NOPD News

News & Information from the New Orleans Police Department

Transparency
Add to Twitter Add to Facebook Add to LinkedIn Add to Reddit

Sneak Preview: NOPD Replacing Current COMSTAT Process with New, Interactive Open Data Website

by Ben Horwitz

August 10, 2016

Categories: Transparency

Topics: Open Data

The NOPD is taking data-driven performance management to the next level with the launch of a new program called MAX, or Management Analytics for eXcellence, later this fall.

Right now, like many police departments throughout the country, we hold a weekly department-wide COMSTAT meeting with top NOPD leadership in order to discuss the latest crime trends. This meeting, modeled on the ‘Compstat’ program pioneered by the New York Police Department in the early 1990s, is open to the public and gives attendees an inside view of crime numbers and trends across the city. These COMSTAT meetings provide a good overview of recent crime patterns, but they don’t allow for a deeper understanding of departmental management.

MAX will reinvent the dated COMSTAT model by focusing not only on crime, but on all other responsibilities of NOPD leadership, including personnel management, deployment, misconduct, uses of force, vehicle risk management, and Consent Decree compliance. MAX will also  provide a platform for measuring the effectiveness of departmental strategies, such as reducing response times.

As we start this exciting new process, the department will phase out its weekly public department-wide COMSTAT meeting. The last meeting will be held today (Aug 10). In the coming weeks, we will replace this meeting with multiple high-level internal reviews with District Commanders on a monthly basis. The MAX meetings will enable NOPD to take a deep dive into the systemic issues of crime, management, community policing, and risk management to develop solutions aimed at the root of the issue. The MAX meetings will also include Lieutenants and Sergeants who have responsibility at the unit level in creating or sustaining that change.

The most important part of MAX is that all of this data will be made available to the public in real-time in an interactive, intuitive, and engaging way. This is just one more example of how the NOPD is leading the nation in police transparency and open data and making criminal justice data available to the public.