Parting words

I am thankful to the SPD and especially to the crime analyst unit for allowing me this internship.  I am happy that they trusted me enough to see confidential information. I am thankful they gave me the opportunity to learn; I learned something new every day. I am honored I got to work with such great people and my bosses were patient when teaching me some of the more complicated computer programs. 

My advice to anyone thinking about this career would be that you must like working inside at a desk for the majority of the day.  You need to be knowledgeable in certain computer programs, and you need to be able to make graphs and tables on the computer.  If you like puzzles, finding patterns and trends in stories this would be the job for you.

What is the state of our state?

On November 30th, I attended the State of our State Conference.  I was invited to go because Morrison Institute hosted the event and my research methods professor works for Morrison Institute.   At the conference, we learned how important education is to Arizona citizens.  The support for primary education was overwhelming and many believe our schools could improve the preparation of our students for college.  However, Arizonians believe immigration is the biggest problem facing our state. I learned that the majority are not happy with the current government running our state.

This was a great opportunity...

I am glad I got the opportunity to be an intern in the CAU.  I am so happy that I learned how to use Excel, because many employers require their employees to know how to use this program. However, I know this isn’t the job for me.  This job requires a lot of deskwork and it can be very solitary. I learned that I would rather have a job with more interaction with others and be in a faster paced environment.  

My favorite part was learning about all the different crimes.  My favorite shows are cop shows so that is no surprise; but I would rather leave this drama to the cop shows than do it as a career. In the end, I learned a lot and I am glad I have it in my resume.

Career Day

On October 27^th, I attended the Magnet Traditional School Career Day.  Magnet Traditional is where I volunteer.  At the event, I saw a Phoenix police detective, a former Navy Seal, an archaeologist, a public relations and social media account coordinator, and a representative from the Greater Phoenix Convention and Visitors Bureau.  From this event, I learned that I might want to get a job with the Convention and Visitors Bureau. You have to have a love for your city and we already know that I love our weather.  I think I would enjoy this job because of the interaction with a variety of people. I am excited to explore all the opportunities that are out there.

Apartment search

I am apartment searching right now.  You would not believe how frustrating it is.  It is a very long drawn out process.  It is made easier since I am doing it with my best friend, Amy.  We have known each other since we were five years old.  It is so exciting to finally live together. We are hoping to find a place before the next semester starts.  We are crossing our fingers to find a decent affordable apartment and I am searching the internet, especially raidsonline.com!

Raidsonline

So, we get a lot of calls from civilians about the different crimes and the percentage of crimes that occur in their neighborhoods or their future neighborhoods.  They like to call when they are contemplating moving.  We always try to help them; however, this is public information and everyone can look up crime statistics for their neighborhood.  A particularly good site is raidsonline.com.   My supervisor and I spent an afternoon reviewing this site. Most people get scared when they see the percentage of violent crimes especially the violent sex crimes in their neighborhood.  However, sex crimes are usually not random; the victim usually knows the offender and it usually has nothing to do with the neighborhood. In my opinion when deciding on where to move you should be more concerned over property crime percentages as these are most determined by location and violent crimes are usually determined by the person.

Theft and Shoplifting

Theft is the illegal taking of another person’s property without his or her permission.  Shoplifting usually consists of a theft of goods from a retail establishment.  Shoplifting is usually done by amateurs and is a form of theft.  The most common type of shoplifting is what we call a beer run.  A beer run is when a person walks into a convenience store, like Circle K, and grabs alcohol such as a 12pack and walks right out the front door. The last few weeks of my internship, we had an increase of shoplifting cases to enter because of the holidays.

Books

I love to read!  I read both fiction and nonfiction books.  My favorite fiction novel is A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini.  This book is about two Afghan women and how their lives cross over, spanning from 1960s to 2003.  They both face many hardships throughout the book.  I cried throughout the last half of book, yet I would advise anyone who enjoys a good read to purchase this book.  However, there are several violent and sexual scenes throughout the book. I have read this book once every year since it was released in 2007 and it reminds me how lucky my life is. I love this novel!

The last nonfiction book I read was the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chau.  This is not necessarily my favorite nonfiction but I did find it interesting.  Chau is a law professor at Yale and is of Chinese descent.  She set out to describe how Chinese parenting is a more effective way to raise children than the western style.   However, this is not exactly how the book ended up.  She received much criticism for her parenting style, but I believe the end resolves it.  I would advise anyone who likes nonfiction and learning about different cultures to read this book.

