Removing Crimes from SpotCrime

We rarely remove crimes from SpotCrime.  Our general premise is that once they are made public, they should be public for everyone.  

We do remove crimes that have been mapped incorrectly - which is a topic for another post, but suffice to say, when our computers locate a crime on the wrong street and we discover it - the crime is immediately corrected or removed.

Over the weekend we removed three types of crimes that later did not fit our mission of notifying the public of crime events.  

The first was a reported abduction in Coeur d'Alene Idaho.  Someone reported a child getting off a bicycle, leaving the bicycle and getting into a van.  We mapped the crime immediately, but later the Coeur d'Alene police indicated it was a false alarm on their Facebook Page.   We don't often map crimes in Coeur d'Alene because police department has chosen a proprietary system that blocks the press from access.  We feel this is a great example of a police department favoring the relationship with the vendor over the relationship with the public.  

The second crime was from Frederick Maryland.  A citizen had reported being stabbed at a local park.  Later the Frederick Police discovered the stab wounds were self inflicted.  Naturally, we removed the crime.  We'd like to map more crime in Frederick, but the Police Department has elected to use the same proprietary method of informing the public.  

The third crime was a self inflicted gun shot wound.  At SpotCrime, we take extra effort to identify when a person has intended to shoot at another person.   The exception is when it is an attempted suicide.   We are very sorry for anyone who decides taking their own life is a solution to anything.

 

I all three instances, the crimes were removed because the information was updated - and no longer was a criminal incident.  This may be a reason why some departments are reluctant to release crime data to the public.  They are afraid that when incidents get updated in their system and on pinned on the map, the first reported incident is the one that is remembered by residents.  An issue we explain here 911 Call Data v Police Recorded data.

 

Don't see your city on the map?  Reach out to your police department and ask them to send their data to SpotCrime.  If they send us data, we will map it and send alerts for free.

Where Do People Sign up For Crime Alerts in the US... Everywhere.

The map above shows the general location of yesterday's SpotCrime alert subscribers.  SpotCrime is now averaging over 400 subscribers a day for crime alerts, and we've had over 350,000 subscribe.  Each subscriber gets a personalized map and list of crimes in their requested area.  It is unlikely that any crime alert is identical because each alert is centered around the subscriber's requested address.  As you can see from the map, everyone is interested in being informed about crime.   Please encourage your local police department to make their crime data public, and SpotCrime will map the data, and provide alerts for free.   And we will not discourage other companies from mapping crime too.  We want to be part of the solution, but we want no part in monopolizing the data.

Crime maps are good, but they've been around since the 1800's.   We are expecting the next seismic shifts in crime fighting to be two fold.   The first is in advanced computational analysis of crime data used in predictive policing and resource management.   The next stage of putting cops on the dots  - putting cops on future dots.

The second advancement in crime fighting will be in transparency to the public.  An area where SpotCrime participates.  Informing the public as quickly as possible with as much information as possible and the resulting feedback loop should catapult the rate of investigations and hopefully provide material impact in the reduction of crime.    If knowledge is power, mutual trust and openness between the community and the police amplifies that power.   Operating under the premise that there are more good people than bad.  Allow those good people to be informed and share information without restrictions will ultimately help reduce crime.

If your police agency is using a public crime map, please ask if the data is open to be shared by the public and the press.  If there are restrictions on access,  please ask why and what is the public benefit of restricting sharing and access.

If the goal is to inform the public and help solve crimes faster, there seems no reason to slow down sharing and access.   Criminalizing the sharing of public data seems counter to the objective.

The Crowd Sourced Crime Analyst

One of the main goals for SpotCrime is to get crime information to as much of the public as possible.  Engagement is our motto.  And you don't need to believe we are doing this out of the goodness of our hearts, we have a business model around our approach - like any news organization we have ads around the content we provide.  Get more people to view the content, and increase the amount of ads we can show.  

Any system that provides incentives is susceptible to being gamed, and our ad model should be scrutinized just like any other.  However, since we do not charge police departments for the service and have no financial ties to the police agency, we ask that you measure your scrutiny with our independence and our success of reaching the public.  Currently, SpotCrime reaches more people with crime data than any other system in the world.

