Violence Reduction in Joliet, Illinois: An Evaluation of the Strategic Tactical Deployment Program

16 

 

analyzing crime patterns, creating solutions, and evaluating their impact; the same process 

employed by Joliet’s Strategic Tactical Deployment program.   

Strategic Tactical Deployment 

 

The Joliet Police Department implemented the Strategic Tactical Deployment (STD) 

program in 2007. Each week, the Joliet Police Department holds a compstat-like meeting 

attended by supervisory and command personnel, during which current crime conditions are 

reviewed. Two computer-driven projectors are used to provide information about serious crimes, 

identify recent parolees and gang members, and provide other intelligence information. The 

presentation is created by the police department’s intelligence analyst and a handout of the 

presentation is generally available. The city of Joliet is broken down into three police districts: 

East, Central and West. Specific attention is given to gang crimes, gun violence, and drug 

activity in each of these areas. This strategy was intended to supplement routine patrol and 

provide an offender-specific focus to regular police operations.   

During the meeting, Strategic Tactical Deployment areas are chosen for the following week 

based upon a spatial and temporal analysis of the data. STD deployments are determined by 

reviewing the past thirty day, and hour and day of week, patterns of violent crime. In addition, 

kernel density maps (see Figure 1) are created based on the past week’s activity (drug arrests, 

gang contact, parole contact, probation contact, robbery, weapon seizures, shots fired, aggravated 

discharge, reckless discharge, aggravated battery with a firearm, and homicide). Inputs are 

weighted depending upon the severity of the incident and STD areas are chosen for the 

upcoming week based upon the as collaborative discussion and the hotspot maps.  

Figure 1 

Kernel Density Map 

---

17 

 

 

STD deployments typically occur on weekends during the evening hours from 9:00 PM until 

1:00 AM. Depending on manpower availability, one or two additional patrol units are assigned to 

preventative patrol in the STD areas each evening. The STD initiative is a voluntarily overtime 

program funded by a grant from the U. S. Bureau of Justice Assistance. The officers are asked to 

focus on violent crime and gang activity and are not required to answer routine calls for police 

service.  

Those attending the STD meetings are also provided an STD Meeting report (Appendix 1), 

which is also available electronically to all Joliet police personnel over the department’s 

computer system. The report contains detailed information about serious crime in each of Joliet’s 

three police districts. The report also contains information about recent arrestees, parolees, and 

probationers residing in Joliet. (This information is not included in the appendix of this report for 

privacy reasons.)   

 

New STD Activity Summary Reports (Appendix 2) and Field Interview Cards (Appendix 3) 

have been created for the STD program in order to accurately gather data for the project’s 

evaluation. Officers assigned to STD patrols are also provided with an STD map (Appendix 4) 

---

18 

 

and are required to complete the STD Activity Summary Report, which has been redesigned to 

capture the following information: arrests, offense reports taken, compliance tickets issued, field 

interview cards written, weapons confiscated, foot patrol activity, traffic stops made, traffic 

citations issued, parking citations issued, and vehicles towed.  

 

In addition, the STD Activity Summary Report includes the following STD Guidelines: 



 

Patrol only within the area designated on the map on the back of the report 



 

Field Interview (FI) Cards must be completed on all contacts made 



 

Zero tolerance should be utilized in the targeted areas   

Activity is monitored on a weekly basis; those officers who fail to show enforcement activity are 

barred from future participation in the program. Although specific officers are assigned to the 

STD program, the whole police department is made aware of the STD effort and the STD area 

boundaries.   

Area-Based Crime Response  

 

On 26 August 2012, the Joliet Police Department changed the name of the Strategic Tactical 

Deployment (STD) program to Area-Based Crime (ABC) Response. Joliet announced that the 

name was changed in order to expand the program by infusing offender-based strategies into the 

already existing place-based program. While Joliet had focused on the exchange of information 

with probation and parole from the inception of the program, it was felt that greater 

communication was needed between the participating agencies. This new effort would continue 

to exchange information as in the past, but with a greater emphasis on working with both 

probation and parole to revoke the probation and parole status of violent offenders. In addition, 

Joliet announced that the program would now be managed by a committee of supervisory and 

command officers and increase its focus utilizing the following four discrete strategies: 

---

19 

 



 

Better communication with probation and parole 



 

Enhanced data analysis 



 

Expanded intelligence processes to provide additional information to patrol officers 



 

Better focus on hot spot areas including parole sweeps, targeting of known offenders, and 

tracking tension between gang members. 

To further gain cooperation and buy-in from patrol officers, roll call training sessions were 

held. The training was attended by every police officer involved in the STD program and 

included a twelve-slide presentation and a question and answer period (Appendix 5). Included in 

the training were: 



 

the purpose of the program  



 

the need for accurate and complete field interview and arrest information 



 

the need to maintain strict STD area integrity  

Probation Cooperation 

 

An important part of each STD meeting was the exchange of information with the Will 

County Adult Probation Department. (Juvenile probation did not participate in this program.) A 

probation supervisor is assigned to the STD project and attends each STD meeting. Joliet 

maintains a database of all adult probationers, based on updates from Will County Probation.  

This database is cross-checked on a daily basis with all police contacts: field interview cards, 

arrests, suspect information.  All probation contacts were forwarded to Will County Probation 

each week prior to the STD meeting in order to allow them to research problem probationers and 

respond to questions at the weekly meeting. Table 1 provides a list of the exchanges of 

information that occurred during the first eight months of the study.  

 

---