P1 Exclusive: L.A. Sheriff "changing the paradigm" in addressing gang violence

Editor's Corner with PoliceOne Senior Editor Doug Wyllie

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By Doug Wyllie
PoliceOne Senior Editor

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca says that in the past ten years in L.A. County, there have been roughly 280 casualties resulting from “typical” emergencies such as fire, earthquakes, and other common tragedies that are not viewed as criminally caused. In that same timeframe, there have been close to 5,800 deaths caused by gangs and gang violence.

Sheriff Baca tells PoliceOne Correspondent Morgan Wright in an exclusive podcast interview on The Thin Blue Line that he looked at these statistics and decided it was time to change the paradigm and begin to address gang violence as an emergency situation.

“The whole concept came to mind because of my responsibilities as the mutual aid coordinator for all emergencies for the Los Angels and Orange Counties in Southern California,” Baca says. In that role, he works to coordinate the response to fires, earthquakes, civil unrest, and other commonly occuring events in the area.

“In those emergencies we use every resource in a coordinated fashion, whether its fire police, medical, along with the private sector [such as] utilities. We have a multi-governmental approach that is tried and proven in effective in dealing with emergencies. I said, ‘Aren’t gangs that are murdering people a part of an emergency mentality for all of us to consider? Why can we put [in place] the same type of strategy in dealing with gangs?’”

The system is called Southern California Gang Emergency Operations Center (GEOC for short) and according to the executive summary released by Sheriff Baca it is “nothing other than a coordinating body of all activities related to gangs.”

GEOC’s multi-faceted centralized framework is dependent on a software solution from Knowledge Computing Corporation that brings together the criminal justice, social services, faith-based and community-based service organizations, as well as local government under one umbrella. The underlying software – called Coplink – organizes and analyzes data housed in various databases and record management systems, over a highly secure intranet-based platform.

“This is a massive coordination problem that…far exceeds any natural disaster I’ve ever been involved in. This really is a human coordination issue and without a GEOC, all of the independent efforts aren’t going to solve the problem.”

Baca says that the key is integrating human and technological support systems to achieve an edge in economizing as well as being smarter in dealing with a complex problem such as gangs. He says that through the combined efforts of every available service and resource – law enforcement, intervention services, educational institutions, families, neighborhoods, and faith-based organizations – that disease of gang violence can be curbed.

Listen to the entire podcast with Sheriff Baca and PoliceOne Correspondent Morgan Wright by clicking here.

As senior editor of PoliceOne, Doug Wyllie is responsible for the editorial direction of the PoliceOne website. In addition to his editorial and managerial responsibilities, Doug writes on a broad range of topics and trends that affect the law enforcement community.