The 411 on 911 in 510

September 10, 2007 12:58 PM

Oakland Crimespotting:If you hear sirens in your neighborhood, you should know why.
posted by fandango_matt (41 comments total)

Well, that was probably the most terrifying and disheartening pageload I've ever experienced.
Hey, there's a cool slider thing on the bottom-left...

... oh dear God.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 1:10 PM on September 10, 2007

nice interface, but the OPD has had a service like this up on the web for a long time. slapping on a clever font and making its own website seems like someone budding web designer/programmer class project, and not particularly interesting. certainly doesnt live up to, or even come close to the purported goal of

"Instead of simply knowing where a crime took place, we would like to investigate questions like: Is there more crime this week than last week? More this month than last? Do robberies tend to happen close to murders? We’re interested in everything from complex questions of patterns and trends, to the most local of concerns on a block-by-block basis."
posted by mano at 1:14 PM on September 10, 2007

I'm really glad my parents didn't see something like this before I moved to Oakland.
posted by hototogisu at 1:15 PM on September 10, 2007

I maintain that Oakland has an unfairly negative reputation.
posted by kittyprecious at 1:18 PM on September 10, 2007

I agree Oakland gets a bad rap due to parts of it being atrocious while the majority of it is lovely, Oakland Hills, Rockridge etc
posted by zeoslap at 1:30 PM on September 10, 2007

There are plenty of bay area government run GIS crime maps out there. I've spent a good amount of time on the SF, Oakland, and Richmond ones myself. This one is a much better interface (but has limited data and the circles are bit too big, making it hard to see the really dense areas).

What's pretty amazing to me is how much more obvious that old saw "crime doesn't cross major streets" comes across with the draggable, response map.

Oh, and I'm with kittyprecious. With the exception of a very few neighborhoods, Oakland really doesn't deserve its reputation.
posted by aspo at 1:32 PM on September 10, 2007

I'm really glad my parents didn't see something like this before I moved to Oakland.

if overprotective parents figure so prominently in one's housing decisions, perhaps one should be moving back in with them, and not to oakland. seriously, if this statement doesnt indicate the cognitive dissonance of the gentrifier, i dont know what does.

keep oaktown bad!
posted by mano at 1:38 PM on September 10, 2007

Oh, that's so cute. It's not that I would find them nagging and annoying, it's that I would find them right.
posted by hototogisu at 1:43 PM on September 10, 2007

I agree Oakland gets a bad rap due to parts of it being atrocious while the majority of it is lovely, Oakland Hills, Rockridge etc

So, turn on just the red crime dots, and then look at the entire month of August. It looks to me, like anywhere west of 580 is "no man's land" and between 580 and 13 is probably "not bad, for Oakland". East of 13 is pretty sparsely populated by comparison. So, by "majority" do you mean the places you aren't afraid to go or the places where most people live? No offense, there's a lot to like about Oakland but it's mostly pretty scary.
posted by doctor_negative at 2:06 PM on September 10, 2007

The website says this is something I would need Flash 9 to understand.
posted by athenian at 2:07 PM on September 10, 2007

Get up, get get, ah get down.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:20 PM on September 10, 2007

the recipe goes like this:

1. bland suburban yuppies move to your neighborhood seeking the "flavor" (i.e. adventurous, edgy).

2. the "flavor" happens to make them uncomfortable at the same time (i.e. they arent used to the flavor)

3. yuppies reach critical mass, start reproducing, and remake neighborhood in their own bland suburban image.

4. finding their new neighborhood bland, semi-adventurous yuppies seek flavor elsewhere.

repeat as necessary.
posted by mano at 2:39 PM on September 10, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

DEFEND OAKLAND.
posted by loquacious at 2:41 PM on September 10, 2007

I figured they must be using month-long or week-long stats at first, then I looked down at the slider and saw they're by day. Wow. That's frightening.

Too bad they don't have some sort of national reporting framework that would let you produce something like this for the whole country, with the ability to drill down to individual criminal incidents on a street-by-street basis.

