One Million Strong. Thank You!

We’ve hit a new milestone after 6 years at this crime mapping business.

We had over 1 million unique visitors to SpotCrime websites last month! One million visitors strong to a more informed and safer community. Thank you!

This is another notch of achievement added to our mission of keeping the public informed with timely, relevant, informative, and useful crime information. We believe this number to be larger than all the other crime mapping companies combined, and note - we have never charged a police agency a penny.

We’d like to thank some agencies for recently having the courage to move to an open data format for crime data. Being fully open with the public is a big step, and recent agencies that deserve attention are:

Salt Lake City. Based on experience, we never thought any agency in Utah would be open with their crime data. Thanks for bucking the trend, Salt Lake!

Alameda County, CA. The Sheriff’s office recently moved from a proprietary to open display of crime data. Their new system allows and encourages the data to be shared and used by anyone. Kudos Alameda County!

Bexar County, TX. Bexar County joined it’s county seat, San Antonio, and began publishing their crime data. Now residents in the police jurisdictions of Bexar County and San Antonio can enjoy consuming and sharing crime information together. Way to go Bexar County!

We’d also like to give a special shout out to New York City. Recent legislation indicates that the only large city left in the US to make any data available to its public may soon start doing just that! Let’s hope the legislation encourages open data and the NYPD does not create a convoluted system that restricts access and sharing.

At the other end of the open data spectrum, you’ll find Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Metro Police Department recently rolled back their open system in favor of a proprietary system that specifically restricts you from copying down and sharing the data.

If you've been to Vegas, thought about going to Vegas, watched a movie set in Vegas, or live in Vegas, please consider reaching out to Sheriff Gillespie (email: sheriff@lvmpd.com) and asking why crime data is now restricted.

Many police departments across the US are announcing partnerships with crime mapping companies. Typically, these crime mapping companies add some type of restrictions that prevent the public from sharing the information with their neighbors openly. We believe crime mapping is good, but open data is better.

We see a lot of crime information here at SpotCrime. From prowlers to shoplifting to car thefts to burglaries to bar fights to sexual assaults to brutal murders. Why would any police agency want to limit how this information is shared?

Please ask your police department to have the courage to make this data fully open without restrictions. And ask them to trust the public to use this data for positive results.

Thanks for subscribing to SpotCrime. We appreciate your support and interest in public crime data!

Sincerely,


Colin Drane
Founder
619.663.7768
feedback@SpotCrime.com

Comments

MPC said…
Wow. In hyper local, that's like the sound barrier.

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