FEATURE Hamilton’s Evidence-Based Deployment ModelBy Superintendent Robin Abbott and Dr. Samantha Henderson, Hamilton Police Service The City of Hamilton is culturally and economically diverse, and like many large cities, faces its share of problems related to the intersection of homelessness, mental health, drug addiction and social disorder. Though the issues are not limited to the area, nowhere are they more apparent than in the city’s downtown core. Hamilton’s downtown contains a disproportionate concentration of crime and has been identified in multiple surveys as a place where business owners, employees and residents feel unsafe. Further adding complexity to the situation is that these persistent safety issues exist in a policing landscape where the community expects an obvious return on investment for increasingly large police budgets, and services must “do more with less.” In early 2023, downtown businesses brought their concerns about safety in the core to their police service board, requesting increased police presence and a return to officers walking the downtown beats. Recognizing that “policing as usual” was insufficient to meet these requests, the Hamilton Police Service (HPS) was faced with the challenge – and opportunity – of developing a strategy to effectively and efficiently reduce crime and social disorder downtown. After assessing research on evidence-based practices that have worked in similar circumstances elsewhere, and conducting analyses of local data and crime dynamics, HPS established the Core Patrol pilot project team, with a mandate to conduct foot patrols and engage with the community, while providing a visible presence within the downtown core boundaries. Initial patrols in the pilot project began in June 2023 with two officers assigned to walk the Core Patrol area, Monday through Friday, during standard business hours. Four adjustments were made over the following 26 months, either by modifying coverage hours, adjusting coverage locations or adding additional officers to the team. Though initially intended to last only a few months, the strategy’s success led to its solidification in September 2025, when the board approved the hiring of eight officers to permanently staff the unit. A RESEARCH-INFORMED STRATEGY When initially developing the program, it was determined that several things could increase our likelihood of success, the most important of which was leveraging research and data. Evidence was assessed about what worked elsewhere for similar types of problems. A review of academic literature indicated that a combination of hot spots policing and foot patrol would be an appropriate response. Hot spots policing via focused patrols of high crime areas is a well-researched approach whose implementation has consistently been linked with reductions in crime. Hot spots policing takes advantage of the fact that crime concentrates in a non-random way – there are high crime places and high crime times.1 It targets limited police resources to the areas with the highest amount of crime, where officers can have the greatest impact. The use of hot spots policing is supported by extensive research findings, including a review of 65 studies conducted across nine countries.2 Further, studies of dis-placement in relation to hot spots policing have found that the approach is more likely to lead to a diffusion of crime prevention benefits to adjacent areas than it is to displace crime to them.3 Heatmap of Occurrence Times with Core Patrol Schedule Overlay Central to the Core Patrol strategy is its emphasis on community engagement and harm reduction. Importantly, the impact of a hot spots policing strategy is tied not just to where officers go, but also to what they do once they get there. Heavy-handed tactics and an exclusive focus on enforcement can lead to negative community perceptions of police.4 In contrast, increasing positive police-community interactions can improve perceptions of procedural justice in high disorder areas and in individuals with negative perceptions of the police.5 The Core Patrol strategy was designed to provide ample time for proactive and positive community engagement, while also allowing for a reactive response to citizen-generated calls for service. The team regularly visits local businesses to engage in meaningful conversations, identify ongoing issues and concerns, and strengthen community relationships in the process. Between January 2024 and August 2025, the team visited 738 unique businesses over 3,900 times. The team reduces harm by only laying open-air drug-use charges when Bill C-5 aggravating factors are present and otherwise referring willing individuals for urgent (within 24 hours) assessment by an addiction worker via a partnership with a local hospital Rapid Access Addiction Medicine Clinic. The team also sits on the Rapid Intervention Support Team (RIST) roundtable to help connect clients in need with the social services that have been arranged to assist them. ADAPTING FOR OUR LOCAL CONTEXT The team combined the research evidence with HPS data and officer knowledge to adjust the strategy to our local context. To support the team’s work, the HPS Crime Information Analysis Unit (CIAU) created a dashboard that can be accessed on mobile data terminals and service-issued cell phones. The dashboard visualizes crime concentrations across the Core Patrol area so that officers can direct their activities to areas where they will have the greatest impact. Team members also wear GPS units while they work, which allows the CIAU to combine officer location information with crime data in the dashboard to highlight high crime areas that have not received the recent presence of an officer. The dashboard and integration of GPS data were possible