Tulsa's Mayor Returns From New York City With A Plan For Fighting Crime

Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor is just back from a trip to New York City. Taylor was part of a group of 14 different mayors, who were there for a crime-fighting summit. <br/><br/>Taylor talked to reporters

Wednesday, April 26th 2006, 6:04 pm

By: News On 6

Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor is just back from a trip to New York City. Taylor was part of a group of 14 different mayors, who were there for a crime-fighting summit.

Taylor talked to reporters in Tulsa Wednesday afternoon about some of the ideas the mayors shared and how they might help Tulsa's sky-high crime rate.

News on 6 reporter Steve Berg says the big idea is what they call "data-driven" crime prevention.

That will be the heart of Operation Bullet Trap, which is Taylor's crime-fighting plan. Taylor says that "data-driven" methods have been used with great success in other cities like New York City and Boston. Basically she says they take the crime data and look for trends. Once they see what the trends are, they can target their resources on that area.

She points that there are many different causes for homicides and those causes can change from time to time. "One city had had a significant increase in domestic violence homicides and so they were able to deploy resources then to help prevention in that area."

Speaking of crime fighting and police, Taylor says she has made no decision on the Chief Dave Been situation and whether he will be re-instated. She says that will have to wait until after the budget is sorted out, possibly in a week or so.