Property and Violent

There are two types of crimes: property crimes and violent crimes.  Property crimes involve the taking of money or property or destroying property.  Violent crimes are when an offender uses or threatens to use violent force on the victim. I enter property crimes including shoplifting, theft, and criminal damages into program B.  Criminal damages are the hardest cases to enter into program B, but surprisingly I found them the most interesting.  They can get confusing because there are five types of criminal damage including criminal damage of a vehicle, of a residential property, of a commercial property, graffiti, and with domestic violence.  Criminal damages, as in all property cases, can turn violent; however, I strictly enter property crimes into program B.  The only time I deal with violent crimes is when we get detective requests.

Vendor Conference

So my boss was going to attend this conference later in the year. All kinds of people and companies were going to be at the event.  The conference had vendors that were presenting and essentially trying to sell their products to police stations. The vendors included technology companies, law offices, universities, and many more.  My boss was in charge of making the vendor stamp cards.  Each guest attending the conference received a stamp card.  The goal was that each guest attended every vendor booth and once the visited the booth they would have their card stamped. My boss had me make the vendor stamp cards for this year’s conference.  I worked in Excel and it took me three full work days to complete this project, but it was worth it because she loved the end result.

I learned Excel!

Hi everyone,

So recently I got a detective request. (I explained what these entail in a previous post.) Well usually, when we find matches to their queries, we just send them the case numbers of the possible matches. However, this time the detective was presenting the results, so he wanted a chart or graph made so he could easily show the connection of the crimes. After collecting all the cases, my boss taught me the basics of Excel. It is so easy and weirdly, fun making graphs, tables, and charts in Excel. It was awesome getting to make a graph that a police officer actually used for his presentation. Most of the officers in our building know the crime analysts for their charts; I was very excited I got to make one.

TV

I love watching cop shows.  My favorite three TV shows are The Mentalist, Castle, and Rookie Blue. This was why I was so excited to work for SPD.  My internship was nothing like what we see on TV; I did not go to crime scenes.  In The Mentalist, a consultant works with the CBI after his wife and child are brutally murdered by a serial killer.  Castle is a murder mystery writer who works with the NYPD to solve crimes and to get ideas for his books.   Rookie Blue is about five rookie cops learning the job and their interaction with seasoned officers and detectives. I am usually too busy to watch that much TV, but I always make time for these three shows.

Ride Along

Hello again,

In one of my previous posts, I touched on how patrol officers receive calls and enter reports. Well, due to my internship, I got to go on a ride along with a police officer this summer. Basically, a ride along is the ability to drive with a police officer as they respond to calls. Officers are restricted to certain districts. An emergency call is forwarded from the operator to the computer in the police car. The police officer then responds to the calls in the computer. After they finish up dealing with their call, they enter in quick notes about the crimes so they can record it into program A later.  A couple of calls we went on was a person running a red light and a person jumping bail. It was a pretty interesting night!

Scottsdale Family Advocacy Center

Hey guys!

So, this summer I got a tour of the Scottsdale Family Advocacy Center through my internship. The man giving me the tour was great! Everyone said that if I was going to look around the center than he was the man to take me around. He loves giving the tour; and he is very animated as he goes around to the different rooms. As, we visited each room, he told me the purpose of it. Basically, the advocacy center was built so victims had a safe and comfortable place to go after being hurt. It was also a way to avoid all the long and drawn out proceeding victims have to go through after reporting their crime. Before the advocacy center, victims might have to travel from the hospital to the police station (to give their statement) to anywhere else they were needed. The center provides all these services in one building; they are shaken up enough, so to be able to go to one place that feels safe is nice for the victims.

For example, crimes of sexual assault, child abuse, or violent crimes including homicide are seen at the advocacy center. The building is staffed with nurses that are on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They are there to collect forensic evidence, write reports of their findings, and provide medication for the victims. There are also interview rooms in the building; they have child protective services staff to look in on the interviews and sometimes to observe the child in the playrooms that they have in the building. They also, importantly, have police crisis intervention specialists there to provide comfort and support to the victims. Other rooms in the building include three quiet rooms, a kitchen, conference and training rooms, an evidence processing room, and much more.

