Various Organizations See Advantage in Online Crime Mapping
- The Journal Times of Racine County, Wisconsin has launched a crime and prevention page that compiles all of the crime and court news throughout the county. The page includes an interactive crime map that can be used to locate where and when crime has occurred. The page also includes police and court blotters, crime and court stories, crime stopper news, information about public safety and links to other resources.
- www.journaltimes.com/crime/ - The News & Observer serving Raleigh/Cary North Carolina receives incident reports from area police departments containing information from every report filed by an officer in response to a service call. This includes the offense, date, time and location of the incident. It does not represent arrests, traffic citations or accidents. Raleigh incidents are updated daily (except Sat. and Sun.) and Cary is updated each Tuesday. Incidents go back to January, 2001 for both cities.
- http://apps.newsobserver.com/know/crime/ - Meridian Mississippi Police Chief Benny Dubose says, after numerous reports of criticism from residents about the department hiding crime statistics, it has decided to offer the public a chance to track crime themselves, on the Internet. It’s a new neighborhood crime-alerting and mapping service that’s available online. Dubose says anyone with Internet access can go to www.crimereports.com and track crime in the city.
- http://www.wtok.com/news/headlines/20666929.html#
Crime Mapping News
Crime Mapping News is a quarterly newsletter for Crime Mapping, GIS, Problem Analysis, and Policing. This particular newsletter from 2005 focuses on the use of mapping and the application of GIS when planning for major events. The newsletter’s first article reviews the discussion and coordination of federal, state, and local agencies emphasizing their use of data, mapping, and GIS for the July 2004 Democratic National Convention.
A specialized GIS team was created for the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, MA. This team, known as the GIS Working Group was the major body responsible for the coordination of agency wide planning, implementation, and support of local, state, and federal geographic information systems. For example, the GIS Working Group studied geospatial issues, worked on increased communication among the agencies and organizations involved, and addressed GIS specific problems for the event.
The GIS Working Group analyzed geospatial information and produced GIS integrated maps that plotted event locations such as DNC event venues, location of medical and hazardous materials response teams, security zones, staging areas, transportation changes including closings of roads and public transportation.
Courtesy of Lauren McLane, Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency and Johanna Meyer, Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency
For Further Information Visit – http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/pdf/Item1818.pdf
