Travel-Time Analysis of New York City Police Patrol Cars

Radio-monitored patrol (RMP) cars in the New York City Police Department patrol and respond to calls for service (CFS) throughout the city. The initial phase of an on-going attempt to improve productivity in the department consisted of a comprehensive quantitatively based study of RMP car practices. One aspect focused on the effect on travel times to CFS of alternative RMP patrol and response strategies. The hypercube queueing model, a public domain patrol car allocation model, was used to predict the consequences of these new strategies for particular neighborhoods in Eastern Queens and Lower Manhattan. A somewhat surprising finding from the analysis is that increasing the potential service areas of RMP cars need not result in an increase in travel times.