SpotCrime - The Public's Crime Map

SpotCrime has started to map crime data in Dayton, Ohio ! Dayton, OH on SpotCrime.com The Dayton Police Department pushes crime information to the public via their own website. SpotCrime uses that information to map Dayton. Why map the crime data on our map too you ask? SpotCrime has over half a million subscribers . That's roughly more than 5 million email alerts we send out on a monthly basis to our subscribers. We figure the more eyes we can get on the crime, the safer the communities will become! So go ahead, check out the Dayton PD website and SpotCrime. Figure out which one you like best. Just remember, it doesn't matter which map and alerts you prefer, just as long as you share the information with your neighbors. Stay aware, stay safe!

In an effort to make crime data easily available anywhere, w e recently made some changes to SpotCrime.info , making it easier to use on any mobile device.  Check out the screen shot View this version of SpotCrime by heading to SpotCrime.info on your mobile device. We figured these changes would make it easier for you to view the SpotCrime website on a smaller screen.  Some changes you'll notice is the crime list option in the upper right side of the screen.  This option allows you to view just the list of crime in the area you searched. You still have the ability to tap a crime to see more details, however a list is helpful so you won't have to tap on every icon to get more information. We made the icon key easy to hide (notice the 2 arrows next to the key), allowing you the ability to view more of the map. And finally, we made the buttons bigger (especially helpful for those who have fat fingers like me!) Try www.spotcrime.info on your mobile device and let us k

In this post, I’d like to talk about the limitations of public crime maps and quasi-public-proprietary crime maps.   Don’t get me wrong, we at SpotCrime are fans of crime maps .  They are an effective tool to represent crime data and get information to the public.  But, crime maps are just one of many options of delivering useful crime data to the public. Maps in general will always have some type of dimensional limitations.  No matter how you adjust the parameters of time and distance with data on a map, it will still be just an incremental snapshot of the data set.   With crime data, if you take a too small snapshot and an area can appear to have no crime.  Take a too large of a snapshot and amount of crime data could crowd the map, show too much crime, and render the map unreadable.  Heat maps are sometimes employed to show density of data on a map, but these too have their own adjustable variances that can influence what is being projected.    Ultimately, the same limitations of a