What is the effect of police patrol on police emergency response time? An agent-based modelling approach

• In Event: Advances in quantitative methods 3

Abstract

In a recent scoping review, Verlaan & Ruiter [unpublished manuscript] gathered and systematized all the variables which were empirically investigated to have an effect on police emergency response as measured by police response times. Surprisingly, the scoping review doesn’t identify any studies investigating the effect of police patrol strategies. Police patrol and emergency response are at the core of virtually all law enforcements agencies, together making up the bulk of what we term reactive and proactive policing. As such, understanding the relationship between these two core components – whether it is “symbiotic” or “parasitic” – would improve police decision-making around the globe.

This project aims to investigate the effect of police patrol strategies on emergency response times using agent-based modelling techniques. Three distinct proactive policing strategies are investigated, namely: undirected patrol, directed patrol and stationary patrol. In this research project, undirected patrol is taken as the baseline against which the other two strategies are measured. The research questions this project aims to answer are:

1. What is the effect of patrol on emergency response times?

a. How does this effect vary among policing jurisdictions?

b. What factors influence the effect of proactive policing on reactive policing (e.g., network properties, number of calls for service, number of agents active)?

The agent-based model is a build in Netlogo and uses data retrieved from OpenStreetMap to construct a realistic traversable street network for every police jurisdiction in the Netherlands. The project employs real calls-for-service data (inclusive of times spend on scene) in order to make the analysis as realistic as possible.

Authors

• Tim Verlaan, NSCR

• Daniel Birks, Leeds University

• Rob van der Mei, CWI; VU