View Crime Around You on an iPhone

Crime Near You is a new iPhone app from seasoned Google Maps API developer Virender Ajmani.

The application uses crime data from the FBI to show the top crime hot-spots around your current location. You can query the app for a number of different categories of crime and the hot-spots for that crime around your current location will be displayed on a Google Map. 

As the app uses data from the FBI it currently only works in the USA.

Tampa Crime on Google Maps

The RAIDS Online crime mapping website has just added Tampa, Florida to its list of cities.

Using RAIDS Online it is possible to view Tampa crimes by type and by date. If the user types in an address each crime shown on the Google Map will also display how far the incident was from their home.

If you want to see if your city's crime data is covered by RAIDS Online use the 'Jump to City' dropdown menu. Cities in the menu are organised alphabetically by state.

Car Crime on Google Maps

Car Insurance comparison website Cheapest Car Insurance has created a Google Map of UK car crime and car accidents.

One of the major factors in the price of car insurance premiums can be where you live, drive and store your car. The aim of the map is to provide a visual guide as to how high the vehicle crime rate is in your area and whether you are in an area that has a high number of road accidents.

Using the Vehicle Crime & Road Traffic Accident Map it is possible to search for any UK address (except Northern Ireland) and view nearby incidents of car crime or traffic accidents involving cars. The data for the map is for 2010 and come from the Department For Transport and the Police.

Canberra Crime on Google Maps

Australian mapping blog All Things Spatial has published a nice review of two recent Google Maps based applications mapping crime in Canberra.

The Canberra Times has created a Crime in the Capital Map. This map shows the number of all crimes committed in the Australian capital during 2011. It is also possible to view heat map layers on the map that break down the data by type of crime.


The Australian Federal Police has also recently released their own Canberra Crime Statistics Map.

The map provides the local community with crime statistics, allows users to view comparisons between suburbs and displays crime trends over the past five years. Arek, of All Things Spatial, praises the map for its comprehensiveness. It really is a nicely designed map with an intuitive interface that allows the user to view, select and compare the underlying crime data.

Naughty Neighbors on Google Maps

The people of Philadelphia really do make for poor neighbors. At least that seems to be the only conclusion that can be drawn from councilman Bobby Henon's Google Map of properties cited for rental violations, L&I violations, or delinquent on property taxes.

The Bad Neighbor Map is councilman Bobby Henon's map of violations in the 6th district. It would probably have been easier to have mapped the properties without violations. The 6th district is obviously inhabited by some very, very naughty people.

The London Mugging Map

UK charity Witness Confident has launched a new Google Map called StreetViolence.org that allows victims of street robberies and assaults to add the crime to a Google Map. The charity believe the map will alert the community to potential risks, allow victims to post appeals for witnesses and can be used to thank passers-by who helped.

The UK government already provides a crime map for all of England and Wales, which is available at Police.uk. However Witness Confident argue that the government's map does not allow users to distinguish violent crime carried out by strangers from domestic or acquaintance violence, which leads users to believe that 'the risk to them of violent crime is worse than it is'.

Currently the map appears to be populated with 'Test Markers' which I'm pretty certain will also lead users to believe that crime is worse than it is. Presumably the test markers will be removed soon.

Updates Announced for UK Crime Map

The UK government's official crime map Police.uk, which uses Google Maps to map UK crime, has been visited over 450 million times and is by far and away the most popular UK government website.

Today the UK government announced that from tomorrow users of the maps will be able to get crime statistics for more locations. Currently users can search the map by postcode or by address and get results based on "an anonymous point on or near the road where they (the crimes) occurred."

As of tomorrow users will be able to search for crimes that have taken place at specific public locations, such as individual railway stations, shopping centres, airports, hospitals, parks and nightclubs etc.

Despite its popularity the map has not been free of criticism. The knowwhere blog posted a good round-up of some of the criticism the website faced in the week of its original release.

The new mapping of public spaces is also proving controversial. For example there are worries that nightclub owners may become much less likely to liaise with local police forces over criminal activity within their establishments if the result is that the clubs are then shown as criminal hotspots on the map.

Today the UK government also announced that from May users of the crime map will be able to see what happened after a crime was committed, what action was taken by the police and whether anyone was eventually convicted for the crime.

The Detroit Murder Map

The Detroit Free Press' Living with Murder Map plots the 3,184 lives lost to homicide in Detroit between 2003 and June 2011.

Each marker on the map represents a homicide victim. If you click on a marker you can view where, when and how the homicide happened. The map is searchable by year and beneath the map a list of the homicide victims is sortable by column heading. If you select a homicide victim from the list view the corresponding map marker is highlighted on the map.

As well as the map view the Detroit Free Press have created a series of graphs that explore the race, gender and chronology of Detroit's homicides.

The Murder Map of the World

The Guardian newspaper has created a Google Map showing Murder rates Around the World. The map was created using data from the UNODC.

The UNODC collected the national data on homicide for 207 countries. Different countries have different definitions of murder and also have different methods for collecting the data. The map therefore doesn't show a real like-for-like comparison between countries.

However the map does give a rough overview of murder rates around the world. The Guardian for example goes on to make a link between economic conditions in a country and the murder rate,

"If we take some economic measures such as GDP per capita from the CIA factbook we can see a general trend that those lower in the ranking are those with higher murder rates."

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Mexican Crime on Google Maps

Infomap is a Google Map of user reported incidents in Oaxaca, Mexico. Users of the map can report incidents of crime, traffic accidents and delays, fires or any other incidents they wish to share.

Incidents are reported by users via a short form. As well as appearing on the map the incidents can be shared through social networks like Facebook and Twitter. The map can be queried by type of incident and by date.

