In Portland, Oregon, police are working with cancer experts to help find cars that have been stolen. Police Officer Michael Terrett of the Portland Police Department came up with the idea.
About one out of every thirty cars that the Portland Police stopped was stolen. They talked about the idea with Dr. Jeffrey Tyner, a professor at the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University. Dr. Tyner agreed, thinking that data would be a great way to help them be more successful.
“He told me about his concept that he wanted to bring a data-driven approach to identifying stolen vehicles,” he said. “I thought it would work well because we use data,” she said. Both of them were interested in using data, but for very different reasons. “Data is data, though.”
First, they used data to figure out what kinds of things a stolen car would have. This helped them focus their search and know what to look for. This included things like darkened windows and a license plate that wasn’t there. With that information, the experts helped the police figure out that one in four of the cars they stopped was stolen, up from one in thirty.
Terret said, “If we can apprehend that vehicle with that person in the car, we are likely, as our statistics have shown, going to take a gun off the street.” He meant that stopping stolen cars can stop more crime. He then said, “It’s likely that someone in that car has an active arrest warrant that we can arrest.” Who knows what we might have stopped from happening in the neighborhood.”
Officers from the police force said that their information about what makes a car stolen is always changing. These cancer researchers are used to material that changes all the time, and they know how to use it even though it changes all the time.
Portland Police got a $80,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice so they can keep working on their plan with the researchers.
