Just came across this great news story about CrimeReports from Fox 10 in Pensacola, Florida. Near the end a man who runs a community center comments that a map like our could harm people who live in high-crime areas. What are your thoughts?
Hatari.co.ke recently launched in Kenya as a way to crowdsource crime information in the capital, Nairobi.
Hatari.co.ke is is a website that allows anyone in Nairobi, Kenya, to submit reports about crime and corruption in the city. (“Hatari” means “danger” in Swahili.) It will provide the growing city and its inhabitants with a repository of public information about incidents such as carjacking, corruption, police harassment and others.
This week, the Orlando Police Department becomes the 31st law enforcement agency in Florida to share their crime data on the National Crime Map at CrimeReports.com. More than 4 million Floridians now have online access to crime information through the most widely adopted crime-mapping site in North America.
UK crime mapping view of London
The UK Home Office, the central policing hub for the UK, released a countrywide online crime mapping system last year. The application was so popular that on the day that it went live to the public, it shut down because there was so much online traffic. It was soon up again soon, but there was a very public debate about the quality of the maps, their lack of detail, and the public’s concern that their home prices would be adversely affected by publically identifying high-crime areas.
The debate had died down a bit until recently when Charles Arthur write an article for the Guardian titled, “UK police crime maps gets an API—but how useful is it really?” Although Arthur agrees that releasing police data to the public is a good idea in concept, he says that,
