Final answer:
In responding to crimes in progress, police consider the nature of the crime, potential harm, and officer safety, using tools ranging from witness descriptions to geographic profiling and advanced GIS for hotspot analysis.
Step-by-step explanation:
When police officers respond to crimes in progress, several criteria must be considered to determine how to respond appropriately. These criteria include the nature and severity of the crime, the potential for violence or harm to the community, and the safety of officers and bystanders. Additionally, officers utilize various tools such as K9 units, witness descriptions, and geographic profiling to pinpoint the location and identity of the suspect more effectively.Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are increasingly used in criminology for hotspot analysis, where crimes are mapped, and patterns are identified to help predict future occurrences. This technique employs spatial principles like distance decay, which suggests that criminals often commit crimes closer to their homes, with certain exceptions for serial criminals. Profiling and analysis can be enhanced by advanced methods such as Rossmo's Formula.
Considering the unpredictability and variation among individual criminals and crime sprees, law enforcement must rely on both technological resources and their judgment based on experience and observations. In some cases, this means making informed decisions, even when only uncertain witness information is available.