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Displays

Big Screen for NYPD 131

Posted by CmdrTaco from the screen-envy dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "With millions of emergency calls every year, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) decided to invest in a new command and visualization center in order to keep up with the ocean of data it has to deal with. According to this article from BusinessWeek Online, the display system consists of hundreds of Mitsubishi digital light-processing (DLP) monitors covering three walls. The NYPD thinks it will help it to also manage the hundreds of thousands of annual arrest records and to further reduce crime in the city. You'll find more details and references in this overview, which includes impressive pictures of former visualization centers built by Imtech, which will integrate the NYPD one."
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Big Screen for NYPD More

Big Screen for NYPD

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  • Supplier? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 30, 2004 @09:34AM (#9289408)
    And they got all this from NEC for only $567 billion.

  • How dare they? (Score:5, Funny)

    by tomstdenis ( 446163 ) <tomstdenis&gmail,com> on Sunday May 30, 2004 @09:35AM (#9289409) Homepage
    Spend money to improve public services!?!?! The animals!!

    This is why democracy doesn't work... ;-)

    • But spending money to turn a city police station into a war room for day to day operations? I know it's crime-ridden New York city and all, but this is beginning to get ridiculous. If they actually need to fund the police that heavily, they have bigger problems than public service deficiencies. Like this one: they're looking less like a democracy and more like a police state... ;o)

      Maybe if they would stop nailing people to the wall for protecting themselves against crime [frontpagemag.com] (N.B., there are quite a few other

      • I wouldn't call the Safest Large City in America [ny1.com] (of 10 largest cities in America) "crime-ridden." In fact, looking at what technically is considered a city (greater than 100,000 pop), NYC ranks 211 out of 230 in the country (higher number is better.)

        New York City fights crime better than any other city in America. The fact that at 8 million people, it's safer than most cities of 100,000 people is amazing.
        • New York City fights crime better than any other city in America.

          A light rainfall creates runnels down my cowl, to pool silently at the base of my cloak as I gaze down upon my charge. Yes, the city of Gotham is well defended tonight.
      • New York isn't crime-ridden. In terms of offenses the city comes 23rd in the largest 25 cities in the US [nyc.ny.us].

        Which is probably why New York's finest are usually busy issuing tickets to pregnant women for sitting down, bar owners for allowing dancing, seniors in the park feeding pigeons, or for that most heinous of crimes, sitting on milk crates.

  • NYRAD? (Score:4, Funny)

    by ErnstKompressor ( 193799 ) on Sunday May 30, 2004 @09:37AM (#9289420) Homepage
    NORAD eat your heart out...

  • I hope... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cytlid ( 95255 ) on Sunday May 30, 2004 @09:39AM (#9289422)
    ..it doesn't run Windows... else they might see..

    ... ok ready to groan on a Sunday morning? ...

    ... I almost can't type it ...

    ... Get ready for a +5, Bad Pun...

    ... NYPD Blue Screen.

  • OT - its a joke, giggle (Score:5, Funny)

    by Stevyn ( 691306 ) on Sunday May 30, 2004 @09:39AM (#9289426)
    Yes! Now I can hack into the police station and have the screens all say "Napster" or "Nurv is evil" just like in the movies. All I need is the video of Gates using and praising KDE running on Linux 2.6.7-rc2 while his henchmen rough up Linus. Best part is, I can do it through telnet. God hacking is so easy and gui based!

  • Something I've always wonders about these displays (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Eevee ( 535658 ) on Sunday May 30, 2004 @09:40AM (#9289431)
    What exactly is the advantage over having, say, four or so monitors on a desk? Since the people are sitting pretty far away from the wall display, wouldn't you be only getting an effective resolution about a tenth (or less, depending on distance) of what you'd have from being right in front of the display?
    • It means that everyone is reading from the same page - yes, everyone does still have their own monitor, but no matter what task each individual is performing, the main overview is displayed on the wall.

      Besides, it looks good.

    • Big Picture? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by beachplum ( 777797 )
      This is just my extrapolation, but maybe there is a productivity and teamwork benefit to having a lot of people looking together at one thing, like the use of a projector in a meeting room, rather than the individuals all having access to the same information by themselves. Might be a mental thing rather than a resolution thing.

      • Ah, that's the thing. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Eevee ( 535658 ) on Sunday May 30, 2004 @10:20AM (#9289598)

        In the images shown in the links, and from the limited experience I've seen of them in person, they aren't looking at the same thing. There's five or six different things being displayed (and a monitor showing CNN because the boss thinks it's neat) that have nothing to do with each other. If the people only use a small portion of what's being displayed (or don't really use it at all), it's a pretty expensive toy.