We feel there are many benefits to encouraging police departments to be transparent and timely with their crime data.   And we are encouraged that more agencies are eschewing the antiquated model of proprietary systems for an open approach to releasing data.   Open systems inherently reach more of the public because the data can easily be shared and accessed by everyone.  Closed proprietary systems create artificial friction on access that typically benefit the vendor to the detriment of the public.  For this post we like to discuss the potential benefits of reaching many eyes with current crime information.  

We'd like to make the argument that a vigilantly informed community is a safer community and can provide positive feedback to the police agency through an open exchange of information.  First, we like to reference the popular book by James Michael Surowiecki   -  The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, which argues under the right circumstances the crowd can be smarter than the few.   Note the qualification "right circumstances".  This is not to say the crowd is smarter than crime analysts, but possibly that engaging the crowd with its diversity and massive processing power might help identify and reduce crime.   Informing the public openly with crime information may help crime analysts do their job by providing an informative feedback loop of information.  

Currently there seems to be particular interest on using crime data to deploy police resources to fight crime.  Simply put, find the crime hot spots and deploy resources to those areas which will ultimately reduce the crime rate.    Some now argue that New York City's staggering reduction in crime was influenced less by the Borken-Windows approach and more by data driven crime fighting process that came from CompStat.  By focusing on hot spots, police not only catch the criminals but disincentivize criminal activity through their presence.  

We like to argue that the next seismic shift in crime fighting will come with added community involvement.   By sharing timely data with the community and allowing the community to openly share the information, quicker information can be garnered from the many incidents that come into a department daily.  Crime analysts are fantastic at noticing trends in data - it is their job - but when the data gets bigger and bigger and resources get thinner with strained budgets there are likely two options to choose.  The first, and a topic for another post, is expensive big data analysis using SAS type technology to process crime information quickly and coherently.   The second, and the purpose of this post, is to allow as much information as possible to reach the public.  It is likely that whatever is released can be enriched with many eyes viewing the data and commenting on the events.   We can't predict how the data will be used positively by the public, but we can estimate that there's a probability of a positive outcome if the data can reach the public quickly.  

How are these positive feedback loops created?  How will open releases of timely crime data produce better policing?  We at SpotCrime have some thoughts, but it is still too early to tell.  We do know that we'd like SpotCrime to be part of the process.   But the optimal solution is not yet known.  A better approach would be to allow the data to be free to the public without restrictions and then determine what is working.  

In our view, criminals have no restrictions on how they share information and coordinate their activities.   Why put restrictions on the law abiding public?  Let's use the openness of the internet and social media as a tool to engage the community and help further reduce crime - fostering trust and willing participation. 

Should We Have a Clery Act for Cities and Counties?

It took the tragic event of Jeanne Clery rape and murder to initiate the creation of the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act (20 USC § 1092(f)).   Now any college or university receiving federal funds is required to disclose information about crimes on or near their campuses. 

So if you attend a University that receives federal aid, you should have access to crime information.  But what about everyone else?  Why shouldn't cities and counties have the same requirements to inform their citizens?

Part of the inspiration of this post was a recent story in the Houston Chronical about a woman who successfully sued her apartment complex because her apartment company failed to notify her about a recent break-in at the apartment next to her.  Shortly after renewing her lease, she was attacked in her apartment and brutally raped for 10 hours in February of 2009.    In this particular case, the apartment complex was at fault partially for not sharing the severity of the nearby incident.  It could be argued, that another organization had the responsibility to notify everyone nearby of the break-in and attempted rape - the Harris County Sheriffs Office  (HCSO).  

 

It should be noted that the HCSO does now have a viewable crime mapping system for the public to look at.   However, that system restricts the press from sharing the data, and specifically prohibits SpotCrime from accessing the data.    You can look at the data, but you can't share it for fear of a lawsuit.    Since 2008, we have been asking the HCSO to share data with us and make their crime data fully public.   And we are still trying.   Our particular approach with an agency that is so obstinate and difficult to deal with is the Shawshank approach.   We just keep writing in the hopes that one day we get the data open and available to everyone without fear of a lawsuit for sharing.    The goal is to get this information to the public as quickly and openly as possible so that we can reduce crime through an informed public. 

