Where Do People Sign up For Crime Alerts in the US... Everywhere.

The map above shows the general location of yesterday's SpotCrime alert subscribers.  SpotCrime is now averaging over 400 subscribers a day for crime alerts, and we've had over 350,000 subscribe.  Each subscriber gets a personalized map and list of crimes in their requested area.  It is unlikely that any crime alert is identical because each alert is centered around the subscriber's requested address.  As you can see from the map, everyone is interested in being informed about crime.   Please encourage your local police department to make their crime data public, and SpotCrime will map the data, and provide alerts for free.   And we will not discourage other companies from mapping crime too.  We want to be part of the solution, but we want no part in monopolizing the data.

Crime maps are good, but they've been around since the 1800's.   We are expecting the next seismic shifts in crime fighting to be two fold.   The first is in advanced computational analysis of crime data used in predictive policing and resource management.   The next stage of putting cops on the dots  - putting cops on future dots.

The second advancement in crime fighting will be in transparency to the public.  An area where SpotCrime participates.  Informing the public as quickly as possible with as much information as possible and the resulting feedback loop should catapult the rate of investigations and hopefully provide material impact in the reduction of crime.    If knowledge is power, mutual trust and openness between the community and the police amplifies that power.   Operating under the premise that there are more good people than bad.  Allow those good people to be informed and share information without restrictions will ultimately help reduce crime.

If your police agency is using a public crime map, please ask if the data is open to be shared by the public and the press.  If there are restrictions on access,  please ask why and what is the public benefit of restricting sharing and access.

If the goal is to inform the public and help solve crimes faster, there seems no reason to slow down sharing and access.   Criminalizing the sharing of public data seems counter to the objective.