Online maps help cops find crime hotspots

Having a list of addresses where crimes have taken place is great for getting a sense of where the areas most in need of attention are, but it's hardly of help for people who think visually -- which is probably most of us.

And now police departments are finally embracing the web, taking data from police reports, tying it to birds-eye-view maps, and even letting the public subscribe to email alerts offering them updated statistics and graphics. Officers use the maps at the station to get a 30,000-foot view of what's going on in the city, and the maps can even be sent to squad cars which are outfit with computers, giving beat cops instant access to the whereabouts of criminal hotspots.

CrimeReports.com is the biggest name behind the system, and the company now has hundreds of police departments subscribing to its services. Individuals can check out an interactive map of all the various crimes going on in their neighborhood too (though this will make you extremely paranoid; I don't recommend it), and subscribe to the same updates.

SpotCrime offers another similar service (complete with icons like a clenched fist to represent "assault"). It operates very much the same way, though CrimeReports seems more responsive to me.

But the most interesting aspect of these services is how they are being used to thwart crimes as they happen. The linked story above tells the anecdote of a police department which looked for patterns in a series of crimes involving teens searching for unlocked cars to break into. By visualizing the streets they were prowling, authorities were able to predict where they would go next as they continued their crime spree. "We caught them in the act," says the officer in charge. Excellent police work, fellas.