The questions come flying from a tribunal of department leaders - amplified with maps and bar charts blown up on video screens. Get on it. Punches have been thrown. Careers are launched - or squashed. At the same time, the department evaluates each commander by charting sick time, auto accidents, overtime pay and 911 response times in each precinct.
Persistent problems can get a commander transferred.
But Compstat meetings aren't just management tools. They're brainstorming sessions at which crime-fighting ideas are exchanged, picked apart, retooled. It's how the police eventually caught the Crown Heights rapist. For more than a year, a man would vault up the fire escapes of Brooklyn apartment houses, climb through windows, steal the contents, and sometimes rape the female tenants. The hunt for the rapist was discussed at Compstat meetings, and a battle plan was forged.