New York's Real Time Crime Center - by Austin S. Camacho

My fictional protagonist, Hannibal Jones, is a private eye running a one-man agency, so the tools he uses to help people in trouble are usually limited to muscle, guts, observation and deduction. P.I. work calls for a lot of legwork, the kind the police can’t afford to do. They don’t’ have the time or the manpower. But like real-life cops, he would laugh at the stylized world of law enforcement you see on TV, where every crime can be solved in an hour.

But New York City is closer to that fantasy than I realized, until I learned about the Real Time Crime Center. It’s like a super detective help desk, the nerve center for technology to help the detectives out there on the streets with the kind of information that helps them develop leads and solve crimes. The Real Time Crime Center’s primary purpose is to give field officers and detectives instant and comprehensive information to help identify patterns and stop emerging crime. It’s the first of its kind anywhere in the world of law enforcement.

You know how on TV the cops can just type stuff in and get instant info? That’s what they’re trying to do with the Real Time Crime Center. Information networking they call it, but to me it’s just good old crime analysis. COMPSTAT, for Computerized Statistics, is a weekly precinct-by-precinct analysis of crime trends and hot spots. In New York, they can reduce violent crimes by putting 1,500 cops into a targeted location. That’s how NYC got to be the safest large city in the USA.

The next step is to look at crime data and intel in real time and shoot it out to the cops so they can see crime patterns and trends. Not only can they use their resources better to fight crime, but they can support investigators better to ID and catch the bad guys faster.

I’m amazed at how they’ve made different sources electronically searchable and user friendly. The department has at least 50 huge databases, all crime data warehouse from IBM to put all that info into a common format. They hooked the last 10 years of complaints, arrests and detective case information into a real-time feed from the 911 system.

The RTCC opened on July 18, 2005 and provides support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Today it has access to more than 5 million New York State criminal records, parole and probation files, more than 20 million New York City criminal complaints, arrests, 911/311 calls and summonses spanning five years, more than 31 million national crime records and over 33 billion public records!

The Crime Center uses satellite imaging and sophisticated mapping of New York City precinct-by-precinct. The link analysis capacity of the RTCC can track suspects to all of their known addresses and point detectives to the locations where they are most likely to flee.

Detectives can search the data sources easily, almost like using Google. If you can search for, say, “a white male, 5-foot-8-inches to 6-foot, doing robberies, in the Bronx, uses a silver gun, and targets old ladies," well, that can save a lot of the grunt work gathering your list of suspects.

The NYPD sends an incident response vehicle with every homicide squad in the five boroughs and one major case squad. These vans are on scene for all serious stabbings, shootings and homicides. With secure wireless access to the Real Time Crime Center, detectives can access and print out anything they need, out in the field.

Think about it. Before the detective starts to canvas the area, he’s got details about his location. incidents and arrests within a given distance of this crime, parolees, probationers and wanted felons in the area, open narcotics investigations, gang activity, the whole ball of wax. This is the stuff I’d love to know at a murder scene. Have there been a lot of drug arrests in the area? Is there a sexual predator nearby? Who the nosey neighbor that calls 911 all the time? The kind of stuff beat cops used to know.

And the Real Time Crime Center can put it all up on a screen. The detective gets a visual representation of the suspect or the location. He can see the relationships the suspect has with other criminals, other crimes, other cases, guns, and so on. It’s called a link analysis, with one person or location at the center. Then, graphical links are shown to phone numbers, known addresses, relatives, criminal records, whatever.

Another new trick is called crime mapping. The Real Time Crime Center identifies crimes and trends that used to require days for analysts to dope out. The Geographic Information System lets you even show where all the complaints are that make up what you think is a pattern. You can see all the crimes near bus stations, for example or near schools. This kind of pattern analysis is great for robberies or sex crimes.

The Real Time Crime Center even helps the cops when crimes cross jurisdictions. New York has been able to hook up with other agencies in and out of New York State, like the New York/New Jersey High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Regional Intelligence Center. (Good stuff for a later blog.)

New York is THE big city, but I think the concept of the Real Time Crime Center can work for any police force. It saves more man-hours than anybody can count. And it gets the technology down to the street. Right now information in the center is available to the 37,000 police officers of the New York City Police Department.

If this keeps up, old fashioned private eyes like Hannibal Jones might end up out of business.

Miscellaneous Observations by Chester Campbell

My daily (almost) two-mile walk at the mall provides an opportunity to observe goings-on among the populace as well as ponder plot points for my mysteries. I thought I’d mention a couple of observations from yesterday’s stroll. Well, a little faster than a stroll. I walk a 15-minute mile.