It was a great opportunity for me to be able to get a tour of the center. And, I am so grateful that we have place like this for victims. They all have gone through something horrible if they are there, so to have a place that is meant for comfort is nice for them. At the end, I just want to put two statistics. Sexual assault affects 1 out of 6 American women! And, a report of child abuse is made every ten seconds!

Summer Lovin'!

My favorite time of the year in Arizona is summer!  All my friends and family tell me this is crazy. I have lived in Arizona my whole life and everyone I know hates summer here but I love 110-degree weather, (125 degree can be a bit too much).  I hate cold weather and I would take the 125 over negative degree any day.   I also love the summer activities especially swimming and canoeing.  I hate skiing, snowboarding, and anything involving snow!  I do not think I could ever leave Arizona because I love the weather so much.

Detective Requests

Hey!

So in my previous post, I mentioned that sometimes detectives will ask us for certain things, and that is why we create program B. They will usually send our unit an email with a request. Most of the times they are looking to see if the offender they have in custody committed any other crimes or they want to know when the most likely time and the mostly like place a perpetrator they are trying to arrest will be. So, they will ask us to look in our program B to see if we have any crimes that match their request.

A request can include many things. If we are looking to see if the person they have in custody has committed any other crimes, the request will usually ask us if we have any reports that occurred on certain dates and the M.O. might include something very specific. So, for example, let’s say a detective wants to know if there were any reports from June of 2008 until October of 2010 that were sex assaults where the man was wearing a mask. (By the way, I have never been asked to look for this certain crime; I just made it up.) Well, we would go into program B and narrow down our files by the date and crime type. Then we would look in our synopses for the word ‘mask’. If we found a match/matches to the request, we would send them to the detective.

Another possible request from a detective might include a detective asking when and where a certain crime has occurred the most, so they can try to catch the offender. For example, a detective asks us to see when and where vehicles are being graffitied at supermarkets (i.e. not home garages). So we say we see this crime occurring mostly on Thursdays and Fridays from 6:00pm to 8:00pm at these certain locations. (Again, I made this request up.) Then the detective will try to send officers out there to catch the perpetrators.

I love when detectives send us requests because it gives me a chance to track patterns in crime. So, I get to actually use the data I enter in program B most of my days.

A and B

Hi all,

So, in one of my previous posts, I mentioned a mysterious computer program. Entering data is my day to day job at the office. I am going to try to explain what this program is and what I do without getting into specifics.

Well, as most of you, I am sure know, police officers get a call that comes to their car computers of a crime or some emergency that is in process or has already occurred (I will talk more about this in a later post). After they leave the scene, they write up a report that goes into a computer program, let’s call it program A. Well, my job is to transfer the information from program A to the crime analysts program, program B. As crime analysts, we look for certain information in the reports from program A that police officers write up and we ignore other things they have in program A. Well, I dissect this information and highlight the things we look for, so when a detective asks us for certain information, it is easily ready for us in program B.

Vacation

My family and I have taken three cross-country road trips. I go with my grandmother, mother, sister, and cousin.  Our first road trip was when seven and we visited the northern states.  Our second trip was when I was ten.  This time we traveled through the southern states.  Our third and last trip was up the west coast and into Canada.  I don’t remember the first trip as well because I was a little girl, but I do remember seeing Mount Rushmore.  That was cool!  My favorite place from the third trip was Portland.  I loved the culture and environment there.  But, my favorite trip was the second one.  I loved visiting Louisiana, Georgia, and Alabama. I loved the botanical gardens in Oklahoma City and the exciting canal cruise in Bricktown.   I hope to recreate this trip one day. 

Budget Cuts

I thought for this post I would talk a little more about my office.   As you know, I work in the Crime Analysis Unit in the SPD.  I have three direct bosses.  However, my one boss Mike teaches me most of what I learn.  Before I started my internship, there were two other full time employees.  However, they both were offered higher paying jobs and left the Unit. Therefore, the CAU is shorthanded.  Because of this, they needed interns.  They budget cuts have effected their Unit because SPD would rather cut those positions that do not have employees than fire actual people in a different position. This does make sense; however, it has been hard on the CAU.

Because the CAU is short-staffed, they have hired two other interns besides me. In addition, we have a regular volunteer that helps get things done. The volunteer and interns often help enter crime data because without us Mike would be doing it on his own.  It is a lot of data! Moreover, on a daily basis this is my routine job. However, I do get to do other tasks that I will talk about throughout my other posts.

