SANTA CRUZ, Calif., Feb. 18, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — Santa Cruz, California-based predictive policing start-up PredPol has landed a new leader to guide its rapid growth by adding Silicon Valley veteran Larry Samuels as CEO. Samuels has held several senior executive positions in the high technology industry, including President & CEO of Communities.com, Executive Vice President/Chief Operating Officer of Creative Labs, and Vice President of Worldwide Strategic Markets and General Manager (U.S.) for Atari. He has led or been a management participant in three successful public offerings. PredPol, the industry leader in predictive policing software, also added former Facebook Chief Privacy Officer, General Counsel and Head of Global Public Policy Chris Kelly to the Board of Directors.
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140218/PH66436-a)
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140218/PH66436-b)
PredPol's SaaS technology combines proprietary mathematical algorithms, big data, and anthropological research to create a simple and effective tool for law enforcement to predict when and where crime will occur. Field-tested in over two-dozen police agencies, including LAPD, Seattle PD and Atlanta PD, PredPol's technology has recently been expanded to include gun violence prediction technology. The software been featured on major national and international news network and was named by Time Magazine as one of the top inventions of 2011.
The technology was developed over the course of six years by mathematicians and social scientists in collaboration with crime analysts and officers from the Los Angeles and Santa Cruz Police Departments.
Since the original beta research with the Santa Cruz Police Department and Los Angeles Police Department, PredPol has grown to become a market leader in predictive policing technology and deployments with a rapidly growing U.S. based customer list and international deployments in Europe and South America.
"Over the last few years we've worked with PredPol to develop a tool for our line level officers that is easy to use and effective in preventing crime" Santa Cruz Police Deputy Chief Steve Clark said. "They have been very responsive to our feedback and have consistently improved the software to meet our needs."
Cities that have implemented the PredPol tool are seeing results. In Alhambra, California, the department just completed their first year of using the technology. According to Police Chief Mark Yokoyama, they focused on two of most common crimes in Alhambra: car burglaries and auto theft. Car burglaries dropped by 21 percent while auto theft dropped by 8 percent after using the implementing PredPol. These numbers have been reflected by numerous other agencies that have deployed PredPol.
In order to showcase the accuracy and efficacy of the software program, PredPol's software now includes a tool that shows the accuracy of the predictions in real time to the departments; providing a level of transparency and accountability about the efficacy of the software. Departments can look up what predictions were made and whether a crime ended up occurring in the predicted time and location.
As interest in predictive policing grows, new CEO Larry Samuels is focused upon securing the necessary assets and team to continue scaling the company. This will include the hiring of additional engineers, digital marketing specialists and support staff. One of his first hires was public safety industry leader Dan Crawford. Crawford is an executive with over 20 years of experience including roles as CEO or President of multiple companies that service the public safety and criminal justice industry including EPIC Solutions, Printrak (a Motorola Company), VisionAIR, Tiburon and Syscon Justice Systems. At PredPol, Crawford leads the efforts for business development and sales. Crawford provides an experienced public safety software voice to the growing company.
"PredPol highlights what is best about research-based tech companies: brilliant minds that dedicate their research and work towards the public good," CEO Larry Samuels said. "I'm excited to scale PredPol into a multi-service leader of Software as a Service (SaaS) products in the fields of law enforcement and other public service domains."
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