SpotCrime - The Public's Crime Map

We’re happy to announce the newest addition to the SpotCrime family - SpotSpec.com ! SpotSpec, powered by SpotCrime , takes an in-depth look at crime around specific places and generates crime rankings and reports for locations like schools, restaurants, and hotels. The ultimate goal of SpotSpec is to provide a useful tool that creates awareness with the public, highlights the importance of police data transparency, and increases community trust with police agencies. For now, we have rolled it out exclusively for Baltimore City Schools , Baltimore County schools , and Baltimore City restaurants , but hope to be able to add more areas and locations soon. Each location receives:  A calculated SpotCrime SpotSpec score A ranking against other similar locations And an individually tailored Crime Spec report We hope you find this new tool useful and interesting. Go out, explore, be aware, and be safe. Head on over to www.SpotSpec.com and let...

Updates have been made to the SpotCrime ‘Live’ Crime Data Transparency Ranking list. Only 1 city was upgraded to a 2 ranking - Baltimore. They added a calls for service and arrest data feeds after the Freddie Grey protests. 5 cities were downgraded. The recurring reason for the decrease in transparency across the country? Police system ‘upgrades’. The new year has brought dozens of RMS/CAD/database upgrades to police departments nationwide. It’s great to see agencies embracing new technology, however, these new upgrades are knocking public access to crime information offline. Boston, MA - 2 to a 0  BPD is no longer updating the open data feed due to RMS upgrade . No timeline has been given as to when the feed will be available again. Phoenix, AZ - 2 to a 1   The Phoenix  RMS upgrade knocked a weekly public file offline and dramatically decreased the the timeliness and quality of the data. St. Louis County, MO - 2 to a 0   St....

Two agencies, The Vera Institute of Justice in accordance with The Police Foundation and the NYPD in accordance with Microsoft, have recently announced their own separate development, test, and implementation of a model for law enforcement agencies aiming to upgrade current CompStat processes. Both The Vera Institute and NYPD are calling their new versions of CompStat ‘CompStat 2.0’. The Vera Institute has a history of work on public safety related issues like police management practices, police-community relations, misconduct, and policing in democratic societies worldwide. And, the Vera Institute worked with the NYPD in the past on development of projects including The Manhattan Summons project as well as the development and implementation of the original CompStat launched by NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton in the early 90’s. The New CompStat 2.0 (two different versions) Unfortunately, we weren’t able to receive any information from NYPD PIO office on their version o...