CrimeReports: Tells me 10 people got mugged a block from my office
CrimeReports.com is your site if you want to know what police are doing in your neighborhood.
It’s incredibly useful: Want to know who got assaulted close to your home or office, and whether there were any car thefts, and when exactly all of that took place? CrimeReports has it. It overlays all of the police reports in your area on a local map, so you can see each crime — from robberies to sexual assaults — and what sort of action has been taken by the police. Today the company said it’s raised $7.2 million in a second round of funding from Austin Ventures, with participation from vSpring Capital.
I typed in “330 Townsend, San Francisco, CA,” which is where VentureBeat’s office are located. Up popped all of the assaults, car thefts and other reports in the area (see image below). There are a ton of incidents, all within the last week, but frankly I wasn’t surprised: We see police action around here all the time. The report shows the main clusters of action and what tends to happen. For example, down by 4th and King, there’s so much crime that CrimeReports has to bunch multiple reports of assaults, robberies and theft into each icon (which I can drill into for a separate breakdown of reports). Basically, that south side of the train depot is a cesspool that should be steered clear of, and it also shows the times of day when the crime picks up. This lets me warn my co-workers to be on the lookout when they stroll down to Philz, our favorite coffee house (although I’m sure this won’t dissuade us from going there; the coffee is too good).
True, many individual cities have already created their own sites to provide similar information. So the challenge for the site is to make sure it becomes comprehensive enough to become the go-to site no matter where people are. Indeed, CrimeReports relies on law enforcement agencies to supply it with data. It says it gets data from more than 500 law enforcement agencies across North America. It’s also branching out and looking for ways to make money. Earlier this year, it released Command Central, a crime analytics and visualization software it sells to law enforcement agencies.
The site uses a number of web 2.0 tools to facilitate collaboration between law enforcement agencies and citizens — things like Twitter and Facebook buttons that you can click on to make a quick update on those sites about suspicious activity you might see.
The Salt Lake City company is three years old.
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt Marshall is editor and CEO of VentureBeat. Follow him on Twitter at @mmarshall, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.