The first thing I noticed was the cops. Ordinarily I will encounter one, at the most two, mall security types in their spiffy uniforms with their Smokey Bear hats. My wife and I call them Barney Fifes after the Don Knotts character on the Andy Griffith Show. But, yesterday, I entered the Food Court to find a pair of blue-clad Metro Nashville policemen standing there. Once in a while I find a lone cop around but seldom two.

They were talking to the mall security chief, a guy who’s normally dressed in jacket and tie. He probably packs heat, although the Barneys aren’t allowed to.

As I continued, across the way I spotted two more of Metro’s finest walking along the concourse. One of these was female. They were chatting away more like shoppers than cops on the beat. I walk too fast for my wife, so when I ran into her a little later and mentioned the uniforms, I learned she had encountered yet another pair. She was concerned about what dire emergency might be in the making.


Recalling the youthful looks on their faces, I realized there was no crisis afoot. Several days ago, the nightly news covered the graduation ceremony for a new class at the Metro Police Academy. Before the new cops are sent onto the streets, they put in familiarization time in various venues. This batch was getting a taste of the mall.

So, nothing to go in my WIP.

Speaking of the security chief, I spotted him at a new kiosk being handed a couple of brass looking cylinders by a smiling, sexy wench. Signs on display advertised “Stress Test.” The tell-tale clue, though, was the “Dianetics” sign above the kiosk and the display of books by L. Ron Hubbard.

It had been awhile since I gave any thought to Scientology, except when reading about Tom Cruise, so I went to Google to refresh my memory. The device the young woman used is called an E-Meter. Wikipedia describes it this way:

“The Church of Scientology restricts the use of the E-meter to trained professionals, treating it as ‘a religious artifact used to measure the state of electrical characteristics of the “static field” surrounding the body’. The meter is believed to reflect or indicate whether or not a person has been relieved from spiritual impediment of past experiences. It can only be used by Scientology ministers or ministers-in-training and does not diagnose or cure anything. The E-meters used by the Church of Scientology are manufactured at the Church of Scientology's Golden Era Productions facility.”

I don’t know if she was a minister or a minister-in-training, but a few days before a neatly-dressed, tall black guy had been at the booth observing the performance. I had been invited to take a test but declined with a smile. When I’m walking, I don’t stop for anything, even a chance to be Scientologically “cleared” and freed from all my ailments.

Hubbard has been hailed as a fairly decent science fiction writer, though not being into sci-fi I can’t vouch for it. But from what I’ve read about his “religion,” it sounds more like fiction than science.

Have you observed anything interesting in a mall lately?

Mystery Mania
www.ChesterDCampbell.com

Don't stand too close to a naked book promoter!

I knew I'd get your interest, you bunch of perverts! (Heh-heh...)

This post is about how to get readers to notice your book and purchase it, so if that's not of interest to you, "Move along, move along... nothing to see here!"

There has been some discussion lately on one of the online groups to which I belong about the ROI of various promotional methods. One problem is, unless you have a very specific target audience that you can track minutely, it’s very hard to get a reliable view of the ROI on advertising and promotion. How do you know, for example, that it was the postcard, the bookmark, the book teaser video, the flyer, the blog entry, the tweet, the… whatever, that was the tipping point to persuading someone to buy your book.

Or if we look at it another way, which one actually gained the reader’s attention on a subliminal level?

Some authors have said that they saw definite increases in purchases after this or that promotional action... but do you know if this was the second or third or twentieth time the purchasers saw an ad or a mention of your book? Maybe it was the postcard laying on their desk from a month ago that really did it, not the ad they saw yesterday.

If you have the money to spend on sophisticated tracking methods to find out what works best… well, you probably don’t need to worry about your personal book sales very much, do you?

Al that being said, people who pooh-pooh using postcards, bookmarks, video teasers, blogs, etc., are forgetting a couple of very important points.

First of all, not everyone is hardwired to respond to the same sort of stimuli. Just as some people are visual learners, some are auditory learners, some are kinesthetic-tactile learners, and some are evenly split across two or all three methods, not everyone will respond to the same sort of promotional methods. For some people, finding and handling that bookmark in their bag of goodies may be the thing that triggers their interest. Others may be intrigued by seeing a colorful flyer, or their attention may be captured by a multimedia mix of sound and movement that comes from a video teaser.

