Analyst Talk - Jeff Asher - The Crime Index Analyst - Leapodcasts

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to Analyst Talk with Jason Elder.

(00:01):
It's like coffee with an analyst,or it could be whiskey with an
analyst reading a spreadsheet,linking crime events, identifying a
series, and getting the latest scoopon association news and training.
So please don't beat that analystand join us as we define the law
enforcement analysis profession.
One episode at time,
Thank you for joining me.
I hope many aspects ofyour life are progressing.
My name is Jason Elder, and todayour guest has 18 years of law

(00:26):
enforcement analysis experience.
He spent time with the CIA andthe New Orleans Police Department.
He obtained his master's degreeat George Washington University,
and recently started his ownpodcast called Jeff Lytics.
He's here to talk about,among other things, the dos
and don'ts of crime trends.

(00:46):
Please welcome.
Jeff Asher.
Jeff, how are we doing?
Doing great.
How are you?
I am doing well.
How is Louisiana?
It was hot this weekend and nowit's cold and I don't understand it.
Yeah, I guess we're all going throughthat polar vortex that's going through.
Yeah, I guess so.
It's it, it's weird.
I wish it would decide.

(01:07):
I think my, my allergieswish it would decide.
Don't worry.
It's probably gonna be likeeighties by Thursday, so.
Sure.
I'm really excited to talk toyou about your podcast, about
crime trends, about data.
I always like to nerd out on, on that,but I also want to get your backstory.
So let's first just talk abouthow you discovered the law

(01:27):
enforcement analysis profession.
Yeah, so I I'm from New Orleans, born andraised, went to the University of Texas.
And after that I was a seniorin high school on nine 11 and
said, okay, I think I want to.
Do some sort of service and mm-hmm.
After I graduated college, I movedup to DC got my master's degree in

(01:47):
security policy studies and at GeorgeWashington University which was like a
feeder school to the, Intel agencies.
I was gonna grad school at night andstarted working for DOD as an intern
with the Office of Naval Intelligence andinterned with the Defense Intelligence
Agency and then got a job with CIAand did that for five years and loved
it, but was ready to move back home.

(02:08):
And I didn't have any applicableskillset to anything that
was happening in New Orleans.
So I talked to the police departmentand they had not had a crime analyst in
decades, and they managed to find fundingto bring me on to be the crime analyst.
And so.
I did that and then I, I left thatand started, kept I know I'm jumping
ahead, but af after I left that, thatwas the field that I was working in,

(02:31):
and so I've just been doing an analysisand data for that for last 12 years.
So when you were at GeorgeWashington, as you mentioned,
inspired by the events of nine 11.
What was, your goal or what, whatdid you see your path being as
you started at George Washington?
I,
I mean, I wanted towork for the CIA mm-hmm.

(02:52):
I've never.
I've never had a paththough, so I don't know.
Like you tell me in three yearsthat I'm an astronaut living on
the moon, I'll be like, cool.
That sounds fun.
I, there's, there's no path involved.
I gotcha.
What was the small policedepartment that you started with?
Started with New Orleans and then wasthere about a year and a half, started
my own consulting gig was sort ofslowly working through that and you

(03:16):
starting up a business, it's hard.
And then my wife got pregnant withour first and we was like, oh, well
actually health insurance would be nice.
So I, made a deal with the JeffersonParish Sheriff's Office, which is kind of
the suburbs of New Orleans, that I couldwork there part-time and keep consulting.
And so I did that and kept and did thatuntil I started working with the, got

(03:38):
my first sort of big client as a soloconsultant and started going solo.
, I jumped ahead a little bit.
Back up a little bit.
So your time with the CIA, so Idon't know how much you can talk
about, but what can you talk aboutin terms of your time with the CIA?
There's, there's not somuch that I can talk about.
It's a little bit difficult.
If everybody will, that's listening tothis will sign an NDA and get back to me,

(03:58):
though, I can probably talk about it more.
I mean, it was a great experience.
I started, I was 25 when I started.
I was uhhuh shocked at the amountof experience they were giving
to a green 25-year-old Uhhuh.
And it was the best learningexperience I could imagine.
And as far as sort of the, theintellectual stimulation of learning
something new every day and being ableto learn things that nobody else in

(04:21):
the, world knew or the country knew.
I got to travel and see the worldas a, in my twenties, which annoyed
my wife because after that she waslike, okay, let's, let's go travel.
I was like, I've done that.
I don't want to.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was a very unique experience and the,best benefit, I think is that they, they
taught me to write and to do analysisand to, I think one of the challenges

(04:42):
that a lot of the younger analysts I seetoday face is that they've been taught
to like code that they haven't beentaught how to write and communicate.
And I think that my pathwas the opposite direction.
I learned how to write and communicate,and then I learned how to look at data.
In high school and even throughcollege, did you feel that you were
a good writer and then what youlearned in the CIA just advanced that?

(05:05):
Or did you think that Oh, no, , I wasaverage and CIA took it to the next level.
I thought I was okay.
I mean, I, mm. I knew how towrite and I don't know that I was
necessarily a good storyteller mm-hmm.
In terms of, using evidence andinformation to communicate a narrative.
So I think , to that effect,I've gotten a lot better.
And I think that sort of the trainingfrom the CIA largely helps with that.

(05:29):
And, but I, I I don't thinkI was God's gift to writing
or anything like that ever.
Still don't for that matter.
But, but I think that I'm certainlyimproved and I think I, I can communicate.
Okay.
Do you feel that anybodycan learn how to write well?
Yeah, absolutely.
I'm never gonna write abestselling novel, but mm-hmm.
I don't know that that level of,sort of prose is necessary and

(05:50):
honestly, and in terms of just.
Writing good analysis.
You don't want that level of pros.
I remember one of my grad schoolclasses, my favorite class the
professor was this guy Bob work.
One of the, the advantages of being atGW was that at the night school at GW
was that it was taught by professionals.
And so he, had some seniorjob at the Pentagon under the

(06:12):
Biden administration I think.
But all each week he gave us apacket to read of, of an issue.
And our assignment was in one page under350 words to write an analysis of it.
And it was the, that old quote thatI wrote you a long letter 'cause I
didn't have time to write a short one.
It like you, the ability to learnin a way that is short and, and

(06:34):
teaches you to write in a page.
What if you're sort of a traditionalthinker might take you five or six pages?
Is a, is a very, is a skill that peopleneed to learn, but everybody can learn it.
I have certain soap boxes as I've beendoing this show now for, five plus years.
I, I have certain soap boxes and, , oneof 'em is about writing every job

(06:56):
announcement for analysts will talk aboutthe, the desire for speaking and writing.
And yet when you go toconferences or you see curriculum.
It doesn't seem like there'sthat much time and energy
spent on writing and speaking.
No, entirely.
And, and I mean speak, we talk speaking.

(07:18):
That's the other aspect thatI think I got a lot better at.
Thanks to grad school and theCIA I especially sort of giving
presentations and, speaking to largeraudiences or honestly just speaking
to superiors and people that are invery high pressure policymaking roles.
I think I learned a lot there.
The.

(07:38):
Thing that always I rememberis we had these sort of task
forces when we were in training.
You do four months of training and II did it twice for two different jobs.
So you're doing this long trainingsession and the objective is everybody
has a role and some people are, analysts.
I think I was a, a brieferto the director of the CIA.

(08:00):
Obviously it's not the actualdirector, it's, it's the, the teacher
that's, that's running the class.
It's the director.
But, so we're in this thing and each.
If each person doesn't fulfill their role,then it describes how the script will go.
And somebody that went beforeme had not said something or, or
briefed them about something, and sosomething bad happened to the group.

(08:21):
And so my job was to presentour information to the director
not knowing that someone hadscrewed up in front of me.
And so I had a five minute briefing,which is a very difficult thing to do.
And so I've prepared forit and I'm ready for it.
And the guy walks in and I'mabout to start and he just starts
screaming at me about the guy thathadn't done their job before me.
And I just got screamedat for five minutes.
And anytime I do a briefing, I'm like,well, it can't be worse than that time.

