The Halifax police department has just made live a new webstie that maps police calls. See the site here.
The crime mapping site is still in “pilot” stage. It now currently tracks only five types of calls: theft, theft from motor vehicles, break and enter, robberies and assault. Notably, the category “assault” does not include all sexual assaults; deputy police chief Bill Moore explained that those assaults that occur in the home between people who know each other and are often partners, which is most sexual assaults, will not appear on the mapping because “most people aren’t interested in that.”
Also, currently the web site has only three time frames: the last 24 hours, the last four days and the last week. After a week, the calls disappear from the site completely. Moore explained that this will change, and that the long-range plan is for the site to contain all historic data.
Moore said that the site came about partly as a result of the mayor’s roundtable on violence, and at the insistence of both the former public safety officer Don Spicer and former city councillor Sue Uteck. The Coast also has long criticized the police department for not making such information available.
The site uses software developed by the Fort Lauderdale, Florida police department, and was given to the HRP for free. Moore said no additional costs were incurred to develop the site, besides already budgeted staff time. It uses Flash, so does not work on iPhones or iPads.
Our take on the site? It’s a very good first step. The department ought be congratulated for implementing it.
That said, it is just that: a first step. Now two more things need to happen. First, the site needs to be more fully developed, with all crimes, not just the five mentioned, plotted, and with an exhaustive date range.
Secondly, while the site is an excellent advance from what we have now, which is nothing, what’s really needed in terms of full public information is the police blotter. The blotter is the short report written by the responding police officer to a call. It provides context that a simple map can’t. It should be easy to attach that narrative to the map, which would give citizens the information they want.
For example, currently a regular complaint we hear from readers is that they’ll be sitting at home at night, and a huge police operation will be going on down the street, involving dozens of officers. The resident obviously is curious about what’s going on, but the next day the police release will say “there were no significant calls.” It’s hard to reconcile dozens of cops down the street with “no significant calls,” but the police blotter would give context, and let the reader decide what is and is not significant.
But that complaint aside, kudos to the police department for taking the first step of implementing the mapping system.
Related Stories
Opening up the police department:
This article appears in Feb 14-20, 2013.
Definitely a good first step. But, as you say, it needs more work, yet.
Seems to be missing an awful lot of street names, and at a glance, some wrong place names. Why is Graham’s Corner to the right of the Circ? Should be over by Lake Banook.
no chief, i think many people would be interested in how many sexual assaults are happening. no cherry picking on this pls.
Mea culpa. This is absolutely not what I meant. Please let me clarify. Most sexual assaults occur in the home between people who know each other and are often partners. These are traumatic incidents, and in most cases we know who the offender is and there is no public safety risk. In these cases, we do not want to publicize the location, as this could identify the victim. In cases of random sexual assaults, we release info to the public through media releases and police reports.
Deputy Chief Bill Moore
mea culpa myself, what i wanted included is the random sexual assault. very much a concern to the public. media release & police report is fine, but need to be included in such a mapping for the same reason as the other crimes. to see areas of concern, patterns.
And of course in a day and age where iPhones and iPads are uber common they build it using flash… Which has been abandoned by its owner, adobe, and is thus basically obsolete… Good work HRM. Way to do your research.
Is it just me or are those little icons both offensive and oddly hilarious?
The main thing is the age range/filters need to be longer. Seeing what happened in the last 7 days doesn’t provide you with any significant information. The range needs to be longer, say 6 months or a year to truly show you where the crime trends are taking place. Otherwise all you can take from the map is, “Oh hey something happened here the other day” You have no way to tell if it was an isolated incident or if it really is a bad area.
i read that the 7 day range is just for the beta testing or demo, or whatever they are calling it. will be ‘all data’ when it is in full service. i would guess that means for as long as they have records.
I think it’s a great idea, although 7 days is not long enough for information. Plus the only crimes you see are the reported ones. Sooo many crimes go unreported. I recently found a website called “blogacrime”, looks new but at least it’s regular people who post crimes that have happened to them reported or not. This gives you a good picture of the neighborhood or even street that your living or moving on.