Members of the UC team, from the school's Center for Criminal Justice Research, already have started their first step - observing in Evanston, Over-the-Rhine, Price Hill, Avondale and Fairview Heights.

The neighborhoods were picked from the Cincinnati Police Department's larger list of problem areas, chosen in part based on the number of calls for service and violent crimes.

"I hope we learn that there's a science to long-term crime prevention," said Councilman David Pepper, chairman of Cincinnati City Council's Law and Public Safety Committee.

Pepper worked with the professors and police to develop the plan. "We need to deal with safety as intelligently as we can."

The UC team - called the Ohio Service for Crime Opportunity Reduction - is the same group that helped city police and the university work together to stop the annual off-campus Cinco de Stratford parties during which revelers turned over cars and set fires in 2002 and 2003.

After the school and police officers knocked on doors in the neighborhood explaining that expulsion and loss of financial aid could result from a rioting arrest, the party did not happen this year.

The program is funded by the Ohio Office of Criminal Justice Services.

The group's mission, according to its Web site, is based on the belief that crime is concentrated "where physical and social environments create enduring crime opportunities," and that changing the environments can eliminate the opportunities and reduce crime.

Pepper said the group would finish its work - after the observation, it'll also interview officers and residents as well as analyze crime data provided by the police - by June, ending with a list of suggested changes. The changes, he said, won't just be for police to make - they could also involve changing traffic patterns and getting landlords to clean up blighted properties.

"Maybe it's cameras, maybe it's traffic patterns, maybe it's lighting," Pepper said. "It's going to be a deeper analysis to fighting crime."

The study will be talked about at Thursday's 7 p.m. neighborhood safety summit at Elder High School in West Price Hill, which the researchers will attend. Chief Tom Streicher and his district captains have been briefed on the study and are on board with it, Pepper said, as is the Community Police Partnering Center, established as a result of the Collaborative Agreement that ended a racial profiling lawsuit against the city filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Cincinnati Black United Front.

"There's something about a location that makes it more prevalent for crime than somewhere else," Pepper said. "We need to figure out what that is and try to eliminate it."

E-mail jprendergast@enquirer.com