SpotCrime - The Public's Crime Map

Date and time is important when displaying crime data publicly for obvious reasons - the public needs to know when a crime occurred to better inform themselves. Additionally, date and time is important for any type of crime analysis over time. There are dozens of different ways to display a date and time. Every police agency addresses this differently in their crime data feeds. For example, some agencies include date and time in the same data fields, others break them apart into separate fields. Some include time, some don’t. Some write out the month, others use numbers. Some make note of the time zone, others use Unix time. Representing time is sometimes a minor headache, but not a necessarily difficult task. The SpotCrime Open Crime data Standard (SOCS) specifically addresses the date/time issue in open crime data by specifying that date and time to be split into two different data fields. The ISO 8601 YYYY-MM-DD standard is to be used for date and the UTC and 24 hour to be used for...

SpotCrime is now mapping crime in Omaha, NE ! We made contact with the Omaha police department just under a year ago to ask them to revisit making crime data open and available to everyone. We shared the importance of open crime data and the SpotCrime Open Crime Standard (SOCS) . After a long wait and some programming, Omaha is now publishing a crime data feed! We are now mapping crime in Omaha and sending out email alerts to residents free of charge. We are also now able to move Omaha's crime data transparency ranking to a 2 on our list! Omaha is the largest city in Nebraska and sits right next to Council Bluffs, IA.The population is just over 400,000 making it top 50 most populated cities in the US. Notable residents of Omaha include Warren Buffet, Marlon Brando, Gerald Ford, and Malcom X. Check out the Omaha crime map at SpotCrime . Sign up for your local crime alert to stay informed of what happens in your neighborhood.

Jeff Sessions gets it wrong (again), AI and machine learning in policing, 2016 NIBRS data released, data on police shootings, the opioid crisis, and more... POLICE CONDUCT Research Shows Police Body-Worn Cameras Reduce Misconduct and Cost for Las Vegas (GovTech) Data on both fatal and nonfatal police shootings from the 50 largest local police departments in the United States (Vice) Autopsy Doctor Resigns, Says Sheriff Overrode Death Findings to Protect Officers (KQED) CRIME RATE 2016 NIBRS crime data released (FBI) Jeff Sessions misrepresented crime statistics from his own department's report  (NewsWeek) How we win the opioid war: Report (TheCrimeReport) See also:  NIJ Report: Opioid Crisis Is a Driver of Homicide Boom (Washington Free Beacon) CMPD, prosecutors call domestic violence an 'epidemic' (WBTV) Why is internet gambling a crime? (TheCrimeReport) Mass shootings aren't more frequent, but they are deadlier: Study (NBC Chicago...

Should you use year old economic data to determine the current economic stability or the unemployment rate? Would you wait a year after receiving medical information to make a decision on how to proceed with a potentially life threatening procedure? Do sports teams only look at statistics at the end of the season? No. So, why do we happily wait a year for access and the ability to analyze crime rates with UCR (Unifrom Crime Reporting) and NIBRS (National Incident Based Reporting System) reporting? Although well intentioned, it is our belief that UCR and NIBRS should not be data communities ask for and utilize when trying to figure how to assess crime in their neighborhood.  *Please note we are not arguing for cessation of UCR and NIBRS. If these reports have been around for so long, then they must be useful. Right? UCR and NIBRS Fall Short Timeliness: One of the problems with UCR and NIBRS reporting from the community perspective is timeliness. The reports are ...

SpotCrime was founded in 2007 as a crime mapping and alert website. Since then, we've become an advocate for open, equal, and fair access to incident based crime data (RMS/CAD), opening up crime data all across the world. Below are a few of the major impacts SpotCrime has had on the open data movement. We don’t believe any current or past crime mapping company can come close to the impact we've made. Standardization - SOCS We developed the SpotCrime Open Crime Standard (SOCS) which is being adopted by agencies nationwide. Free Software - SpotCrime Catapult SpotCrime Catapult is free software we developed in 2013 to help police agencies pull a public file from their CAD/RMS. We only ask that agencies using the software make the file created using Catapult open to anyone, not just SpotCrime. Shaping Policy - SB644 We were honored when SpotCrime was asked to testify on the Maryland open data bill SB644 which took effect in June 2014. Read our testimony ...

