SpotCrime - The Public's Crime Map

Recently the Benton County Sheriff (Arkansas) announced a new public  crime map . Local news OzarksFirst.com reported that the map was paid for by a $15,000 grant. Not a large sum, and often crime mapping vendors have similar contact costs charging $150 a month for public crime mapping services. Using a simple discounted cash flow valuation of a police agency contract at $1,800 a year at a 10% discount rate, you'll get a total valuation of the vendor mapping contract at $18,000 (divide 10% into $1,800). Very similar to the amount paid by Benton. We have seen some agencies pay larger sums for public crime mapping. Most notably, Seattle Police Department spent approximately $350,000 for their public mapping system. So how do we get to $180 million in savings? Since we are using back of the envelope numbers, we are going to be very conservative in our estimated costs. We'll use an approximate cost of $10,000 per police agency for public crime mapping. Why use $10k? I

BALTIMORE, MD (12/11/12) --- SpotCrime – the most comprehensive online source for crime data – has surpassed 500,000 subscribers just prior to the end of 2012, making the Baltimore-based company the most visited crime mapping site in the world. “Nearly 55 percent of online users looking for incident details and crime mapping information now turn to SpotCrime,” says the company’s Founder and President, Colin Drane.  “That’s more than double our nearest competitor and has resulted in SpotCrime sending an average of 165,000 crime alert emails per day or more than five million email alerts monthly.” In addition, SpotCrime has become the most liked crime map on Facebook, garnering more than 70 percent of Facebook “likes.” The company anticipates those numbers will increase in the future due to recent expansions of its partnerships with two of the country’s largest media companies, Sinclair and Gannett. Those partnerships mean that television stations in 15 additional markets  throug