because HPS planned to use a data-driven approach and to complete a strategy evaluation from the outset. This allowed for a consistent and ongoing data capture of enforcement and community engagement activities throughout the pilot project. It also made it possible to incorporate novel data capture methods, such as the body-worn GPS, which provided the data we needed to conduct an advanced statistical strategy evaluation. Recognizing that HPS’s deployment model would likely need to change, the service took an approach that was agile and adaptable to shifting trends in crime while mindful of required notice for shift changes in the officer collective agreement. The pilot commenced with two officers who were able to achieve high levels of community engagement that resulted in positive community feedback, but their coverage area was too large and coverage hours too limited to result in a measurable reduction in crime. Thus, HPS expanded the pilot project to six officers and adjusted coverage hours so that they better aligned with high crime times. After this adjustment, community engagement was maintained, and officers were able to spend more time on community concerns such as open-air drug use and trespassing. Dashboard Screenshot The positive impact was confirmed through an advanced statistical evaluation,6 which was only possible because high-quality data was captured throughout the project. The evaluation showed that the team reduced work for the frontline, increased engagement with the downtown community, completed a disproportionate level of proactive work and significantly decreased calls for service and crime occurrences in the Core Patrol area. This provided the basis for successfully requesting funding to make the pilot permanent and to increase the number of officers on the Core Patrol team from six to eight. HPS’s success in achieving funding does not mark the end of the data collection and analysis. The service is preparing for changes in 2026 that will impact its Core Patrol deployment strategy. A new, large entertainment venue in Hamilton is expected to draw thousands of additional visitors. This will increase activity downtown, and with increased activity comes the potential for increased crime and calls for service. HPS is analyzing projections for how the venue’s event schedule may impact policing demand and are planning to analyze and incorporate data from each event into deployment plans moving forward. LESSONS LEARNED The experience with this pilot project will inform HPS’s strategy planning and that may be useful for other services. The service increased the likelihood of success by rooting its strategies in practices that have been successful elsewhere and adapting them to a local context. However, ongoing measurement, assessment and adaptation is needed. The project also showed that leveraging HPS’s internal resources by partnering with civilian analysts from the outset of the project, rather than once it was complete, enabled it to be data-driven, to adapt as trends shifted and to conduct a thorough evaluation of the project. Finally, having an evaluation documenting the success of our strategy provided a strong foundation from which to request permanent funding. Robin Abbott is a Superintendent with the Hamilton Police Service whose career has spanned frontline policing, Criminal Investigations, and Public Order and Professional Development. She currently leads the division at the forefront of the city’s most complex social and public safety challenges. Known for her commitment to leadership, team development and service excellence, Abbott has guided initiatives that strengthen community partnerships and enhance frontline policing. Dr. Samantha Henderson holds a PhD in Criminal Justice from the University of Cincinnati, specializing in crime prevention. She has more than a decade of experience working with law enforcement agencies and community groups in cities across the U.S. and Canada. Henderson is currently the Strategic Analyst for the Hamilton Police Service, where she leverages data and research to support law enforcement operations and enhance public safety. 1 Haberman, C. P., & Ratcliffe, J. H. (2015). Testing for temporally differentiated relationships among potentially criminogenic places and census block street robbery counts. Criminology, 53(3), 457-483. doi:10.1111/1745-9125.12076 2 Braga, A.A., Turchan, B., Papachristos, A.V., & Hureau, D.M. (2019). Hot spots policing of small geographic areas effects on crime. Campbell Systematic Reviews, 15(3), e1046. https://doi.org/10.1002/cl2.10463 Guerette, R.T. & Bowers, K.J. (2009). Assessing the extent of crime displacement and diffusion of benefits: A review of situational crime prevention evaluations. Criminology, 47(4), p 1331-1368.; Bowers, K., Johnson, S.D., Guerette, R.T., Summers, L., & Poynton, S. (2011). Spatial displacement and diffusion of benefits among geographically focused policing initiatives: A meta-analytical review. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 7, p 347-374.4 Weisburd, D. (2016). Does hot spots policing inevitably lead to unfair and abusive police practices, or can we maximize both fairness and effectiveness in the new proactive policing? University of Chicago Legal Forum, Vol 16., Article 16. Available at: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol2016/iss1/16 5 Bolaji, Q., & Metcalfe, C. (2024). Exploring the association between levels of police presence, contact, and perceptions of police legitimacy. Crime and Delinquency, Online First Article. https://doi.org/10.1177/00111287231226188 6 Henderson, S. & Farrugia, K. (2025). Core Patrol Pilot Project – Status Update and Evaluation Report. Submitted to Hamilton Police Service Board on September 9th, 2025.