13-15 2007 MAPPING CRIME

MAPPING CRIME
Police around the world are using technology to anticipate where the bad guys will strike next.
     A decade ago, Bogotá had a bad name. Violent crime was out of control. Rather than buying more guns or patrol cars, Bogotá’s cops went for something bigger: science. The city began superimposing millions of police bulletins onto digitized city maps to pinpoint which bandits were at work and where, down to the doorstep. By displaying crime data on easy-to read city maps, police were able to target urban hot spots and optimize street patrols. Murders have since fallen by a third in the past five years and the police’s approval rating has soared. “Crime mapping has made us faster and more efficient,” says Gen. Luiz Alberto Gómez, head of Bogotá Metropolitan Police.“We are serving the neighborhoods better.”
     So are police in several countries, as the virtues of high-tech crime fighting become clear.
Spiking crime rates everywhere from Colombia to Brazil, India to South Africa, have encouraged more and more cops to draw on technology to anticipate where criminals are going to strike next, so their thinly stretched forces can be at the right place at the right time. “Without computerized crime analysis,” says Alexandre Peres, a government security strategist in Pernambuco, northeast Brazil, “policing is guesswork.”
     The trend goes back to the early 1990s, when New York City police started using CompStat, a computer-driven mapping tool. In the next decade or so, violent crimes tumbled by 70 percent; the city now ranks 222nd in the country in crime. Major cities across the United States and Europe followed New York’s lead, and now the rest of the world is catching on.

(Newsweek, April 24, 2006)

QUESTÃO 13
De acordo com o texto,
a) há uma década, o índice de violência na Colômbia era mais elevado do que no Brasil.
b) os policiais de Bogotá foram equipados com mais armas e carros de patrulha.
c) através de mapas computadorizados, a polícia de Bogotá incrementou o combate ao crime.
d) o governo colombiano resolveu aumentar a frota policial na última década.
e) o número de assassinos presos em Bogotá baixou para 30 ao ano, nos últimos 5 anos.

QUESTÃO 14
Segundo o texto,
a) o Gen. Luiz Alberto Gómez está se empenhando em servir seus vizinhos cada vez melhor.
b) crimes de espionagem estão cada vez mais comuns na América do Sul, Índia e África do Sul.
c) a polícia de Nova Iorque inspirou-se no sistema de mapeamento de crimes colombiano no início dos anos 90.
d) o índice de crimes em Nova York aumentou 70% na última década.
e) Alexandre Peres afirma que, sem a análise computadorizada de crimes, o trabalho da polícia torna-se mera adivinhação.

QUESTÃO 15
O advérbio “rather than” em “Rather than simply buying more guns and patrol cars, ...”, no 1° parágrafo, poderia ser substituído, sem prejuízo de significado, por
a) instead of.
b) in addition to.
c) as long as.
d) now that.
e) as far as.