The program is based on place-based policing, or hot spots policing, a data-driven approach to tackling crime.
Mesa Police Department officials told Mesa City Council’s public safety committee that an initiative to attack crime hot spots with a surge of officers for a limited period of time has helped the department lower violent crime in Mesa amid a national rise.
While overall crime in Mesa, including property crimes, is slightly up from last year, police said the city saw a 14% drop in violent incidents in the first quarter of 2022 compared with the same period in 2021.
They attributed the progress to a recently launched program that will target violent crime by drawing personnel from every division of the force together in a specific location every night for two weeks, once per quarter.
Patrol officers, gang and narcotics specialists, and “shirt and tie” detectives will work side-by-side to make seizures and arrests seen as most likely to prevent violent crime, such as drug dealing, illegal gun possession and outstanding warrants.
Chief Ken Cost told council in April that Mesa is one of the safest large cities in the U.S., but it still has its share of violent crime.
“People get in arguments and the guns come out, and gun play is a huge deal right now,” Cost said in April. At a community forum last year, Cost said, “we know that it’s the street level drug dealing that is turning into violent crimes.”
To try to head off a rise in violent crime last summer, Mesa PD rolled out a 15-week summer program. After analyzing violent crime between May and December of 2021 and seeing a decrease in violence, Mesa PD leadership asked district lieutenants to reinstitute a new version of the program in 2022, called the Violent Crime Program.
The first operation occurred earlier this year.
The program is based on place-based policing, or hot spots policing, a data-driven approach to tackling crime. The place-based approach is seen in the criminology world as innovative and effective, but some versions of it have also drawn criticism.
Place-based policing is founded on the observation that a disproportionate amount of crime in a community occurs in a relatively small geographic area. The idea is to use data – and not just intuition – to identify crime hot spots and focus enforcement in those areas and, hopefully, disrupt criminal patterns.
One criticism of place-based initiatives across the country is that proactive policing – flooding an area with police contacts or enforcement of minor offenses – could have the unintended consequence of fostering resentment in communities.
Michelle Rose, criminal justice committee chair of the East Valley NAACP, brought this up in a community forum last year before Mesa’s summer crime program.
“We know, not Mesa PD necessarily, but the United States as a whole, has a pattern of over-policing in Black and brown neighborhoods,” Rose said.
Mesa police leaders told the forum that their program would be more nuanced and targeted than other departments’ hot spots programs. They said also that their reliance on data would remove human bias from the process of selected areas of focus.
Assistant Chief Ed Wessing told the forum that hot spots were determined based on “where our crime is occurring and specific types of crime.”
Leaders in the forum also said the enforcement surge would focus on offenses linked with violent crime, like drug dealing.
“It’s not just a blanket of officers,” Cost said of the program. “I’m sure you’re aware of the ‘stop, question, frisk’ things that were going on in (the New York Police Department), for example. It’s not that wide of a net. It’s more precise.”
In selecting areas of focus, Mesa police are guided by a heat map of violent crime, created by crime analysts compiling data on arson, aggravated assault, homicide, robbery and prohibited weapon possession.
Lt. Tony Landato, operations lieutenant for the Superstition Patrol District, led the first Violent Crime Program operation in 2022.
Armed with crime maps as well as conversations with officers familiar with each district, the department organized dozens of additional officers to focus on selected hot spots over a two-week period. The surge netted 27 guns and over $2 million worth of Fentanyl pills, and resulted in 191 arrests.
Landato emphasized that places to surge enforcement are selected based on data.
“For us … it’s strictly about where the crime data tells us to go,” Landato said. “Some people will talk about, ‘oh, you’re targeting because it’s this type of neighborhood, or this part of the community or something.’ That’s not even on that (crime heat map).”
For Landato, policing crime where it’s found is an equity issue.
“I can tell you some of my folks have dealt with an issue that has led to drug arrests and people have come out in tears thanking them. ‘Thank you for dealing with this,’” he said. “It’s a quality of life issue for the people who maybe don’t have a choice about where they live, and that’s what’s important to us.”
Landato said the department’s Violent Crime Program is special because it allows crime specialists who normally cooperate at a distance to work side by side in real time.
One example he gave was an arrest for drug possession by a patrol officer that eventually developed into a massive drug bust within two days. The patrol officer worked with detectives and narcotics agents to move up the food chain.
“One night you arrest somebody because they got drugs on them,” Landato said of focused violent crime operations, “and you get some information that leads you to over here. Next thing you know you’re doing a search warrant here and there’s drugs and, oh my gosh, this has led to information about over here.”
“Then the next thing you know you’re looking at something like this,” Landato said, showing off a picture of tables laden with 14 guns, almost 3,000 grams of fentanyl pills, 43 grams of heroin, 37 grams of meth, $10,000 in cash.
Sometimes we can get compartmentalized, right, I’m doing my thing and Gang (Unit) does their thing.” Landato said. “It’s a good thing when you can kind of bring everybody out to play together, if you will. For me, that’s what I like to see.”
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