What's going on?
Our research has revealed a set of three themes that we find in Esri-police relationships: the variety of offerings that Esri sells to police; variation in the kinds of contracts; and a reciprocal dynamic between police desiring geospatial analysis tools and Esri producing and selling these tools for police. We have summarized these themes below, and pulled a set of case studies that exemplify different dynamics in Esri-police relationships.
Unpacking Esri and Policing
Esri's Offerings for Police
Police desire for GIS and geospatial analysis technology started with crime mapping, and the use of maps in both crime analysis and CompStat, data-driven policing strategies that developed in the 1990s and spread to many police forces in the 2000s. Early on, extensions of Esri’s mapping tools like CrimeView required installation of ArcGIS on computers in police departments that had adopted computerized mapping into their analysis.
Over time, Esri has developed a wide variety of offerings for law enforcement. These include:
Crime Analysis Tools
These tools, all connected to place-based and predictive policing, include the Emerging Hot Spot Analysis tool, Repeat and Near Repeat Classification tool, the Link Analysis tool, and the Generating Crime Risk Zones tool. These tools all carry the techno-optimist promise of making police work more rational and effective at solving crimes while improving police-community relationships.
Law Enforcement “Solutions”
These are ready-to-go configurations of ArcGIS geared towards police users at different levels:
- Esri’s flagship Law Enforcement Solution is Crime Analysis, which brings together various crime analysis tools. This offering was developed by an Esri employee who was a police crime analyst previous to working for Esri.
- For command, there is a CompStat Dashboard that provides a constantly updated statistic and geovisual picture of police activity. This is in keeping with early integrations of GIS into decision-making and crime analysis. However, Esri’s offerings for command have also expanded to include products like the Crime
- Management Solution that helps manage employees and workflow.
For police-public relations, Esri has developed Police Transparency, which allows departments to develop a public-facing dashboard on police stops, use of force, and demographics.
Training and Consultation
Esri offers webinars, textbooks, and blog entries on how to use its technologies for crime analysis and works directly with police to consult, develop tools, and train police on how to use their offerings. For instance, Esri worked with individual police departments, such as the Vancouver Police Department, Winnipeg Police Service and Phoenix Police Department to develop applications that can be used on patrol, although they don’t yet offer an out-of-the box product for this.
Kinds of Contracts
Police departments access Esri’s offerings for law enforcement through a variety of contractual arrangements. Some police departments hold contracts directly with Esri. Others access Esri technologies through a city-wide or state-wide Esri contract. Others access ArcGIS software through a third party. These contracting arrangements are complex.
One trend that we saw across many sites where police departments use Esri products was a shift towards Enterprise Agreements. These are agreements give uncapped use of a wide array of Esri products and often involve the installation of servers on site. Esri’s Enterprise Agreements with cities and/or police departments often involve an Advantage Agreement, which involves a package of training, consultation or coaching, Help Desk assistance, and User Conference passes.
Desiring GIS, Selling GIS
Our research has revealed that there is a reciprocal relationship between police departments and Esri. Police departments desire geospatial analysis tools, which Esri then develops. Esri in turn develops and sells its geospatial analysis tools to law enforcement, which then shapes how policing happens.
In the 1990s, the New York Police Department took on a new data-driven policing practice called CompStat, but Esri’s technology wasn’t brought into the process. In the 2000s, the Los Angeles Police Department worked with Esri to develop an app for their CompStat process. By 2021, the Vancouver Police Department had developed a new CompStat Dashboard that configured ArcGIS, Esri StoryMaps, and Microsoft BI. In 2023, Esri was promoting their new “CompStat Dashboard Solution” at their User Conference. Taken together, these examples illustrate how Esri may not be at the root of every geospatial tool that law enforcement use, but Esri follows trends and develops tools that it then markets to police.
Esri’s products have become more and more expensive over the past ten years, and there is a need for police departments who want to use geospatial analysis to justify the expense of ArcGIS licenses by emphasizing the necessity of partnering with Esri. Esri’s contracts with city’s and police often specify that Esri must be referred to as the “industry standard.”
Esri proactively develops and sells products to police, in part by creating dependency, for example by offering freebies for limited time periods.
So What?
Esri’s offerings for police are geared around a particular brand of policing practice: place-based, problem-based, and data-driven styles of policing. There is a synergy between this approach to policing, and the modular and solution-focused logic of engineering that Esri embraces in general. The technocratic “solutions” that the company offers to “policing problems” produces a veneer of objectivity, as does the place-based, problem-based approach to policing overall. These practices offer a guise of fairness and rationality that covers over racialized policing practices – such as the application of the New York Police Department’s Domain Awareness System, which utilizes Esri technology, in a pattern that Legal Aid Society’s Cop Accountability Project has called a continuation of racist stop-and-frisk practices, but with an invasive digital component.
None of the solutions that Esri, or problem-based policing in general, offer an analysis of or approach to the root causes of social problems. In the words of Brian Jordan Jefferson, It is worth asking how we might capture these resources and use them for life-affirming solutions to the problems engendered by our distinct social system. What if the capabilities for data analysis were directed differently? What if we took this on as a responsibility, as geographers, GIS users, and teachers?
explore our case studies
Saint Paul Police Department: Deciding on Esri
Saint Paul Police Department undergoes a decision-making process to use FEMA funds to access Esri’s crime prediction tools.
San Diego Police Department: Heavy usage of the City’s ever-growing Esri contract
The City’s standard city-wide $1.35 M annual Esri contract lists the San Diego Police Department as a major participant, with the largest share of users among all departments.
Los Angeles Police Department: Bratton brings CompStat and Esri to LAPD
LAPD contracts with Esri to create a Crime Analysis Mapping System to be used in weekly CompStat meetings.
Vancouver Police Department: Esri programs that police use
Vancouver is a standard case of a police-Esri contract that offers insights into the kinds of the police units that are using Esri programs and the types of programs they are using.
Baltimore Police Department: Heavy Spending on Police Training in Esri
Baltimore Police Department consumes 45% of the entire City’s 5-year contract with Esri just in the first two years, a large portion of this spending went to BPD training.
Fort Worth Police Department: Surveillance and Crime Analysis Tech
Fort Worth Police Department and City contracts with various surveillance tech companies; these contracts require the police to have and use Esri products.