Lance Eber
Last week I had the pleasure of presenting a check for $2000 and a corporate plaque to Lance Eber of the Merced, California Police Department, the 2023 California Crime and Intelligence Analysis Association (CCIAA) recipient of the Steve Gottlieb/Alpha Group Center Award for Creativity and Excellence. Lance is the sole crime analyst for the Merced, California, Police Department, and he was tasked with the responsibility of pushing out data to satisfy the informational cravings of nearly 100 officers, detectives and administrators on a 24/7/365-day basis. That’s not an easy thing to do when you’re…a party of one…with a limited budget…with limited technological resources…and you work a Monday through Friday 7 AM to 4 PM schedule.
Lance’s solution to the problem led to his development of the “Crime Analysis Data Center.” It was created by using ArcGIS online and its Hub Site feature to host multiple dashboards that provided Daily Incident information along with information related to Gang Members, Cases, and Arrests; Sex Registrants; Detective Assignments; two years of arrests; two years of tickets; annual tickets; annual collisions; tattoo search capabilities and Field Interview information.
As a result of Lance’s creation of the Crime Analysis Data Center, any member of the agency can now access data 24/7/365 from not only their desktop and in-vehicle computers, but from their mobile devices as well.
Given that the Alpha Group Center Award for Creativity and Excellence is meant to honor a CCIAA member who developed a strategy or intervention that either abated a crime problem or, in this case, “enhanced the efficiency or effectiveness of a public safety organization,” and also given that Chief of Police Craig Gundlach’s nomination of Lance substantiates that his creation of the Crime Analysis Data Center has “truly benefitted our department,” both the CCIAA Awards Committee and I congratulate Lance Eber on his achievement and extend to him our best wishes for his continued success! Great job, my friend! 🏆