(08:44):
Oh gosh.
So that's, I mean, that, that's thetype of thing that I think helps you
a lot when you're, in a differentaudience and trying to speak to.
A large audience of professionals,or a large audience of students,
which may be even more terrifying.
Oh
man.
Well, I, I mean, even to, obviouslyyou have to think on your toes and
have to take in new information,process it, and, speak about it.

(09:07):
And that's probably what you werepreparing to do, trying to prepare for
every single scenario, not the one whereyou're getting yelled at by what happened
five minutes ago from somebody else.
Exactly.
That's that.
That's good.
So what made you leave the CIAto come back home to New Orleans?
I'm a
native.
I'm from here.

(09:28):
Mm-hmm.
I got married and wasjust ready to come back.
Mm-hmm.
And you, you look at the condo inNavy Yard, DC I was living in for
800 square feet and the like, oh,I could, I could get a nice house
down in New Orleans for Yeah.
The cost of this, and my parentsare down here and mm-hmm.
So it, it just became something thatI eventually just sort of wanted

(09:51):
to be back home is essentially it.
And so I left I left in 2013 and, and Idefinitely missed the work quite a bit.
Mm-hmm.
But the my.
Kids get to grow up near my parentsand I get to take my kids to
saints games and things like that.
So yeah, it's
it's it can be beautiful.
Yeah.
We, we used to live in Baltimoreand it was before we had kids,

(10:11):
just similar to your situation.
And my wife and I often saying like, ohit would be, it would be nice to take the
kids to DC this weekend, type of thing.
'cause we were, we, we wouldgo to DC often when we lived
in Baltimore as just a day trip
.And just there's a lot obviously there to consume and with the kids
it, would make it more special
. Yeah, absolutely.
It's it's nice.

(10:31):
And so you, you sacrifice alittle bit of the work for the
possibility of the, I guess the work
life balance.
Yeah.
So in terms of yourtransition professionally.
How was it going from federal to local?
It wasn't, I wouldn't call it easy.
I, I think that it's the type ofthing that, and not just going

(10:52):
federal to local, but from a intelcapacity to a crime analysis capacity.
Mm-hmm.
And going , from an agency that had,had obviously lots of experience doing
analysis and had sort of a programand a set way of doing it to a agency
that hadn't had analyst in decades.
And so it was certainly a challenge.
You're kind of speaking adifferent language, and so getting

(11:13):
them to learn what the languageis definitely a challenge.
Hmm.
So I take us through just that firstcouple weeks, maybe first couple months
of walking in there and what it waslike, some of the obstacles that you
faced and what you were able to build.
I mean, the, honestly, thebiggest obstacle is that the,
there was no bureaucracy set up.
There was no hierarchy, there was nothere was no ability to, even get my

(11:37):
email set up from like, the naturaloh, here's the person that does
that, and that's who you talk to.
And so, mm-hmm.
It was it was quite a challenge tocome in as a civilian at an agency
that had not, does not, did not havecivilians that do those types of things.
So a lot of it was just figuringout the software, figuring out the
how, how to operate, how to get inthe door, how to get a, a keypad

(12:01):
that would open the door so I didn'thave to get locked out each time.
I mean that these, the very realchallenges that, that were, were
not necessarily easy to overcome andtook a few weeks and then figuring
out, okay these are my customers.
This is my account, what do they want?
And yeah, , that is a. Thechallenge of every analyst, I think.
And that was, it's even moreso when there's nobody to tell

(12:22):
you who the customers are andwhat, what it is that they want.
Yeah.
Now did, they know what they wanted?
No, not at all.
I mean, that's, that'susually kind of the challenge.
I, I speak to so many analysts andthey were like there's your computer.
Go.
That's no real no real guidanceor goals or anything like that.
Just go do

(12:43):
Yeah.
I mean, it,
it's, like it's good and it's bad.
Right?
You right.
You can go, there's freedom todo anything, but also it gets
boring to constantly be working onprojects that nobody cares about and
trying to drum up interest in it.
And so, and that, that is the challenge.
Yeah.
And I've, and I struggled with that.
I struggled like that being an individualanalyst at a police department.

(13:04):
I struggled with that, program building.
Then when I was part of a teamof analysts, I was like, oh.
Like this is way different.
And I, I actually really enjoyed beingpart of an analytical team as opposed
to trying to do that program building.
Yeah.
I mean, I, I never got that.
Mm-hmm.
I, I never got the team 'cause I wasby myself at NOPD and then when I left,

(13:29):
they hired a director of analyticsand created an analytics department.
And then, so now I've beenconsulting after that.
So I definitely miss that.
And certainly with the agency, you'reworking with a team and with a, a,
you have somebody ahead of you thatknows what the, the way it's done and
has subject matter expertise and somuch subject matter expertise that,
that it makes it a lot easier tosort of walk those, those streets.

(13:52):
, During your time in new Orleans pdthen,, what were some of the, the
problems that you were dealing with?
What were some of the crime trends then?
Well, I mean,
gun violence is, . There.
There's not really a trend otherthan gun violence in New Orleans.
I mean, there are, but the mostimportant and the, the thing that
sets New Orleans apart is theincredible amount of historically

(14:15):
shootings that the city's had.
And so a lot of my work was aroundmeasuring it, measuring changes
the city implemented before Icame, a program called NOLA for
Life, which had a whole bunch of itwas basically focused deterrents.
And so they were implementing thatand I was starting to measure the
impact of the program and it worked.

(14:35):
And it, it had about a year offocused deterrence that really
reduced gun violence in New Orleans.
And then the effects sortof started to wear off.
And so I was describing why that washappening and everyone enjoyed it.
When you're talking about.
How everything's getting betterand it's probably tied to
the work that you're doing.
And then when things start tothe, the effect starts to wear
off, people don't like it as much.

(14:56):
And so I was doing things likethat and trying to evaluate sort
of the risk of gun violence.
And if we could basically identifywho may or may not be at risk for.
Being a victim or a shooter.
And some of the work of, like Andy PapaRisto was really impactful in, in terms
of like influencing the, the kind ofanalysis I was trying to do that could,

(15:16):
in theory help to develop either lawenforcement interventions or ideally
doing things like providing services and,and non-law enforcement interventions
to people that are at risk and usingsome of the data that the city was
collecting on shooting victimization.
So that was kind of where I went,but it was it wasn't, I mean,
not, not like in a malicious way,but it wasn't something that the

(15:37):
agency was yet super en engaged in.
And so it was all right,I'll go do my own thing.
Yeah, I, I did want to ask himabout that transition as well, but
back to focus deterrence, describethat a little bit more for us.
So the idea
is that.
Your shootings are concentrated veryheavily amongst a very small proportion

(15:59):
of your population, and you canidentify that population in New Orleans.
They almost exclusively targeted peoplethat they had identified as quote
unquote gang members, and they developedthere's a couple of ways of doing it.
One is sort of the heavy handed approach.
New Orleans did that particularlywell where they developed all of
these indictments against usingracketeering indictments against

(16:22):
dozens of people at a time.
And they did mm-hmm.
A whole bunch of these.
And they were taken off the streets.
People that.
Had committed murders and they were takingoff their sort of associates who were
not necessarily engaged in, gun violence.
But were using that sort of, those sortof relationships to and racketeering
indictments to basically get at and,and demolish entire groups of people.

(16:44):
I say demolish not bring themunder the, the, and put 'em under
trial and everything like that.
So that was one angle.
And then the other angle was doingthese sort of call-ins where you,
you go and you tell people, Hey, weknow that you're doing gun violence.
You're shooting peopleand engaged in this stop.
Or, we'll put the police on you.
But if you do wanna stop intheory, here's some, some services

(17:06):
and we'll help you programs.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We'll get you a job and, or help youkeep a job or get you rides or help
you pay bills, whatever you need.
Mm-hmm.
Is kind of the idea behind it.
And, and so focus deterrence is saying.
Hey you could try and, and aim forfixing the root causes of crime,
which is this enormous task.
Or you could go very hyper-focusedon who's doing the shootings.

