>>>>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/us/16police.html
>>>
>>>It's a little short on success statistics, isn't it? It's easy to point to a success, like the thwarted car burglary, and leave people with the impression that it's successful overall.
>>
>> Oh poo! A few years ago I wrote an appl similar to the one used. I finally abandon'ed it from lack of interest.
>
>Something similar to trying to predict crimes before they happen? That must have been interesting. Feel free to elaborate.

Map coordinates are numbers. Humans are creatures of habit. Habits are patterns. Predictions based on numeric patterns are handled well by neural networks.