 2019, the department also had 752 fewer victims of this type of crime, and it investigated zero homicides compared to four in the year prior.
“The city has grown by about 6,000 people roughly since we implemented this,” Huff said. “And yet, crime is going down. That’s not normal.”
“It was just so opposite of what we were seeing in 2018 for the same time period,” added Kenneth Keene, an analyst with Nampa police. “We’ve had terrific successes.”
The department has always had data on crime statistics, Keene said. But CompStat — which was created in New York more than 20 years ago and is used at major police departments nationwide — allows analysts to actually break down the time, area and reason for crimes, as well as targeting specific crimes or areas.
Prior to the program’s launch last June, the department was already seeing an almost 25% decrease in crime offenses, according to a previous Idaho Press report. Huff said this could partly be due to the fact that officers were already educated on the program and looking for ways to use it before the official rollout. The agency continued to see a decrease — about 3% — in the six months after CompStat was put into effect.
“I haven’t seen a group of officers buy into something so fast and so positively, and I think it’s because of the way the chief really structured it,” said Keene, who worked for 25 years at the Los Angeles Police Department, which uses CompStat. “It’s not software program. It’s simply a philosophy on how you operate a police station. You say, ‘Look if this is where the crime is, then let’s put resources where the crime is at and suppress it.’ … It’s letting numbers help us do our job — those numbers tell a story.”
Huff said the department also uses CompStat to create projects, allowing officers to focus on certain crimes while patrolling and be more proactive during their downtime between calls. The entire agency meets monthly to address strategies, results, and effectiveness of a project.
Keene said the department receives a progress report “every hour, of every day” to see whether they need to reevaluate their tactics. Past projects include increasing police presence in areas with higher rates of traffic accidents, car burglaries, and shoplifting.
Huff said officers are in constant communication with one another to discuss what happened during a specific shift and what still needs to be addressed. Other areas of the department — such as evidence, records, and dispatch — also are talking with officers and letting them know what they see or hear.
“It’s all comes down to communication,” Huff said. “That helps us be more proactive. … Our ultimate goal is to put ourselves out of a job.”
Before CompStat was launched, patrol officers were spending about 70% of their shift reacting to calls, Keene said. Now, that time is divided almost 50-50 between proactive and reactive work.
“That’s where you want to be as a police department,” Huff said.
Critics of the program, including former police, have said it incentivizes officers to make more arrests in order to meet quotas and avoid embarrassment when their numbers are reviewed in department meetings, according to a column from USA Today. Opponents also believe the tool is used to profile offenders.
Both Huff and Keene said this isn’t the case at Nampa police.
“We’re not profiling people, we’re profiling crime,” Huff added. “We’re never going after someone for their sexual orientation or the color of their skin — anything like that. We don’t do that. … You’re always going to be stopped for a lawful reason.”
Keene said the department’s version of CompStat also is flexible and always evolving to ensure resources are being concentrated properly. If something isn’t working, they devise a new strategy.
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“The punitive nature is totally eliminated. … There’s no ego in this,” Keene said. “It’s innovative — and it’s working for us.”
In next year, Huff said he hopes to see part 1 crimes decrease even further. But he doesn’t anticipate another extreme drop.
“We’re already at a win right now, and if we could drop even a couple of more percentage points, that would be huge,” Huff said. “Or if we could just maintain where we are — that’s already a quarter less crime.”
Olivia Heersink is the Canyon County public safety reporter. You can reach her at oheersink@idahopress.com. Follow her on Twitter @heersinkolivia.
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