(17:29):
'cause we know thatit's very concentrated.
It's not random throughout a cityand, and engage just that population.
And so that's kind of the idea behind it.
In New Orleans Robin Engel and, and Carusoand, a bunch of people at the university
of Cincinnati came in and, and actuallydid an assessment and said, yeah, this.
This was very effective.
And then they sort of wore offand, and they kind of ran out of

(17:52):
gang members to indict is kindof my, my read on the situation.
So yeah, it was, it was a, a goodtime I think if, if I was only
gonna be there for 18 months.
It was a very interesting18 months to be there.
Yeah.
Well, I was gonna ask you, and you,you just answered it, I believe,
is you, you said it was effectivein the beginning, but it didn't
kind of tailor it off at the end.
And just curious wh why that patternwas, why do you think it tailored off?

(18:16):
Well, indictments are really hard.
I mean, if mm-hmm.
They take a lot of resources andthere's only a finite number of
people that you can kind of useracketeering indictments at a, either
from the federal or the state level.
And they kind of wentthrough that group and.
And so there was a, a finiteamount of reach for the sort of

(18:37):
hammer and they didn't give quiteenough effort to the carrot.
Mm-hmm.
I guess stick in carrot.
So I think that that, and so if you'renot able to sort of stay focused on the
program, then it, the effect wears off.
And that's kind of what wesaw in New Orleans, I think.
Yeah.
I mean, and it is interesting.
'cause I mean, that, that'sobviously can, can be a lot of work.

(18:59):
It's a lot of effort.
And if it if you don't get the goodreturn on investment or you run out of
resources, then , you can only go so far.
Yeah.
All right then.. After that you,you go on your own into consulting.
So yeah,
well, I, I mostly blame my dad.
He's been talking to me since as longas I can remember that hey, if you,
you're a consultant if, if you'reworking for somebody and they wake

(19:22):
up and they're they had a bad night'ssleep, they can come in and make your
day hell or they can fire you and if youwork for yourself, that can't happen.
And so I basically figured I had thisskillset that could be useful and that
there would be a market for just do theability to bring thinking to problems
that organizations don't necessarily do.

(19:42):
And so I started doing that.
I didn't really have any clients, butI was a 30 years old, or no, 30, 32.
And thought I could, Ithought I could bet on myself.
And so went out and it was itwas a little slow going at first,
but it eventually picked up.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Talk about that first sales pitch
well, so, I mean, thefirst sales pitches were.
They were a little bit of law enforcement.

(20:03):
They were my favorite though was Itried to approach the, the couple of
NFL teams about doing sort of, andI'm a huge sports fan, and so doing
sort of NFL draft analysis that, oh,okay, people fail and it's somewhat
random who succeeds and who fails.
And so the ability to take someof that randomness out of it
would really be advantageous.

(20:24):
And so I actually met with I had a buddythat was with the Chiefs is now with
the Panthers, but I went up and wasat the Senior Bowl in Mobile and met
with them and their gm and this was acouple of years before Patrick Mahomes.
But yeah, I know I met with the Saints.
I, I talked to a couple of other teams.
It didn't go anywhere, but I thoughtit was an interesting approach.
And then.
I met with a whole bunchof police departments.

(20:47):
I flew up to Gary, Indiana for aday to meet with the chief there,
and , there'd been a, an officerinvolved shooting the night before.
And so I fly up and thechief's not even there.
I mean, that was I think, sort ofwhat it is to pitch your own business
and yourself as a consultant.
And so one of my approaches wasthat I don't have a name for myself.
And so I was starting outall on my own and, and nobody

(21:11):
could, tell me from anyone else.
And I'd worked for facelessbureaucracies my whole life.
And so I just started writing.
I started a blog.
Where I was looking at New Orleanscrime trends and Michael Lewis,
the author is, is from New Orleans.
And, and we went to the same highschool, obviously a couple of
years apart, but I emailed hisagent and our moms knew each other.

(21:32):
And, and so when he was in town, wehad lunch and he introduced me to
Nate Silver running 5 38 at the time.
And, and Nate, as I pitched Nateon a couple of ideas that I've been
thinking about as far as like justtaking data to analyze crime trends.
And so I started working with 5 38 andwrote a bunch there and then was working

(21:54):
with the upshot, writing a bunch there.
And, and so it was there'sno one step that takes you.
But then eventually I, I started to geta couple of clients and landed a contract
with the New Orleans City council doingpublic safety consulting with them.
And and that was sort of thebeginning of it picking up.
Yeah.
So, but the writings.
Is what seems like, lit the fuse, per se,,on your endeavors there as a consultant.

(22:16):
Reading your ideas, reading youranalysis, and then like, oh, okay,
this isn't just some random guy.
We can, we can benefit fromwhat he, how he thinks.
Well, entirely.
And I, mm-hmm.
I get introduced to people.
I have people reach out to me.
I mean, it, it has, it's certainly I'vegrown more of a name than I initially
had, but having the writing, theability to just show that I can think

(22:40):
and, and do things, and the problemsthat I may have written, something
about a problem that your agency isdealing with, and I can just provide
that as sort of an advertisement.
It was, it was critical.
And then COVID hit, well, I guess I,I've been doing it for a few years,
but then I started writing and, andtweeting about COVID and, and just the
data there and what it was showing.
And it, I got a muchbigger profile from that.

(23:00):
So definitely interesting circumstance.
Yeah.
And so, and obviously you're, you'reon your own, you're dealing with open
source information, it's data thatanybody can come across, but you're
obviously putting a, a great understandingbehind the data of, in your articles.

(23:21):
I think that there's like a lot ofanalysts doing great work for agencies,
a lot of data scientists and peopleworking at BJS and FBI and doing
really strong work in the field.
I, I thought then, and I think nowthat there's not many people that are
just trying to communicate this, wherethe audience is not criminologists,
it's not police chiefs withinyour department, it's the public.

(23:43):
And understanding what everything means,I think is such an important thing.
And very few people are.
Doing it.
I don't think anybody wasdoing it way back when.
I think there's veryfew people doing it now.
People like Jerry Radcliffe aredoing incredible work on his
podcast and, and sort of figuringout the social media angle of it.
I don't think that there's nearlyenough people like that right now.

(24:05):
Yeah, I mean, it's, knowing your audienceis always a, a big topic when you're
talking about writing or speaking.
And we often talk about, on the show, Ihear a lot about talking to academics,
talking to police, talking maybe to eventhe city council and, but the public's
a whole other audience in that as well.

(24:27):
And they're going to have their ownexpectations and gonna need to ha
have basically their own language.
Yeah.
In entirely.
And the public is they're,the policy makers often take
their cues from the public.
And so if the public.
Believes that whatever the data saysis correct, then that makes it a lot

(24:48):
easier for the policy makers to follow.
The data and police leadershipand city leadership and city
councils and things like that.
If the public thinks that everything isgetting worse, then there's gonna be a
subset of policy makers that will notlearn, even if things are getting better.
And I mean, frequently the otherway around too, and problem problems
are beginning to show themselves.

(25:09):
If the that's not made clear, thenit makes it difficult for the public
to evaluate where to go from there.
And, and we're gonna, let's we're gonnapark that idea for a second there, 'cause
we're, we're gonna come back to that.
'cause I know that's one that was oneof your first episodes on your podcast.
I do want to get in, get a betteridea of what you do as consultants.

(25:30):
So we're gonna move on to your analystbadge story and for those that may
be new to the show, the analystbadge stories, the career defining
case or project that analyst works.
So it's about 2022 here.
You're consulting and you are dealing withone of my favorite topics, response times.
Yeah.
So we were talking about this and yousaid, what's your analyst badge story?

