Fiscal Year 2013-2015 Special Budget Meeting

First, MCS2 is reportedly absorbing a $480,000 funding cut which has had the effect of suspending all call-outs of robbery investigators in the off hours. This means that robbery investigators will rarely be on the scene of any robbery and will be leaving the task of questioning victims and witnesses, in the immediate aftermath of the crime, to police officers, who are largely untrained in investigative practice. Second, there is apparently a lag of as much as three days before reports of robberies (in the form of the pink copy of the report or "the pink") reach MCS2 for assignment to investigators. This lag is largely caused by the need to enter robbery reports into the database maintained by the Records Division. Yet, Forensic Logic representatives told The Bratton Group team that any entry made by police officers into databases tied to the Forensic Logic system should be available for others to review within 20 minutes. The lag in relaying robbery reports, therefore, may be reparable with changes in entry protocols. Third, even without the lag at the Records Division, heavy caseloads and the burden of processing in-custody arrests often delay the response of robbery investigators to not-in-custody cases. The MCS2 lieutenant acknowledged that it might be as much as five to seven working days before an investigator would contact a victim in a given robbery. Fourth, and this issue applies to all CID personnel, investigators work hours that are precisely the opposite of when robberies occur. There are three shifts: Sam to 4pm, 9am to 5pm, and 10am to 6pm, with no weekend shifts. Investigators are simply not available to respond to robberies in the evening hours and on weekends as they occur. The consequence of all these constraints probably is reflected in the results for the weekend of March 23'"'^ and 24* when there were 56 robberies and attempted robberies, yet no one had been taken into custody in connection with any of these crimes by the following Tuesday. The Bratton Group team envisages an investigative component at each disttict, managed by a supervisor with investigative experience and staffed by at least one robbery investigator and one burglary investigator. Each of these investigators would be assisted by police officers who would be trained and participate in the investigative process at the district level, forming district robbery and burglary units. These units would be responding to crime scenes, interviewing victims, canvassing for witnesses, and gathering evidence. They would work at identifying crime patterns, modus operandi, and repeat criminals active in the district It is hoped that the robbery and burglary units could sometimes be supplemented by problem solving officers whose beats are subject to robbery and burglary patterns, without violating the either the spirit of the letter of Measure Y. The Bratton Group team is developing a more complete description of the envisaged units and a draft set of protocols under which they might operate. Bratton Group team members will The Bratton Group, LLC 26