Basically, CompStat is a holistic approach to crime fighting that uses computer statistics (thus the name) to analyze crimes and arrests. Top managers set priorities for reducing the crime rate and hold lower-level employees responsible for achieving the goals. At the semi-monthly CompStat meetings, supervisors look at problems in depth to determine the best use of resources. It is like corporate culture applied to police work, not much different from McDonald's analyzing how many hamburgers it sold today to determine how many it will need tomorrow.
"What CompStat is all about is putting emphasis on a particular problem," Bratton says.
Jamie Peachey
Jamie Peachey
Gascón, dogged by the media, explains that he means to keep the peace on the first day of Arpaio's "sweep."
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Gascón is a true believer in the system.
"There's no question that police can, in fact, have an impact on crime and reduce crime," he says. "I'd like to think we've actually proven that in Mesa."
Numbers, however, can be tricky to interpret. Though overall crime in Mesa has fallen 15 percent since Gascón has been in town, FBI statistics released in May show that aggravated assaults and robberies have continued to rise. Even though the number of homicides and rapes fell slightly in 2007, Mesa's rate of violent crime, as a whole, went up, even as the crime rate declined in most other Valley cities.
Assistant Chief John Meza, Gascón's second-in-command, says the department has set a hard goal of bringing overall crime numbers down 10 percent by the end of the year. He knows it will be difficult — a lot of the robberies of late have been random "street jumps" that are impossible to predict. One recent bulletin by Mesa police described how a woman, walking to her car at 5:30 one May morning, was jacked by three men who jumped out of a pickup truck, pointing shotguns and demanding money.
Meza touts the fact that arrests for robberies are up 72 percent over last year. The reason, he says, is the improved communication, questioning, and accountability instituted by Gascón. It is not about punishing people — just "holding them to task," Meza says. He talks at length with commanders about where robberies are occurring and changes plans accordingly. The system Gascón instituted breeds a "we're all in this together" spirit, he says, that makes it easier to pull in squads from traffic or other police units.
Not that CompStat has worked well everywhere. A 2003 report on how it worked at the Lowell Police Department in Massachusetts describes how "scarce resources and a veiled sense of competition made commanders reluctant to share resources with sectors that were hardest hit by crime."
In Lowell, the report says, some commanders were less likely to try new ideas out of fear of a public whipping at the CompStat meeting if they did not work out.
Reducing crime rates is a common goal with CompStat. But crime rates are driven by a long list of causes — not to mention that they are subject to statistical manipulation. In 2005, a Los Angeles Times article calls out Bratton and Gascón for publishing figures that included a 28 percent drop in violent crime for the previous year, even though they knew a change in the way domestic-violence crimes were counted made that figure bogus.
However, once the reporting changes were taken into account, the number of violent crimes still went down substantially, according to the article.
Mesa may yet see a dramatic decline in crime over the next few years because of Gascón's programs. But there is a snag: The resources needed to keep the department effective are being slashed.
Gascón's "State of the Department" report in August 2007 concluded with the idea that Mesa needed to invest more in its police force to keep up with the city's growth. He suggested that Mesa build new police substations and boost the number of officers He called the current 1.9 officers per 1,000 residents "insufficient."
In January, though, city officials (hit with budget problems similar to what other local governments are experiencing) told Gascón to look for more than $7 million in budget cuts. For now, at least, the chief must figure out how to make CompStat work on the cheap.
Though Gascón says he has been a workaholic his whole life, he does take time off now and then. He dines out with his girlfriend, jogs to keep fit, and drives Arizona's backcountry in his off-road vehicle.
And, sometimes, he uses his free time to annoy his ideological opponents.
Last October, Gascón penned an opinion column to counter the propaganda of extremists. The article, which appeared in the Arizona Republic and the East Valley Tribune, focused on his belief that illegal immigrants do not commit crime out of proportion to their overall presence in society.
Claims about the crime among immigrants ring personal to Gascón, the Cuban exile.
"I take issue when people go after immigrants as a source of crime," Gascón tells New Times.
Of course, the opinion piece did not go over well with right-wing extremists, some of whom continue to believe undocumented residents are behind a vast crime wave in Mesa and the rest of the country. Gascón wrote that he had heard it said that 90 percent of serious crime in Mesa is committed by illegal immigrants.