(25:51):
And I said, it's, it's classified.
So we're, we're gonna go with theother one, which is that I was working.
As a public safety consultantwith the New Orleans City Council.
New Orleans is like everywhere else, onlymore so it when murder got bad everywhere.
It got worse in New Orleans whenstaffing got bad everywhere and, and

(26:14):
lots of the big agencies lost officers.
New Orleans lost generally more.
And so they went from around 1200 or so.
Officers and recruits in 2019to around 950 or so in 2022.
And already they were hurting the,the agency had 1500 officers in

(26:34):
the sort of wake of Katrina in 2006and then into like 2010 timeframe.
And had, they had been a, a hiringfreeze, which led from them from
going about 1400 to about 1,050.
And then they worked their way backup right before COVID to around that
1200 mark and then lost it again.
And so that 20% drop in officersfrom a level that was already

(26:58):
probably insufficient in 2019.
They had about 50 minuteresponse times in.
April of 2023 was kind of the crest.
They, they finished with 180minute on average response times.
And so something like one in or12 to 15% of emergency calls for
service took 60 minutes or more.
And so just really bad stuffwas happening because of it.

(27:23):
There was all sorts of incidents whereat the sort of least harmful end of
the spectrum, the, you, you'd come out,you see your car's been broken into,
and you you call the police, it's.
11 o'clock at night and they getthere and it's five in the morning and
obviously you're sleeping, your phone'son do not disturb, and the officer

(27:45):
gets there and they say, oh, we'regonna mark this as gone on arrival.
And so mm-hmm.
You either have the option ofcalling again and maybe getting
lucky or more likely not callingand it doesn't get reported.
And so in 2019 about one in five,a little less, about 18% of all,
vehicle burglaries, for example, hada, were listed as gone on arrival,

(28:09):
and in 2022 it was almost 40%.
So like that, that, yeah, that's bad.
It's not enormously consequential.
It gets more consequential when you havethings like rapes that went from about
what 5% were gone on arrival in 2019.
And then in 2023 at sortof the height it was 33%.

(28:31):
And so you had all of these circumstances.
And so what I was doing was workingwith the council and we identified 95
rape victims that had called the policeand their cases had been downgraded
from an emergency to a non-emergency.
And in this case, because of the,the impact that emergencies were,

(28:53):
they were slow, but they weremuch faster than non-emergencies.
The.
Punitiveness of being downgraded from anemergency to a non-emergency was enormous,
and the majority of those cases that weredowngraded were marked, gone on arrival.
And so you've got cases where a womanwill call the police department saying
that she had been raped the night before.
She's finally worked up the courage,or she's at the hospital or something,

(29:15):
and the police department says, okay,we'll get to it when we get to it.
You're not in anyphysical danger right now.
And so they get to it,but it, it's hours later.
And and so the majority of thosewere being marked on, on arrival.
And then we had several cases wherepeople call the police for domestic
violence situations downgraded from anemergency to a non-emergency, and then.

(29:39):
Hours later, one woman called 11hours later, the police showed
up at four in the morning.
Nobody's there.
They, mark had gone on arrivaland five weeks later she's
murdered by her boyfriend.
So it just the, there was noappreciation for just how bad things
had gotten and the data was very clear.
The department did not like thestory that was being told, but it

(29:59):
was, it was honest and it was true.
And it was their response was,you should use median response
time instead of average.
Which like, I guess, but that's usingmedian in this case would miss the fact
that this enormous growth of outlierson the, the far end that were not
getting the services that they required.
And, and so eventually the policedepartment accepted the findings

(30:22):
and began to take steps to fix it.
And now I think their responsetime, it hit 50 minutes on average.
65 minutes on average now, whichisn't great, but it was 180 minutes
on average, two and a half years ago.
So it's significantly better.
Yeah.
So what were some of thethings that they implemented?
So they hired about a hundred concontractors, a hundred civilians.

(30:43):
To take over professional staff rolesand they've invested in some of that.
The thing that I think was even moreimpactful is that they hired a third
party contractor that's made up of mostlyretired NOPD officers to go out and
respond to non-injury traffic accidents.
And you're talking thousandsupon thousands of these.

(31:04):
Mm-hmm.
And they all take 45 minutes to an hour.
And so by taking half of those offtheir plate with a contractor, you're
basically one, you're saving money and.
You're in a position to free up thousandsupon thousands of hours of officer time
to respond to, to other types of offenses.
And so,
yeah,
they've been enormously successful.

(31:24):
They have fewer officers now thanthey had in 2023, but they're able
to respond more effectively becausethey've become much more efficient.
And so it's really, I had a piece inthe argument recently about this, that
it, they should be a poster child forhow agencies that are struggling with
staffing should respond to these problems.
I've always said that for a long time.
When I see, a traffic accident, like why is it an officer that's

(31:46):
responding to the call kind of thing.
That definitely should besomething that it does.
That's a, that's kind of alower level event anyway.
With the, civilians that they, didhire does, that mean that they were
replacing officers that were doingthose positions and then they put those
officers out on the streets, so to speak?

(32:08):
Or were they just doing atotal different function?
Do you know?
I, I don't know specifically howthey were being deployed, but mm-hmm.
That was kind of the idea.
Yeah.
Hmm.
And then I do, you know what the, theresponse rate is now for a rape call?
So now they're back to, I don't havethe exact numbers, but I think that

(32:28):
they're back to like 10% as opposed to athird were being marked gone on arrival.
The other thing that they've doneis they've set aside for those
types of victims, a specificunit whose job is to call back.
Mm-hmm.
And make sure that those arenot falling through the cracks,
which is another great way.
Even if you, you can't have fastresponse times, then you can potentially

(32:50):
not victimize a person twice.
Have they published anything aboutgetting other city departments involved?
Not that I know of.
Specifically that's,it's always a challenge.
I was.
Doing some sort of TV thing, interviewwith a, a member of the police union and,
one of the big issues here is Mardi Grasand they, basically deploy the entire

(33:12):
department for several straight days.
And that's a real challengeto their staffing.
And the the union member was like,well, you, you can't use anybody
but police officers for Mardi Gras.
It's like, well, why not?
Why couldn't you use just trafficpeople to help direct traffic
doesn't necessarily have to besomebody with a badge and a gun.

(33:32):
So I think that there's, there'sdefinitely ways to be more efficient that
the department and the city could explore.
But they've done a greatjob of doing that already.
Yeah.
And I think, I mean it's, I I thinkit's unfortunate it got that bad
before it, I mean that's, some of thosenumbers are pretty, are pretty stark.
So, but I mean, I guess it is, itis good that they are improving

(33:54):
and they're they're doing whatever,what you always hear when there's
budget issues, do more with less.
Yeah.
And there's
ways to do that.
And I think that it, there's clear waysto do it that can be effective and smart.
And so I think people should agenciesthat are having similar problems should
definitely explore it would be my, advice.

(34:19):
Hello, this is Joshua Todd, US BorderPatrol, Buffalo Sector Intelligence at
Wellesley Island Station, and I'd like youto remember that numbers on the page are
reflective of the humans that we serve.
We've had a recent report of an overdosein the county and we discussed it
at a local meeting, and then laterthat day I went to the barber and
got a haircut and the woman was.

(34:39):
Visibly distraught and we got to chattingand it was actually her son that overdosed
and, and passed away that, that last week.
So while we do a lot of reportsand they are numbers on the
spreadsheet, they end up reflectingthe, the humans that we do serve.
You didn't do the dishes Well, no.
I was busy doing other chores,but my completed chores is up

(35:01):
five in the last seven days.
Yeah, but you're still down13 over the last 28 days.
Well, I see your shoppingpurchases is up 20% this month.
My spending is still down year to date.
In fact, my black shoe purchases are halfof what they were this time last year.
Well, thank goodness lastyear wasn't a normal year.

