Chicago: Bang! Bang!

May 19, 2005 1:13 PM

Chicagocrime.org takes the Chicago Police Department's Citizen ICAM and puts it into an easily searchable -- by crime type, street, date, district or location type -- format, along with a Google Map. Who knew police station parking lots were so dangerous?
posted by me3dia (10 comments total)

Created by Adrian Holovaty, by the way.
posted by me3dia at 1:35 PM on May 19, 2005

Fantastic. A friend of mine worked in the '90s on the NYPD's COMPSTAT, their official, in-house version of this - pulling data (often rekeyed off paper reports) from the precincts and commands into Excel for import into a proprietary mapping package. The analysis and accountability that program provided are credited with much of the increased effectiveness of the NYPD's crime-prevention strategies over the last decades. Now, with public data from the Chicago PD, the brilliance of Google Maps, and his own big brain, Adrian has built a similar tool in a few weekends.
posted by nicwolff at 1:37 PM on May 19, 2005

Sweet!
posted by kenko at 1:40 PM on May 19, 2005

Looks like a good resource for finding drugs and prostitutes, or at least find out where the latest stings are going on.
posted by Pollomacho at 1:42 PM on May 19, 2005

When I saw this yesterday, I took the RSS feed for my block and turned it into a syndicated feed on my livejournal friends page. And now I know when crime happens!

I love the internet.
posted by sugarfish at 1:44 PM on May 19, 2005

How do they integrate the Google map with their data?
posted by RalphSlate at 1:46 PM on May 19, 2005

This is pretty cool. Milwaukee has something like this, but it maps out a subset of crime data for the previous year along with some census, health and property data using some sort of custom GIS thing that seems to use javascript. Definately not as slick, but still interesting. I'm moving soon and I used it to help me get an idea of the different areas of town.

Pollomacho - Excellent idea. You can also get somewhat of a feeling for the cops in a given area. For instance, almost all cannabis busts <30gm are in one area, whereas busts for >30gm are spread out. I'd be willing to guess that in other areas of the city the cops just aren't petty enough to bust people for such small amounts.

RalphSlate - Google maps uses XML to generate the maps and you can feed it custom values.
posted by nTeleKy at 2:14 PM on May 19, 2005

This is awesome. It'd be nice if we could overlay this with census data including race and income...

I live in Lincoln Park where the biggest crime is being served a cold latte.

Seriously though, I saw the cops nab a 20 year old guy with a gun behind my Clark St. building the other day - he had just mugged someone in broad day light on Wells.

Looking at this data reminds me that no matter how high the rent is the city can still be dangerous.
posted by wfrgms at 4:38 PM on May 19, 2005

Well, looks like my old high school still needs the metal detectors and the paddy wagon parked outside every day.

Thanks, me3dia, this is cool.
posted by sellout at 5:45 PM on May 19, 2005

Yeah, I've been down with ICAM for awhile now. I live on SUCH a short street in a semi-rough neighborhood (just 2 blocks from the police station) that when it appears on the list, it's like "Oh sh*t!" Every Monday morning...

kenko---> I live in district 14! Imagine my surprise when I opened your link.
posted by Betty Tyranny at 7:37 AM on May 27, 2005