Monday, June 30. 2008

The Baltimore Sun Looks at Online Crime Mapping

The article titled "Putting crime on the map" was in the Sunday paper. It focuses on CrimeReports.com a online solution available for $99/month for small municipalities and $199/month for lager ones, based on the amount of data. It also notes ratemycopy.com a site that allows individuals to rate cops, just like restaurants and movies. (I'd not heard of the latter.)

Key tidbits:

RateMyCop.com attracts about 200,000 unique visitors a day; in Washington alone, 20,000 people have signed up for CrimeReports.com's localized crime e-mail alerts, officials for the companies said.

So far, police departments from 175 jurisdictions contribute data to CrimeReports .com, and the site is working to integrate 100 more agencies, he [founder Greg Whisenant] said.

Adrian Holovaty, a journalist and Web developer whose latest project is EveryBlock.com, a site that feeds up-to-the-minute news and information to residents in Chicago, New York City and San Francisco. He said searches pertaining to crime are the most popular activity on EveryBlock.com.

I get that municipalities are jumping CrimeReports.com. I'm disappointed that the big draw on EveryBlock is crime. I thought it was about hyperlocal news. But perhaps news = crime?