SpotCrime - The Public's Crime Map

Public data belongs in the hands of the public. Not in Kalamazoo currently. Kalamazoo Police Department recently shut down their open, unrestricted crime data feed and moved to to a closed, proprietary third party crime mapping website. Open, unrestricted crime data feed Here is what an open, unrestricted public crime data feed looks like on an independently run crime map. And here is what a closed, proprietary public crime data feed looks like on an independently run crime map. Notice a difference? No, crime didn’t decrease with a new crime map. No, the police department didn’t stop responding to calls. The difference is data is no longer openly available in Kalamazoo for the public and press to collect use, and share. Instead, if you want to see what crime is happening in Kalamazoo, the only way to do so is to head to the new crime mapping website that places restrictions on how the public and press can use the public crime data that appears on the

You can now view up to date crime data in Detroit, MI in SpotCrime! The Motor City is the most populated city in Michigan with over 5.2 million people in the Detroit metro area. We've started mapping up to date crime data in Detroit, a city that has notoriously been low on the crime data transparency scale. Due to the increase in transparency, we've moved them to a 2 ranking (that's the best rank to get!) on our city crime data transparency scale ! Economically making Detroit data open makes sense. Detroit declared bankruptcy in 2013 and exited bankruptcy in December 2014.  A McKinsey report published in 2013 estimated that, in addition to empowering citizens and improving the delivery of public services, open data has many economic benefits including giving the rise to entrepreneurial businesses and helping companies segment markets and improve efficiency. McKinsey report also estimated that open data can generate more than $3 trillion a year in additional revenue

Here is a crime map for the city of Detroit, MI between January 2009 to May 2009. It is interesting to note the higher ratio of shootings to other crimes than in other cities.

The map above shows the most recent crime in Detroit pulled from news sources and the Detroit Police Department. Some data verification was provided with the help of Ms. Celesta Campbell (City of Detroit Legal Dept.) and Commander DeCrease (Detroit PD). To see an interactive crime map for Detroit click on the the link below: http://spotcrime.com/mi/detroit