CrimeReports.com is expanding. This is the sort of interactive Web site that I believe will generate repeat traffic as people spend solid chunks of time exploring the maps.
A couple of weeks ago
I introduced you to the new
EveryBlock site, which allows users to zero in on microlocal data (including crime), but it is up and running for only three cities. CrimeReports.com has partners in 40 communities.
An AP story explains the site:
The free site relies mainly on police
departments paying $100 or $200 a month, depending on their size, to
have CrimeReports.com extract the information from their internal
systems and publish it online. Public Engines LLC, (Greg) Whisenant's
seven-person company in Salt Lake City, pledges to post no ads on the
site.
About 40 law
enforcement agencies have signed up, including police in San Jose,
Calif., and several Utah jurisdictions. The site also captures and
posts information from departments such as the one in Chicago that do
not pay Public Engines because they had built their own links into
their records.
This
coincides with a prominent trend in policing. Since New York City
police launched their "CompStat" system in 1994, law enforcement
agencies around the country have been capturing and analyzing crime
information in more careful detail, in hopes of better planning
responses.
But
these internal records generally do not come in a uniform, Web-friendly
fashion. Even Web sites with crime maps, like the one operated by
police in Washington, D.C., don't reveal details on individual reports.
Instead such details often are made available in police logs sent to
local newspapers.
What's new in CrimeReports.com is its system for extracting the files from disparate police databases.
Then
it maps them online in one central location, through an easy Web trick
known as a "mashup." Since Google Inc. opened its mapping software to
third-party applications, free mashups like this have sprung up to let
people plot everything from photograph locations to the sources of
campaign donations.
There are other sites such as
Crimeindc.org that map crime for specific metro areas.
A key question for newsrooms is whether you are content to allow nonprofits or non-news organizations continue to be the trailblazers in this area, just as we allowed classified and help wanted technologies to drift away.
