View from the cop: Crime & punishment
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AJC.com > Metro > View from the cop > Archives > 2006 > June > 11
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Statistics don’t lie, but they can punish you
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’ve been in training in lovely Forsyth, Ga, at the Georgia Public Safety Training Center. Next week we’re down to the two-week countdown to opening day of the Sandy Springs Police Department on July 1. I’ll be filling you in on the stuff. For now, I’ll write about my serious training week.
Day One
I’m sitting in a hotel near downtown metropolitan Forsyth I drove down this morning to begin a week’s worth of training in crime analysis. Sandy Springs will be using analysis as part of our crime-control model to target trends and patterns we hope will lead us to some productive results. This isn’t one of those “gimme” weeks of blah, blah, blah, and no test. I’m in serious trouble here. This class requires a lot of math. The “M” word.
I was intimidated when I thought about the class and the fact that each student gets a Texas Instruments calculator just scares me. This is no ordinary calculator. Texas Instruments has model numbers assigned to each model; for instance, a common TI calculator is the TI-26X. This class is so hard the calculator assigned to it is the TI-Two-Million. The package says it’s ideal for: algebra I and II, geometry, calculus, physics and secret formulas for world domination. It’s powered by a car battery.
This thing has symbols I don’t understand, to calculate things like Boolean Logic Operations. What the (%$^) is a Boolean? I thought it was a country where the Booleanians enjoyed a simple life of fishing and doing hexadecimal conversions.
The intimidation of this course leads me to arrive early searching for “brain food.”
I heard that some foods are good for the brain and actually stimulate it. It was the perfect boost that I sorely needed. The problem was that I had no idea what kind of food stimulated the brain. I gave it a lot of thought but couldn’t think of a thing so I did what I thought might help and stopped off at the Waffle House for some scrambled eggs and cheese, hash browns smothered, covered, homogenized — whatever, with some orange juice and a cup of coffee. I waited for my brain to become mathematically enhanced, but apparently Waffle House doesn’t help with one’s math. I did notice, however, that I was somehow able to recall all the lyrics on the first George Strait’s Greatest Hits album.
Oh well, we’ll see.
Day Two
I survived a day’s lecture and although I have no idea what he said, I took good notes. I noted a lot of impressive words like collation. I had no idea it actually had nothing to do with the colon. I was relieved.
Day Three
More excitement. Calculating mean averages and then modes, medians, that sort of thing. I’ve noticed the others in the training center have noticed our calculators. You can’t help but notice. I have to carry it like luggage.
I found that there is nothing to do at night. If you’re in law enforcement and you come down to spend a week at the training facility in Forsyth, bring a bike. I spend the evenings riding for a couple of hours. While riding, I practice my Fahrenheit to centigrade conversions, pounds to kilograms, inches to centimeters and of course, gallons to liters. Then I start thinking that I need to get a life.
Day Four
I’m starting to fade. Fortunately for you in Sandy Springs, I’m not the crime analyst. We stole a smart guy we stole from Kennesaw Police who will fill that role just fine.
Today, we got into formulas. Some serious formulas.
I could feel myself falling. I had them fooled for three days but now my math-challenged mind was giving out. We got into predictions and after some chalkboard stuff I didn’t understand, we got into writing the formulas for trying to figure out when the bad guys would strike again.
