SpotCrime - The Public's Crime Map

The value of implementing and using an open crime data standard is endless. That’s why we created the SpotCrime Open Crime Standard (SOCS ). Here’s an example how SOCS can help. Three cities have recently announced their availability of crime data to the public - Toledo, Columbus, and Indianapolis.  If you were to check out each city’s crime data source, you’ll find that three cities use different approaches and methodologies in releasing public crime data. And, only Columbus provides an open data table. SOCS solves all three of these city’s issues by not only encouraging agencies to release crime data openly, but standardizing how agencies open up and create crime data feeds. It also encourages police departments to give the public and the press all the data - not just snippets.  Toledo announced the release of their new crime map this past month. The map limits the radius that can be searched (to ½ mile) and you can’t access the data in an open format . If you want to

We’re happy to announce that the first agency has successfully implemented the SpotCrime Open Crime Standard (SOCS) when creating an open crime data file! NORCOM (North East King County Regional Public Safety Communication Agency) in Washington state is the dispatch agency for North East King County and includes cities like Kirkland , Bellevue , and Mercer Island . This area is located just outside of Seattle on the east side of Lake Washington and is in close proximity to branches of companies like Google, IBM, Expedia, Amazon, eBay, and of course Microsoft. Bellevue is even the home of the new Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. NORCOM used SOCS as a model to create the data file they send to us in order to map crime for residents.  We created SOCS because we wanted to make it easier for police agencies to figure out what kind of information and format is best when creating files for the public. Our hope is that this standard will be used nationwide when agencies release d

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

Check out some screenshots from sites like Alexa , SimilarWeb , and Compete showing traffic and ranking comparisons of SpotCrime to three other crime mapping sites. SpotCrime is still the most visited crime mapping site compared to all other sites. This does not include traffic from our sister sites like MyLocalCrime and SpotCrime.info , traffic from our media partners like Gannett and Sinclair , or traffic from our Android and iPhone apps (which are are the #1 crime mapping apps on both the Google Play and iTunes app stores!) Below are screenshots from Similar web showing comparisons of SpotCrime, CrimeMapping, CrimeReports, and Raidsonline. SpotCrime as more estimated views, time spent on site and page views than all of the other sites. Below are screen shots from Alexa which shows that SpotCrime is ranked higher than all other sites - Globally and in the US. Finally, below are screenshots from Compete.com showing SpotCrime traffic twice the size of

When talking about crime data, is there a distinction between open, public, and proprietary crime data. Absolutely. What is open data? Open data is data that’s available in a machine readable format without restrictions on the ability to use, consume, or share the information. Philadelphia and Chicago are good examples of cities that have open crime data available for residents, the press, and anyone to collect, use, and redistribute. Philadelphia SpotCrime Map Open crime data is the best option for police agencies. The easier the information is to obtain, the easier it is to get more eyes on the information which, we believe, leads to really cool ways to view the data and, most importantly, leads to safer and more informed neighborhoods. What is public data? Public data is data that’s available to the public to collect or look at, but it’s not easily redistributed (or machine readable) and sometimes not easily obtained. It might require an open record

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 informati

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 vendor m