Philly police get $320K to expand data science program

By Juliana Reyes
Technically

PHILADELPHIA — Thanks to the backing of two federal grants totaling $820,000, the Philadelphia Police Department has tested various ways to tackle violent crime and trained 30 cops as a data scientists.

The department just got another one-year, $320,000 grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance. This time, the department will focus on “hypothesis testing,” a new practice that has its roots at the University College of London, said Police Department Deputy Commissioner Nola Joyce.

In hypothesis testing, cops identify a specific crime that keeps happening in a particular area during a particular time, work with community members to come up with answers, or hypotheses, as to why this crime keeps getting committed and then tests those hypotheses. While some of the department’s officers trained as crime analysts have already been doing some of this work, this project will focus on testing the effectiveness of this technique on a few districts.

Full Story: Philadelphia Police Department gets $320K federal grant to expand data science program