(35:22):
Plus I bought you a new underwear,so your closed purchases is up 40%
this month compared to last month.
Well wait.
There were no closed purchasesthe previous month, miss.
Perfect.
I didn't know you had theability to divide by zero.
You should be happy.
Your temperature led policing programhas worked great in this house.
I have not touched your preciousthermostat in the last six months.

(35:45):
Millions of homes in the US areimpacted by people wanting to
be comfortable in their homes.
Temperature led policing, controlthe temperature, control the cost.
Let's talk about crime trends andwhere I then I want to get into
your podcast a little bit more.

(36:05):
The perception of crime trends.
We talked about a little bit aboutwhat the public thinks, what the
public perceives how the public iscommunicated with I, I guess does, one
of the things I was thinking about as Iwas preparing for this interview is do
people really know what crime trends are?
Probably not.

(36:25):
I mean, some people definitely do.
Mm-hmm.
Many people probably don't,I think has been sort of my.
My read on it, they had that, a pollfrom U gov a few months ago that asked
people, were there more murders thisyear or there more murders last year
or this year than in 2020 and in 1990.
And regardless of age or race orgender or political persuasion,

(36:49):
everyone said there's more murdersnow than there were 35 years ago.
And it's just like the, the typeof thing that makes one's head
explode that people generally.
Don't inherently perceive it.
And I think the last few years, Imean obviously partisanship has always
played a role and politicizationhas always played a role.
But the last few years I think it'staken on an outsized role, which has been

(37:11):
extremely unfortunate to sort of witness.
Yeah.
And I think a lot of it Ithink back, you, you mentioned
the University of Cincinnati.
I, I went to graduate school inUniversity of Cincinnati, and I remember
Dr. Francis Cullin used to talk aboutthe social consciousness and like what
just the society defines as, as a wholeand what they find it to be important.

(37:33):
And it is, man, it, it doesseem like there's just certain
topics that really get the focus.
You just outside, just off thetop of my head, like o off you
always see about shark attacks.
Every summer it seems likethat's a, that's a big deal.
And then when they look at thedata, it's like, ah, they're not
any anymore or less numbers wisethan they were the last five years

(37:55):
.But if it gets into the news and it gets into the news cycle
and it takes a life of its own.
Yeah.
It's, it's the saying that themedia doesn't cover the planes
that land, I think is a big mm-hmm.
A big issue.
And obviously you want to.
Cover the plane crashes.
You want to cover the tragedies,but you also want to use the
available data to effectivelyevaluate what the actual trends are.

(38:17):
And very recently in New Orleans,I, I got annoyed by this situation
where New Orleans has had thisimmense decline in gun violence.
I mean, they had an enormous amount ofshootings in in sort of 2020 to 2022
timeframe where they were, they wentfrom, you know like 300 and to 400

(38:38):
shootings incidents a year to almost 700in 2023 might have actually exceeded 700.
And then they had this enormous decline.
And last year there were somethinglike under 300 shootings and, and
or they're on track to have thefewest murders since 1970 this year.
So enormous drop in gun violence.

(38:59):
And there was a spike in murders wherethey had something like 10 murders in 14
days or some, some horrific trend thatwas short-lived and, and got coverage.
The fact that, that in themiddle of October they had this.
Short or small surge.
But I was struck by the fact that theywent 10 days with one shooting for

(39:21):
the first time in the 15 years of datathat I have in the middle of September.
And that didn't generate a peep.
And then they went.
They had like 14 shootings in 10days in the first half of October.
And that got all of this news coverage andjust an enormous amount of news coverage.
And then the shooting it wasjust a bit of, it was bad and

(39:41):
terrible and, but largely random,not the start of some new trend.
And then it went back to no coverage.
And I think that that influencespeople's perceptions so much that it's
really hard to say when is, oh, thisis a new trend, this is something.
This horrific increase in gun violenceis something we need to really be
paying attention to because it,it signals something new versus

(40:05):
like, this is not a new trend.
This is obviously an issue thatisn't solved and is something that
we should be trying to deal with, butis not necessarily, like, this isn't
the start of something that requiresa whole new approach, inherently.
And I don't know that, that like, howdo you take something that, this is very
serious, this remains a serious problem,it's just not a worsening problem.
It might even be a problemthat's getting better.

(40:25):
How do you convey that to the public?
And I think it's very difficult.
Yeah.
In that situation, obviously, it's almostfeels like that's a, that's it's separate.
I, I understand it's all crimetrends, but it, as you mentioned,
it was a, a period of time.
A short-lived period of time,fortunately, and, but, and, but
it's gonna have that lasting effect.

(40:46):
And I just, I, I guess my, my, I'mcurious from like, why do you think it's
like so hard to communicate good news?
Right?
It's, it's obviously the o sayingis if it bleeds, it leads, right?
That's obviously the public iswhat the public interest is.
But I mean, I, I don't know.
It just, it just seems like the, there,it should be easier to promote good news.

(41:12):
I think it's hard 'cause I, I'm alifelong Saints fan and I don't know
when this is gonna run, but like theSaints just beat the Panthers yesterday.
Gi giving away when we'rerecording this, but That's okay.
It was they played well.
The Tyler Schuck, their new rookiequarterback had 280 something PA yards
passing and he had three touchdown, twotouchdowns and they forced all these turn.
It was great.

(41:32):
I have all of this data that showsyesterday was great for the Saints.
Mm-hmm.
You don't have data on crime nothappening and that's what the positive is.
And so I think it makes it.
Very difficult to necessarilyevaluate a positive if you can't
necessarily put numbers behind it.
The absence of stories about murdersis the thing that leads to that,

(41:57):
that contributes to a reduction orcontributes to what you want to see.
But I don't know the, I don't know howyou build like a scorecard of these are,
these are times when we didn't have crime.
Yeah.
Yeah, but I mean, I, I still think in,in terms of what the numbers show, I
mean, to go from 700 to less than 300,maybe breaking a half a century long

(42:22):
record is, is certainly something thatshould be celebrated and easy to convey.
Yeah.
And it's something that, I mean,you see it in surveys of, of
residents that they're more, moresatisfied now than they were.
But in 2022 when the city had thenation's highest murder rate there,

(42:43):
the satisfaction level was 33%.
I just pulled up the survey in 2019when they had the fewest murders.
Previously in the last 50something years, it was only 54%.
So.
It was you had, it's, there's sortof a level at which last year, the
Gallup survey that just came out, that49% of people said that they thought

(43:04):
crime had risen in the last year.
And like, that's the first timesince 2001, I think under 50%,
but it's still 49% of peoplethat are wrong about the trend.
It's not I can appreciate that it'sstill a serious issue and that it's
something that needs to be taken,taken with solutions, but also at the
same time, like, it'd be nice if wecould recognize that it's going down.

(43:27):
Yeah.
Because I, I think there, yeah, itis, there is always those surveys
that tell you quite a differentpicture from what the stats tell you.
Right.
It, those can be in moving in oppositedirections and it's, it is difficult
to wrap your head around and to inform.
Right.
We are both blessed and cursed as asociety these days that we have so

(43:51):
much data, so many data resources.
But it also makes it so hard toget everybody on the same page.
Yeah, it does.
And nobody's getting the, theirnews from the same sources and
it, it makes it very difficult to.
Portray because people rely onintuition and gut and anecdote, and
I don't know how you overcome that.

(44:11):
It's, it's definitely, I think the onlyway to overcome it is to con constantly
always be talking about what it is.
Yeah.
Now, in, in your experience, was therelike a crime trend that you saw where
like just maybe the, the, you thoughtit was a bigger deal, but the public
just wouldn't, or maybe even the, theclient wouldn't just take it seriously?
Or is this something that they onlywant, see, maybe they only wanna talk

(44:35):
about murders and there's all these othercrime trends out there where they're
actionable, but they, people don't want totalk about those particular time trends.
Not really.
I, I think you usually, the,the things I write about murder
do better than anything else.
But I think that the other challengeis that I, I did a, a thing
talking about how theft is falling.