        Now if the display was one 'thing'--for example, a wide area network status with some of the monitors devoted to a map showing the links, while others showed statistics--then I see the value. And I'm sure there are places using them in just this way; is it just that people showing off the multi-monitor displays feel a need to be flashy with ten different things being displayed, then go back to a boring yet practical application?

        • If you run a large data center, and shit hits the fan, CNN could quite possibly be your first notification of the issue. Being aware of service-affecting events gives you an opportuinty to take proactive/corrective action, and mitigate downtime.

          A place I worked actually had a meeting about this when we designed our data center.

          And yes, it does also look cool.

  • Lower Crime? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nuclear305 ( 674185 ) * on Sunday May 30, 2004 @09:41AM (#9289433)
    How exactly does a new wall of monitors lower crime?
    Are these monitors secured to the wall in some new way to prevent theft?

    All joking aside, how does this lower crime? If a Bigger, Better display helps lower crime, doesn't that imply that they are currently allowing things to slip through the cracks because they can't manage their data?

    • Re:Lower Crime? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You don't think they have trouble managing their data?

      The statute of limitations for rape is 5 goddamn years in part because of all the data that needs to be retained. Many different precints have files on different rapists that years later are proven to be the same perp.

      • Re:Lower Crime? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by bman08 ( 239376 )
        The guys in the precinct are still filing their paperwork with a typewriter and carbon paper! There are tons of ways to use technology to improve the way a PD runs, this seems like something of an uneven distribution of screen realestate.

    • Re:Lower Crime? (Score:2, Informative)

      by sjalex ( 757770 )
      yeah, it does imply that things are slipping through the cracks, that's why they are spending money on this, at least that's the obvious reason on the face of this. Imtech appears to have lots of Homeland Security contracts as well as a GSA contract so I think there is probably a bigger story behind all this, but in a nutshell you are correct sir. Incidentally it looks like Imtech is using some pretty nifty DLP displays from Mitsubishi, the DLP part is from TI: DLP.com [dlp.com]
    • Why, this will allow the police commissioner to go before the community leaders and show them "The BIG PICTURE" of the city. The police can keep a big eye on everything. The money was well spent, they will be told.
      Lets see. This is better how than a few more cops on the beat? I think they have been watching too much Sci-Fi

      • Re:Lower Crime? (Score:2, Informative)

        by ratsnapple tea ( 686697 )
        Hey, you should go read up on COMPSTAT, the computerized crime-tracking tool the NYPD implemented under Rudy. I'm sure it cost at least a dozen cops' salaries worth of technology, but it was instrumental in driving down the crime rate, and now it's being implemented by many other cities, not just in America, but around the world. In short: yes, making information easy to access and read can be just as effective as hiring cops at reducing crime.
    • It let's them keep the season finale of 'Friends' on one screen while crime stats stream by in another window ... otherwise they would've had to use BitTorrent to download the finale from the web, and we all know that's just wrong ... Crime averted! The terrorists don't win.

    • Re:Lower Crime? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Xoro ( 201854 ) on Sunday May 30, 2004 @10:13AM (#9289566)

      In the 1990s, the NYPD developed an intensely data-driven style of policing centered around a program called CompStat, which basically tracks crimes and their locations, times, etc. This allows the police to see where things are heating up and deploy more and better-targeted resources to the area. It's been extremely effective, and crime has dropped about 60-70%.

      Obviously, visualization tools mix well with this kind of system, but why a big board? One possible answer is that there is a whole culture of public accountability that goes along with CompStat -- local commanders are called in to group meetings and are expected to know the figures for their area and discuss plans for dealing with them. When you get a group talking about the same visual data, a shared image is really helpful. Since the idea seems to mesh well with the culture, and the culture has been successful, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt.

      • Also, it should be pointed out that seeing stuff on your computer screen isn't quite the same. This board lets them display a hell of a lot more data at once and, possibly more importantly, lets a whole lot of people see it at once. Anyone who's used a whiteboard knows how useful having such a thing for scribbling on can be when discussing. I suspect having these walls of data will be an important way for sharing information for the people who actually have to analyse it.

      • In the 1990s, the NYPD developed an intensely data-driven style of policing centered around a program called CompStat, which basically tracks crimes and their locations, times, etc. This allows the police to see where things are heating up and deploy more and better-targeted resources to the area. It's been extremely effective, and crime has dropped about 60-70%.

