hi there casey. reporter: we re talking about no crystal balls to do this instead it s crunching numbers. lapd says it s getting closer to predicting crime which means in theory they would be able to prevent it before it even happens. los angeles, home to some 4 million people spread across 469 square miles. finding effective ways to police the nation s second largest city. information can predict the future. it can lead to make good decisions. all we re doing is moving that to police work. welcome to the comstat unit a place where they study years of previous crime data and plug it into computers. we have the ability to look into database and see all the crime that has occurred and use that data to forecast where and