NIRO Knowledge

Lorna Ferguson
Lorna Ferguson is a Ph.D. Student in the Sociology department at the University of Western Ontario, Canada and is the Founder of the Missing Persons Hub. Lorna has a broad interest in policing research and developing evidence-based approaches to policing and crime prevention, including issues related to firearms and social media use. Currently, she focuses on police responses to missing person cases. 

John Ng
John Ng has been a law enforcement analyst in Canada for over 10 years. He’s a certified law enforcement analyst with the International Association of Crime Analysts and has been an active member having volunteered with their former Methods Subcommittee co-authoring a handful of technical papers on analytical methods including hotspot analysis, prioritizing offenders, and social network analysis. He is currently the Chair of their Publications Committee.

He’s presented at crime analysis conferences and recently at the American Society of Evidence-Based Policing (EBP) Conference on the role of crime analysts in EBP. He also served as the Analyst Series Coordinator (lead) for the Canadian Society of Evidence-Based Policing’s (Can-SEBP) Community Engagement Team and continues to volunteer as their Director of Operations. He was also selected as an NIJ/IACP LEADS Scholar, which is a scholarship that helps support mid-level officers in advancing data and science in policing, he is one of the first crime analysts to received this scholarship.

Roberto Santos is an associate professor of criminal justice and co-director of the Center for Police Practice, Policy and Research at Radford University in Radford, VA. He is a retired police commander from the Port St. Lucie, FL Police Department where after 22 years worked in, supervised, and commanded every division within the agency. He is a graduate of the FBI National Academy (Class 239). Prior to policing, Dr. Santos was a sergeant in the Marine Corps and is a veteran of Desert Storm/Desert Shield. Dr. Santos is recognized nationally and internationally for his impact on the field of policing through his high-level rigorous research, translation of research to practice, and hands on work with police organizations.As Co-Director of the Center for Police Practice, Policy, and Research, Dr. Santos shares in the administration of the Center and management of large-level, grant-funded research projects. Dr. Santos earned his Master of Science in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Florida Atlantic University and his Doctor of Philosophy in Criminal Justice with a concentration in Organizational Leadership from Nova Southeastern University.

Dr. Eric L. Piza is an Associate Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. Prior to entering academia, he served as the Specialist of the Newark, NJ Police Department, Research Director for Crime Analytics of the Rutgers Center on Public Security, and Research Program

Coordinator of the Police Institute. Dr. Piza is involved in a number of applied research projects focusing on the spatial analysis of crime patterns, problem-oriented policing, crime control technology, and the integration of academic research and police practice. Currently, Dr. Piza is leading a research project involving the systematic observation of body-camera footage to analyze situational characteristics of police use of force events. He has published more 45 peer-reviewed journal articles and secured over $2.3 million in grants in support of this research. Dr. Piza was the 2017 recipient of the American Society of Criminology, Division of Policing’s Early Career Award, which recognizes

outstanding scholarly contributions to the field of policing by someone who has received his or her Ph.D. degree within the last five years. He received his PhD from Rutgers University, School of Criminal Justice.

Read Hayes has over 30 years’ of hands-on law enforcement, retailing, and research-based crime control experience in the US and over 20 countries. Reads is the University of Florida Crime Prevention Research Team’s Co-Director, and Director of the 160 corporate member retailer-supplier-LE coalition Loss Prevention Research Council.

Read and his team have conducted over 300 LP field research projects including 25 place-based RCTs, and his current research focus includes offender and customer decision-making and situational deterrence at different geo-scales.

Andrew Reece is a graduate of the University of Maryland with a double major in criminology and government & politics). He jumped into government contract work for the US Dept. of Justice shortly after graduation. He mostly performed financial analysis of USDOJ grant expenditure. He moved to Blacksburg and became a communications officer for the Virginia Tech Police Dept for 2 years. From there, he worked in the financial crimes division of Wells Fargo for a short period of time before taking his current position as a crime analyst for the Roanoke City Police Department, where he recently celebrated his 4th “anniversary” in May. His current position mostly has him focusing on crime series, trends/patterns, hot spot analysis, and various data requests that come from inside and outside the department. He is also one of only a few hundred certified crime prevention specialists in the state of Virginia, and also recently acquired his general instructor certification from the state’s division of criminal justice services.

