A few more agencies have joined the ranks of customers of the Omega Group that are offering their residents crimemapping.com as a means of keeping track of crime in their jurisdiction. I think its a decidedly good thing when citizens understand what’s going on in their own community, and realize that the police are dealing with more than the two or three items that happened to make the news on any given day.
The Peoria, Illinois Police Department is one of the recent additions at crimemapping.com. They have great data, and I particularly like the fact that (like Lincoln) Peoria includes short narrative comments for the crimes they map. I think these comments are helpful to understanding the context of crime.
For example, I received a Crime Alert last week pertaining to a crime right around the corner from my house. I’ve subscribed to a buffer of two-tenths of a mile from my address. I probably would not have known about it otherwise, due to the volume of crime we deal with in Lincoln. The comments in the Crime Alert indicated that an unlocked pickup had been entered, and some coins taken from the console. That’s a much different picture than the map alone, had the crime icon been labeled without the comments.
Interestingly, when I visited Peoria and clicked on my very first offense in crimemapping.com, it was this one (click image to enlarge):
I will add the egg McMuffin to my list of odd assault weapons.
By the way, I downloaded the Apple Safari (public beta 4) browser last week. There are definately some performance differences between browsers. I’ve tried Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and IE 8, but Safari is now my weapon of choice for crimemapping.com.
12 comments:
Congratulations on your 400th post.
"Apple's Safari ... has many security weaknesses."
http://www.cio.com/article/478557/How_Secure_is_Safari_
Of course if you stay out of dangerous neighborhoods (ie don't click on fishy links) you don't need as much security.
Thanks for taking time to communicate with the public via this blog!
Careful including the egg mcmuffin as an assault weapon...if those pesky Dems decide to turn to law enforcement for definitions of an 'assault weapon' for a new assault weapon ban...we could lose the precious egg mcmuffin forever.
Chief, I'm been following your blog for a few months now, one question that I have: are you a Windows or Mac user, and what does the department use? Thanks!
I wonder if the victim was crying fowl? Or if they had the proverbial egg on their face. I'm sorry but I could not resist.
I like Firefox with the NoScript and AdBlock Plus add-ons. After the QuickTime JS exploit nailed me, I gave up on IE, except for doing Windows/Office updates.
GK, we'll start by banning just the Wendy's Triple, because no private citizen needs that many patties! If that goes without too much uproar, we'll ban the Double, then any single patty weighing over 99 grams.
10:09-
Windows XP on all department PCs. I'm currently using a Dell E4200.
Our records management database that serves everything up is OpenVMS running on an HP Alpha with applications developed using ADMINS.
12:23-
FYI, here's the breakdown on the browser-of-choice for visitors in the past month:
Internet Explorer
8,702 70.90%
Firefox
2,860 23.30%
Safari
501 4.08%
Chrome
114 0.93%
Opera
52 0.42%
Camino
19 0.15%
Netscape
5 0.04%
Chief:
Just curious. Was that Egg McMuffin concealed?
Yes, that is an Egg McMufin in my pocket.....
Per Illinois law, a breakfast sandwich is only considered a deadly weapon if the total meat weight of the sandwich exceeds 100 grams. However, in certain Illinois cities (not including Peoria), the possession of a breakfast sandwich by a convicted felon is prohibited (as is the possession of those tasty little cinnamon rolls).
A9-022515 UNK PTY THREW PACKET OF RANCH DRESSING AT VIC'S VEH
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