In the mid to late ’90s, San Pablo, California had the dubious distinction of being the most violent city per capita in the nation. Shootings, homicides and assaults were frequent, gangs coerced juveniles into their ranks, the poverty rate was double the average in the county, and its residents were packed into an area of only 2.6 square miles.
That’s the environment in which Brian Bubar started his 22-year career in law enforcement, which has spanned roles ranging from patrol officer to detective and up through the ranks. Now, as police chief, Bubar oversees a force of 62 sworn and 25 nonsworn officers that field approximately 35,000 calls for service each year.
The key difference between now and when Bubar started his career is a dramatic decrease in the crime rate, including an 80% reduction in gun crime since 2011. It didn’t happen overnight, and it didn’t happen without concerted efforts by San Pablo PD and city officials to proactively address community concerns and keep the lines of communication open.
THE INVESTMENT IN TECHNOLOGY
San Pablo PD’s technology investment started in 2011 when they received a grant to enhance school safety. Early success from initial investments kicked off the gradual implementation between 2011 and 2017 of 134 situational awareness cameras, 16 automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras and 66% city coverage with gunshot-detection software.
Bubar makes it clear that community support has been critical to San Pablo PD’s success in funding and implementing these technologies. The city conducts an annual survey that asks the community (including mainstream residents as well as opinion leaders) what the city’s priorities should be for the coming year. In 2018, 82% of respondents favored investing in new technologies to enhance public safety.
Other initiatives Bubar credits with improving crime rates in the city are neighborhood watch programs and a diversion program for at-risk youth that has led to an 85% reduction in juvenile arrests since 2011. Economic development and making the central business community a focus for proactive policing has helped San Pablo reduce problems like retail theft and open drug use that plague other cities in the Bay Area.
That community support spurred the city to make a major investment in 2018 that enabled San Pablo PD to add 60 more situational awareness cameras and 56 ALPR cameras, increase coverage of gunshot-detection software to 100% and implement both body-worn and fleet camera programs.
Being a small, dense jurisdiction helps. “We take advantage of our size,” said Bubar. Today, San Pablo has expanded their crime prevention technologies to include over 300 situational awareness cameras and 84 ALPR cameras that provide coverage throughout the city.
ENTER PEREGRINE
The rapid growth in the department’s deployment of data-generating technologies like ALPR, bodycams and situational awareness cameras in 2018 created the need for data analysis software to make sense of it all.
“The complexity of bringing that data and overlaying it over multiple different technology platforms was a significant challenge,” said Bubar. “The police department was looking for a software to make data tangible and accessible in a valuable way to our community and staff.”
At the same time, by happenstance, Bubar – then a lieutenant – took a call that “came out of the blue” from two tech entrepreneurs, Nick Noone and Ben Rudolph. They had read about a case Bubar had worked on while an undercover officer and wanted to learn what challenges law enforcement needed solved.
That conversation turned into a two-year commitment with Noone and Rudolph embedding within San Pablo PD’s investigations unit. During those two years, “they just built a platform that was responsive for our needs and our community needs,” said Bubar.
The platform Noone and Rudolph built while embedded became the real-time decision and operations management platform now known as Peregrine, recently noted by Forbes as one of the next billion-dollar startups. San Pablo PD now uses the platform exactly as advertised – to put real-time information in officers’ hands, gather insights from disparate data to make informed decisions about where to place resources, and unlock regional interagency collaboration.
Learn more about the collaboration between Peregrine and San Pablo PD:
“I can clip [investigative] camera footage. I can clip body-worn camera footage and share that information in a second, where historically that would take you hours if not days to get back,” said Bubar. “All of this access and feedback is happening far more dynamically through Peregrine.”
Peregrine not only helps the department determine priorities based on insights gleaned from the data, it has helped create a culture of accountability within the department. “We use Peregrine to prime our officers and say ‘Here’s what’s important. Here’s what’s valuable, and here’s what your work means and what it’s doing in the community.’“
San Pablo experiences spillover violent and drug-related crime from the surrounding cities in the Bay Area. “Those are things we have to stay on top of,” said Bubar, “but according to feedback from the community, the main priorities are the quality-of-life issues like homelessness, blight, illegal dumping, trespassing, loitering. Over the past decade, it’s been a balance of addressing violent crime but also being responsive to the community perspective. We’ve had to figure out a way to address both.” Data from Peregrine enables the department to keep a close eye on police and community priorities alike.
THE POWER OF DATA
“To be able to stand at a community meeting, receive feedback in real time and then be able to show police work to them in real time is the most powerful and impactful way to connect with our community,” said Bubar. “Being able to say ‘Here’s actually what is happening in your community, in your neighborhood, and this is what the police are doing’ is incredibly powerful. It gives the community the ability to have ownership in public safety and feel like they’re collaborating.”
Sharing the data has also helped the community see the value in the technology investments San Pablo has made in the police department. Bubar describes the cameras and ALPRs as equally a community tool and a department asset. For instance, the data shows that on average, 7 out of 10 individuals arrested by San Pablo PD are not San Pablo residents.
“If you commit a crime in San Pablo, odds are you are going to get arrested,” said Bubar. Being able to share that data and tell that success story “aligns our community with our initiatives and purpose. Like, ‘Hey, we’re here to protect you. This is your police department.’”
Bubar acknowledges that actually aligning the community with the department is challenging, and it takes a lot of years to build that culture. “We started that about a decade ago, and we’re seeing the fruits of that now,” he said.
Among the fruits of that multiyear effort is the strong community support San Pablo PD enjoys. The support has not only helped San Pablo PD avoid the detrimental effects of the “defund the police” movement that has impacted neighboring departments, it has actually shored up support for increasing the department’s access to technology. In fact, the city approved a $44 million investment for San Pablo PD to build a state-of-the-art regional training center and police headquarters. In accordance with community priorities, the new building will also house enhanced service programs related to behavioral health and homelessness response.
“Over the past five years, we’ve really focused on having data-driven strategies coupled with community feedback, which has equated to lower crime, more supportive feedback, more initiatives to support the police department and more investments in technology to build on that success,” said Bubar. The result is what all police departments strive for: keeping their communities safe. “San Pablo is safer today than it was yesterday,” said Bubar, “and we’re hopeful to continue our success with safer tomorrows.”
