Is there a database available to find out about crime in your neighborhood?

January 4, 2005 10:25 AM

I've searched and searched, but is there a database available to find general crimes in your neighborhood like burglaries? I know about the sex offender database, but I can't find anything but general statistics from the police department. I'm in Chicago.
posted by agregoli to Law & Government (13 answers total)

Best answer: Citizen Information Collection for Automated Mapping is what you're looking for in Chicago.
posted by chundo at 10:32 AM on January 4, 2005

Response by poster: Thank you!
posted by agregoli at 10:46 AM on January 4, 2005

Response by poster: Uh, this is really hard to use - you can only search in a two week time frame?
posted by agregoli at 10:48 AM on January 4, 2005

You're supposed to be able to walk into the district and get a map with more recent data. I never had the balls to try it though.
posted by @homer at 10:53 AM on January 4, 2005

Nah, you can specify a smaller time frame (despite instructions saying otherwise). It does only have the last three months of data available for some reason though.
posted by chundo at 10:53 AM on January 4, 2005

Ok, nevermind, I see what you're saying. Yeah, I guess the MAXIMUM time frame is 14 days. Pretty silly.
posted by chundo at 10:55 AM on January 4, 2005

The local section of the newspaper has always had these where I've lived. Does the Tribune or Sun-Times have a neighborhoods section?
posted by trey at 11:14 AM on January 4, 2005

This has detailed information by district. For a finer granularity, think about going to your local beat meeting.
posted by Sidhedevil at 11:15 AM on January 4, 2005

FYI, most major metropolitan areas seem to have something like this online, as far as I can tell. They are not generally accessable from a single point "crimemaps.com" or some such thing.
posted by RikiTikiTavi at 11:26 AM on January 4, 2005

is there a database available to find general crimes in your neighborhood like burglaries?

Yes.

And, indeed, my local newspaper publishes it monthly.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:29 AM on January 4, 2005

citizen ICAM is the best on-line resource in chicago for this kind of thing. depending upon which district your neighborhood is in, the folks at the office will be more or less friendly when you come over to ask. you can also check out the district home pages for general info, but generally, CPD is no user-friendly. part of it is concern for victim privacy, but most of it is just that that's the way they are.
posted by crush-onastick at 11:57 AM on January 4, 2005

not that this is a help for anyone in chicago, but for people in portland, oregon, the city has a great information service that it provides. it's called PortlandMaps and gives crime stats around properties, what a house was sold for, assessed for and lots of other stuff. It would be great if every city did this.
posted by chrisroberts at 12:10 PM on January 4, 2005

You can probably go to your local police station and print it out. I was the crime reporter for a newspaper and every day, I'd go to the police station and examine the crime report. It's public record, so they have to make it available.
posted by moooshy at 12:40 PM on January 4, 2005