I’m not sure where I heard about this site, but I’m very excited to see that it exists, and I hope that it can expand to reach cities across the US. With a headline “Building Safer Communities,” CrimeMapping.com allows its users to view the crime statistics in 23 cities around the country, provided by the local police departments. The great thing about this service is that their data is uploaded every 24 hours and, since it is presented directly on a mapping format, it is extremely easy to navigate. Additionally, according to the FAQ, “The date range for crimes displayed represents the last ninety (90) days of activity.”
Looking to Expand across the USA
I spoke with Vance Stewart, Operations Manager at CrimeMapping.com, to find out why the site is only collecting data from this small pool of police departments. “It takes time to get them to buy off on it” he said, “the goal is to have as many cities around the country to work with.” According to Stewart, it takes somewhere between two months and a year for these departments to make their budgetary allotments, so the actual process of adding new cities is quite time and energy consuming.
Supposedly, they are getting a very good response from the site — apparently some people are so interested in having their city added that the community is asking their local law enforcement agencies to participate.
Quick Look at CrimeMapping.com
Above: Snapshot of recent crime in North Miami Beach
One of the great features that the website offers is a service that allows users to be alerted of crime in their area. If you live in one of the cities serviced by the website, you can choose to get emails when new crimes are reported in your vicinity.
I personally hope this site can continue to grow, as it is a phenomenal tool for everyone in a community, including real estate investors, professionals, homeowners, and renters. Here’s to their success!
BTW – If you know about other fantastic real estate related tools or resources online, please let us know.
Article Author:
Joshua DorkinJoshua has written 539 articles for us.
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BiggerPockets.com was founded by Joshua Reed Dorkin in August 2004. An entrepreneur, web designer, real estate investor, and one-time realtor, Joshua was not satisfied by the online offerings of other real estate sites out there, and decided to build one himself. Mr. Dorkin's vision for BiggerPockets has helped to propel it into becoming one of the top real estate destinations online. His vision for the site and its future has brought national press attention to both Mr. Dorkin and to BiggerPockets.
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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow! That’s a cool site. I do hope they can expand into more cities. I’d love to know exactly what crimes are happening in my backyard
Great find Josh. Now when clients ask about this kindof stuff, I can refer them to a website. I’m off to check out my area..I hope it fares well.
Ok…I see its limited, must be new. They don’t have New Jersey in there yet, but they will eventually. Its a great idea.
Susan – Mr. Stewart assured me that the goal of the company was to get as many cities and municipalities up on the site. Get together with your community and lobby to get your city on the site. They actually have more information on how to do that in their FAQ.
Thanks for the tip, so the difference between this site and everyblock.com is how often the date is updated?
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Wow! This is great. You can be aware of who are living in your neighborhood.
@Steve – I didn’t know about EveryBlock.com, but upon checking it out, I’m not finding crime stats or data mapped out (I may have missed it). The thing they emphasized at CrimeMapping.com is that they don’t scrape data from other sites. The info they post comes direct from the police departments.
Joshua: At EveryBlock, we publish crime data in some, but not all, of our cities. For a good example, check our Chicago site — http://chicago.everyblock.com/ — and particularly the crime section: http://chicago.everyblock.com/crime/
One major difference between a site like CrimeMapping.com and EveryBlock is that EveryBlock aims to show you *everything* happening in your neighborhood, not just crime. EveryBlock is a superset of CrimeMapping.com, in other words.
Adrian @ EveryBlock
Adrian – Thanks for jumping in…I certainly didn’t spend enough time on your site to make a personal opinion, but I did note that you had a broader focus. That said, I’d be interested in hearing how you get your crime data. Could you share with us?
Hey Joshua,
We get it from the police departments. In every case, we provide an “About the data” page where you can find out more info about where we get it. Here’s the page for Chicago, for example: http://chicago.everyblock.com/crime/about/
Adrian
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Thanks for this great resource, i never even knew this existed. I’m planning on moving in the next year, still scouting locations, and this will help tremendously, thanks again!
What a way to define the crime areas its really worthy for the persons who want to know about the society current affair fantastic job you have done but if you also show the crime ratio according the area so its more convenient other then nice work
Why would GIS crime-mapping work better in an urban setting than it would in a suburban or rural setting?
I think this is an amazing tool however I also think some people might not understand how to use it fully and might be put of from moving to a potentially good area (if they are using this tool to scout potential areas they are considering moving into).
In order to properly ‘calibrate’ this tool, i think people should check on their current location first, to see how much crime occurred right there, without them possibly even knowing! Crime occurs everywhere (unfortunately), and we need to keep this in mind. I hope you understand what I am trying to convey.
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This is a nice utility. Interesting to actually visually see differences in crime rates in different areas.