Crime Mapping

I started following a new blog today called SpotCrime.com Crime Mapping. SpotCrime is an online crime mapping company. The company gathers crime data from police records and local news sources nationwide and then uses this data to create online crime maps. It also has a partner site (UCrime), which maps crimes at over 100 University campuses--I'm sure parents sending their kids off to college would be especially interested in the latter site. I played around with both of the sites today and was rather impressed. It gives you the exact date, time and address of the crime, and you can look up the type of crime that was committed (e.g. assault, theft, vandalism etc.). In Massachusetts, your searches are limited to Boston, Cambridge and Springfield neighborhoods. Since I live in Somerville, it wasn't all that useful to me personally in terms of my neighborhood crime. However, I was able to look up nearby Cambridgeport, which informed me that there had been an assault at Brookline and Erie Streets on 8/31/09 at 6:13 a.m. I also looked up my sister-in-law's neighborhood in Roslindale. There was a higher frequency of crime activity in Roslindale, including multiple shootings, assaults and robberies that happened all within the last month. Note to self--call sister-in-law and tell her to watch her back! Good thing she and her husband have a very large black lab to stand guard. :-)

In addition, I was able to look at crime maps for Boston University, Harvard and UMass Amherst, among others. Fortunately, no serious crimes, such as assaults or shootings, were reported for any of those campuses. However, there were 11 thefts reported on the Harvard University campus. The thefts included mostly bicycles, but also a laptop computer and cash. Harvard students, guard your belongings-it may be time to invest in some sturdy U-locks!

Overall, a very useful site. I imagine both the public and police would find this information useful. I know that if I were looking to move to a different neighborhood, I would probably add this to my list of variables to consider.