SpotCrime - The Public's Crime Map

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 ...

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...

SpotCrime is now mapping Hartford, CT! The Hartford Police Department is posting crime data to the Hartford Open Data portal . We had reached out to the Hartford Police Department last year in hopes of opening up a crime data feed. We had offered them SpotCrime Catapult when they mentioned their system was too old and they didn't have any way to pull a public crime data file. The HPD didn't take us up on our offer when we reached out last year, but we're happy to see they found a way to export data from their system! Interested in seeing crime data in Hartford? Check out the Hartford  SpotCrime map . Don't forget to check out a quick view of data on MyLocalCrime . Mobile? SpotCrime.info works or you can download our apps from the iTunes, Google Play, or Kindle Fire stores! Stay aware, stay safe!

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...

SpotCrime - the most visited crime mapping website and most comprehensive online source for crime data - is introducing SpotCrime Catapult, a free software solution that allows police departments worldwide to make their crime data public. Catapult was created by SpotCrime developers and enables any police department to export public crime data from their records management system. In addition to the free software, SpotCrime is also offering any police department that, on or before December 31, 2013, implements Catapult and makes their crime data available to the public, up to $2,000 in reimbursement to defray costs of implementation. Alternatively, SpotCrime is willing to itself provide the technical services to help implement the software. The offer is subject to more detailed terms and conditions set forth here http://bit.ly/131j4xg . “With open data initiatives rolling out everywhere, SpotCrime wants to make it easy for police departments to release their crime data and...