in the News
Los Angeles Times 3/9/06
"Website Puts Crime Tracking on the Map"
Hartford Courant 3/16/2006
"Crime Mapping is on the Docket"
Selections from the blogosphere
"People are talking about e-Policing"
DailyNews 3/10/2006
"LAPD Website Lets Residents Pinpoint Crime"
Variety
"50 to Watch"
Los Angeles Times 3/9/06
"Website Puts Crime Tracking on the Map"
Hartford Courant 3/16/2006
"Crime Mapping is on the Docket"
Selections from the blogosphere
"People are talking about e-Policing"
DailyNews 3/10/2006
"LAPD Website Lets Residents Pinpoint Crime"
Variety
"50 to Watch"
Crime Mapping is on the Docket
By Jesse Leavenworth Mar 16, 2006
Say you're planning to visit Aunt Elsie in Atlanta, or maybe your kid is starting a career in Los Angeles.
Police departments in those two cities are among a handful in the nation that offer crime mapping on their websites. Plug in Elsie's street corner or the neighborhood where Junior is apartment hunting, and the sites pinpoint recent serious crimes using shapes and colored dots.
For example, from March 4 to 7, within a mile radius of Melrose Place and Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, a crime map shows three burglaries, one theft from vehicle, one personal/other theft and one aggravated assault. In the same period in a circular area east of the city center at Winter and North Mott streets, Los Angeles police investigated one homicide, two violent robberies, three stolen vehicles, two thefts from vehicles and one aggravated assault.
L.A. launched the service last week, following similar efforts in San Diego, San Francisco and Atlanta. The idea is that sharing detailed information with citizens strengthens bonds and increases communication with police.
Hartford police are moving toward crime mapping, but there's no timeline, department spokeswoman Nancy Mulroy said. The department now posts crime charts at www.hartford.gov/police. Figures are given for the four major areas of the city -- Northeast, Northwest, Southeast and Southwest -- as well as a breakdown for the 17 neighborhoods that lists not only serious crimes but also citizens' calls for service, traffic tickets and other statistics. On Monday, the site listed stats for Feb. 26 to March 4.
Police want to offer more detailed and targeted information, and electronic crime-mapping is a goal, Mulroy said.
"Shared knowledge builds trust. It builds communication," she said.
Along with the mapping service, L.A. police also have started regularly e-mailing residents crime alerts for their neighborhoods, notifying people, for example, of a rash of car break-ins. An officer suggested the "e-policing" program "after noticing that he was fielding daily calls from residents -- all asking about the same crimes," the Los Angeles Times reported last week.
Lightray, the Los Angeles company that designed the electronic police services, found that people preferred crime mapping compared with charts and spreadsheets because targeted results are available at a glance, company founder Kimberly Brooks said Monday.
And a resident who learns that a car was stolen or someone was robbed right around the corner tends to become less apathetic, Brooks said.
"It makes them care, and having people care about what goes on in the community is the critical factor in engaging them to help law enforcement," she said.
But not everyone is pleased. Some real estate agents have complained about home buyers' redlining neighborhoods "based on possibly misleading blips in crime," the L.A. Times reported in its story on crime mapping.
Police Chief William Bratton was quoted as saying, "The reality is what the reality is. The reality is that in large parts of the city it is a good reality. But it is unfortunate certain areas of the city have more than their fair share of crime. But it is not a big secret. ... This is an effort to inform."
The most frequent type of call she receives, New Haven police spokeswoman Bonnie Winchester said, is from people moving to the city who want to know the crime level of a certain neighborhood. Winchester said crime mapping would nothelp people because she is only able to call up incidents at individual addresses. And besides, Winchester said, she doesn't feel right about characterizing neighborhoods.
"Where I might be comfortable living might not be where you're comfortable living," she said.
New Haven police have hooked up with a news website (newhavenindependent.org) to offer people more detailed and up-to- date crime statistics. As in Hartford, the folks in New Haven see maps down the road.
"There's no question we would like to do crime mapping at some point," Independent editor Paul Bass said.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
By Jesse Leavenworth Mar 16, 2006
Say you're planning to visit Aunt Elsie in Atlanta, or maybe your kid is starting a career in Los Angeles.
Police departments in those two cities are among a handful in the nation that offer crime mapping on their websites. Plug in Elsie's street corner or the neighborhood where Junior is apartment hunting, and the sites pinpoint recent serious crimes using shapes and colored dots.
For example, from March 4 to 7, within a mile radius of Melrose Place and Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, a crime map shows three burglaries, one theft from vehicle, one personal/other theft and one aggravated assault. In the same period in a circular area east of the city center at Winter and North Mott streets, Los Angeles police investigated one homicide, two violent robberies, three stolen vehicles, two thefts from vehicles and one aggravated assault.
L.A. launched the service last week, following similar efforts in San Diego, San Francisco and Atlanta. The idea is that sharing detailed information with citizens strengthens bonds and increases communication with police.
Hartford police are moving toward crime mapping, but there's no timeline, department spokeswoman Nancy Mulroy said. The department now posts crime charts at www.hartford.gov/police. Figures are given for the four major areas of the city -- Northeast, Northwest, Southeast and Southwest -- as well as a breakdown for the 17 neighborhoods that lists not only serious crimes but also citizens' calls for service, traffic tickets and other statistics. On Monday, the site listed stats for Feb. 26 to March 4.
Police want to offer more detailed and targeted information, and electronic crime-mapping is a goal, Mulroy said.
"Shared knowledge builds trust. It builds communication," she said.
Along with the mapping service, L.A. police also have started regularly e-mailing residents crime alerts for their neighborhoods, notifying people, for example, of a rash of car break-ins. An officer suggested the "e-policing" program "after noticing that he was fielding daily calls from residents -- all asking about the same crimes," the Los Angeles Times reported last week.
Lightray, the Los Angeles company that designed the electronic police services, found that people preferred crime mapping compared with charts and spreadsheets because targeted results are available at a glance, company founder Kimberly Brooks said Monday.
And a resident who learns that a car was stolen or someone was robbed right around the corner tends to become less apathetic, Brooks said.
"It makes them care, and having people care about what goes on in the community is the critical factor in engaging them to help law enforcement," she said.
But not everyone is pleased. Some real estate agents have complained about home buyers' redlining neighborhoods "based on possibly misleading blips in crime," the L.A. Times reported in its story on crime mapping.
Police Chief William Bratton was quoted as saying, "The reality is what the reality is. The reality is that in large parts of the city it is a good reality. But it is unfortunate certain areas of the city have more than their fair share of crime. But it is not a big secret. ... This is an effort to inform."
The most frequent type of call she receives, New Haven police spokeswoman Bonnie Winchester said, is from people moving to the city who want to know the crime level of a certain neighborhood. Winchester said crime mapping would nothelp people because she is only able to call up incidents at individual addresses. And besides, Winchester said, she doesn't feel right about characterizing neighborhoods.
"Where I might be comfortable living might not be where you're comfortable living," she said.
New Haven police have hooked up with a news website (newhavenindependent.org) to offer people more detailed and up-to- date crime statistics. As in Hartford, the folks in New Haven see maps down the road.
"There's no question we would like to do crime mapping at some point," Independent editor Paul Bass said.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
Hartford Courant - March 16, 2006