IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ormnsc/v28y1982i7p759-774.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Police Patrol-Initiated Activities Within a Systems Queueing Model

Author

Listed:
  • Richard C. Larson

    (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

  • Mark A. Mcknew

    (Clemson University)

Abstract

Officers in police patrol cars operate in a complex stochastic environment. In addition to handling dispatcher-assigned calls for service from the public, they patrol to pose a threat of apprehension to would-be offenders and undertake certain on-site interventions to help improve general public safety. The on-site work, often highly discretionary, is called patrol-initiated activity. It includes issuing tickets for traffic violations, building checks, car checks, pedestrian checks and assisting motorists. In many cities patrol-initiated activities and calls for service consume comparable amounts of officers' time. In this paper we develop a spatially-oriented queueing-type model of a police patrol force that allows each of N patrol cars to be in one of three states: (1) busy, on a call for service; (2) busy, on a patrol-initiated activity; (3) free, on patrol. Designed for computer solution, the model yields N nonlinear equations whose unknowns are the workloads of the N patrol cars. Other performance measures of patrol can be computed easily in terms of the workloads. The incorporation of patrol-initiated activities represents an improvement over previous OR/MS models, and could result in more informed police management decisions regarding patrol beat design, workload smoothing among officers, and reduction of neighborhood-specific inequities in police accessibility. The methods of this paper are potentially applicable to other urban services, including taxi and maintenance operations.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard C. Larson & Mark A. Mcknew, 1982. "Police Patrol-Initiated Activities Within a Systems Queueing Model," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 28(7), pages 759-774, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:28:y:1982:i:7:p:759-774
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.28.7.759
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.28.7.759
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/mnsc.28.7.759?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Iannoni, Ana Paula & Chiyoshi, Fernando & Morabito, Reinaldo, 2015. "A spatially distributed queuing model considering dispatching policies with server reservation," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 49-66.
    2. Nicole Adler & Alfred Hakkert & Jonathan Kornbluth & Tal Raviv & Mali Sher, 2014. "Location-allocation models for traffic police patrol vehicles on an interurban network," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 221(1), pages 9-31, October.
    3. Sukanya Samanta & Goutam Sen & Soumya Kanti Ghosh, 2022. "A literature review on police patrolling problems," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 316(2), pages 1063-1106, September.
    4. Boyacı, Burak & Geroliminis, Nikolas, 2015. "Approximation methods for large-scale spatial queueing systems," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 151-181.
    5. Akbar Karimi & Michel Gendreau & Vedat Verter, 2018. "Performance Approximation of Emergency Service Systems with Priorities and Partial Backups," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(5), pages 1235-1252, October.
    6. Atkinson, J.B. & Kovalenko, I.N. & Kuznetsov, N. & Mykhalevych, K.V., 2008. "A hypercube queueing loss model with customer-dependent service rates," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 191(1), pages 223-239, November.
    7. Richard Charles Larson, 2002. "Public Sector Operations Research: A Personal Journey," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 50(1), pages 135-145, February.
    8. de Souza, Regiane Máximo & Morabito, Reinaldo & Chiyoshi, Fernando Y. & Iannoni, Ana Paula, 2015. "Incorporating priorities for waiting customers in the hypercube queuing model with application to an emergency medical service system in Brazil," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 242(1), pages 274-285.
    9. Iannoni, Ana P. & Morabito, Reinaldo, 2023. "A review on hypercube queuing model's extensions for practical applications," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    10. Hall, Randolph, 2000. "Incident Dispatching, Clearance and Delay," Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings qt2pp689vn, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.
    11. Hall, Randolph W., 2002. "Incident dispatching, clearance and delay," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 1-16, January.
    12. Ansari, Sardar & Yoon, Soovin & Albert, Laura A., 2017. "An approximate hypercube model for public service systems with co-located servers and multiple response," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 143-157.
    13. N C Simpson & P G Hancock, 2009. "Fifty years of operational research and emergency response," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 60(1), pages 126-139, May.
    14. Hall, Randolph W., 2001. "Incident Management: Process Analysis and Improvement," Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings qt1jf6j37t, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:28:y:1982:i:7:p:759-774. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.