SALINAS - The Salinas Police Department is taking a page from Santa Cruz to fight crime.
The department is turning to predictive policing to fight gang violence.
Gang violence is all too familiar in the city.
That's why Salinas is looking at an alternative to hiring more officers to keep the bad guys off the streets, called "predictive policing."
For $25,000 a year, Salinas Police will closely track violent crimes.
"In a perfect world, we would actually have enough officers to put out in those areas to see if it's going to make a difference, but he way that Santa Cruz and Los Angeles have done it is they've used a little bit of supplementary patrol but really they're just using the resources that they have," said Cassie McSorley, deputy chief of the Salinas Police Department.
Officers plan on using a system modeled by one used to predict earthquakes.
The system allows officers to look at historical crime data, as far back as 10 to 20 years.
"We're hopeful," McSorley said. "The way we envision it is we have certain areas throughout the town based on the data and the daily uploads and that when officers have free time they're directed to spend time doing police work."
Salinas Police are setting up the new system in the next couple of months.
As for results, the department should see how it's doing in about six months to a year.
