Mapping Crime with Brotherly Love

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Since we've been mapping crime data in Philadelphia, we've decided to enter a submission into the OpenDataPhilly Visualization contest.

Philly has been one of the most progressive cities in terms of open crime data. They've published an open crime data feed since the beginning.

The maps we submitted to the visualization contest include SpotCrime.com and our daily and weekly email alerts. Both maps use Google to plot Philly crime data that's available at the OpenDataPhilly.org website. We've been using Google maps since our conception.

In addition to our web and email, we also have apps for Android, iPhone, and Amazon Fire. And, we have SpotCrime.info (no ads) and MyLocalCrime (different colors and icons).

As you may know, the SpotCrime site is interactive. You can search by address, date range, keyword, date, and/or crime type on our Philly SpotCrime map. Learn more about searching by date range here. Clicking on each icon brings up and information bubble where you can learn more about each incident.


Our emailed alerts are static Google maps. We deliver two types of emails - daily and weekly. You can find more information about each alert below.

When we submit SpotCrime to these types of contests, we never expect to get an award on appearance. There's nothing too special about a Google map with icons. However, we hope to get recognition for our reach.

SpotCrime is the most visited crime mapping site in the US. SimilarWeb.com analytic show that we're bigger than the other three major crime mapping sites combined. We send over just over 9 million email alerts on a monthly basis. In Philadelphia, we send out over 90,000 alerts a month!

Our email alerts are shared highly in community watch efforts, so one email is sometimes forwarded on to entire blocks and neighborhoods. We don't have a local media partner in Philly, however in cities like Austin where our widgets are displayed on KEYE, we estimate we more than double our reach in the area!

Have suggestions on how we can make our alerts or website better? We'd love to hear from you. Not seeing crime data in your area? Let us know! Stay aware, stay safe!

Daily Alerts
The daily alerts include a map of crime within a specified radius with a crime list located below the map. Each incident listed has a link that leads to more details on the crime. You can view this specific alert as a webpage here.

Weekly Alerts
Our weekly alerts are delivered each Sunday and include a static map of the 5 closest crimes for the past week. We also include a bar graph of the numbers of crimes each day over the past two weeks and a pie graph comparing crime types over the past two weeks.
You can view this specific weekly alert as as a webpage here.





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