Scott Harris, Freelance WriterFinding Patterns in the ChatterSocial media is ubiquitous and voluminous. A new tool can help police departments cut through the white noise to find localized information on crimes, including those that have not yet been committed.The tool is Geofeedia, created by a Chicago-based tech firm of the same name, and it doesn’t take a social media whiz to use. “You don’t need to know how Instagram works to use Geofeedia,” said Phil Harris, the company’s co-founder and chief executive officer. “We wanted to set it up so that a middle school student could jump on and use it.”2Created in 2007, but more recently rolled out for the law enforcement community, Geofeedia is a cloud-based social media management platform that allows users to monitor Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Picasa, and a host of other social media tools for specific keywords and hashtags. Geofeedia takes it to another level by allowing users to easily target those searches within a specified geographic area. This allows law enforcement professionals to spot trends in social chatter inside a given region to help learn more about recent or potentially forthcoming criminal activity.“We help groups filter those networks by physical location and by keywords,” Harris said. “It can help public safety professionals across the spectrum, from gang activity to homicide to Internet crimes.”3The Los Angeles County, California, Sheriff’s Department uses Geofeedia, according to Harris, to start gathering data as soon as a 9-1-1 call arrives on a violent crime like a shooting. “In 53 percent of instances, someone in that location has mentioned the word ‘gun,’” Harris said. “This kind of intelligence is amazing… It’s very rich but it’s also very narrowed. We’re helping to solve crimes.”4With about 300 customers in the law enforcement space, Geofeedia, which sells its service as an annual subscription, is expanding its presence as a public safety tool. Along with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, the Chicago Police Department is also a prominent customer.“Anyone with a smart phone is a reporter,” Harris said. “You eliminate the noise and find out where things happen and where they’re going to happen.”5Filtering out that unnecessary chatter, Harris said, presented a “huge technology challenge.” But, when it came to creating an actual tool for law enforcement customers, making it accessible was a priority, just as much for those who had never even opened a Facebook account as those already immersed in the social media arena. Using police officers with less experience with social media as members of its development team, Geofeedia leadership came out with something that is simple for anyone to use. “We recognized early on that we had to make it remarkably easy to use,” Harris said. “Within 15–20 minutes, you can jump on and begin using it.”6 Geofeedia also hosts free webinars to demonstrate the product and its applications.