 

What is your local law enforcement agency doing to inform you of crimes in your area?   If they have a mapping system, does the system restrict the press from access and why?   What is the ultimate danger to the public for sharing this information (once it has been approved for release)?

 

If we accept the objective of the Clery Act that informing students and parents of crimes on campus will help prevent future crimes, then why not make an similar effort for ever citizen?

 

Hopefully, the move towards crime data transparency can be solved without another law.  Many agencies have been releasing crime data openly for some time, and more are coming online.   And why not allow the press to have full access to this data, they've got a good track record of reaching the public and are economically incentivized to do so.    With the advent of social media, everyone can now quickly share information.   Limiting the ability to share only stunts the reach of the information.  

 

In the mean time, we are anxiously awaiting a response to our latest letter to the Harris County Sheriffs Office.  

If you'd like to help our effort, ask your police agency to make their data fully public (no restrictions on access).   And we at SpotCrime will start mapping the data as soon as possible.   For all of our safety, we deserve equal and open access to timely crime data.    Every Jeanne Clery that now graduates college,  is potentially subject to the same limited information that existed on college campuses 25 years ago.   Let's close the gap and give everyone the opportunity to be informed about crime regardless of being on a college campus or not. 

How to Get Free Crime Mapping for your Police Department

SpotCrime Offering High Engagement Crime Maps - For Free!

There are two main categories of crime mapping  (or two ends of the scale)

1. Institutional crime mapping - designed for professional analysts with many bells a whistles

2. Public facing crime mapping - designed to get information to public fast.

We at SpotCrime tend to the public facing end of the spectrum.   We provide very little analytics - although our city pages do have a basic charts page - http://spotcrime.com/analytics/md/baltimore

What we do focus on is distribution and engagement.

Our distribution in the US is larger than any other crime mapping site on the Internet.  We have multiple websites for the public to choose from that are all fast and functional - SpotCrime.com, SpotCrime.info, MyLocalCrime.com, and UCrime.com.  With the thought that people register information differently, we’ve created multiple outlets for residents to choose from.  

SpotCrime.info, the newest SpotCrime addition

We also provide our maps in more places than just our websites.  We deliver over 120k emails a day, that’s over 3.5 million emails sent a month.  Each email is tailored to an address and radius specified by the user.  And we send an actual crime map with each email - which makes it easier for residents to engage with and forward on the information to friends and family.

We have partnered with over 50 media outlets across the US.  These media partners display our local crime maps on their website along with breaking crime news stories to help inform their viewers of crime in their area.  In some cities, community watch groups and HOA’s display our maps to help with their neighborhood watch efforts.  Other companies, like Trulia - an online residential real estate site, Lifeshield - a home security company, and IDV Solutions - a data software company, integrate SpotCrime on their site to provide crime data to their users to help them make informed decisions.  Most recently, we began delivering our maps to Topix.com.  With over 7 million visitors a month, our Topix partnership has vastly increased our reach.

We are mobile.  Our web pages work so great in a mobile environment that there is almost no need for an app.  However, we still offer apps on the iPhone and Android for viewers who prefer an app.  We even send crime data via SMS text alerts for users who do not own a smart phone or tablet.

Finally, we can be found on almost any major social media network.  On Twitter, we’ve hooked up an RSS feed to tweet real time crime events for individual cities across the US.  Our Posterous sites display actual press releases from police departments across the US.  You can ‘like’ us on Facebook to learn about major crime stories.  Our SpotCrime Blogspot keeps viewers updated on the progress we are making in crime mapping.  You can StumpleUpon us and even re-pin us on Pinterest.

With this type of distribution, we’ve estimated 5 to 6 million people engage our data on a monthly basis.

Why push information onto the Internet in every way possible?  Because SpotCrime was created by a regular citizen who wanted to know what was happening on his block.  Founded and based in Baltimore with arguably one of the highest crime rates in the nation, SpotCrime was designed with the ability and purpose to get information to residents fast and share it fast.  