After speaking with CIO’s, IT departments, open data advocates and the like, we’re making an update to SOCS ! We’ve been pretty lucky to have so many people across the country give us their feedback. The first update we’re making an obvious one we should’ve included in the roll out. We will now be breaking out lat/long coordinates into two separate blocks. Data Type Required Permitted values Example Details Latitude Yes Geographic coordinate system 39.399262 Geo-coding accuracy. Not displayed by SpotCrime. Longitude Yes Geographic coordinate system -76.602990 Geo-coding accuracy. Not displayed by SpotCrime. Another change we’ve made to SOCS is more of a clarification than a change. In the original layout, we list the file types accepted by SOCS. We also listed examples of file types not accepted under the Open Data definition and mentioned they are still accepted under the SpotCrime Standard.  SpotCrime will still map these formats, however, they are not consider...

Every police agency has options on how to bring crime information to the public. For example,  the AMBER Alert tool is almost universally used. The idea is that if a child is taken an alert is sent to anyone and everyone so the quicker the information gets to the public the better of saving the child and reducing harm to the child. (EDIT: A couple of days after we published this post, Facebook announced their AMBER Alert program !) Not all crime events can have the same urgency as an AMBER alert - there's a huge difference between the robbery around the corner and an AMBER alert - but why should your access to these two pieces of information be different. All crime information can have the same level of openness - meaning the ability of the press and the public to use, share, and distribute the information is equal. Police agencies have varying degrees of sharing crime data. We've summed them up into four: 1. Agencies don't share much at a...

The value of implementing and using an open crime data standard is endless. That’s why we created the SpotCrime Open Crime Standard (SOCS ). Here’s an example how SOCS can help. Three cities have recently announced their availability of crime data to the public - Toledo, Columbus, and Indianapolis.  If you were to check out each city’s crime data source, you’ll find that three cities use different approaches and methodologies in releasing public crime data. And, only Columbus provides an open data table. SOCS solves all three of these city’s issues by not only encouraging agencies to release crime data openly, but standardizing how agencies open up and create crime data feeds. It also encourages police departments to give the public and the press all the data - not just snippets.  Toledo announced the release of their new crime map this past month. The map limits the radius that can be searched (to ½ mile) and you can’t access the data in an open format . If you...

We’re happy to announce that the first agency has successfully implemented the SpotCrime Open Crime Standard (SOCS) when creating an open crime data file! NORCOM (North East King County Regional Public Safety Communication Agency) in Washington state is the dispatch agency for North East King County and includes cities like Kirkland , Bellevue , and Mercer Island . This area is located just outside of Seattle on the east side of Lake Washington and is in close proximity to branches of companies like Google, IBM, Expedia, Amazon, eBay, and of course Microsoft. Bellevue is even the home of the new Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. NORCOM used SOCS as a model to create the data file they send to us in order to map crime for residents.  We created SOCS because we wanted to make it easier for police agencies to figure out what kind of information and format is best when creating files for the public. Our hope is that this standard will be used nationwide when agencies relea...

Here is one example of how SpotCrime attempts to get data and the headwinds we face. Back in 2011, our founder Colin Drane responded to a request that appeared in the Google Group ‘Geospatial and Crime Analysis Technologies - Resources’ by Susan Smith, then Crime Analyst of the Shawnee Police Department in Kansas. The request was regarding a project and requested information on Geospatial and Crime Analysis Technologies. We offered to map crime data for free and received this terse response: From: Susan Smith < SSmith@ci.shawnee.ks.us > Date: Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 10:51 AM Subject: Re: Geospatial and Crime Analysis Technologies - Resources- SpotCrime To: Colin Drane < colin@spotcrime.com > Cc: Brittany Lambert < lambert@spotcrime.com > Hi Colin, I am familiar with your company. I just finished a 2-year study of the online crime mapping companies. Thus, I don't need your folks to map some of the data from the Shawnee log. We already h...