Secondly, it takes more than one mention of a product to get most folks’ interest. Marketing pros say that it takes multiple stimuli from the same product to evoke a “purchase response,” and the various numbers I have seen range from ten to forty-plus. So seeing that book cover or title once, or even twice, may not get through the wall of built-in resistance that most of us have to spending money! That doesn’t mean you should spam everyone repeatedly about your book, but it certainly means that if people see multiple mentions of the book, it will increase their chances of remembering and purchasing the title the next time they are in their local bookstore or browsing Amazon.*

One specific question asked in an online forum was, “What do you do with a book trailer or video, anyway?” Book trailers or video teasers are very useful in ways some of us don't seem to think about. Here are some ways you can use a book video.

1. Put it on your laptop and have it on your signing desk, playing at low or no volume while you are signing books. I've used mine that way and generated a lot of interest from people who otherwise probably would have walked right on by.

2. Offer to send it out in advance to venues where you plan on having a signing or reading. They can (if they choose) put it on a computer or on their web site and have it running or available to generate interest in the upcoming event.

3. Post it on your CrimeSpace, MySpace, FaceBook, blog, ad infinitum web page so that anyone who goes there has the OPTION of viewing it. But don't make it automatically run, which is very annoying to those who are in a work environment or who have dialup connections.

4. At least one author I know (p.m. terrell) uses the video I created for her as a pre-presentation display, projecting it onto a screen from her laptop before getting up to talk about her book, SONGBIRDS ARE FREE. She reports that it really gets people's attention.

When you are thinking about advertising, marketing and promotion, think outside the book.

* Yes, I know there are people who will adamantly affirm that no advertising, review, video, postcard or whatever will EVER influence them to buy a book! Yep, and there's no such thing as behavioral conditioning, either, and advertisers who pay for time during the Super Bowl are just pouring millions down the drain, too. Uh-huh. We are ALL affected by advertisements, whether we like to admit it or not.

Tony Burton

http://www.wolfmont.com/

Watch for the 2009 Toys for Tots anthology coming out in October-

THE GIFT OF MURDER

http://www.wolfmont.com/tgom/tgom.html

New Voices by Mark Troy

To be successful, an author must master the craft and provide a fresh voice. How does one do that? One reads. Read the best books by the best writers in your genre learn how they did it. Read the most current ones to stay fresh. In particular, I think it’s important for writers to read the best of the new voices because these are the freshest voices, the ones at the cutting edge.

How does one find the fresh voices? I look to the major awards—the Edgar and Shamus awards. Because I write private detective stories, I go to the Shamus award for best first PI novel. Some of the past nominees, which include Walter Moseley, Laura Lippman and Denis Lehane, have transformed the genre.

The Shamus nominees for 2009 have just been announced. Here are the nominees for Best First PI Novel. According to the Shamus judges, these five are the freshest voices in private eye fiction. It’s too early to tell what impact they will have on the genre, but it’s a safe bet that writers and readers will be talking about one or more of these authors for years to come.

If you're thinking private eye stories are about two-fisted gumshoes in New York, Boston or Los Angeles tracking cheaters and discovering murders, this group will change your mind. The 2009 crop of newcomers brings us sleuths who walk the means streets of Minneapolis, New York, Beijing, Belize and 14th century London.

The Eye of Jade by Diane Wei Liang (Simon & Schuster)
Mei Wang resigns from China’s Ministry of Public Security to go out on her own, a move that causes consternation among her family, friends and the important people of Beijing. Her first case, the search for an ancient jade missing since the Cultural Revolution reveals secrets about her own family and creates a crisis for Mei, her mother and sister.


Stalking Susan by Julie Kramer (Doubleday)
Minneapolis TV reporter, Riley Spartz, discovers that a serial killer is targeting women named Susan and killing one on the same day each year. For Riley, it’s all about lives, but, for her boss, it’s about TV ratings and, for the mayor, it’s about the city’s image.

In the Heat by Ian Vasquez (St. Martins Minotaur)
Boxer Miles Young is at home in Belize, looking for a last big fight. Isabelle Gilmore wants Miles to find her daughter, who’s run off with some of her mother’s money and her no-good boyfriend. Isabelle’s afraid Rian’s going to marry the kid, the only son of corrupt ex--police chief Marlon Tablada, and she wants Rian---and the money---found. In return, Miles gets put on a fight card with a $30,000 payday.


Swann’s Last Song by Charles Salzberg (Five Star)
Skip tracer Harry Swann cares only about money, so when a beautiful woman from the Upper East Side asks him to find her missing husband, he happily takes the case. The story moves from new York to Los Angeles, to Acapulco and Berlin.

