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Crime Prevention Is Working – Here’s the Tech Making it a Reality

Updated: Feb 3, 2023


We’ve frequently discussed how DACRA Tech’s software solutions can transform a municipality’s process after a misdemeanor or a violation but what about before it actually happens, i.e., incident or crime prevention?


We’re not talking about time travel here. We’re talking about the encouraging area of crime prevention – a method in which the community takes steps to curtail negative events and decrease the chance of them happening through education and awareness.

Thankfully, DACRA Tech can assist municipalities in crime prevention on multiple levels. Let’s view several applications of how that’s done.


Designed for Violation and Crime Prevention as Much as Enforcement


On the law enforcement side, DACRA’s platform helps municipalities support the citizens of their community by bringing attention to potential crimes and incidents that would lead to a violation. The software can quickly print a crime prevention notice that the officer can place on the resident’s door or vehicle to gently remind residents that leaving their garage door open could encourage a crime. Often police provide community services that go unnoticed, this helps provide the residents with the comfort of knowing the police department is looking out for their safety. DACRA can also bolster prevention by generating letters, notices, and alerts to help a respondent meet their local ordinance obligations.


On the property maintenance side, DACRA Tech’s platform helps a resident and the community foster compliance through capabilities to efficiently request and manage inspections, service requests, permit requests, and contractors. DACRA Tech’s Community Development software module orchestrates these proactive and preventative steps way before a building code compliance incident occurs. By keeping all of this information in order and streamlined, and enabling the resident to take timely action, we can avoid issuing a warning, violation, or fine.


We learned a great deal about this aspect through building code inspectors. DACRA’s building code module could simply issue a ticket and send the person through to a hearing. But building code inspectors told us that a lot could happen before the point of violation is reached – such as providing warnings and outreach to help the municipality work closely to help the person fix their issue.


If our community member doesn’t comply after that point, then it becomes a violation. Having accurate and timely intelligence on each issue makes the process successful. And that’s where analytics is a lot more than just numbers to us.


Data Can Help Prevent Crime


Crime prevention’s best friend is analytics. DACRA Tech tailors its software to your municipality’s unique requirements to give real-time data context and meaning for each community. The platform’s robust reporting and analytics take over, using existing information to paint a more predictive picture of where an offense could occur next.

For example:


Heat Maps

When data heat maps are implemented, we can better view the “hotspots” of offenses commonly located in one area. Getting this information through DACRA Tech enables municipalities to drive additional resources toward the hotspot to minimize future events.


Traffic and Pedestrian Stop Reports

Violations stand a greater chance of occurring in high traffic areas, so DACRA Tech can identify sections of streets and highways. Similarly, the software can see a pattern of pedestrian stops being made as far as a specific location, right down to a specific street and intersection. If we know where violations happen before they happen, we may be able to act faster by being in proximity and preventing some of them.


A View of Prior Violations in Every Detail

If we look to the past and learn from it, we can anticipate how to adjust for the future. DACRA Tech aids in this effort with its highly detailed views and sorting of a violation’s components. We’re able to drill down to view the event based on the activity and result by an officer, official or department. So, municipalities don’t need to have nearly as many holes of information to fill.

When we have common threads to follow by what DACRA Tech provides us in detail, we can plan ahead to potentially curtail particular violations from occurring. Even a few less of those is a win.


One Solution To Deliver Consistent, Clear Records

You can have an enormous amount of data in one place, but if it’s not well-organized, it could create a bottleneck for analysis and action to occur. Not so with DACRA Tech. Our platform empowers officers, administrators, and hearing officers to efficiently access all violations in one database, where they can view the entire history of the violation by vehicle, property, and owner.


Better Community Engagement From One Source

Analytics. Reporting. Heat Mapping. Elements like these add up to create a more proactive environment in your municipality and DACRA Tech is the engine to make crime prevention – and enhanced community engagement – a reality. If that’s a serious goal for your municipality, let’s talk about what that looks like when our technology is implemented for you. You’re just one demo of DACRA Tech away from discovering it.

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