Murders in Baltimore 2009 and SpotCrime's Mission

By protector


The above map was created with the data provided by the Baltimore Crime Blog. To get the map, go to SpotCrime Baltimore, change the date range from 1/1/09 to 12/31/09, and add "murdered" in the keyword search. For this map, we've changed the view type to "terrain". The Baltimore Sun has another version that can be seen here: Link to Baltimore Sun Murder Map

Murders for 2009 in Baltimore is estimated to be above 230.

Compared to New York's murders for 2009 (NYT - 390), Baltimore's per capita murders would have been 15. Conversely, if New York had Baltimore's rate, there would have been 6,225 murders in New York for 2009.

SpotCrime's Mission:

Founded in Baltimore, SpotCrime will continue its effort to help catalog and distribute crime data for public view. It is our contention that technology advancements have made it possible for almost every police agency to make their crime data fully available to the public at minimal cost. By "fully", we mean the data should be timely, available on the internet, and have no access restrictions. In some cases, agencies are contracting with vendors who then retain control of the crime data and then restrict access to the public data. We feel this runs counter to the ideal of government transparency, democracy and trust. Transparency is not a crime map. Transparency is unadulterated access to the data.

In keeping with our perspective, we do not charge any police department for our mapping, and we do not require or ask for exclusive access to the data. Additionally, we republish the data in almost every format available for public consumption (email, SMS, Twitter, Gooogle Maps, RSS, Facebook, Javascript widgets and an iPhone app). We hope that this approach is the reason why SpotCrime has over 100 media outlets using our maps and is the most visited crime mapping website in the U.S.

We hope this approach to information distribution helps empower societies to make meaningful impacts in reducing crime.

Colin Drane
Founder

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