NCJ Number
121089
Date Published
1989
Length
10 pages
Annotation
Crack cocaine has led to violence, fear, death, and destruction in large cities and in many suburban and rural areas in the United States.
Abstract
Many police departments trying to cope with victims and fear feel under siege trying to protect their communities. There is tremendous pressure on police to "do something". Police want and communities need thoughtful, creative approaches that make the best use of resources available. One of the key obstacles in drug control, however, is obtaining intelligence about drug use information that can measure interventions and seizures. A tool for measuring drug use is the Drug Use Forecasting (DUF) program, which uses urinalysis of arrestees to measure drug trends and patterns. DUF data can also serve as a "leading indicator" of changes in crime rates and other drug-related community problems. Another program called Drug Market Analysis computerizes all information about drug trafficking to track the locations of crack hot spots and drug markets throughout a city or metro area. With this program, police departments will know very quickly when and where a new drug problem emerges.