SpotCrime - The Public's Crime Map

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: 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. 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. 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 a...

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...

SpotCrime is now mapping crime in Montreal, QC, Canada! Montreal is the second largest city in Canada and the largest city in Quebec. The most spoken language is French followed by English. The crimes mapped are derived from trusted media outlets through out the city. To check out other world wide SpotCrime maps, simply click on the "Crime World Wide" link located at the bottom of the SpotCrime homepage. You can also type in a foreign address on MyLocalCrime to check for crime in the area. A man wearing a black wig and false teeth robbed a National Bank, a man was stabbed in the back and taken to the hospital--sound familiar? You'll notice these crime descriptions are similar to crimes that happen in the US. Crime is a world wide problem! Citizens of all countries should work together in the fight against crime. Awareness is the best preventative measure. Sign up for SpotCrime alerts in your area to help prevent crime. Spread the world. After all, ...