The Billings Police Department has started using computers in an attempt to forecast crime patterns and make it easier to thwart criminals, especially burglaries that police have found tend to happen in patterns.

"Our manpower probably won't increase in the near future," Lt. Kevin Iffland said. "We can compensate with analytics software to best allocate our resources by looking at historical data and trends to identify criminal hot spots to prevent crime."

He said police face the responsibility of improving public safety even with fewer resources.

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Source: Great Falls Tribune