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Dutch Crime on Google Maps

The Dutch city of Utrecht has its very own crime map.

Stopdecriminaliteit.nl. uses Google Maps to show the latest incidents of crime in the Dutch town and surrounding areas. It is possible to search the map by postcode or by type of crime. For reasons of privacy, however, crimes are never plotted to the exact address on the map.

As well as plotting crimes in Utrecht the site also gives general advice on measures that you can be taken to make your house more secure against burglary.

StopDeCriminaliteit.nl

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5000 Crimes in San Francisco

This Google Map displays 5000 crimes in San Francisco almost instantly on a Google Map. The map was created with the Google Maps API and the Dotter.js, a javascript class that generates data URIs.

The crimes displayed were committed in San Francisco between the 25th April and 25th May 2011. What is really impressive about the map is how quickly the 5000 data points load on the map.

If you want to create your own super-fast map with thousands of data points then the Dotter.js class is available on Github

Dotter Example - San Francisco Crime Map

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Reporting Bribes with Google Maps

Bribespot

The next time the police or a government official tries to coerce you into handing over your hard earn cash for favours Bribespot wants to know about it.

Bribespot is a crowdsourced Google Map that allows individuals to report when someone has asked them for a bribe. Using the map you can report locations where bribes are requested/paid, indicate the size of the bribe and the area of government / police that tried to shake you down.

Bribespot is available as an iPhone and Android app and from your desktop. The desktop version lets you report bribes and view a Google Map of all the user submitted locations. You can also view a check-in stream of all the latest reports to Bribespot.

Via: TNW

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New York Dope Arrests on Google Maps

Sharing NYC Police Precinct Data

WNYC has used Google Maps to show the 19 New York City precincts with the highest arrest rates for the lowest level marijuana possession misdemeanours. The map was created to accompany two WYNC stories (1 & 2).

The two WYNC articles examine the large number of police stop and frisk arrests in New York for marijuana possession. Almost 90 percent of the people arrested for marijuana in the city are black or Latino.

The map shows the 19 precincts with the highest arrest rates. The precincts are shaded on the map to display the majority race or ethnicity, where one exists in the precinct. If you click on precinct you can view details on the number of stop and frisk stops, the number of arrests and a breakdown of the precinct population.

All the data for the map is available in the form of three fusion tables.

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Play Dangerous or Not With Street View

Who Wants to Not Get Stabbed?

This game by Tom Scott uses Google Street View and data from the Police.uk API. In the game you are presented with the Street View of two different locations in the UK. The object is the game is to guess which of the locations has the lowest rate of anti-social behaviour.

Despite the rather gruesome sounding name this game of Dangerous or Not is actually quite an interesting test of your geographical prejudices. Underneath each Street View is a brief description of the location. You therefore have to guess which area is more 'anti-social' based on your geographical prejudices.

The results can be quite surprising and challenge your prejudices about different locations. At the end of a game you are given an assessment of your score. Apparently I am "about as street-smart as someone in a 1980s public information film."

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SpotCrime Adds UK Crime Data

SpotCrime

UK crime data has been added to SpotCrime and MyLocalCrime. The UK recently launched a national crime map for England and Wales called Police.uk. This data is now available in SpotCrime and MyLocalCrime.

Using both services it is possible to search for a UK address and view the latest crime data for the location on a Google Map. The data for a searched location is also displayed beneath the map. It is possible to click on a map marker to click through to read further details about each recorded crime.

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Comparing Crime with Google Maps

Crime Maps

The Guardian have teamed up with SpatialKey to create a great Google Maps application that allows you to compare crime statistics in two different UK locations or compare two different crime statistics at the same location.

The application places two Google Maps side by side. You can enter two different locations and compare December's crime statistics as a heat map at each location. You can select from a number of crime categories and can even compare the statistics for two different categories at the same location.

The crime is displayed in the form of a heat map. If you roll-over either map the total crime at the specific location is shown in figures. If you click on the map an information window opens displaying the designated location from which the crime statistics were collected.

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UK Launches National Crime Map

Police.uk

A new national crime map has been released by the government in the UK. UK citizens, in England and Wales, can now search this Google Maps application to find what crimes have been committed in their neighbourhoods.

Previously UK police forces have been very reluctant to release the location of crimes beyond local ward level. The new map shows crime mapped to "an anonymous point on or near the road where they occurred." Individual addresses are not pinpointed on the map.

To search for crime in an area users can enter a postcode or an address. The map will then display the crimes committed in a radius of the submitted location. The maps include a pretty neat marker clustering system and the number of crimes are also broken down by category.

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Fusion Table Queries on Google Maps

London Teenage Murders 2005-2010

I'm a big fan of Google Fusion Tables and this Google Map of London's teenage murders over the last six years is a great example of the powerful query functions available with Fusion Tables.

The map allows you to view the locations of all of London's teenage murders from 2005 to 2010. You can query the map by year and also by age, gender and cause of death. After each query the Google Map uploads the relevant data from the Fusion Table dynamically.

The application also uses Fusion Tables to list the names of the victims beneath the map. A drop-down menu lets you select from any of the six years. The victims details for the selected year are then displayed below the map.

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Comox Valley Crime on Google Maps

Comox Valley CrimeStoppers

This Google Maps mashup displays the locations of crimes in the Comox Valley in Canada.

The map features a useful timeline that lets you refine the crimes shown by any month going back to September of last year. The map also lets you refine the crimes shown on the map by type of crime and by district. It is even possible to select individual streets to view all the crimes committed there in the last year.

The map uses categorised map markers to show the type of crime committed. The results of a crime search are all displayed in list form beneath the map, as well as being displayed on the map.

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