The Los Angeles Police Dept has positioned itself aggressively at the center of the predictive policing universe, forging ties with a UCLA team and drawing up plans for a large-scale experiment to test predictive policing tools performance. The department is considered a front-runner to beat out other big-city agencies in the fall for a $3-million U.S. Justice Department grant to conduct the multiyear tests.

Los Angeles is one of the most severely under-policed in the country, with just shy of 10,000 police officers on its payroll. At any given time, only a fraction of them are on duty, spread across 469 square miles that are home to more than 4 million people. Predictive tools, if they work, would allow the LAPD to get more out of its meager force.

By Joel Rubin, Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-predictcrime-20100427-1,0,4082890,full.story