Veil of Lies by Jeri Westerson (St Martins Minotaur)
In late 14th century England, Crispin Guest is a man adrift in a culture where position is rigidly defined. Once a knight, a member of the upper tiers of society, Crispin was convicted of treason and stripped of his rank and his honor for plotting against King Richard II. Having lost his patron, his friends, and his position at court, and with no trade to support him and no family willing to acknowledge him, Crispin has turned to the one thing he still has—his wits—to scrape a living on the mean streets of London as a “Tracker,” i.e. a personal sheriff.

The winner will be announced at Bouchercon. I hope to have read them all by then.

Mark Troy
http://hawaiian-eye.blogspot.com
http://www.marktroy.net

Marketing Tip: Have Fun

With great pleasure, I welcome today’s guest, Sylvia Dickey Smith, who will talk about marketing. I know Sylvia to be an excellent writer and a world-class marketer of her books. I also know she once sold 170 books in one weekend, so I think every writer would be wise to read what she has to say on the subject.

Earl Staggs

Marketing Tip: Have Fun

Often, I’m asked to speak on the topic of marketing and promotion. I call my presentation Marketing For Fun & Profit. (Of course, we know it takes a long time to get to the profit part of that equation.) My philosophy on marketing is if you’re not having fun doing what you’re doing—stop—do something different. Try another strategy, learn to enjoy just being. Relax, don’t get hung up on sales, simply enjoy the event. Yeah, I know, that sounds rather Pollyannaish, but it works.

At a recent Barnes & Noble book signing in Beaumont, Texas, I wore a pirate costume and toted a wooden treasure chest filled with “play” jewels, skulls, gold-wrapped fun-size Snickers, a pirate rally flag, and coordinating paraphernalia. The B&N CRM, Cindy, walked up to me and said, “I just love when you come to do a signing. You put yourself into it. You bring something to the table. You’d be surprised how many authors show up and sit behind a newspaper. They never look up or speak to anyone the whole two hours.”

Now that’s a mystery. Why would anyone take up space in a bookstore and not try to meet the customers, invite them to take a look at their books, enjoy free candy, and then wish them a nice day whether they buy their books or not? If I were a CRM, I wouldn’t be happy if an author came in and sat there like a blob, breathing my air and taking up floor space that could be well-used by someone else.

Speaking of mystery, folks tell me I’m one because I not only market for myself, but for other authors as well. Why? I embrace the belief that what goes around comes around. What I put out I get back.

That is why I conduct Murder, She Writes, a radio talk show where I interview mystery writers. Web address: www.blogtalkradio.com/murdershewrites.*

After taking on a newspaper column with Examiner.com interviewing authors of both fiction and non-fiction, I decided to cancel the radio program due to time shortage. Soon as I started notifying scheduled folks of my intent to discontinue the show at the end of the month, I received word that the program has been selected a listener favorite. Now, how can I quit with that? So, for the foreseeable future, I will keep doing both. If readers are interested in being featured on either one, email me at sds@suddenlink.net for more information. And if you were scheduled, you still are. I’ll be in touch.

Have fun marketing!

*NOTE: If anyone has a marketing question, I am happy to correspond in the Comments section of this blog, or at the above email address. As a friend often said, two heads are better than one, even if one is a goat head. (The goat head being me.)

Got Gas...?

by Ben Small

Lately, I've been seeing articles, ads and television programs on the Sportsman Channel (DirecTV) and others about new gas systems for AR style rifles, both the AR-15 and AR-10, and of course, their military counterparts, the M-16, the M4 and the M14.

While AR-style rifles are considered much more accurate than the AK rifles most insurgents and third world bad guys use, they're also more fallible, i.e. they fail a lot. ARs are notorious for two aspects: They must be clean and they must be wet. If these two criteria aren't met, the guns may not fire, especially when it's hot outside or the rifle's fired a number of rounds between cleanings.

If a rifle doesn't fire, the shooter may die.

Contrast this with the AK-47, a simplistic design that will fire every time, even if the rifle's never been cleaned. The AK-47's design is so simple -- intended to be so -- that a kid can assemble and operate one.

Why the difference? Two reasons, really. ARs have tight tolerances and a direct gas impingement system, whereas the AKs have loose tolerances and are gas-piston driven.

Big deal? You betcha.

