DPD - New Crime Mapping Site

Today, I discovered that the DPD now contracts with The Omega Group to provide crime mapping services, rather than using the old, fairly primitive system that the department used.

Clicking the link takes you to crimemapping.com. If you type in a Detroit address, you can get a list of crimes occurring within a given area, and even get tables and charts showing trends. You can also customize a date range for the data. The site does not appear to have data for the past week or so, but I have not explored it enough to figure out the exact timing. The site can be a little bit slow, but provides access to much better data.

I know that the DPD was seeking to use data-driven resource allocation, so hopefully this is part of that change.

GIGO--If the crime wasn't reported or the police didn't write anything up, it won't appear in the database.

I just checked a few addresses in the area of crimes that have been covered by the media lately and zero of them show up on the site.

So is this site being used now?

If so....it sucks

When I say Lately, I mean with in the past five days, like the 2 year old getting shot on lakewood, 700 block. it is not reported on this site.

I tried to display all crime for 2010 and it told me that there was 'too much crime to display'

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Novack

I just checked a few addresses in the area of crimes that have been covered by the media lately and zero of them show up on the site.

So is this site being used now?

If so....it sucks

When I say Lately, I mean with in the past five days, like the 2 year old getting shot on lakewood, 700 block. it is not reported on this site.

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Crimes from the last week or so are definitely not included. I would hope that the DPD's version of this was updated daily.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hermod

GIGO--If the crime wasn't reported or the police didn't write anything up, it won't appear in the database.

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Point taken. That said, the police have to use what data they can get.

Kind of an interesting map, though. I like the click-and-drag feature. It shows crime evenly spread out over the city, with little regard for what might be thought of as safer neighborhoods. Try the recent week that comes up if you select Detroit Police from the Agency drop-down. The only thing that seems to make a difference is private security; Indian Village and the condo areas east of downtown have markedly fewer crimes.