SpotCrime - The Public's Crime Map

To be honest, it’s not a very powerful tool. We believe public crime maps are just the bare bones. Engagement and open data are more powerful tools. Engagement is a key metric in determining if a product is successful or useful. We measure engagement by emails and visits. What good is a crime map if no one looks at it?  SpotCrime is the most visited crime mapping site in the US. We have over 1 million views a month to our website and send out over 8.5 million email alerts a month. We’ve been able to reach this size without charging residents or a single police agency and without taking any federal funding or grants. SpotCrime map on News4SanAntonio.com We’ve found that one email alert is sometimes forwarded on to 100 community watch members. Since we’re a free service and our main source of revenue is advertising and media partnerships with companies like Gannett and Sinclair , we have incentive to reach as many eyes as possible with crime information. The infor...

SpotCrime.info on a mobile browser You may think that SpotCrime is simply a crime map and really cool crime alerts. Well, we’ve become a lot more than that since our launch in 2007. We want public crime information in the hands of every person as quickly as possible. In order to reach that goal, we’ve realized transparency and openness are two very important aspects to government and public data. That’s why we’d like you to ask your police department to post your city’s public crime data openly. ‘ Openly ’ means the data is available in a machine readable format without restrictions on the ability to use, consume, or share the information. A good place to post would be on the  city’s open data portal website (if they have one yet) or directly their own police agency’s website. Why should you ask them to do this? There are a couple of reasons. 1 - Remove the restrictions on public data. Posting in an open format would remove any restrictions a third party vend...

There are already methods for agencies to share information among each other like N-Dex , NEIM , GJXDM . But what about sharing information openly with the public? Currently, Baltimore shares data differently than Baltimore County who shares it differently than Annapolis, MD who shares it differently than Arlington, VA who shares it differently than Dallas, TX who shares it differently than LA who shares it differently than Vancouver, BC who shares it differently than London, England. Until now. We’ve created the SpotCrime Open Crime Standard (SOCS) to encourage police agencies throughout the world to keep crime public data uniform, simple, and ubiquitous. We’ve also created the standard to set guidelines for making public crime information open and accessible to the public. Similar to LIVES with health inspection data or GTFS with transit data, the SpotCrime Open Crime Standard (SOCS) will allow agencies to report the same kind of information to the public openly, causi...

We find it unfair sometimes to compare cities using the FBI UCR reports because some agencies report on crimes differently . However, LawStreetMedia ranked the top 10 most dangerous cities under 200,000 in population and we thought it would be interesting to see if the cities with higher crime rates were open with their crime data. The FBI reports for 2013 have been released only for January-June 2013, so those are the percentages being used. And the rankings are based on the 2012 FBI crime rate per 100,000 people. In the article, LawStreetMedia noted a few of the agencies were strapped tight with their budget. Which surprises us because a few of those agencies are paying for crime mapping by contracting with proprietary systems like Omega. If all of these police agencies would release the information openly , crime mapping companies including SpotCrime would map the information for free. Out of the list below, only one agency is releasing crime information that can be used an...

We’ve got crime coast to coast covered in America (and across the pond, too!). Yes, Canada is in the same America as Boston - the continent of North America that is! We started mapping Nanaimo, a city just west of Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada on Vancouver Island. Open data has picked up in the US, and it’s taking charge in Canada as well. The city, along with other Canadian cities, has crime information on their website. The police are using the crime map they’ve created to open a dialog with residents next week . Head back east into the States to Boston and check Boston open crime data on SpotCrime . Boston recently saw a hike in homicides this January, but as James Allan Fox points out in an article published Boston.com, comparing crime month to month instead of an overall or yearly comparison might paint the wrong picture. He’s dubbed this approach a ‘Chicken Little’ approach when a sudden increase in crime is assumed to signal a trend, when it doesn’t. Fox’s po...

We're still hard at work mapping crime in Charlotte, NC . Although our crime data feed was turned off, and then restored at a delayed rate back in August, we are striving to keep our maps up to date for our users in Charlotte by mapping more recent crimes from local media outlets. For example, check out the crime list of recent robberies of fast food joints in Charlotte in the screen shot below. These robberies were recently covered by Charlotte news outlet WCNC . To view the entire crime list, head here . WCNC covered the story because police have reported that there have been four times as many robberies in Charlotte this year than last. The police are urging residents who frequent fast food places to be 'extra vigilant'. Our access to an open crime data feed was shut off when the Charlotte entered a contract with a proprietary vendor. This vendor now receives preferential access to crime data before the public and press. The police department could be ...

Moving soon? Renting or planning to buy? SpotCrime can help! Crime is a big issue that comes to mind when you find yourself in a move. Nobody wants to put themselves or their family in a potentially harmful area or situation. SpotCrime is the most visited crime mapping site - for good reason. We offer many ways to users to view crime in their area. Here are just a few suggestions to help in your home search. SpotCrime and MyLocalCrime Once you’ve found the area you’re interested in moving to, head to SpotCrime or MyLocalCrime (or SpotCrime.info if you're on your mobile) for a quick view of crime in the area. It would be a good idea to check out crime around any shopping centers you would frequent and around any schools your children would attend, too. Keep in mind that icons like shootings, assaults, robberies, or burglaries are pretty serious crimes to consider when buying or renting a house. Seeing too much crime? Take into consideration the population of the city. Typically...