The Wichita Police Department will host a community meeting Tuesday night to discuss a new predictive policing method.
The method, which the department is calling risk based policing, uses data to determine what sorts of locations in the city are correlated with gun crime.
“From some of the preliminary models we’ve run so far, convenience stores show up as a big predictor of gun crime,” said Geoffrey Vail, a crime analyst with the city of Wichita, at a District 3 Advisory Board meeting. "That doesn’t necessarily mean that these are criminal in nature … but what we see is oftentimes these locations facilitate an environment that allow gun crimes to happen.”
Other locations the department found connected with gun crimes are hotels, motels and liquor stores.
The city’s four police bureaus will pilot the program by focusing on one trial location that is determined by the predicting policing method, Vail said at the advisory board meeting. He added that police officer and citizen input would also be taken into account.
Community advocate LaWanda DeShazer called for a meeting about the predictive policing method because she is worried it could be used by law enforcement to target minority communities.
“It just kind of raised the flag for me,” DeShazer said “Because in a lot of the poorer areas, you're going to find all kinds of corners that have tire stores and liquor stores. But that doesn't mean that all the people over there are bad.”
DeShazer said she hopes to learn what the predictive policing data will be used for — such as more arrests, more patrolling or more community resources.
At the advisory board meeting, Vail said the strategy would not rely on arresting people.
“It’s about making the whole area better and making a comprehensive strategy to battle the chronic issues,” he said.
The meeting will also address the department’s usage of Flock cameras, which capture license plate numbers and other distinguishing features of vehicles. The city bought 110 of the cameras in April 2021 to aid the department in recovering stolen vehicles, making arrests and aiding investigations.
“I want citizens to be aware of what's going on,” said DeShazer, who also asked the police department to discuss the cameras.
The meeting will be held at the Atwater Neighborhood Resource Center at 6 p.m.
