Case Summary

In 2001 the Chicago Police Department (CPD) partnered with the Oracle Corporation to develop the Citizen and Law Enforcement Analysis system (CLEAR). This relational database program allows the CPD to streamline many processes such as filing crime reports, evidence tracking, and human resources services, while also giving officers in the field a powerful tool to assist in apprehending suspects. CLEAR has proven so successful that is currently being used throughout Illinois and is recognized by the U.S. Justice Department as a law enforcement best practice.

Business Challenge

With the strong support of Mayor Richard Daley, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) decided in the late 1990s that to maximize law enforcement performance, all policing intelligence should be deposited and accessible in one central location.¹ The primary goal of CPD's initiative was to design and build a comprehensive enterprise information system that would profoundly change the way their organization conducted business.

The department envisioned this new technological application impacting three core CPD functions: police management, criminal justice integration and business and community partnership.² A related strategic goal was to develop this data system in a manner such that it could ultimately be extended beyond Chicago to other cities across Illinois.

Approach Taken

In 2001 CPD partnered with the Oracle Corporation to create the Citizen and Law Enforcement Analysis system (CLEAR) which was formally introduced after a 10 month development process costing $40 million.³ CLEAR is a relational database program that offers all police officers a comprehensive picture of criminal activities in the Chicago Metro region.

It is comprised of 4 key applications:
1. Automated incident reporting application (AIRA): The "front end" of CLEAR, AIRA enables patrol officers to complete case reports at workstations via portable data terminals, in their cars, or at any CPD facility. This application feeds data into the subsequent stages of the criminal investigation process.
2. Automated arrest application: The automated arrest application shifts the recording of arrest information from station personnel to the arresting officers, who are trained to enter data in the new system via computers in station interview rooms. Data entered by arresting officers is then interfaced with the Department's digital mug shot application and automated fingerprint identification system.
3. E-track application: Captures information on evidence and recovered property that enters the Chicago Police Department, allowing officers working with evidence/recovered property to track its movement through the chain of custody.
4. Personnel Suite: The central tool for automating human resource functions in CPD, including attendance tracking and administering medical leave and injured-on-duty data.

Along with increasing the information available to police officers in the field, CLEAR has also been utilized by the Chicago Police Department to create the new The Deployment Operations Center. DOC is a 20 officer special unit that employs street intelligence, CLEAR data and a new crime-mapping tool to identify potential hot spots of gang activity.

The CPD is also harnessing the capabilities of CLEAR to increase citizen and local business engagement with law enforcement activities. For example, this database system allows residents to subscribe to a service delivering crime updates on specific beats and hosts 'virtual' beat meetings that give residents opportunities to pass along crime tips.⁴

Results Achieved

While other major cities have experienced an increase in violent and property crimes over the past few years, the Chicago Police Department has been relatively successful in reducing criminal activity. 2007 statistics for Chicago show a 3.8% decrease in overall crime from a year earlier and murder rate that was the lowest in the city since 1965.⁵ While the implementation of CLEAR is certainly just one of several factors contributing to the Department's improved performance, the system has already demonstrated a strong return-on-investment. For example, the time it takes for officers to access mug shots and suspects' records has been reduced from several hours to simply a few seconds. Other common tasks such as logging seized property and checking offenders' release dates have also become streamlined.⁶

Further, the initial success of CLEAR has allowed CPD to accomplish its strategic goal of expanding the system across Illinois. This new integrated database technology called I-CLEAR was launched in 2004, and now allows CPD to share information both with the Illinois State Police as well with all other local law enforcement agencies.⁷ Also, CPD's CLEAR system is currently being adopted in Wisconsin and Indiana, and has even been highlighted by the U.S. Justice Department as a law enforcement best practice.⁸

Lessons Learned

An important conclusion to be drawn from the implementation of CLEAR is that transformative technologies require significant buy-in from both administrators and politicians if they are to be successful. In the case of the Chicago Police Department, the city was willing to pay the large upfront startup cost, and patiently waited for Oracle to develop the database for nearly a year before any benefits were realized.

Another key insight gathered by the CPD was that the single most effective strategy in winning over users to CLEAR has been that officers train and support the users in their own districts.⁹ However, since CLEAR applications are enterprise wide, it can take up to year and half to train each user, which can be particularly burdensome on precints if they follow this proven practice of localized training.

A final lesson learned is that collaborative technologies can be harnessed to strengthen multiple strategic relationships simultaneously. While CLEAR was deployed primarily to improve police officers' ability to share data with each other, the program has also become a successful platform for improving relations with the public. Along with the crime data services already provided to citizens, CPD is planning in the near future to launch a citizen polling application that will ask questions about police-community relations and what types of law enforcement activities people would like to see more of in their communities.¹⁰