        How do you know the drop was due to CompStat and not to Giulani's controversial law enforcement practices?
        http://www.disastercenter.com/crime [disastercenter.com]

    • Well, you know the whole thing is well and good until they get bored and hook up a DVD player to it.

      Hmm... /me starts thinking about joining the NYPD!

    • While it might be true to say that "Crime Doesn't Pay", it certainly "Justifies Bigger Budgets."

  • Looks like (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dachannien ( 617929 ) on Sunday May 30, 2004 @09:41AM (#9289434)
    The only thing left for them to do is beef up security around the WOPR.

  • The District? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Hiigara ( 649950 ) on Sunday May 30, 2004 @09:43AM (#9289438)
    Anyone remember that show? Some guy took over as the chief of the Washington DC Capital district and enacted major changes. The police department used a huge real time statistics tracking system and displayed it on a huge display. I think the idea was kind of revolutionary to the average joe like me; but I don't know if police were using a system like that before then.

    I wouldn't mind seeing systems like this implimentated in say, elected public offices to keep track of opinion areas, ethnic densities, crime rates, poll results, average pay. etc. To help them keep better tabs on what they need to improve and how to vote on what bill.

    Oh, did I mention I plan on making a run or two for public office? :D
    • If you are serious, you don't understand the intent of our system of government. Of course, neither do any of the politicians in office today.

      I am not voting for you so that you can take a poll and see what the majority want and vote accordingly. If that were the case, we should go to a full democracy and get rid of the bureaucracy in the middle.

      I am voting for you because I feel you are the best candidate to make the best decisions for your constituents, despite their feelings. If politicians did thei
    • I wouldn't mind seeing systems like this implimentated in say, elected public offices to keep track of opinion areas, ethnic densities, crime rates, poll results, average pay. etc. To help them keep better tabs on what they need to improve and how to vote on what bill.

      Thing is, typically the public views it that if you're spending large amounts of money on the police, that you're doing something to improve the community.

      On the other hand, if you're spending large amounts of money on the elected official

    • I wouldn't mind seeing systems like this implimentated in say, elected public offices to keep track of opinion areas, ethnic densities, crime rates, poll results, average pay.

      It'll be like playing SimCity *grin*.

      I think it's a seriously bad idea though. I think that if a system like this would be installed in city government officials and the like, they'd spend the whole day staring at the screen, and making quick fixes to address small local problems. They might be able to spot trends and see the la

    • Would you care to explain what you mean by the term ethnic density? The way that you have that term preceding crime rates makes me a little cautious about what you would do with the data, but I will withhold jumping to conclusions.

      Do you mean the racial distribution of the population? If so, why the fuck is this important? And anyway, this kind of info can be gotten easily via standard sociological research with greater accuracy and less expense.

  • Think Ahead (Score:2, Funny)

    by SEWilco ( 27983 )
    And with its many uses, the first use of this single room will be to untangle the scheduling needs of all the staff who need to use the room, one person at a time.

    Except when the entire staff uses it at once, to monitor for problems on the field of play of major sporting events.

  • Heres's the direct link to the BusinessWeek story [businessweek.com]
  • ... kind of reminds me of SimCity, where you can pull up a graph of the city and work out where crime "hotspots" are.

    • Re:Hey... (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      kind of reminds me of SimCity, where you can pull up a graph of the city and work out where crime "hotspots" are.

      The solution for these "hotspots" in SimCity is to destroy them and build nice parks instead. Harlem is still standing, so I can safely say that nobody in charge of NYC plays SimCity, unfortunately.

  • The big rooms actually exist (Score:5, Funny)

    by h_jurvanen ( 161929 ) on Sunday May 30, 2004 @09:48AM (#9289463)
    I thought that these huge rooms with huge video screens were just in movies, but one time as part of my job I went to visit a mobile telephone network operator, and I was surprised to see that their NOC was exactly like that. Our guide said that the big screens are, in practice, mostly used to show DVDs during the night shift.

  • When will they introduce a sensor embedded glove for use with manipulating data on these screens? Data of, say, videos of murders happening in the near future?

  • Kubrick flashback! (Score:5, Funny)

    by HarveyBirdman ( 627248 ) on Sunday May 30, 2004 @09:54AM (#9289490) Journal
    "I... I don't know exactly how to put this, sir, but are you aware of what a serious breach of security that would be? I mean, he'll see everything, he'll... he'll see the Big Board!"

  • Most commonly heard quote on system launch day (Score:4, Funny)

    by telstar ( 236404 ) on Sunday May 30, 2004 @09:57AM (#9289501)
    "This is a UNIX system ... I know this!"

