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The District Brings Real-Life
Crime Mapping to Prime-Time
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Prime-time TV audiences will be exposed to GIS
technology as a crime-fighting tool this season when watching The District,
CBS’s new crime drama. Debuting this fall, The
District is loosely based on the real-life events of
former New York Deputy Police Commissioner Jack Maple.
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Craig T. Nelson (Coach) plays
Jack Mannion, the new police commissioner of Washington, D.C., brought in to reduce crime
in the nation’s capital with the aid innovative tactics and powerful, new
technologies including computer mapping. Lynne Thigpen plays Ella Farmer, one of
Mannion’s top assistants, who operates the various crime analysis technologies,
including the GIS mapping component.
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Part of an overall, comprehensive system known as COMSTAT,
ArcView GIS is the computer mapping engine that allows the characters in The District
to map the locations of murders, armed robberies, guns seized, and much more. In fact,
COMSTAT, first created by the NY City Police and Transit Authority to help fight crime,
and other GIS crime mapping applications are widespread and used today by law enforcement
agencies throughout the nation & worldwide. The
availability of low-cost user-friendly GIS applications has helped to increase the use of
GIS in crime mapping over the years.
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Real-world applications of GIS
analysis and mapping include crime analysis, traffic analysis, community policing analysis
and mapping, beat structuring, parolee/Megan’s Law tracking, Internet crime mapping,
community mapping, and tactical/operations/incident command.
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The District debuted October
7, 2000, and is scheduled to run Saturdays at 10:00 PM. Pacific and Eastern time, 9:00 PM.
Central and Mountain time.
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