After Brussels, Antwerp is the largest city in Belgium with a population of 600.000 inhabitants. The Antwerp area includes one of the largest ports in the world and the highways around the city are among the busiest in Europe. The city has a university, two football arenas, a hall where internationals events are organized and a World Trade Centre of diamonds.
The personnel of the local police force of Antwerp consist of 2200 police officers and 440 civilians. To serve inhabitants, workers and tourists there are units who respond to emergency calls 24-hours-a-day, seven days a week and there are 19 police-offices spread over the area whereof 6 offices are open 24-hours-a-day, seven days a week for the public. To accomplish the goals of community policing the force has invested strongly in neighbourhood policing to reduce nuisance. The neighbourhood police work in partnership with all kinds of external agencies and local communities.
The criminal investigation department focuses on offences which are pointed in the strategic plan ‘Area Safety Plan 2009-2013’. The priorities are drugs, violence against persons, offences against properties (burglary), offenses committed by youngsters and environmental offenses.
The force has invested over the last 4 years in deploying the concept of intelligence led policing on the strategic, tactical and operational level. One of the major investments was the implementation of a data warehouse (Police Management Information System) to support all the decision levels in the organization, implemented using Cognos technology. On the neighbourhood level, a custom .NET application is used for case management, as also for the case management of the investigations department. For strategic crime analysis the force uses SPSS and ORBIS GIS, while operational crime analysis is performed with the assistance of the i2 Analyst Notebook. Also various other systems are used for interoperability with higher levels and for specific services.
intelligence led policing – strategic and tactical intelligence