(44:55):
A reported theft isfalling considerably, but.
Shoplifting reportedshoplifting is rising.
And it's, it's hard tosay exactly why that is.
It's probably a reporting thing.
But it's the type of thing thatI, I find really interesting.
But our shoplifting data is terribleand so it's hard to say whether
or not it's actually a thing.
And that that's not of likehuge interest to anybody, but

(45:18):
I think I find it interesting.
Yeah, , the whole shopliftingthing is, interesting.
Joe Ryan.
He works for multitude now.
He, talked about shoplifting, and itended up being for Victoria's Secret
in Washington, dc but when he was onthe show, he talked about like how,
how simple it was to, deter shopliftingand the program that, that was highly

(45:41):
successful in deterring shoplifting there.
It seems like that's like lowhanging fruit where really big
impacts can easily be made.
Yeah, I, I would think so.
And I I've talked to the retailfoundations and groups that are talking
about this, but their data is so bad,it makes it very difficult to know.

(46:02):
What's real and what's not.
Yeah, and the different store policieson how they deal with shoplifters.
Right.
I've talked to some folks that if youaccuse somebody of shoplifting , and
you're wrong, you lose your job.
Yeah.
And it, it, it's very difficult.
They don't know.
What is, shrinkage, what is employeetheft and what , is theft from the

(46:24):
populace or from your shoppers.
And so that alone makes it extraordinarilydifficult to know what is happening
and what you should be caring aboutand what, and whether or not the
frequently you'll get breathlesspress releases about how bad crime is.
And so we're moving this storethat also happened to not be
doing very well 'cause there wasa competing store down the street,

(46:45):
but we're not gonna talk about that.
And, and it's, it's very easy toblame crime and then all of a sudden
everyone thinks, oh, crime's outtacontrol when it's not even something
that we're measuring accurately.
Yeah, it is funny how justbusinesses just, just.
Just eat it.
, they just put it into their, theirequation on what they need to charge.
Yeah.
And costs.
Hundred percent.
And Right.

(47:05):
Like the, I, it always amazes me,I don't, it's been a while since
I've seen the data, but the the selfcheckout line, like they, they easily
lose like 5% with self-checkout lines.
But they, they rather just eatthe 5% than pay pay people.
It's cheaper than hiring,hiring someone to Yeah.
Pay people to, to be there.
Yeah.

(47:25):
Yeah.
And it's that's, but that'sjust kind of amazed to me.
And some of that someof that is accidental.
Some of that is actual theft, butit's still money going out the door
that they're not really trying totrack seriously, as you mentioned.
Yeah.
Ab I mean, absolutely.
And it it, it makes it difficultas a trend to be able to evaluate.
Mm-hmm.
Let's get into the podcast then.

(47:46):
Right.
Just talk about how this ideahappened and, and where is
it and where is it going?
So started Jeff Lytics podcast,wherever you get your podcasts.
And the idea was basically thatpeople perceive crime trends wrong
and, not as problematic when thethe issue is, is going up, but

(48:10):
especially when it's going down, peopletend to only think it's going up.
And so the, the idea behind thepodcast is that it's not enough
just to put the data out there,but that we need to talk about it.
And so I'm talking to people that eitherhave what I think are interesting.
Thoughts about the sort of humancondition and why that this, this gap

(48:33):
between perception and reality existsand what we need to do to fix it.
And so usually people that eitherhave ideas about that or people
that are doing things to fix it.
And so my first guest was Michael Lewis,which I thought did a great job of
sort of setting the stage for what thewhat the communication challenge is.

(48:55):
And I've had Laura Arnold withArnold Ventures, who's funding the
realtime crime index that I work on.
Soon.
I, I'll have Larry Krasner coming up soon.
Paul Krugman and a whole bunch of otherfun guests, Ganesha Martin, who's in
Minneapolis doing their consent decree.
And it's just, I I, I see why you do it.
I, it's fun.
It's interesting.
I get to have a weekly conversation.

(49:16):
That, and Larry Krasner, whose showis coming up next is I thought had the
best advice, which I was like what doyou do to convince people about this?
And he said, you just talk about it.
You gotta keep talking about it.
And there is a dearth of people talkingabout consistently what are, what
are the, what is the data show andhow can we communicate this better?

(49:37):
And so for me it's fun 'causeI get to talk to interesting
people and, and learn about it.
And so that, that always interests me.
Yeah.
Well I'm I can see it being almost likehow you started your consulting, right?
You started out writing and that led.
To opportunities.
And so I can see this podcastand you start talking and it's
gonna lead to opportunities.

(49:58):
Yeah.
That, that's kind of the idea.
And it's it's different because I'mnot a good question asker or I'm not
a natural question asker, I'll say.
So figuring out how to talk topeople and have sort of engaging
questions that aren't being askedof me is is an interesting new
challenge, which is, is fun to belearning still how to communicate at.

(50:18):
At a later stage of my career, towardsthe later stage of my career I think
is really interesting and, and fun.
Yeah.
I think it might have been onepisode one with Michael Lewis.
If, I think it was a saying, if you'vethought about it, you've thought
about it too much, and I, I, I thinkfor me, there's times in terms of
asking the right question as I'mgoing through editing, I was like,

(50:41):
oh, why didn't I ask that question?
I should have asked this question next.
And so if I don't thinkabout it, it's fine.
I don't, I can just edit and be, be itjust flows and it's, it is what it is.
But there's times where I'm like, oh,it would've been so great if I would've
asked this question, or I would'vewent down this path of, of, of the
conversation and then it kind of bothersme for a little bit and then I move on.

(51:04):
But so it was one of those deals thatin term don't hang up too much on
trying to be perfect and ask the, thebest question each and every time.
I think one of the thingsas we were prepping, I told
you, I don't script the show.
I just, we come up with some topicsand I ask some follow up questions
and we move on to the next one.
So.

(51:25):
But it seemed like you'renaturally inquisitive though, right?
You might, you might not think youasked the the right question, the
best question, but I think you'renaturally inquisitive, which will,
which will help you in your endeavor.
Well, I think the advantage is thatI'm, I don't know the answer of how
do we effectively communicate this.
I'm genuinely curious and I like hearingfrom other people and it's been nice.

(51:47):
'cause I feel like each guest has had adifferent opinion of what can be done.
And it's, it's, I think, neat to beable to hopefully learn from that.
Yeah.
Well, I like the topic withMichael Lewis when you were
talking about the car thefts.
I think it was in Minneapolis,but it's, it's everywhere.
I guess it's everywhere with the USBable to use a USB to steal the vehicle.

(52:11):
Right.
And something like that.
As it plays out, you, the datawill tell you the outlier.
So you can then focus on it and you, you,you both did a good job of kind of honing
in on, the progression of, of that story.
But then when you get to someof these more macro events it's
interesting to me that we can't,seem like we ever find a true answer.

(52:35):
, To the question, like, I think youmight have very much touched on, like,
why did the crime drop in the nineties?
There's whole textbooks writtenon various theories on why a
crime dropped in the nineties.
And then I think you were talkinga little bit recently why, crime
is dropping in, in certain cities.
So it, it, it amazes me that therebecomes so many different factors

(52:59):
that it's hard to pinpoint one tojust, there's, it seems like there's
always gonna debate, be a debate, andwe'll never truly find out the answer.
Yeah.
It, it is and it's like you said, we dohave ideas, we have lots of good ideas
about why crime dropped in the nineties.
We don't know for sure and.
It's, and I get asked all thetime , why did murder rise in

(53:22):
2020 and why is it falling now?
And I feel like the more confidencethat I hear somebody explain it with
the less likely I am to believe them.
And I, I think the healthy skepticismis necessary in this field, which is,
is probably not the great, is good,but also not the greatest thing in
the world to have that worldview.
Yeah.
And it's, I guess there justbecomes so many variables.

(53:45):
I, I, I don't know.
That's the only thing I could think of.
'cause it's just, it.
When it's, when it's at thatlevel with the, the USBs Right.
You can look at the dataand it's, it's, yeah.
And that one's rare.
That one's easy.
They're, they're rarely that easy.
Yeah.
But when you're talking aboutsuch a high level and, and
it's, it's probably what it is.

