Police chief to place focus on people who commit crimes

Maricopa Police Chief Steve Stahl plans to refine the department’s policing methods by zeroing in on those who commit the crimes.

While the department already has a handle on identifying hot spots for crime — general areas where trends occur — Stahl wants to place more focus on the small percentage of people likely to be involved in illegal activity. He said 5 percent to 10 percent of the population commits around 70 percent of the crime. 

“We are going to address people,” Stahl said. “That’s the new vision.” 

It’s a vision Stahl shaped while taking graduate-level courses at the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Va. The police chief was among a select group of law enforcement professionals around the country who spent 10 weeks — January through March — attending classes sponsored by the University of Virginia. Cmdr. Jim Hughes assumed the department’s top position while Stahl was away. 

Stahl said a course he took on intelligence theory has helped him refine the future direction of the department’s intelligence unit and identify tools to assist with smarter policing. The department’s crime analysis unit — made up of a detective and a civilian crime analyst — helps interpret the city’s crime data to prevent future crime. 

“What intelligence does is it identifies those people who are most prevalently going to commit crimes and under what conditions,” Stahl said. 

The department would be able to identify the 5 percent to 10 percent using a confidential database. Maricopa Police spokesman Ricky Alvarado described it as an “M.O. building” database where police would be able to look at the crimes a particular person frequently commits.

It would then help police determine if they are connected to a particular case. 

However, the intelligence gathered on a particular person has to be done within the limits of the law, Stahl said. 

“We have to make sure when we do this, we do this under the federal law to make sure we don’t violate anybody’s rights,” he said. “And that takes training to my intel unit, as well as all the officers.”