Hot spots policing involves the targeted deployment of police patrols to areas where high levels of crime have previously been observed. For hot spots policing to be effective, it requires analysis of crime data to identify the specific locations where crime is concentrated and the creation of suitable patrol routes. The creation of hot spots policing patrol routes is a manual task that police officers perform, requiring skills and knowledge about hot spots policing and crime pattern analysis for the patrols to be effective in reducing crime. These requirements can limit the use of hot spots policing where these skills and knowledge are not available, and where they are available, the creation of patrol routes can be a time-consuming task. In this paper, we introduce two computational route generation heuristics that automate the creation of hot spots policing patrol routes. Both approaches identify the specific locations where crime concentrates and then use different methods to create the patrol routes. We compare the performance of each approach using metrics associated with effective patrol route creation and through visual inspection. We conclude that the heuristics we introduce provide an accurate means for creating hot spots policing patrol routes, which can support greater and improved use of hot spot policing as an effective type of intervention for decreasing crime.