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Chicago Using Los Angeles-Style Predictive Policing Technology to Reduce Murder Rate

The lab’s job: to help build and operate Strategic Decision Support Centers, where officers and civilian analysts monitor gunshot detectors, surveillance cameras and other data to pinpoint where crimes occur and where they might happen next.

Sean Malinowski was torn between two cities last year: chief of staff to Los Angeles police Chief Charlie Beck and $250-an-hour consultant to the Chicago Police Department, helping create new, high-tech crime-fighting centers.

“I used all of my vacation time and days off to do this,” Malinowski says. “My family time suffered. I’m a little worn out by it.”

Invited to Chicago by Supt. Eddie Johnson to lend his expertise after the city suffered one of its bloodiest years in decades in 2016, Malinowski was hired under a $1.1 million contract between the city and the University of Chicago Crime Lab. The lab’s job: to help build and operate Strategic Decision Support Centers, where officers and civilian analysts monitor gunshot detectors, surveillance cameras and other data to pinpoint where crimes occur and where they might happen next.

In essence, Malinowski’s job was to show the Chicago department how to use its own technology to fight crime, L.A.-style, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

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