The value of a crime map is not only the information it holds, but the network it engages.  Facebook may not have had the best technology when it started out, but it trumped it’s competition because of the sensibility behind connecting with peers, similar to SpotCrime’s ability to reach viewers with crime data.

Finally, because we have a news media model based on advertising, we are incentive to get this information to as many people as fast and as accurate as possible.  

911 Call Data v Police Recorded Data

We get this question all of the time from SpotCrime users - what is the different between call data and police recorded ?  Here's a brief explanation of the two.

911 Call Data
Departments across the country have different names for 911 call data.  It can range from ‘911 call data’ to ‘calls for service’ to ‘CAD data’ and many more. 911 call data includes any data pulled from a department’s CAD (Computer Aided Dispatch) system. Typical CAD companies used by departments include Intergraph, Spillman, SunGard, Tiburon, USA-Software, and New World Systems.

911 call data includes any call into a police department that requires action by an officer. It is the raw, immediate data that represents the first record of an incident.  Many police departments - like Dallas, Tulsa, Columbus, San Antonio, Hillsborough County, and Tampa (to name a few) - have started to release their CAD data in an open feed format available to the public.

A benefit of 911 call data is that it is a fast representation of actual police incidents that have been handled by the department.  It is real-time crime data. However, because the speed of processing the incident is so quick, the accuracy of the incident may be compromised (i.e. the exact location of a shooting).

Police Recorded Data
Police recorded data is data that is entered into the department’s RMS (Records Management System) at a later time. A lot of companies that create CAD systems also make software for RMS. Some typical RMS used by departments are Niche, SunGard, Spillman, Tiburon, and Enforsys.

The RMS holds police recoded data that covers the entire life span of an incident - from when it was generated to when the case was closed.  Police recorded data takes longer to process and release than 911 call data.  However, the police recorded data is often much more accurate than 911 data because it is validated and updated throughout the life of an incident.  

A lot of police departments use police recorded data to create reports called tactical data.  Tactical data is very useful for departments to determine where to allocate their resources and it helps them make better decisions about policing.

Don’t see your city on the map?  Ask your department to send SpotCrime their 911 call data or police recorded data.  If they send us data, we will map it for free.

Stay aware, stay safe.

Crimes against the Elderly

The US has a rapidly growing elderly population.  And, unfortunayley, the number of elderly people being victimized by criminals has grown rapidly as well. 

Scams again the elderly are crimes we don't get to map much - they normally show up as theft or assault - but we would like to bring more attention to them.

Most elderly victims are over the age of 75 and depend on other people.  The need for personal assistance increases with age.  Also with age, the less 'in tune' with the world an older person becomes.  A lot of older people are more financially concerned (especially if they are retired), so it would be easier to scam someone into giving away private healthcare information or billing information. This leaves an elderly person very vulnerable and an easy target.

For example, a recent scam in Stafford County, VA included a phone scam where someone pretended to be the person's grandchild.  The 'grandchild' would convince the grandparent that they were stranded in a foreign county and needed money.  Luckily, no one sent moeny to the phoney grandchild so none of the reported incidents became a crime.

Some other types of phone fraud that elderly fall victim to include phishing, charity fraud, sweepstakes fraud, phony health insurance policies, and home repair scams. 

With age comes disease and not so good health.  Alzheimer and different forms of dementia may leave a person as a very easy target.  The dementia patient may never realize or remember that their in home care taker has been stealing money or items from them.  To a criminal, its like taking candy from a baby. 


Other ways criminals take advantage of the elderly is through the care, or lack of, that they receive from a caretaker.  In Chicago, a daughter-in-law and granddaughter were charged with criminal neglect for an 86 your old woman.  The step-daughter and granddaughter essentially left the woman to rot while they spent her money that was meant for her care.

If you are worried about your elderly family or friend being a victim of a crime, always check on them.  Talk to them about potential scams and let them know that you are there to help. Need to get more care for your mom or dad?  Do your research on the home or caretaker.  Make sure to visit them frequently. Be weary of any new friends they may make, its OK to assume sometimes!

