O CANADA: Your Crime Maps Need Some Work.

Good news: we are seeing more Canadian agencies make an attempt to move toward increased transparency within their police agencies. A few Canadian cities have released their own versions of crime maps. 

The bad news is the maps they are creating could be way better. 

Three ways Canada can make better crime maps:

1. Open (and machine readable): To start, each map should come with some sort of open, machine readable data feed. This will allow the data to be easily consumed by anyone. Only a few of the maps do this currently.
2. Date: The data included on the maps could be better. One city doesn’t give a specific date, just a range. Another city only gives the month. Some cities provide data months behind.
3. Location: Some sort of address should be included. We’ve found typically in Canada the icons/addresses are anonymized and sometimes moved blocks away. Anonymizing sensitive isn’t a bad thing and is needed in order to help protect victims. Moving crime incidents blocks away from where they actually occurred just doesn’t depict an accurate picture of where crime is actually happening. Our suggestion: block level addresses, lat/long coordinates for mapping.

The more information residents have, the better they will be able to be informed. This relationship the police department creates with the community by being as transparent as possible is invaluable.

Below we analyzed the transparency of crime data from a few Canadian cities.

Winnipeg:

Zoom out. Small icons.

Zoom in. Huge icons. Hard to determine where an incident occurred. No idea what date they occurred.

1. Open (and machine readable): There is currently no way to tabulate data for yourself.
2. Date: There is no way to figure out which date the incident occurred. You can’t search for a specific date, just a date range.
3. Location: There’s no real way to get an address off of this map. When you zoom in the icon gets larger. Even if you can get an address the incidents are mapped a couple of blocks away from where they actually occurred. See the screenshots below as an example. We cross referenced the map with the Winnipeg press releases to figure this out. If they aren't going to map the incident at least close to where it actually occurred, what's the point of putting it on a map?

Shooting on Winnipeg Map v what's listed in their Press Release 

The same shooting mapped accurately on SpotCrime

Crime details page for the Winnipeg shooting on SpotCrime

Vancouver: 

There's no map, but a data file instead (this isn’t a bad thing).

1. Open: Vancouver crime data is open and machine readable!
2. Date: There is no specific date, just a month.
3. Location: Vancouver has anonymized data to the block level.

Toronto:

This is the most inclusive dataset and maps including: calls for service, reported incidents, shootings and homicides.

1. Open: Yes!
2. Date: Yes!
3. Location: They don’t provide block location, only intersections.

Edmonton: 

Screenshot of as far as you are allowed to zoom in on the Edmonton crime map

1. Open: There is no way to tabulate this data.
2. Date: You can select a date range!
3. Location: There is no address information and you are unable to zoom in to see the location. You can't see city wide crime on one map.

Calgary:

Only one crime mapped in Calgary for the 'Last Month' preset date range 

1. Open: No way to tabulate this data.
2. Date: A date and time is provided, but you can only search with the preset date ranges.
3. Location: There are no addresses associated with the data. You can zoom to get a better picture of where the crime occurred.

Ottawa:

1. Open: No :(
2. Date: Yes, but data that is more than 14 days old is deleted
3. Location: Yes

Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows: 

They have similar maps. Both are pretty good.

Maple Ridge Map

1. Open: Yes! There is even an export option.
2. Date: Yes!
3. Location: Yes!

Pitt Meadows export box options

Ask for better data

Want to make crime data better in your city? Ask for a way to tabulate the data yourself. Ask for up to date information. Ask for a way to determine an accurate location of where the crime occurred.

Do you know any good examples of open crime data or crime maps in Canada? Let us know!