SpotCrime - The Public's Crime Map

The world of crime is definitely a strange one. SpotCrime has a couple of search capabilities . One of which is a keyword search through the entire SpotCrime database . We strongly encourage police agencies to include as many details as possible in the description with each crime incident provided to the public. A good description provides specific information behind a crime that is helpful to residents. For example, the description of a suspect, how a burglar gained entry, or what kind of weapon was used in an armed robbery. This kind of information makes it easier to prevent something similar from happening in the future. We used creepy Halloween words to search through our database and found some pretty offbeat and strange crimes. If you’re wondering if we have the classic Jason or Michael Myers crimes mapped, we made sure we had the real life horror flick crimes mapped on SpotCrime in this blog post . You’ll notice that some of the linked crimes below d...

Holy cow look at all of those crimes on the map!! That is what you'd first think looking at a crime map in a city like Baltimore . But, if you really think about it and think past all of the thefts, shootings, assaults, you start to think about how those icons got there. Think about the work and people involved to get a dot on a map. It starts with 911. A concerned resident (like you) sees something suspicious or a crime and calls 911.  Then, the 911 Dispatcher collects as much information as possible about the incident. They then decide where, how, and how many officers to dispatch to a certain location. This dispatching process takes equipment and technology. Phones, database systems, cars, radio, uniforms, badges, guns, and training. Then comes the actual officer. Well trained officers are needed to respond to each and every dot on the SpotCrime map . We have a database of well over 15 million crimes . That's A LOT of work for police officers! Once the off...