CINCINNATI — Could managing the public's perceptions of safety help prevent crime?
"A lot of crime is just not being reported," John DiPietro, senior instructor for the Ohio Crime Prevention Association said during a three-day training session he began leading Tuesday at the Cincinnati Police Academy.
OCPA promotes itself as the professional voice of crime prevention in Ohio. To hear DiPietro and others at the training speak, managing community perceptions of safety could help calm crime for departments struggling to find enough men and women to serve.
"You never know how that's going to be received but you gotta keep trying and keep pushing it out there," DiPietro said.
Despite advanced crime mapping and analytics helping police track trends, unreported crime troubles officers in DiPietro's class.
The class included law enforcement from CPD, the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office and Jennifer Gerke, an officer from Jackson, WI, who drove to Cincinnati for the training.
"Perception in anything is huge," she said. "With the advancement of social media, with the regular media too I think people sometimes get the misconception that crime is rampant everywhere."
DiPietro coached the sworn and non-sworn professionals in his class to build better bonds with community members in order to tap into trends missed by statistics, share police insights with people and to potentially fuel a more efficient police response that sends patrols where taxpayers need them instead of where statistics dictate.
"You've got your crime statistics, but you know that's very limited," DiPietro said.
