NYPD Crime Map. The Good, The Bad and The Absurd.
Welcome to the party NYC. You are last city of your size in the US to openly release your crime data.
The new map announced by the NYPD today can be seen here:
http://maps.nyc.gov/crime/
Unlike most large cities in the US, it looks like the NYPD has elected not to reveal the raw crime data, but has decided to represent the data in a very clean, and absurdly difficult to navigate map.
For some, not clearly, explained reason, crime dates are not provided. You are able to get a map of crimes in a particular month. But the exact date and time are hidden.
Crime is mapped to the intersection on approximate block level. This implementation is consistent with most police agencies.
The NYPD gets high marks for not using a vendor to regulate access to the data and prevent the public or the press from publishing or sharing the information. Some cities in the US have taken down their public unrestricted feeds and replaced them with vendors that limit access and curtail tabulation of the entire data sets (Las Vegas and Charlotte). Even though a vendor is not being used, the NYPD still does a good job of limiting full access to the data set. As mentioned, there does not seem to be a complete table of all precinct data. This is curious because the amount of technology needed to display a table of data is significantly less than mapping the data. It would seem almost intentionally omitted. Second, crime data is provided in month chunks and delayed on average a month and a half behind. No specific dates are provided and no corresponding incident numbers are given. Notice a robbery in the month of October around the corner from you. You have no idea if this happened in the beginning of the month, the end or the middle. See three robberies in a row. Did they all happen on the same day or throughout the month? No matter, the level of difficulty of cross referencing them with the department should prove to be a Kafkaesque exercise for both the public and the police.
From our view, you have a map that likely meets the legal limit of the new law with limited use to the public. It also meets our definition of a Rube Goldberg Crime Map.
See the robbery in the map above. How does anyone share this robbery with anyone else without taking a screenshot. What is the intended purpose of omitting the date and the incident number?
We've mapped this robbery on SpotCrime and guessed at an Oct 1 date. Here's the link: http://bit.ly/1bqW5BG
This map is better than nothing. Just not much better than nothing.
Our recommendation is to just publish the data in table form, so that the public and the press can independently analyze and tabulate the data.
Colin Drane
Founder
SpotCrime.com
The new map announced by the NYPD today can be seen here:
http://maps.nyc.gov/crime/
For some, not clearly, explained reason, crime dates are not provided. You are able to get a map of crimes in a particular month. But the exact date and time are hidden.
Crime is mapped to the intersection on approximate block level. This implementation is consistent with most police agencies.
The NYPD gets high marks for not using a vendor to regulate access to the data and prevent the public or the press from publishing or sharing the information. Some cities in the US have taken down their public unrestricted feeds and replaced them with vendors that limit access and curtail tabulation of the entire data sets (Las Vegas and Charlotte). Even though a vendor is not being used, the NYPD still does a good job of limiting full access to the data set. As mentioned, there does not seem to be a complete table of all precinct data. This is curious because the amount of technology needed to display a table of data is significantly less than mapping the data. It would seem almost intentionally omitted. Second, crime data is provided in month chunks and delayed on average a month and a half behind. No specific dates are provided and no corresponding incident numbers are given. Notice a robbery in the month of October around the corner from you. You have no idea if this happened in the beginning of the month, the end or the middle. See three robberies in a row. Did they all happen on the same day or throughout the month? No matter, the level of difficulty of cross referencing them with the department should prove to be a Kafkaesque exercise for both the public and the police.
From our view, you have a map that likely meets the legal limit of the new law with limited use to the public. It also meets our definition of a Rube Goldberg Crime Map.
See the robbery in the map above. How does anyone share this robbery with anyone else without taking a screenshot. What is the intended purpose of omitting the date and the incident number?
We've mapped this robbery on SpotCrime and guessed at an Oct 1 date. Here's the link: http://bit.ly/1bqW5BG
This map is better than nothing. Just not much better than nothing.
Our recommendation is to just publish the data in table form, so that the public and the press can independently analyze and tabulate the data.
Colin Drane
Founder
SpotCrime.com
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