Tampa, Florida

In response to the unprecedented increase in gun violence since 2020, the Tampa Police Department has taken a decentralized enforcement approach. Street Anti-Crime (SAC) squads, which comprise of 117 officers assigned to 12 squads are strategically deployed in all three patrol districts in Tampa, were implemented in February 2022. The Crime Gun Intelligence Center (CGIC) group assists the SACs by using current data to provide real-time, actionable intelligence to help SAC focus on the right people and the right areas. Concurrently, TPD implemented a Real Time Crime Center (RTCC) to work directly with the CGIC and SAC officers to provide instant access to valuable resources to identify potential suspects and likely retaliatory events. Recent advances in data processing and reduction tools, to include machine learning and so-called artificial intelligence will allow TPD’s CGIC and RTCC to advance to the next level of law enforcement technology. As such, TPD would like to invest in advanced data reduction and analysis technology with superior search features, artificial intelligence/machine learning labeling and analysis, built in analytics, and data summarization.

Data Highlight:

• Violent crime with a firearm in Tampa rose by 67% from 2019 to 2020.
• There was a 110% increase in non-fatal shootings from 2019-2020 and a 28% increase between 2020-2021.
• Most of these violent crime incidents were directly related to a sizable increase in narcotics activity attributed to the escalating opioid crisis, price reductions in heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and the return of open-air drug markets.