The Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department (KCPD) and the University of Missouri—Kansas City (UMKC) established a partnership to expand the capacity around problem-oriented policing, specifically through the incorporation and institutionalization of social network analysis (SNA). KCPD comprises roughly 1,400 sworn officers and 700 civilians and serves over 450,000 residents.
In early 2012, policy makers set out to implement focused deterrence, a widely recognized problem-oriented policing strategy for lowering violent crime rates in other large cities.1 While there are many elements to focused deterrence, this brief specifically focuses on the incorporation of SNA into KCPD operations. While SNA was initially a tool used exclusively for the focused deterrence approach, it has expanded to many other areas.
