Book 'em, Google

February 6, 2006 3:09 PM

As a public service, tagged mapping can be used for much more than finding pizza parlors and Craigslist rental entries. Here it gets used to plot criminal activity, like bike thefts and other crimes in West Philadelphia and the larger Philadelphia area, as well as Chicago.
posted by Rothko (11 comments total)

Note: The crime data for the larger Philly area are from 1999; the West Philadelphia data are from 2006.
posted by Rothko at 3:16 PM on February 6, 2006

That's awesome. I can see my old apartment on the West Philly map with a couple of assaults and robberies just a block away. And there's an almost perfect outline of crime around UPenn's border, which is about right.
posted by Mercaptan at 3:22 PM on February 6, 2006

I work with the guy who put together Phillycrime - he is (justifibly, in my opinion) quite proud of it.

Apparently the tough part was getting the police department to release the data.
posted by pombe at 3:29 PM on February 6, 2006

Unauthorized videotaping?
posted by Smedleyman at 3:30 PM on February 6, 2006

And there's an almost perfect outline of crime around UPenn's border, which is about right.

Because of Penn's under-reporting?
posted by fixedgear at 3:38 PM on February 6, 2006

Because of Penn's under-reporting?

Actually, Penn is serious about reporting crime, as difficult as it is to manage. The city police are the ones to watch out for.
posted by Rothko at 3:42 PM on February 6, 2006

I completely misunderstood this post. I thought it was about planning crimes using google.

still interesting, though. I guess I'll go see if there's something like that for nyc.
posted by shmegegge at 4:09 PM on February 6, 2006

There's also www.incidentlog.com , which has national crime logs, also powered with google maps.
posted by dvdgee at 4:16 PM on February 6, 2006

You know, the phrase "plot criminal activity" could mean at least two different things, and I went to the link thinking the wrong one...
posted by oats at 5:06 PM on February 6, 2006

I can't help but notice that the crimes in Chicago seem to all take place around I-94. I'm not familiar with the city, but what's up with this?
posted by bukharin at 5:37 PM on February 6, 2006

We're using this to show local WiFi hotspots. Self-link.
posted by sciurus at 6:08 AM on February 7, 2006