Sophisticated Cell Tower Analysis Helps Los Angeles Law Enforcement Pinpoint Criminals

Highlights ArcGIS extension specializes in the display of movements and events through time and space.

With GIS and temporal tracking software, LA CLEAR maps cell towers to assimilate and comprehend complex cell datasets.

The district attorney’s office can now demonstrate both time and space for its court presentations.

Catching criminals and enforcing the law can be arduous and time-consuming. It’s a piece-by-piece, evidence-based process. And it doesn’t stop at apprehension. Arming prosecutors with the evidence they need to get a conviction is just as vital.

For years, tracking cell phone usage and location information has helped law enforcement put offenders behind bars by establishing motive, placing suspects at the scene of a crime, reconstructing timelines, and connecting suspects to victims and each other. Unfortunately, the technology used in these types of investigations has been limited. Reconstructing timelines can take investigators many hours. And while hand-drawn link charts and paper maps have helped, they’ve lacked intuitiveness, and connections may be missed. Two-dimensional maps don’t clearly show the necessary relationship between cell towers, call locations, cell phone movement, and criminal activity. Moreover, the lack of a temporal dimension—which tracks movement through time as well as space—limits the effectiveness of the map.

The Los Angeles Regional Criminal Information Clearinghouse (LA CLEAR) has implemented an innovative approach to addressing these challenges. Using a solution based on ArcGIS from Esri Partner Oculus Info Inc. (Toronto, Canada), the agency has rapidly streamlined the mapmaking process for tracking cell activity. It has overcome the time and dimension problem as well—sophisticated 3D maps can show movement and activity over time, whether it’s throughout the course of a day, a week, or an entire month.

LA CLEAR and the Need to Track in Both Time and Space

Based in Los Angeles, LA CLEAR is nationally recognized and modeled after the US government executive branch’s Office of National Drug Control Policy’s High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Intelligence Support Center. LA CLEAR provides strategic investigative research and postseizure analysis, tactical case support analysis, electronic surveillance capabilities with accompanying operational intelligence support, and training and conference opportunities to the more than 184 LA HIDTA-specific agencies and task forces within the four counties of the LA HIDTA.

LA CLEAR is managed by sworn law enforcement executives and staffed by a fully integrated team of nonsworn law enforcement, military, and contract specialists organized into the following component units:

The Intelligence & Deconfliction Watch Center (“war room”)

The Analytical Unit

The Special Operations Support Unit

The Los Angeles HIDTA Training Initiative (hosted by LA CLEAR)

The Information Systems Support Unit

The Administrative Support Services Unit

For years, LA CLEAR analysts have mapped individual crimes, the locations of known criminals and suspects, and related crime activity. This has proved invaluable in assisting law enforcement.

This screen shot shows a shooter's cell phone traveling with an associate's cell phone from the Los Angeles area to Las Vegas and back.