SpotCrime - The Public's Crime Map

Thanks for helping us reach 1 million subscribers! It only took us eight years! But, 1 million subscribers, 200 million crime alerts annually, and over 40 million people interacting with SpotCrime data monthly continues to make us the largest crime alerting system in the US and the most visited crime mapping website in the world!  We attribute our growth to the fact that we are the only independent, open crime data company that is self-supporting - we have not taken any outside funding and have never charged police departments for the information we provide.  Our sole intent is to make all relevant crime information available to the public, taking full advantage of the Internet to allow this data to be shared and ultimately driving both greater awareness and new measures that will lead to a reduction in crime. The open crime data we distribute for free to users across the world creates a level of transparency with citizens and public officials that increases both...

With the initiation of the White House Task Force on 21st Century Policing earlier this year, more and more police agencies are voluntarily signing up to take part in the Police Data Initiative . The initiative centers around police agencies opening up dozens of data sets that have otherwise been hard to find by the general public. 26 agencies are currently participating Here are just a few of the datasets being published openly by police agencies nationwide: Computer aided dispatch logs (CAD)  Records management system logs (RMS) Response time  Use of Force  Complaints  Officer Involved Shootings  Assaults on officers  Citations  Traffic Stops  Pedestrian Stops  Pursuits This list may seem overwhelming to some, however it's not impossible. So, where to start ? In some cases, we've seen agencies start to tackle this laundry list of data sets by publishing one dataset at a time. If this is the route your police agency de...

The future of policing always makes me think of the movie Minority Report, a movie that examines whether free will can exist if the future is set and known in advance. In the movie, Tom Cruise gets accused of a murder he hasn’t committed yet, and because of the technology used in the movie, is arrested. Predictive policing is a buzzword these days. So what is Predicitive Policing and does it work? Predictive Policing, also known as PREDPOL, is a police strategy created to solve crimes, prevent crimes, and predict where future crimes might happen. The main goal is to remove the opportunity to commit crime before it’s even there. Holy Minority Report, Batman! I don’t believe our laws would ever let technology ever decide the fate of a person who hasn’t committed a crime yet. However, I do think technology has and will continue to helped deter crime. There are a series of features needed - data collection, software, police, and response i in order for PREDPOL predictions and ...

Starting a neighborhood watch may not seem as daunting a task as it sounds. We’ve learned from interaction with our subscribers over the past couple years that all you need are interested and informed neighbors. All it takes is one organized and motivated person to make a community watch successful. In fact, in one community, we’ve encountered one resident forwarding on our SpotCrime email alerts to over 100 neighbors. Amazing! Here are some suggestions and tips we’ve come up with when trying to create your own neighborhood watch of your own. we have to creating your own neighborhood watch Collect names, email addresses, phone numbers, and addresses of neighbors interested in participating. Knowing where your neighbors live will help you learn the boundaries of your watch. Establish a line of communication. We’ve seen anything as technical as a neighborhood watch website to Facebook groups and pages , Yahoo! Groups , Google Groups , all of the way to something as ...

There were 20 shooting incidents in Baltimore City from this past Friday (June 21) to today (June 25). Check out a screenshot of the crime list below. View the entire crime list here. Here are some numbers to put into perspective how crazy this weekend was in Charm City: There were 20 incidents that were located in 7 of the 9 police districts over a span of about 5 days. From the information that can be collected from the crime list, there were 27 victims (some with multiple gun wounds), 14 were men and 6 were women. Thankfully, we don't see any children listed as victims. Some say the more the temperature increase, the more crime that takes place. Let's hope Baltimore cools off for the rest of the summer. Want to know how you can stop this violence? Know someone who has an illegal handgun? The BPD has a program for that, check it out here . You can get involved with your community by starting a community watch. Talk to and get to know your neighbors. Check out SpotCr...