Getting A Little Personal

So, a lot of you have asked about the polygraph. I thought I would share some more details about it. Before getting the internship, I had to fill out a background packet. It was about 60 pages! It asked for all my previous addresses, all my schooling, and every personal question imaginable. My first meeting I met with a police officer who went through page by page and question by question of the background packet I filled out. He asked all the questions, so I could answer them face-to-face. That took about an hour and a half. Then I made another appointment to meet with a polygraph administrator, so I could take the polygraph test. The police officer told me to dress casually for that. He also advised me not to look up anything about polygraphs on the internet as they can lead you to getting extra nervous on test day. The internet can also “teach you tricks” on how to “pass” the test, and they end up just hurting you come test day. So, I stayed away from the internet.

The day for the test came, and I arrived in jeans and a t-shirt, and the administrator met me in the lobby and took me to a small room. He had my background packet and a desk and chair for him. And, I sat in a chair with wires hanging from it. He leafed through my packet and again asked me some questions. I am not sure why he asked those specific questions though. Then he put those finger clamps on my index fingers, there was a wire wrapped around my torso and I had something monitoring my heart. I can not remember if I had anything else attached to me, but I think that was it.

First, he gave me a test to see how I lied. I already knew I am a terrible liar and the test proved that. For the test, he gave me a stack of cards. I picked the four (the suit did not matter). He asked if I had every number, and I was to say no to each number, even the card I had. At the end, he said, “Alright give me the four. Your insides went crazy when you lied.” I thought that was funny.

Anyway, next came the real test. He asked the same series of questions four times in a different order each time and told me not to move. The questions were: are the lights on in this room, have you ever used illegal drugs, have you ever betrayed a loved one. I do not remember the rest, but there were only about three more questions. It was hard not to move when you are so nervous, but I obviously did well enough to get the internship.

Someone asked how effective did I think the polygraph test was. I did not know exactly. There are differing opinions on that. It measures your pulse and heart rate and those speed up when you are lying, so maybe if you were a good liar, it would be easier for you to pass it. However, I am not sure because it measures your insides and not your facial expressions.

I am officially an intern! (Yay!)

Hey guys! It's Alex! So I'm really sorry, but I am just going to forewarn you that in this post I will have to be very nondescript. Anyway here it is:

My second day "on the job" I was introduced to a new case. I had heard about it on the news previously, so I knew what it was. My boss wanted me to scan the case files and then save them into dated folders on my computer. I worked fast, and so for a week I scanned many, many case files. Some may call that grunt work, but I was introduced to new and interesting cases, and I actually found it rather fascinating.

After I finished the scanning, my boss introduced me to a new computer program. I was to enter data into the program. I was excited because this was a program that crime analysts use daily. In fact, he enters cases into the program all the time. So, he went step by step explaining how the program works and how to enter the cases properly. I pretty much do this everyday now and I really do think it is interesting. I read different cases everyday and learn new things all the time.

Until next time...

My first days...

Hi. My name is Alexandra (Alex) Pappas and I am interning at the Scottsdale Police Department in the Crime Analyst Unit. I thought my first post should just be an introduction to what I do there and what my first days were like. While thinking about what I would write on here, I got a little worried because I can not share as much as I would like. A lot of what I do is confidential, but I will try to make sure I am as clear as possible when I describe what I do in nondescript terms. (Haha!) 

Before I got the internship, I had to take a polygraph test. The setup was pretty much like what you see in movies only not as scary. There wasn't a two sided mirror or a ton of people watching me; honestly I do not think I am interesting enough to garner that attention. Don't get me wrong, I was nervous and my hands were sweaty and those things they put on your fingers do feel really, really heavy in the moment. But, I actually thought the whole process was rather interesting. 

Anyway, my first day was June 21, 2011. The first day I went through the normal steps. I got a tour of the building. My boss showed me a little what he does and what I would be learning to do.  I ran errands and it was all surprisingly fun! I actually had a great day. It was really interesting learning what crime analysts do. And for those of you who don't know what they do; this is it. They find patterns and trends in crime. They make maps for police and detectives to show when and where the offender will be next. They also answer civilian reports about crime in their neighborhood. And even though, crime analysts do much more than just that, for now that is all I will share.