Now that would be some technology I could get behind; too bad it'll never interest the politicos, seeing as how it doesn't let them read anybody's email or listen in on their phone conversations.
posted by Kadin2048 at 2:44 PM on September 10, 2007

This is a good way to know where to buy drugs or pick up ho's.
posted by mert at 2:44 PM on September 10, 2007

DC has a similar crime map.
posted by exogenous at 2:49 PM on September 10, 2007

Huh, I'd never seen this, and I'm pretty much Oakland-obsessed.

Interesting that my brand new neighborhood (I moved last week) has only had a couple robberies recently, and the vehicle thefts seem concentrated a few blocks away. Also noting that the crime in my current (working class) neighborhood seems to be about on par with my last, wealthier neighborhood.

I'm also interested in what someone mentioned above about how crime doesn't cross the street - I'd never heard of that before, but it does seem to bear out.

I wonder how they track all the police brutality incidents though. Oh, nevermind.
posted by serazin at 2:54 PM on September 10, 2007

the recipe goes like this:

1. Bland suburban wannabe hipsters move to your neighborhood seeking the "flavor" (i.e. adventurous, edgy).

2. The "flavor" happens to smell like a mix of urine and garbage, sound like people asking for money all the time, and look like a poorly designed website.

3. They eventually start reproducing and move away to where the schools are better and where their trust fund dollars can be spent more obviously.

4. The next crop of hipsters takes the place of the former hipster new parents, discovering for themselves the lovely odors and frustrating experiences that they didn't count on when planning their presumably culture-filled urban life. They, like their predecessors, take refuge in pretending they're cooler than everyone who doesn't live in Oakland.
posted by The World Famous at 2:57 PM on September 10, 2007

if overprotective parents figure so prominently in one's housing decisions, perhaps one should be moving back in with them, and not to oakland. seriously, if this statement doesnt indicate the cognitive dissonance of the gentrifier, i dont know what does.

Er, what?
posted by davejay at 3:00 PM on September 10, 2007

ChicagoCrime.org provides a similar "remix" of government data. I am too lazy to go back and make that an HREF. :)
posted by WCityMike at 3:05 PM on September 10, 2007

Gentrification 101 (based on actual Oakland history):

1. Neighborhoods are settled in a racially segregated fashion by choice (people tend to move to where they know someone already) and by legal mandate (all the hill neighborhoods are legally and then defacto off limits to homebuyers of color until the mid-60s). Most neighborhoods are initially working-class, but have a core of 'successful' residents who buy homes during periods of economic stability (for example, hundreds of black immigrants from the South purchased houses in West Oakland during WWII, when there were good jobs a plenty).

2. Economy takes a downturn, people of color the hardest hit because employers favor white employees over brown employees. (and pay white workers more anyway.) With economic hardship comes crime etc, and those who can, leave the neighborhood. The core of middle class and professions from the neighborhood leave too.

3. Urban renewal comes along and bulldozes the economic centers of neighborhoods of color. BART does the same thing. The 580 freeway? More of the same. And the West Oakland Post Office flattens a few dozen more homes.

4. Property values skyrocket around the area because of the immense wealth (and general awesomeness) of the region. Artists, dykes, punks, and others on the margins but still part of mainstream, middle class, and largely white culture, are priced out of middle class neighborhoods. They move to the neighborhoods that are now dominated by poor people of color.

5. Yuppies, seeing their kind nearby, start buying up the 'affordable' houses in the neighborhood. Developers get excited and build a bunch of ugly-ass lofts. Nobody likes the crime and violence in the neighborhood - it's not like yuppies are the only people on earth who don't like getting their cars stolen. But yuppies tend to blame the long-time residents.

6. Poor people who are long-term neighborhood residents and recent immigrants from outside of the US get priced out of the neighborhood, and move to Vallejo or Richmond.

7. The end.
posted by serazin at 3:16 PM on September 10, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

Wow, I'm considering moving to somewhere in that area, and I didn't really understand the divide of north/south of the 13 until now- and especially after moving the slider to see the past month.

