How to Get Free Crime Mapping for your Community
SpotCrime always maps for free - meaning we don’t charge the police agency (we have no interest in selling any services to your police agency) and we do not charge the public. We have a news model and, like any news organization, use advertising. Our diabolical world domination goal is to get relevant, useful, timely crime information to everyone on the planet.
But, not everyone likes our approach to mapping. We do have a simpler version of our crime map, MyLocalCrime.com, but that still may not be the best solution for everyone. The best thing about the available technology in mapping is that it’s relatively inexpensive to map crime and there are many companies providing crime maps. The problem is that not all departments make public crime data fully and easily accessible to the public.
We’ve noticed that when a city or county makes their data available freely to everyone, without restrictions and in a table format -- similar to DC, San Francisco, Dallas and most recently Chicago -- many professional and news oriented crime mapping companies map the data for free. This gives the public a tremendous choice in how to consume and view crime data. It also gives a break to a city's and police department's pocketbook.
So, wondering the best way to get free crime mapping for your community? Ask your city to make the crime data fully public and it is likely your community will get many outlets for viewing crime information. SpotCrime will be one of them. And, it is likely that a company (or person) may come up with something more interesting to look at than just a crime map. Hopefully they'll come up with a full-proof way to predict and stop crime before it even happens.
But, not everyone likes our approach to mapping. We do have a simpler version of our crime map, MyLocalCrime.com, but that still may not be the best solution for everyone. The best thing about the available technology in mapping is that it’s relatively inexpensive to map crime and there are many companies providing crime maps. The problem is that not all departments make public crime data fully and easily accessible to the public.
We’ve noticed that when a city or county makes their data available freely to everyone, without restrictions and in a table format -- similar to DC, San Francisco, Dallas and most recently Chicago -- many professional and news oriented crime mapping companies map the data for free. This gives the public a tremendous choice in how to consume and view crime data. It also gives a break to a city's and police department's pocketbook.
So, wondering the best way to get free crime mapping for your community? Ask your city to make the crime data fully public and it is likely your community will get many outlets for viewing crime information. SpotCrime will be one of them. And, it is likely that a company (or person) may come up with something more interesting to look at than just a crime map. Hopefully they'll come up with a full-proof way to predict and stop crime before it even happens.
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