(54:05):
It's a multiple factors.
It's not just one smoking gun.
It's multiple factors.
People, multiple peopledoing things differently.
Yeah.
And it's it's usually complicated andit's, what we're seeing in, in terms
of like the federal deployments now, isthat people want immediate answers as,

(54:26):
and we're seeing like in Washington, DC.
They deployed the National Guard,and more importantly, probably they
deployed several hundred federal lawenforcement officers onto the streets.
And there was a short term drop inshootings and people, oh look, it worked.
And then, but then it,within six weeks it wore off.
And so, I think that people wantsort of, one, they want the easy

(54:47):
answers, and two, they want toimmediately jump to a conclusion.
And I think that that usually, asI've been asked repeatedly over the
last few months about dc we just, wedon't know is the answer as far as
what's the cause, what's this gonnado, and how long is it gonna last?
And people are not good at being patient.
Yeah, that's for sure.

(55:07):
And and even if you give them likefive good answers, they're only
gonna latch onto one, maybe two.
Oh yeah.
The f the first one you say like, oh,if that, if that resonates with 'em all.
That makes sense.
Okay.
That's what I'm going with from now on.
Yeah.
Ab absolutely.
Oh man.
So you mentioned creating the real timecrime index I find that fascinating.

(55:29):
So let's go over , what that is,and then get into it a little bit.
All right, let's do it.
Alright, so what is theRealtime Crime Index?
. The Realtime Crime Index is a sampleof data from right now we're at
around 550 agencies nationwide.
The cutoff for inclusion is citiesof 50,000 or more, or counties

(55:51):
of a hundred thousand or more.
And the goal is to mimicnational crime trends.
As they develop, so basically mimicwhat the FBI is gonna report when it
reports its data in August, Septemberof next year, but do it right now and
do it with a sufficiently large sample.
So we have around what, say 4%, threeto 4% of the nation's agencies covering

(56:14):
around a third, maybe a little bit moreof the, the nation's population and
about 53, 50 4% of the nation's murders.
So it's a really good samplefor evaluating the trends and
seeing them as they occur.
The idea is basically thatwe don't have this ability
.Absent sampling lots and lots of cities, there's no other way to know

(56:36):
what our nation's crime trends areother than just sort of waiting.
Yeah.
So this, is
the closest data set that you know ofthat really can take the temperature,
so to speak, of crime on any given day.
Yeah, , and that's the idea is to, yeah,it's not, it's not exactly real time.
It has a 45 day lag, butwe're able to tell right now.

(57:01):
What is happening nationally in a waythat if you remember back to 2020,
it wasn't until kind of mid fallthat people were kind of grappling
with the fact that murder was rising.
And now we could do thatwith like a month later.
Yeah.
So, so what is Murder doing?
Right,
right now it's falling dramatically.
We have it down around 20% thisyear, relative to last year, a

(57:22):
little less, maybe closer to 19%.
Having fallen the FBIhad it at almost 15%.
Last year we had it closer to 13%, and theyear before that it was 10 ish percent.
So we're on track for the thirdstraight massive drop in murder.
All, crime types that wemeasure are down quite a bit.
Violent crime is down around 10%.

(57:43):
Property crime is down around 13%this year compared to last year.
So it's, I mean, it's a, a remarkablechanging crime that we're seeing
right now, a historic drop acrosspretty much every category.
Now, is that drop due to the factthat it rose several years ago?
Or is this dropping in even termsof comparing it over the decades?

(58:06):
Oh, it's the likelihood is that we'llsee the lowest or amongst the lowest
murder rates ever recorded this year.
So we were roughly around2019 levels last year.
And so kind of erasing the, the totalityof the, the post 2020 spike this year,
we're gonna hit numbers that we haven'tseen before and with data back to 1960

(58:26):
from the FBI or be right around thosenumbers, it's kind of hard to say exactly
what the murder rate will be this year.
Yeah.
And then we're gonna, like we saidbefore, now we're gonna have , this
race to see who can explain why.
Yeah.
And I like to leave that to others.
Okay.
Was there anything in the data.
As you were collectingthis, that surprised you?

(58:48):
That's a good question.
There's, I mean, there's tonsin there that's surprising.
I think the ability to see things that youkind of intuit, but see them on a graph,
I think is, certainly fascinating to see.
Like the, vehicle burglaries orthe vehicle thefts of t Kias and
Hyundais after that video hit TikTok.

(59:08):
Mm-hmm.
Is fascinating, I thinkto see in the data.
It's honestly, it's, it justthe entire shape of the decline,
I think is, is terrific.
It's fascinating.
It's it doesn't surprise you.
I, my team thinks I'm a giant nerd,but I liken it to when the astronomers
took a picture of the black hole andlike you had artists renderings that
kind of said, this is what it shouldlook like, but now you're actually
seeing it and we can actually see thenation's murder trend and see when

(59:33):
it eventually starts to level out.
We'll be able to see that.
And that I think is,is gonna be fantastic.
Yeah.
I wonder the leveling doubt ofmurder will not be fantastic.
The ability to see it will be, yeah.
Yeah.
Good clarification.
Good clarification.
Thank you.
So have you heard anything from the FBI?
Like, are they like, oh man, likethere's, there's somebody doing, this.

(59:54):
We better make sure we gotour Ps and Qs in order?
No, I mean like most federalagencies, there's undergone a lot
of changes in the last year or so.
, When we were building it, we had somewhatfrequent communications with the FBI.
They seemed to be on board withit and liked it, and it honestly,
it, it's another way of looking atthe data they're putting out and
confirming what they're putting out.

(01:00:14):
And so I think that they appreciatethat, that it's got that value to it.
The FBI is collecting datafrom 18,000 agencies and that's
a, a wholly different task.
And so we're just trying to communicatewhat does this data tell us and what.
What can we learn from it and whatdo we need to respond to right away?
And I think that that's not somethingthat the FBI's trying to do.

(01:00:35):
And so it's stepping into , thevoid of and filling a role.
Right?
So what's next for thereal time crime index?
So next we are gonna be launchinga site in the spring that
will take all of this data.
It'll be redo it all, fancyit up, and then add on top
of that the historical data.
The FBI has historicaldata going back to 1930.

(01:00:56):
And a lot of it is in justsort of scanned in PDFs.
So we're digitizing that andwe're gonna produce that.
And you can see.
Chicago murders back to 1930.
You can see PhiladelphiaStaffing back to 1930.
You can see clearance ratesprobably back to the 1960s.
And see these things as they'vedeveloped and be able to pull up
historical figures as far back as wehave them, which I think will hopefully

(01:01:19):
be a great resource for people.
Excellent.
And, and we very creatively, we'rechanging the name of the new site.
It was the Realtime Crime Index.
We're going to call it.
We had hours and hours of consultanthours burned in this, we're
gonna call it the crime index.
Sometimes the simplest is the
best.
Right?
Yeah.
A seven figure contract to McKinleyto, to come up with that answer.

(01:01:45):
Yeah.
Well, reminds me is like, the citieswill do that where they're, they
need that tagline or for their cityor their new marketing campaign and
they'll spend six plus figures on, onthat to come up with and they come up
with something that's like five words.
Yes, entirely.
All right.

(01:02:05):
Very good, Jeff.
All right.
Let's move on to advice forour listeners, our analysts.
'cause I, I do wanna spend a littlebit of time as we're finishing up this
interview on just, just your advicefor analysts as they're dealing with
crime trends, as they're dealing withstorytelling, as maybe even there we can,
if it's just time, we can even talk alittle bit about dealing with automation.

(01:02:28):
But just kinda wanted to get youradvice on whether you're talking about
new analysts, experienced analysts.
What, what, what is your message to themin terms of what your, your view on crime?
I mean, my, my usual message islearn how to be a good writer.
I think that's the most importantthing that analysts can do and
learn how to communicate as a, awriter and a presenter effectively.