Everything south of Ashby Ave. is fucked.
posted by zevious at 3:26 PM on September 10, 2007

I think this is an excellent way to display the data. Neat stuff!
posted by drstein at 3:34 PM on September 10, 2007

Umm, there is almost no oakland north of Ashby. You see all that grey there, that's Berkeley.

As for being oh my god horrid in most of Oakland: you are wrong. Seriously. I stand by the circles are too damn big, which makes the crime look much worse than it is. Look at any large cities GIS crime stats and you will see simaler levels of crime, with simaler distributions. When each crime looks like it takes up a square block, of course things look bad.

Oakland isn't perfect by a long shot, but there's a level of Oakland fear that isn't called for.

Oh and do yuppies as a class still exist? Somehow yuppies seems to belong with Communist as a product of a different era. What does "yuppie" mean anymore?
posted by aspo at 3:37 PM on September 10, 2007

Sure there are still 'yuppies'. They basically represent new wealth, which there is a ton of around here.
posted by serazin at 3:42 PM on September 10, 2007

What aspo said. Everything south of Ashby is not necessarily fucked; everything north of it is not necessarily hunky-dory.

Oakland's like a lot of other big cities. Parts of it are "lovely," parts of it are "atrocious," depending on your point of view, the day of the week, and lots of other factors. Repeat ad nauseam for most major urban, and increasingly suburban and exurban, areas of the US.

Oakland and Richmond both get bad reps. Some of the rep is deserved, some of it is overblown media hype. Parts of San Jose and San Francisco are pretty damn scary, too. SF is on track to have the highest homicide rate in 2007 that it's had in over a decade. Yet nobody's calling Gavin Newsom on it, and you never hear all that much about how "atrocious" and "scary" SF is, unless it's from tourists writing letters to the editor about the homeless on the streets or about how scuzzy the Tenderloin and the Mission are.
posted by blucevalo at 3:50 PM on September 10, 2007

So what the hell does "new wealth" mean? Seriously? While yes I agree there are lots of people who are young and urban and professional, but it doesn't seem like that category really means that much. Oh and from your earlier comment I guess yuppies have to be white. And middle class? What is it about "yuppies" that makes them different from "artists, dykes, punks"? Does yuppie just mean white people who aren't cool enough for you?
posted by aspo at 4:09 PM on September 10, 2007

Sorry that last post was pretty scattered cause I wrote between at least pretending to get real work done.

And I didn't mean it to sound as confrontational as it may read. But really, I still think yuppie is a outdated, meaningless, and, worst of all, lazy word.
posted by aspo at 4:20 PM on September 10, 2007

Yuppie means new wealth - that's it. People who have a lot of money, but not necissarily inherited from their grandparents. In that way, yuppies differ from Vanderbuilts or what not. And I include buppies and guppies (black and gay yuppies) in the heading of yuppies, but because of the way class and race works in our country, yuppies tend to be white. Do you disagree with that? And would you disagree that the Bay Area, with the internet jobs and so forth is full of these newly wealthy citizens?

I guess yuppie also suggests certain values and a casual flaunting of wealth that would turn off both old-school richies and the artist/freak types who either don't come from money, or if they do, want to distance themselves from it.
posted by serazin at 4:23 PM on September 10, 2007

Oops - just read your second comment aspo. Thanks for keeping things civil around here!
posted by serazin at 4:24 PM on September 10, 2007

Thank you so much for this post. From time to time I've checked in on the blog promising this was coming along, so I'm excited to hear it's finally done!

