Optimal Spatial Deployment of Police Patrol Cars

The spatial deployment of a scarce municipal resource, police cars, is examined with respect to four criteria: response time, workload balance, patrol frequency, and interdistrict dispatches. Standard results from queuing theory are supplemented by the addition of spatial concepts to provide the basis for a computer implementation called The Desktop Hypercube. This software allows police planners to draw patrol districts on a map of their city and to evaluate performance according to these criteria. By repeatedly redrawing districts and reevaluating, they should be able to improve performance. Using data on police calls in New Britain, Connecticut, The Desktop Hypercube is used to measure performance while varying the number of cars, the number of patrol districts, and the way the districts are drawn. Certain basic trade-offs become evident, some of which are especially important to cities in which community policing is a high priority.