(01:02:51):
Everything else from there is,is sort of flows from there.
The, I think that analysts going out andfinding new data sets and I haven't worked
for a police department in a decade, butI think that, I guess less than that.
But either way, it's been many yearssince I last worked for a police
department and, and I think that for themost part, agencies are too focused on.

(01:03:16):
Using their analysts in terms of likelooking, basically being many detectives
looking for micro crime trends,understanding who's in a neighborhood,
committing vehicle burglaries, and I thinkanalysts can be very effective looking
at the big picture, strategic stuff.
And in looking at the the, the internalmanagement type analysis and evaluating

(01:03:39):
how the department is functioning.
I think that you can get a lot morefrom an analyst doing that than putting
together bulletins about vehicleburglaries is sort of my, my opinion.
Hmm.
I think it's an interesting take becauseI also know that if analysts are given
the choice, most analysts are going tochoose to be the, to write the bulletin,

(01:04:00):
to be the, the gum chew or the go afterthe tactical analyst as opposed to the
administer straight or strategic analyst.
Yeah.
Probably, I mean, I don't, I don'thave a ton of insight into what today's
analysts think, but yeah, I think thatthere's just, that's just anecdotal.
There's, there's so much morethat analysts can do than just

(01:04:23):
respond to individual TA orsmall tasks, and I think that.
Because most agencies are onlygonna have a handful of agency
of analysts that they're bestused in the big picture stuff.
And that's where you get the mostbang for the buck would be my guess.
And that's where I found the mostimpact in my work as a consultant is

(01:04:45):
in looking at the big picture, findingthe big problems and bringing it to
leadership or policymaker attention.
Yeah, I feel for today's analyst interms of just the amount of data,
because I, I feel that there'sso much data, so many options.
It kind of makes itdifficult to really be.

(01:05:05):
An expert in any, like, one thing in termsof, of just really focusing on analytical
tasks because I, I just feel that there's,if you're, whether you're doing tactical
or whatever you're being asked to doby a supervisor, if they're, if they're
just, whatever the, the issue of the dayis that they're trying to tackle is the,

(01:05:27):
the analyst is spending enormous amountof time just trying to go through the
data, aggregate it, just clerical stuff.
Yeah.
I mean, absolutely.
My experience has been that the,sort of the tactical stuff, I mean,
you have to find policy makers andleadership that'll listen to you.

(01:05:48):
And I think that that is the realchallenge and the more you get up the
chain, sort of as an aside, I thinkthat the challenge I faced in New
Orleans, like, I guess getting backto kind of this concept of the advice
I'd give analysts is to figure outyour hierarchy or, or construct your
hierarchy in such a way that you'reable to be as close as possible to your
leadership, because that's so critical.

(01:06:09):
And if leadership is notlistening to you in any way.
Then you're you're not doing as, as muchas you can possibly do as an analyst.
I would, I would argue.
Yeah.
I I was just I just had Phil Powell on,he's from Jamaica and his program, they
actually have a, a program for leadersand executives on basically how, how to

(01:06:33):
use an analyst and how to treat them,like what, what they should and shouldn't
be doing, which is a big part of theirleadership training, it's great to,
get everybody on the same page on whatthey should and shouldn't be doing.
Yeah, that's a great idea.
Because I think I said a while back,it's, it's a new language, especially
if you're in a department thatdoesn't know how to use an analyst.

(01:06:54):
It's, it's very difficult.
You have to make sure that the analyst.
Can talk to you and that you canunderstand what they're saying
is definitely a challenge.
So what do you, would your advice beif an analyst maybe is dealing with the
public is answering questions about dataor just what are some, just some quick
tips you would have for the analystin, communicating with the public?

(01:07:18):
I think be specific obviously,and be evidence informed.
Like, be able to backup what you're saying.
Mm-hmm.
And don't be, don't behyperbolic, I think is the key.
I mean, I'm, I've been calledpithy, which I take as a compliment.
I think that the analyst's abilityto say what the trend is or what

(01:07:39):
they're analyzing and do it in away that makes 'em come across as,
oh, this is a professional that doesnot have a dog in the fight, but
is evaluating this dispassionatelyand is telling me what's happening.
It's critical for that usingthat ability to communicate with
policy makers and leadership.
And it's just as critical, Ithink, to use that kind of language
to communicate with the public.

(01:08:00):
And when I write, I try, that'show I try to write at every time.
I know everybody's biased.
We all have biases.
Mm-hmm.
I like to think that my writingdoes not convey my biases.
I'm guessing that my, my choice of subjectmatters is what, what conveys my biases?
But the when I take up a subject toanalyze it, I try to be as, as neutral
and straightforward as possible.

(01:08:20):
And so I guess that wouldbe my advice is to do that.
Mm-hmm.
And finishing up with personalinterest, then, you're a
father of four, all under 10.
So did did they go trick or treating?
They did, yeah.
All right.
What were the costumes?
We had a, was it Dragon?
We had a police officer.

(01:08:41):
My daughter was a leopard.
And I do not remember, hang on one second.
I'm pulling up my Halloween pictures.
So he went as a baseball player to school.
He got a costume as a something,I don't remember what, and
decided he didn't like it.

(01:09:01):
He was a fireman costume andhe decided he didn't like it.
So that night I don't, we,we don't have any pictures of
him, so I don't know any we ass
He went to multiplethings, it sounds like.
Yeah.
In terms of, in terms of like data.
Here's what I always tell kids.
I was like, I always know whatthe worst Halloween candy is.
It's whatever's left overafter two or three weeks.

(01:09:23):
Oh no, we, we, we threw awaylast year's candy because we
don't go through it in fast.
I mean, you got four of them.
My 9-year-old went by himself forthe first time with some friends and.
He he, he was walking along and then camehome and dumped out his bucket and then
went back out and filled it up again.
So we, we cleaned up, I was sayingwe should melt down the chocolate,

(01:09:45):
put it in like bar form and fill it,like, and sell it on the neighborhood.
Like world's greatest chocolate
style.
Yeah.
See?
Yep.
The chocolate always goes first.
It's always like smarties or bottlecaps or lollipops or those are the
stuff that's left, it seems like atthe, at the end of two or three weeks.
But yeah, the chocolate always goes,yeah, well, we'll have it for a year.

(01:10:07):
It's that's the way it is.
Yeah.
And I don't know, for some reason mywife's family, in terms of Christmas,
like their stockings are all filled withcandy, so it's almost like I get double
whammy between Halloween and Christmas.
Yeah, that's, that's a lot of candy.
That's a little too much candy for me.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Alright, very good.
Jeff, thank you again forbeing on the show here today.

(01:10:30):
Best of Luck.
With the podcast and yourendeavors we're gonna finish
up with words to the world now.
This is where you can promoteany idea that you wish.
What are your words to the world
I think that from a career standpoint,my words to the world would be,
do what you find interesting.
And I think that when I've.

(01:10:51):
Found ways of doing that.
It's, been so much more rewardingfrom a career perspective and
intellectually stimulating and,doing things that I really enjoy.
And I think that it, it, makes a loteasier and it makes easier to have impact.
So I guess that wouldbe my word to the world.
Very good.
Well, I leave every guest with,you've given me just enough
to talk bad about you later.
All right, good.
But I do appreciate youbeing on the show, Jeff.

(01:11:12):
Thank you so much.
And you be safe.
Thanks.
Thank you for making it tothe end of another episode of
Analyst Talk with Jason Elder.
You can show your support by sharingthis in other episodes found on
our website@www.elliotpodcasts.com.
If you have a topic you would likeus to cover or have a suggestion for
our next guest, please send us anemail at elliot podcasts@gmail.com.

(01:11:34):
Till next time, analysts, keep talking.

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Analyst Talk - Jeff Asher - The Crime Index Analyst

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Analyst Talk - Jeff Asher - The Crime Index Analyst