  • Viewing the Wrong Way (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tintruder ( 578375 ) on Sunday May 30, 2004 @09:57AM (#9289502)
    Perhaps the public would be better served if the screens were placed on the outside of the buildings, looking inward at what is going on in government.

    The magnitude of the fraud, waste and abuse so rampant throughout government pursuing boondoggles like this is endless, and the excuse is always some "Sound Bite Focused" explanation that "It's for the Children", "It's for the fight against terrorism", or some other thinly veiled B.S. intended to take ever more tax money from citizens and waste it on needless government programs.

    A smaller example of this was in Portland, OR where the police needed an extra quarter million dollars in order to be able to track "Racial Profiling" in traffic stops. Seems that none of the cops were able to record the vital statistics of who they stopped unless they were given Palm Pilots (and all sorts of other alleged I.T. expenses to support them).

    Seems nobody even considered those little paper notebooks and a few boxes of pencils.

    Amazing how the public seems entirely ignorant of the paramilitarization of the police and the resulting "Us against Them" rift that continues to widen.

    The best thing that can be done in the U.S. (Short of Jeffersonian suggestions of periodic revolutions to toss out abusive and tyrannical politicians) would be to cut all government spending and staffing by 25% immediately, and 50% within 5 years.

  • Just imagine being able to say "Main screen turn on." in THAT place!
  • I think that this is just an overrated excuse just for them to have a big screen to watch rerunds of cops on... o_O

  • Demolition Man (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Quill345 ( 769162 )
    Doesn't this remind you of the police station in that movie? Next we'll have tickets automatically being printed out of our parking meters.

  • Political showpieces and $$ for supporters (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 30, 2004 @10:09AM (#9289548)
    I worked years for the IT division of a major city's police department and I can assure you that nothing is a bigger waste of money than such things as visualization systems, etc. These are, as in most politics, a way to pass huge amounts of money to political supporters and friends.

    Any "trends" in criminal activity are located far faster by the cops on the beat than by a computerized system. These guys know their beat like the back of their hand: details that would never be stored in a computer are at their fingertips. They are _extremely_ observant. By the time any "visualization center" knows it has a problem the cops have been on it for hours at least. This is a form of "swarm intelligence": independent agents (police officers) cooperating, exchanging information and coordinating activity. If you impose a hierarchical command structure, the flow of information can be imparied.

    As for "trends": what are you looking for? A 5% increase in convenience store robberies? Day to day police work deals not with statistics but with individual incidents. "Trends" are important, but mostly to politicians and bureaucrats who must fund police work long-term. The police are concerned that someone robbed two Stop N'Go's in the west borough in the last 3 hours, killing 3 people. That's not trend analysis, that's a f'ing problem to be solved quickly.

    There are good uses for statistics and trend analysis in police work, but they don't require a huge realtime display of information - they require only a CRT that can produce a graph or a map and some quiet time for the captains to think about how they will allocate their beat's manpower next month or how they can justify a request for additional manpower for a particular precinct where crime levels are rising year-to-year. This is traditional spreadsheet and database work.
    • I worked years for the IT division of a major city's police department and I can assure you that nothing is a bigger waste of money than such things as visualization systems, etc.

      Some of them maybe, but not all - I just listened to one of the chief analysts from Washington talk about their incident room (it was meant for major incidents only, but then they decided why not use it all the other days too) and how this was a key part of reducing their homicide rate by significant amounts (disclaimer: they're

      • Re:Political showpieces and $$ for supporters (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Perhaps I was too broad in my original post - it's not the visualization systems per se that are not useful in police work - we used many during my stint with police IT - but the use of large, real-time visualization of ongoing events in centers with hundreds of staff.

        I respect your honesty in stating that you work for a vendor. I was a specialist in Geographical Information systems and have very deep experience in that field. Nonetheless when I analyzed the utility of GIS for police work I came up largely

        • Perhaps I was too broad in my original post - it's not the visualization systems per se that are not useful in police work - we used many during my stint with police IT - but the use of large, real-time visualization of ongoing events in centers with hundreds of staff.