A super short update of upcoming guests: analyst Andrew Reece, Dr Cynthia Lum, Dr Eric Piza, Dr Read Hayes and an analyst from the UK! A whole but of information about to come zipping your way. Stay tuned for information on signing up for two, hour long, webinars that I will be hosting, one in July and one in August.

My apologies to Andrew Reece for losing my own audio somehow. It did not track but we did get his side of things. Unfortunately, it means the great conversation we had needs to be redone. In the meantime, here is a one off for you. I provide updates on the Access course, upcoming guests, the state of things, my philosophy update and I break down what my logo's meaning and where it came from.

Just a short episode, since I was sick and had to postpone my interview, where I talk about upcoming guests, my new logo that you will start seeing around and how the work is going on the new version of UALE and a little bit more.

Stay tuned for upcoming guests Andrew Reece, Hillary Peladeau and Dr Cynthia Lum.

An analyst since 2000, Trina gained law enforcement experience as a records specialist for six years before starting at Tukwila PD. Trina became an IACA Certified Law Enforcement Analyst in 2012. In 2014-15, she led the vendor selection process for her department’s new records management system. Trina was relocated in 2017 to her department’s Major Crimes Unit and loves assisting detectives on interesting cases. Trina enjoys being involved in her regional association, NORCAN, and has a special place in her heart for threshold analysis and z-scores. Below is the image Trina and I talk about in the episode.

A little One Off for you with information on the next guest, a future guest, an email sign up form for some free Access tips, one a day for each day of the work week next week, and sign up for more! Sorry for the huffing and puffing but it was a great morning walk!

I give a quick apology to you, my audience, for not keeping to my publishing schedule, I give an update of interviews and guests to come (with a name drop for a June episode), and I give you some quick insights on what I have been working on (myself and the Access online course sequel to come) with some resources in these show notes below. Please listen to Dawn Reeby's and Amy Boudreau's podcast episodes if you are looking to help grow yourself and want to put yourself first (or even put yourself on your list of things to take care of) since we are the most important part of our lists.

A day late but another weekly episode of NIRO Knowledge. It is your host once again speaking to you all about our current state of affairs, networking, and growing yourself during these times that may leave us vulnerable for social interaction and give us a little more downtime to learn something new.

I just wanted to give an update of COVID related matters and a quick comment to the idea of “herd immunity.” A quick thanks to those who downloaded the course, and there were quite a few of you, and to those that let me know that you have had success in building your own databases already from what you learned.

Hello everyone and thank you again for lsitening. If you know someone, including yourself, that would like to share something on the show, please reach out to me ____.

A quick thank you to those essential personnel that are the out there on the front lines from police to corrections to grocery store staff and so many more. These trying and turbulent times have forced numerous cancellations of in person training and conferences and I have opened up my online course for free. Jump right to learning Microsoft Access and learn how you can apply it to criminal justice usage whether you are an admin, detective, analyst, student, correctional officer or anyone within the industry.

Dr. Joel Caplan is Associate Professor at the Rutgers University School of criminal Justice, Director of the Masters Program, and Director of the Rutgers Center on Public Security. Joel co-developed and continues to advance the spatial crime analysis technique of Risk Terrain Modeling (RTM), now used in over 35 states in the US and over 40 countries worldwide.  He has prior professional experience as a police officer, 9-1-1 dispatcher, and emergency medical technician, and he routinely serves as a research partner and consultant to agencies in the U.S. and around the world on matters of public safety and security. Joel’s latest book titled “Risk-Based Policing: Evidence-Based Crime Prevention with Big Data and Spatial Analytics” brings a lot of his evidence-based practices and experiences together in one place.

A University of Windsor graduate with a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology, and a minor in Criminology and Psychology, Amy Boudreau has spent the last nine years as a Police Constable with a specialty in Crime Prevention. She holds a Professional Communications Certificate from the University of Toronto, has the International Crime Prevention Specialist (ICPS) designation, and is currently enrolled in a Leadership Certificate Program at the University of Waterloo.

