Model Limitations

Our model has a number of limitations. First, it fails to account for buildings or other geographical objects, including runways and rivers, that would hinder the placement of an officer in a given area. Our model is designed to give suggestions as to the general area of officer placement rather than telling the user exactly where officers should be placed. This means that it is still up to the police force to make the call as to the specifics as to where officers should be placed. Our model is not designed to go into specifics because it is impossible to predict crime impeccably.

Another limitation of our model is its curve fitting ability. It uses only linear algorithms to attempt to predict the crime in an area, where in some cases it would be more useful to try other methods of curve fitting. However, these methods of forecasting were general enough to fit a large variety of trends and patterns, and sometimes even no patterns.

Our model also does not place officers where there has been no past crime. This could cause crime to spring up in those areas due to lack of law enforcement. While it is prudent to address these situations, our model only forecasts where crime is most likely to occur.

Our program does not take into account human behavior, demographics, or other aspects that may influence crime; it is based mostly on past crime rate. With so many factors in play, and the unpredictability of society and human nature, it is close to impossible to predict crime in an area with complete certainty.

Mapping crime has many disadvantages on top of its benefits [22]. It is not to be viewed as a perfect solution to Albuquerque’s high crime rate but rather a tool to best utilize what Albuquerque has right now until a better solution can be found. A major influencing factor on the high crime levels in Albuquerque is poverty, and our program does not model the widespread poverty that affects Albuquerque's population. Our only goal is to provide a tool for police to use strategically and to good effect against criminals.

With all of the limitations with our model, it is not meant to be blindly adhered to. It is meant to be a useful tool to determine the possibility of forecasting crime and attempting to station police officers to approach crime from the best angle possible in order to minimize cost, unneeded imprisonment, resources, and casualties.

Many people have moral issues with mapping crime. They believe that crime mapping would lead to unfair targeting of certain populations and often cite human rights issues [23,24,25,26,27, 28]. When arguing against crime mapping, many also cite mass victimization and discrimination against certain populations like the events that occured during the war on drugs [29,30,31]. Our team understands that this could be an issue, and we can't determine the best way to fix this. We believe that our tool is to be used as a suggestion for the police force rather than something meant to unfairly imprison people or cause unneeded strife among the impoverished.