Company

Ganging up on Crime

i2 Helps Police Put an End to Gang-Related Crime

Once a staple of big cities, gangs are making their presence felt in smaller towns and cities across the country. A case in point is Greensboro, North Carolina. In the early 1990s, this quiet community saw an increase in gang-related crimes such as car thefts, home invasions and armed robberies.

Complicating enforcement efforts, gang members would sometimes travel hundreds of miles to commit crimes in unsuspecting towns. In addition, investigators began to see the emergence of "hybrid" gangs in which members transcended the traditional defining characteristics of race and nationality.

The Solution
To address the rising problem, police in Greensboro turned to software from i2.

i2's integrated suite of products enables investigators to create actionable intelligence from volumes of seemingly unrelated data. Its flagship offering, i2 Analyst's Notebook, is used by more than 2,000 organizations in more than 100 countries to uncover, interpret and display complex information in an easily understood graphical format.

i2 software helps law enforcement to quickly understand and communicate complex information.

Greensboro Police Detective Bobby Edwards had seen how the software was being used by other agencies to track Al Qaeda operatives. Despite the obvious differences between gangs and terrorist organizations, he realized that similar methods could be used to fight both.

The Results
Using software from i2, law enforcement can consolidate information gathered in the course of an investigation and uncover hidden relationships and patterns. According to Guilford County's Assistant District Attorney Chris Parrish, the i2 software is able to "give us connections that the human mind just can't make."

"I use the tool to incorporate our written reports, photographs, video and audio recordings," explains Edwards. "It gives me a one-page picture of how a crime was committed."

Not only does this visual representation help investigators identify suspects and obtain warrants, but it can also prove invaluable in court. That is, if the case makes it that far.

As Parrish reveals, "none of these cases have actually gone to trial." When suspects see the evidence clearly mapped out on paper, they often feel compelled to plead guilty rather than face a harsher sentence if their cases go to trial. In this way, technology from i2 is saving time and taxpayer money while helping to make communities safer.