The thing about jumping to to the conclusion "oh my god" is that this includes things like graffiti, and being drunk and loud, and broken-into sheds, and domestic disturbances. Only a few of those categories are things that actually bother me.

mano, they built it using that Oakland Crimewatch data -- it's the better interface that is their contribution.
posted by salvia at 4:26 PM on September 10, 2007

I thought Yuppie meant dual income, no kids, conspicuous consumer. Or at least that's what it meant back when there were yuppies. Now, thanks to the Yuppies, it's hard to survive without dual incomes and no kids.
posted by The World Famous at 4:32 PM on September 10, 2007

A funny fact about gentrification. A classmate summarized all the academic research he could find on what statistically predicted whether or not gentrification would happen. A strongly negative predictor? Non-white people hanging around on the street. The first round of gentrifiers (the "punks" etc. from above) don't care, but the second wave doesn't hit until the ratio of white punks is high enough that they feel safe. According to his summary, which I last heard four years' back. (This classmate's analysis defined gentrification largely by race, whereas most analyses I've read emphasize class. I'd actually like to reread his report, because this is all I remember.)
posted by salvia at 4:34 PM on September 10, 2007

zevious writes "Everything south of Ashby Ave. is fucked."

Have you ever hung out at the Ashby BART station for any amount of time? Whew ... good place not to be for too long. That being said, I really like Oakland. It's possible to find decent warehouse-style living (work-live I guess is the zoning term) for pretty cheap, if you can get into that. I'm thinking of moving back to the Bay, and that may be my landing spot ...
posted by krinklyfig at 4:49 PM on September 10, 2007

The thing about jumping to to the conclusion "oh my god" is that this includes things like graffiti, and being drunk and loud, and broken-into sheds, and domestic disturbances.

On the other hand, I was kind of shocked at the number of sexual assaults and thefts recorded downtown.* Downtown! Not a place I would consider especially dangerous.

*For the unfamiliar, that's the area between 980 and Lake Merritt.
posted by kittyprecious at 5:05 PM on September 10, 2007

I thought Yuppie meant dual income, no kids, conspicuous consumer.

A class that is on the wane these days, and sure doesn't seem to be the gentrifying force in Oakland these days. While yeah there are plenty in Rockridge, or the hills or Montclair (which I guess is the hills) did those areas ever degentrify?

I don't see many "yuppies" in Temescal or west of 580 not quite Friutvale or over where the new Whole Foods is being built there north of the lake. (is Whole Foods yuppie? 20 years ago it would have been for sure, but I'm not so sure that's really a good way to describe it anymore.) or over by the rose garden (is that Adam's point?) or even down by Emeryville (which I suspect is more gentrifying on the Emeryville side of the border)

Maybe around Jack London where all those condos went up this decade?

Oakland's a pretty damn integrated city (it's kinda scary to think that a place a segregated as Oakland is integrated compared to the rest of the country, but hey.) And it is a cool still semi-maginally-affordable place to live, that yes, is gentrifying, with all the pain (and plenty of good too) that that causes. I just find pinning that on yuppies unfair to the people who actually are moving in.
posted by aspo at 5:07 PM on September 10, 2007

I got here as quick as I could! Oh, I see the discussion has already moved onto gentrification. =)

Regarding the dot sizes, we can certainly try to muddle with them until it looks a little less hectic. We've tried to stay away from making value judgments about crime severity while still letting you narrow down your search, so that's why we went with all-the-same-size icons differentiated by color (red = violent crime, blue = property, green = quality of life / victimless?).

Regarding San Francisco, just you all wait 'til we start scraping the SFPD's data. =)
posted by migurski at 5:28 PM on September 10, 2007

If you care about gentrification in Oakland, you ought to follow this ongoing debate.
posted by salvia at 5:48 PM on September 10, 2007

migurski-

Thanks for commenting, and cool project. I know this is only peripherally related, but do you know about The Organic City or Deep Oakland? Both use mapping to organize their sites, and I think they're pretty interesting.
posted by serazin at 5:59 PM on September 10, 2007

For my East Bay crime round-up, I'm partial to Anneli Rufus' column in the East Bay Express (latest here)
posted by potsmokinghippieoverlord at 6:17 PM on September 10, 2007

migurski, this is a great map! As someone who has used the Oakland site's maps, this is so much better -- thanks. And serazin, cool links.

And back to the "omg" conversation, I just checked out all the assault-type (red dot) crimes in my neighborhood, and they were all spousal / date assaults. I'd click on the links before jumping to conclusions.
posted by salvia at 10:42 PM on September 10, 2007