SpotCrime - The Public's Crime Map

We find it unfair sometimes to compare cities using the FBI UCR reports because some agencies report on crimes differently . However, LawStreetMedia ranked the top 10 most dangerous cities under 200,000 in population and we thought it would be interesting to see if the cities with higher crime rates were open with their crime data. The FBI reports for 2013 have been released only for January-June 2013, so those are the percentages being used. And the rankings are based on the 2012 FBI crime rate per 100,000 people. In the article, LawStreetMedia noted a few of the agencies were strapped tight with their budget. Which surprises us because a few of those agencies are paying for crime mapping by contracting with proprietary systems like Omega. If all of these police agencies would release the information openly , crime mapping companies including SpotCrime would map the information for free. Out of the list below, only one agency is releasing crime information that can be used an

We’ve got crime coast to coast covered in America (and across the pond, too!). Yes, Canada is in the same America as Boston - the continent of North America that is! We started mapping Nanaimo, a city just west of Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada on Vancouver Island. Open data has picked up in the US, and it’s taking charge in Canada as well. The city, along with other Canadian cities, has crime information on their website. The police are using the crime map they’ve created to open a dialog with residents next week . Head back east into the States to Boston and check Boston open crime data on SpotCrime . Boston recently saw a hike in homicides this January, but as James Allan Fox points out in an article published Boston.com, comparing crime month to month instead of an overall or yearly comparison might paint the wrong picture. He’s dubbed this approach a ‘Chicken Little’ approach when a sudden increase in crime is assumed to signal a trend, when it doesn’t. Fox’s po

We're still hard at work mapping crime in Charlotte, NC . Although our crime data feed was turned off, and then restored at a delayed rate back in August, we are striving to keep our maps up to date for our users in Charlotte by mapping more recent crimes from local media outlets. For example, check out the crime list of recent robberies of fast food joints in Charlotte in the screen shot below. These robberies were recently covered by Charlotte news outlet WCNC . To view the entire crime list, head here . WCNC covered the story because police have reported that there have been four times as many robberies in Charlotte this year than last. The police are urging residents who frequent fast food places to be 'extra vigilant'. Our access to an open crime data feed was shut off when the Charlotte entered a contract with a proprietary vendor. This vendor now receives preferential access to crime data before the public and press. The police department could be '