Tulsa Police Begin Compstat

Margaret Stokes & Chris Howell NewsOn6.com

TULSA, OK -- The Tulsa Police Department unveils a new crime-fighting tool. It's called Compstat. It's a computer system that plots "real-time" crimes on a map allowing officers to pin-point troubled areas and react almost instantly.

Thanks in part to grant money and 18 months of hard work, the Tulsa Police Department is ready to introduce Compstat to the public.

Compstat or "Comparison Statistics," is a crime reduction strategy that was started in New York City, and proved to be so valuable there, other big cities across the nation implemented the system. Now Tulsa is joining the ranks.

Basically the program is an online map that's updated at least three times a day with information on crimes from misdemeanors to felonies. The whole idea is for police to identify the problem areas quickly and respond.

Before Compstat, officers had to search several different data bases to find crime statistics.. this new system combines them into one, making the process much easier.

Right now the map is not available online for the public, but that is the long term goal.

Every 28 days the Tulsa Police Department invites the public and the media to attend the Compstat meeting to interact with officers while they go over the previous month's stats.

So what can you expect at the meeting?

"It's not reality TV but it is. In that they'll come to the meeting and really see a police operational meeting in place. It's not staged, no one knows right now what will be discussed tomorrow. It's not staged it's real good things, bad things happening and people will be able to see that," said Tulsa Police Chief Ron Palmer.

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