Amy serves as a Mental Health Ambassador, Peer Support Team Member, and is part of the First Responder Mindfulness Network (FRMN) run by the Ministry of the Solicitor General Corporate Healthcare and Wellness Branch. Amy has extensive training in crisis response, crisis intervention, and mental health awareness training. In 2016, she attended the International Meditation Centre located in Chiang Mai, Thailand, for meditation training and in 2017, she began organizing meditation sessions at a local temple for police employees. At the same time, she launched her “@TheYogaCop” social media platforms to advocate, educate, inspire, and spread awareness. She holds a Corporate Yoga Certification, Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TSY) Certification, and uses Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) which assist the body in releasing deep muscular patterns of stress, tension and trauma, to help others in reaching a state of balance.

Occupational Stress Injury (OSI) and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can develop over time from persistent work-related psychological injury or difficulty caused by traumatic experiences, prolonged high stress, or fatigue during service. Amy’s mission is to assist others in developing self-care, self-compassion, self-belief, and optimism, and to teach others how to maintain individual wellbeing protective factors against burn-out and psychological difficulties through a unique mental resiliency framework. Amy remains involved within the policing community through several activities:

Lorna Ferguson is a Ph.D. student in the Sociology department at the University of Western Ontario, Canada and is the Director of Operations for the Canadian Society of Evidence-Based Policing (CAN-SEBP). Lorna’s current research focuses on evidence-based policy, policing, and missing persons. Specifically, she examines police responses to missing by conducting interviews with police personnel from across Canada – missing persons coordinators, Search and Rescue members, police detectives, frontline officers, with the hope of filling in knowledge gaps on ‘what works’ ‘what doesn’t work’ and ‘what we still don’t know’ in terms of how to most effectively and efficiently response to missing person reports.

Dawn Reeby is an energized, subject matter expert, trainer, seasoned, and certified law enforcement analyst with success in leadership training and the development, integration, and growth of data-driven strategies. She partners with a variety of federal, state and local agencies as a law enforcement strategy specialist, designing and delivering training including webinars, nationally certified courses, day- and week-long workshops, and technical assistance.

Dawn is also the CEO of “Excellence in Analytics” and the founder of the “Rising Geniuss Transformation Program”. She is a highly sought-after law enforcement strategist and peak performance coach known for creating skilled, balanced and highly productive professionals in law enforcement analytics. She helps these professionals and rising leaders to achieve a career that gives purpose, financial stability, and impact IN UNISON with a personal life of confidence, balance and joy. She and her team do this with systems, strategies and clarity coaching so that law enforcement analysts can discover and live the lives that they absolutely love, catapulting their careers with leadership of self as a top priority. Her clients become more confident, highly efficient and productive, and deeply valued leaders who thrive personally and professionally.

I talk about my upcoming guest Dawn Reeby, Twitter live streaming, my online Microsoft Access course version 2.0, the MACA conference and my presentation of Gephi and how my make-up artist did not show up on time this morning. Link to the Twitter video where this audio came from below.

What is worse than someone who doesn’t yield when coming onto the highway when they don’t have the right of way at all? I’m not sure but I engage the listeners by wondering if we can come up with various problems to be solved and if we can find out how much of a problem they are. My scenario wonders if those who don’t yield when coming onto the highway create the traffic back up that then causes stress and aggression and might increase road rage incidents.

Take to Twitter and let me know what daily problems you see that would be great to research.

In this episode, I speak about using Twitter as my main source of social media to get out quick messages, interact with the audience and my use of polls. I speak to the difference in using Microsoft Access and Excel and my online course for Access. There is a short Google form for anyone who wishes to fill it out and speak to any issue that they may have with Microsoft Access. These will be addressed and added into my updated online course that will release a little later this year.

I also pay tribute to a great man who we lost recently, Daniel Bibel. I read his biography on his show that was sent out over our MACA listserv. It was an honor to know him and he will be missed.

I talk with Cristina Fernandez, Scott Roberts and William “Bill” Schwarz of Springfield MA Police. They speak with me about their Real Time Crime Center where they perform tactical analysis as calls come in and strategic analysis going in the background among it all. They assist their agency but they also feed their community information about what is happening in their respective areas of town as well. If you are ready to find out how life runs in a crime analysis unit working in real time, give this episode a listen.