Chart of Crime Incidents Added to SpotCrime By Year

SpotCrime has multiple crime maps in the Buffalo, NY area!

SpotCrime has been mapping Buffalo metropolitan area for quite a while now.  In addition to a Buffalo SpotCrime map, we also have a Cheektowaga, North Tonawanda and Niagara County maps.

Buffalo is the second most populated city in New York state and is the largest populated upstate city with a population of over 260k people.  

Cheektowaga is located east of Buffalo with a population of 94,000

North Tonawanda has 31,570 people

Niagara County, home of Niagara Falls, has 216,470 people...a grand total of 602,040!

SpotCrime receives feeds from the departments to map the data and is very proud to see data transparency in north eastern cities, particularly in New York state, and from departments of different sizes.  Ironically, we still have not established a crime data feed with the NYPD - one of the biggest departments in the US.

Check out the Buffalo area SpotCrime maps at http://spotcrime.com/ny  Make sure to sign up for your local crime alert at SpotCrime.com.  On a mobile device? Don't forget to check a quick view of crime data in your area at MyLocalCrime.com

The Great Baltimore Fire and Open Crime Data

This may be a stretch, but we’ve been thinking about how the great Baltimore Fire and access to crime data are related.

The Great Baltimore Fire spanned over two days in February of 1904.  It took the effort of 1,231 firefighters from 4 different cities to bring the fire under control that destroyed over 1,500 buildings in central Baltimore.  At the time, there were no set standards in the fire equipment used by fire departments nation wide.  Therefore,  the fire lasted for 31 hours because the departments that assisted the Baltimore Fire Department had hose couplings that could not fit Baltimore's hydrants.  

Similarly, when a police department uses proprietary data distribution, it prevents others from hooking up and helping.  The data is supplied (like the water) but the manner in which the data is displayed (the hose couplings) is different.  Proprietary data distribution prevents others from using and publicizing the data, further hindering the message to the public. With less accessibility, less people get reached.

Here at SpotCrime, we are committed to helping put a dent into crime.  Our goal is to map as many cities and reach as many residents as we can.  But in cities that use proprietary systems or no system, we are unable to help.  We’d prefer not to standby and watch things burn, particularly when method of distribution (our hose) seems to be one of the most effective methods in reaching more people.

Recently, a Santa Monica-based think tank, Rand Corp, had to retract a study because the data they accessed was incomplete.  Rand had used crime data to draw a conclusion about pot clinics and crime rates in Los Angeles.  Currently, public crime data is not fully open in Los Angeles preventing companies like Rand from performing accurate research.  The source Rand chose to utilize for the study no longer had access to LAPD crime data.  Rand was unaware that the LAPD had chosen to move from one proprietary system to another, and simply assumed the first site mapped crime in both the County and City.

The parallel between the Great Baltimore Fire and the Rand Corp incident shows the importance of standardization and open access. After the Great Baltimore fire was extinguished,  standards were created to make US hose couplings similar. A public crime data initiative should be set making Police Departments (not third parties) in charge of supplying crime data to the public, preferably in a spreadsheet format that is easily found on the department’s website.  This way, any person or news entity has the ability to map data and distribute it to the public.  No one entity should be able to restrict the use or access of public crime data.

At SpotCrime we’d like to hook up our hose to any crime data source available and spread it to as many people as possible - believing that this is the true purpose of public crime mapping - informing as much of the public as possible.  We also believe that any sort of artificial restrictions on access could impede safety by limiting the reach of the information.   Let’s stop data discrimination and give the information to everyone.

Help us douse crime by making crime data fully public to everyone.  

SpotCrime Helps Las Vegas Realtor

Recently, Mark Fleysher of Jack Conley Realty has started using the SpotCrime map widget on his website.


Mark has found crime data to be an invaluable tool to provide updated information to his clients.


Often, clients ask about safety of various neighborhoods and consider crime a key determinant in selecting a home.


Now, Mark can point them to a map on his site to get a clear picture of crime activity around the homes they are looking to purchase.