          I'd agree largely with that - my background was GIS too (census data on chloropleth maps - I wrote Supermap back in the 80's that replaced mainframes with a PC and a CD-ROM drive) and while our law enforcement products will hook in to GIS sy

    • Since you seem to be so skeptical about the usefulness of computerized crime tracking technology, I think you might find this article from the Economist [economist.com] an interesting read. I couldn't tell whether it's subscriber-only, so I'll reproduce part of it here:

      CRIME maps, which record the locations of incidents in order to help predict where criminals are going to strike next, are used by police throughout the world. But the past is not always a helpful guide to the future, and a team of criminologists from Uni

    • Scenario: I rob two Stop N'Go's on the East side of town. Run in with a shotgun, shoot the guy behind the desk, exact same MO both times. Now, I hear sirens. I jump a train to the West side and hit another Shop N'Go in the same fashion. I live up north, so I start heading that way. I hit another Stop N' Go on the way. 4 identical crimes in 3 different parts of the city.

      Purely using your swarm intelligence, how long do you think it would be before someone said "Hey, let's see if someone in another pa

    • I worked for 3 years in the display industry where it was generally accepted that such large visualization systems were feel good systems either for senior management or for customers, but not for the people sitting in front of them.
  • In this case, I wouldn't be complaining about having to squint at a quarter of the screen.

    -- n

  • Something similar in U.K. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Here's an example, with a similar picture - 60-feet wall of monitors:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2070312.stm [bbc.co.uk]

    We're now living in a Big Brother world, aren't we? Of course, if it helps catching criminals, then so be it.
    • We're now living in a Big Brother world, aren't we? Of course, if it helps catching criminals, then so be it.

      You do realize that this type of thinking is exactly what enables leaders to take more and more steps towards an actual Big Brother society? Say you use it to catch criminals, then move on to other, less innocuous uses...

  • The only way to activate it is by saying "Main Screen Turn On".

    You can blame the poll.
  • You can do the same with a couple of PC projectors.

    I set up a network management center this way with scotty. Course it goes through loads of lamps.

  • Where I live (Score:3, Informative)

    by eric76 ( 679787 ) on Sunday May 30, 2004 @10:52AM (#9289711)
    If they did that where I live, they could get by with a 5 inch diagonal screen mounted on a wall.

    Of course, that's not going to happen. We don't have much in the way of crime -- our biggest problem is usually someone failing to stop at a stop sign.

    The sheriff's department usually only comes out for funerals. One time, rather than drive out to check something out, they saved the trip out by asking me if I could look into it and let them know if there was anything they needed to worry about.

  • Usefull (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PktLoss ( 647983 ) * on Sunday May 30, 2004 @11:01AM (#9289748) Homepage Journal
    I really think this could come in usefull to help corelate seperate calls faster, especially since many operators may be handling calls in the same area and not even know it. One quick look at the screen and you can see a series of disturbance calls moving in a line, or a growing cicrle.

  • Crime will find a way (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The only way to reduce crime is by educational, economic, and cultural means, not by taking police state measures.

    Look at Japan.
    • All well in good, in 20 years you will reduce crime. Though, if I want to reduce crime in the short term, I'd start by doing what Japan is doing [ncbuy.com] in the short term:

      "... Persons violating Japanese law, even unknowingly, may be expelled, arrested or imprisoned. ... In most drug cases, suspects are detained incommunicado, which bars them from receiving visitors or corresponding with anyone other than a lawyer or U.S. consular officer until after indictment, which may take as long as several months. Persons ar
  • Oh dear lord. I wanna break in and play the world's sweetest game of CounterStrike. Screw AimBots, I really *will* be able to see people on the other side of the map.

  • SimCity? :) (Score:2, Funny)

    by kyoorius ( 16808 )
    This would kick ass for SimCity except they are playing with a real city. Perhaps if they practiced with Sim first...

  • Why don't the White House, CIA, FBI, NSA, OHS and the rest of the Sesame Street gang create a centralized inter-agency data-exchange center with a screen like this 3 times the size of a friggin' IMAX theater so they can begin to effectively improve their state of being on the "same damn page"? Hey, if bigger is better, like Starsky said, "Do It. DO it."
  • I wonder if Bill Lumberg will be working on this project? That would be terrific.
  • The subject says it all...
  • ...The new transparent monitor and petabyte storage facilities will require operators using special gestures to retrieve and review suspect information. In addition, the facilities will house four expiremental clairvoyants who have the ability to visualize murders before they occur. Potential murderers will be tried under New York's new precrime laws.
  • Didn't that burn down?
  • This reminds me of all those LCD screens shown in the background of those stock market news shows. It gives an illusion of authority, credibility, and control. I expect that many interviews and press conferences will be given in front of this war room.

    Now, if we could only staff this war room with a bunch of good looking out-of-work actors and a couple of embedded journalists, then we would be all set and New York would be ready for just about anything.

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