QlikView used to capture serial killer in Sweden

QlikTech, a leader in Business Discovery – user-driven Business Intelligence (BI), announced that police analysts in Sweden have used QlikView to assist with a high profile murder investigation. QlikView has enabled the Skåne police force (in southern Sweden) to analyze data and reports leading to the capture of a serial killer.

Over a period of seven years, Malmö was a city in fear of a serial killer that fired on residents of foreign origin. Police investigations around the case were extensive and time consuming. After deploying QlikView, police in Skåne worked through half a million interviews in less than a second. Evidence that would have normally taken three police analysts three months to read through was analyzed in three minutes scanning all notifications issued since 1998.

“Speed is of essence in any police investigation,” said Police analyst Berth Simonsson. “QlikView has been a labor-saving tool. Police analysts ask questions and QlikView delivers answers instantly. Rather than going through the reports manually, we have been able to go through lots of information quickly to find the link that otherwise would have been hard to detect.”

The Skåne police are one of the first police forces in the world to use QlikView to help solve crimes. The ability to search through millions of interrogation records in less than a second helped lead to the capture of one of the time most high-profile investigations, the serial killer in Malmö. The police force also took advantage of QlikView when several buses were shot in central Malmö. The collection of evidence and background information was expedited using QlikView. Data showed the shootings would take place in a particular area at a particular time. When the shooting occurred to their calculations, the police could protect them. With QlikView, police in Skåne can conduct this type of forecasts in four seconds instead, a task that previously took four hours.

The police force has built a number of apps using QlikView to analyze communication behaviors, using data from phone masts. Regarding criminal behavior, they track phone call activity before the actual crime is committed and very low shortly after. Skåne police use QlikView to focus on the actual analysis instead of searching for information. By analyzing crime statistics along with lots of other information, such as weather, day of week, and large events, the police have created models to predict crime.

The Skåne police force continues to expand its use QlikView to clearly visualize when and where different types of crimes occur, optimize staffing, increased crime reduction and security for citizens. Skåne is Sweden’s third largest police department with 3500 employees, of which about 2600 are police officers and about 900 are civilian employees. QlikView is used in both the operational and administrative activities. All Skåne police have access to QlikView – uses for the tool vary depending on the type of information needed.

QlikView has helped improve the following aspects of Skåne police work:

• Shortened seek time for entries – from 9 months to 3 min
• 6.7 million krone were moved from administration to law enforcement
• Faster crime forecasts -forecasts can now be made in 4 seconds instead of 4 hours
• 500,000 interrogation scanned in 1 second
• Better cost control
• Easier access to information
• Faster overview image
• Updated Police
• Satisfied staff