Chicago police use 'heat list' as strategy to prevent violence
Officials generate analysis to predict who will likely be involved in crime, as perpetrator or victim, and go door to door to issue warnings
Individuals who have been singled out by the Chicago Police Department are put on a list of those most likely to commit or fall victim to violence and are issued a warning letter to stop the violence. (Tribune photo staff)
By Jeremy Gorner, Chicago Tribune reporter
August 21, 2013
Robert McDaniel was puzzled when the Chicago police commander dropped by his West Side home unannounced last month. The visit was cordial, but Barbara West's message was clear: Don't commit any more crimes or face the consequences.
Revealing that she had a folder on him back on her office desk, West told the 22-year-old that she knew his best friend had been slain last year in their crime-plagued Austin community. She cautioned that he could meet the same fate if he didn't change his ways.
McDaniel, who has multiple arrests on suspicion of minor offenses but only one misdemeanor conviction, learned to his surprise that he had made the so-called "heat list" with more than 400 others across the city who have been deemed by the department to be most prone to violence — either as a perpetrator or victim.
"I haven't done nothing that the next kid growing up hadn't done. Smoke weed. Shoot dice. Like seriously?" an incredulous McDaniel said while recalling the recent visit from police brass with a Tribune reporter.
With the help of mathematical analysis, Chicago police hope to home in on people it believes are most at risk of shooting someone or being shot themselves. The strategy calls for warning those on the heat list individually that further criminal activity, even for the most petty offenses, will result in the full force of the law being brought down on them. At the same time, police extend them an olive branch of sorts, an offer of help obtaining a job or of social services.
At least one criminologist said the department will have to take a long-term approach if it hopes to be successful with people who could be so deeply embedded in gang or criminal life that the threat of death or jail might not deter them.
The effort, funded by a federal grant from the National Institute of Justice, is formally known as Two Degrees of Association — an acknowledgment of the importance of the interconnections among those involved in crime.
The department's efforts have been influenced by the work of Andrew Papachristos, an associate professor of sociology at Yale University whose research in the Lawndale and Garfield Park communities on the West Side found a homicide rate there more than three times worse than the Chicago average. The homicide victims in those areas, he learned, often shared similar backgrounds: lengthy arrest records, victims themselves of past shootings and arrests with others who also had been shot.
"If you hang around people who are getting shot, even if you're not actively doing anything, then you become exposed," Papachristos said in a telephone interview. "… It's just like sharing needles. It puts you at risk because of the behaviors of your friends and your associates."
Police officials said they came up with a heat list of about 420 names through a computer analysis, weighting numerous risk factors to come up with a ranking of people who in the worst cases were more than 500 times more likely than average to be involved in violence. Among the factors are the extent of a person's rap sheet, his or her parole or warrant status, any weapons or drug arrests, his or her acquaintances and their arrest histories — and whether any of those associates have been shot in the past.
"What we're trying to figure out now is how does that data inform what happens in the future," said Debra Kirby, chief of the department's bureau of organizational development, who visited some Austin homes of people on the list. "What happened yesterday may not be what happens tomorrow."
McDaniel, for instance, likely made the list in spite of his limited criminal background — misdemeanor arrests on suspicion of gambling, drug possession and domestic battery — because a childhood friend with whom he had once been arrested on a marijuana charge was fatally shot last year in Austin.
Interviewed at his Austin home, McDaniel said he was offended at being singled out by West, commander of the Austin police district. All the attention made him nervous because his neighbors noticed, leading them, he feared, to wonder if he was a police snitch. Two officers waited outside on the porch while the commander and a criminal justice expert spoke to McDaniel in his home.
"Like I said, I have no (criminal) background, so what would even give you probable cause to watch me?" said McDaniel, a high school dropout. "And if you're watching me, then you can obviously see I'm not doing anything."
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Chicago police to implement “heat list,” where future crime victims and/or perpetrators are warned.
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