Compstat, OODA Loops and Police Performance Management
* Kevin J. Walsh, Senior Fellow of the Homeland Security Management Institute at Long Island University.
** Vincent E. Henry, Director and Associate Professor at the Homeland Security Management Institute at Long Island University. E-mail: Vincent.Henry{at}liu.edu
Kevin Walsh is a Senior Fellow of the Homeland Security Management Institute at Long Island University. Prior to this, he achieved the rank of Captain during a 25-year career in the NYPD, having conducted numerous assignments in patrol, management analysis and planning, narcotics, internal affairs and training functions. Vincent Henry is Director and Associate Professor at the Homeland Security Management Institute at Long Island University. He was previously at the NYPD, retiring after a 21-year career during which he had intensive involvement in a host of NYPD management initiatives, including the development and implementation of the Compstat process. In this article, Walsh and Henry propose that the OODA (Observe–Orient–Decide–Act) Loop, a model of decision making and organizational learning developed and widely applied in the military context, gives insight into the success of Compstat, a police management system that dramatically increases the speed of dissemination of accurate crime analysis data while promoting improved decentralized decision making and problem solving in order to reduce crime and achieve organizational goals.