The problem with ARs is fouling. There's a small hole in the barrel which directs some of the gases from a fired round all the way back through the rifle's upper, forcing the bolt back into battery so it's ready for the next shot. But when the gases come back to the receiver and bolt, they bring unburned powder and other contaminants, thereby fouling the bolt. Over time, due to the tight tolerances of the ARs, the gun will cease to operate. Sprinkling some gun oil into the bolt and receiver area will free it up for more rounds, but the receiver and bolt chamber will be filthy, and each round fired will make them more so. Eventually, the gun will malfunction again unless cleaned and re-oiled, a messy proposition.

In the AK, however, a hole in the barrel directs the gases and contaminants to a spring loaded piston, which drives the bolt back. No contaminants reach the receiver or the bolt, and because of that and the loose tolerances, the bolt doesn't need oil. Some AKs, fired for years, may never have been cleaned and oiled.

Top end manufacturers have caught on to this AR issue, and now they're starting to produce ARs that are gas-piston driven, much like the AKs. FNH is now making ARs with gas-piston uppers, as is Les Baer. Same with Sig Sauer, with its new 556 line of rifles.

When Sig first came out with its 556 line -- a version of its war-proven 55X rifles -- many internet gun bullies corrected those who called the 556 an AR-style rifle, saying the 556 was more of an AK design than an AR design. Because of the gas-piston system. But now other AR manufacturers are releasing gas-piston driven AR rifles, so the nomenclature bullies are being driven back into their internet holes.

The beauty of an AR with a gas-piston system should be self-evident: The gun is accurate and clean. Tolerances remain tight, but contaminants can't reach the receiver and bolt. Less chance of a malfunction. And the Sig has an added benefit; you can adjust the gas system. Say, for instance, you've shot many mags through your rifle and due to heat and maybe some burned oil, and the rifle is acting sluggish, maybe not slipping fully into battery. Just turn the nozzle at the end of the upper and increase the gas level. Position one to position two. Problem solved. Shoot three hundred more bad guys.

So... why tell you all this? Because for a novelist, the devil is in the details. And some of these details may just give you an important plot point.

For a good discussion of this important and developing design change in military and commercial "black" rifles, see Direct Gas Impingement vs. Gas Piston Driven

Gruesome and OtherThings From My Childhood

Because I just had a birthday, I've been thinking back about my past. Most of the memories have been pleasant--but not all.

I grew up in Los Angeles and we got two morning newspapers and one in the evening. I remember one of the papers covered all the sensational news that was going on, murders and movie stars that weren't behaving themselves.

I've always had a fascination with mystery books and when I was a kid, I listened to all the mystery radio programs. My sister and I had a little portable radio that for some unknown reason picked up radio calls at night. We loved to listen to them, though we weren't supposed to. One night while we listened, he heard the police talking about a woman's body they'd found in a vacant lot and that she'd been hacked up. They described what they'd found in vivid detail. It was the Black Dahlia. Needless to say, sis and I both had nightmares.

One day when I was riding to downtown L.A. by myself (yes, my mother let me traipse all over the place by myself), I saw a dead body lying in a pool of blood right outside the open door of a bar.

During the war years, one of our neighbors' son hung himself in the garage. People only talked about that in hushed tones.

The young woman across the street married a Navy Surgeon and her mother bragged about it all over the neighborhood. One day they came home to visit, as it turned out, the Navy Surgeon wasn't one at all. He turned out to be one of those imposters and he was found out, we turned the lights off in the house and watched as the authorities chased him all over the hillside. Yes, they did catch him, but I don't really remember the details.

One of the worst memories I have is from the newsreels, horrible things being done by Japanese soldiers to the Chinese people--and the people in the German prison camps. I was a kid when I saw those, but I remember them vividly.

One Sunday evening I came home from church alone, my parents had stayed. I went into the house and headed for the bathroom. When I was looking in the mirror at myself, someone ran down the hall. Scared me. I went after the person hollering after him. Dumb. Have no idea what I would have done. He went out the back door. I sat on the front porch till my parents came home. Why I thought that was safer I have no idea.

Once I was babysitting the kids of the policeman and his wife who lived two doors up the street. They told me about the gun they had in a drawer. Someone tried to get it, rattled the door. I got the gun and shouted, "I've got a gun and I'll shoot you."
I was about twelve. I had no idea how to shoot it. I called my dad, after he put his clothes on he came up but couldn't find anyone around.

That's all I can remember. I'm sure there was more, but no doubt all this had an influence on me loving to read mysteries and writing them.

Marilyn, feeling nostalgic.

http://fictionforyou.com