Back on June 12, we announced the availability of a new incident mapping service, crimemapping.com. There is a crime alert feature included in this service that is really quite nice, and I've decided to promote that service a little more proactively. There are links to crime alerts at the top of the main page at crimemapping.com and in the middle of our public web site, or you can just go directly to the sign up page. Once you are signed up for crime alerts, you will receive an automatic email with the brief details of any new police incident reports that show up in the area where you have subscribed. Here's a sample (click to enlarge):
Most people who use the crime alerts feature will want to subscribe to the area around their business or home. You can choose various distances, but I would be cautious about picking a 1 mile or 2 mile buffer. This city is much busier than most people realize, and you might be getting a lot of stuff in those emails, if you get carried away. It's easy to unsubscribe if you decide you need to throttle back.
Usually, incident reports are processed, geocoded, uploaded to the Omega Group, and available within a shift of the initial report. This varies, though, because sometimes officers are authorized to hold-over reports to their following tour of duty. One caveat: although there are choices for DUI and Disturbing the Peace cases in crimemapping.com, these two incident types are not contained within our data.
Crime alerts are a nice addition to the department's many resources for keeping you informed, including two incident mapping choices, crimemapping.com and CrimeView Community, and our daily log of police incidents. The key advantage of crime alerts is that the information is "pushed" to you: you don't have to go get it.
The more you know, the better you are prepared to act. When you are more aware of what's going on in your own neck of the woods, you will be more likely to close your garage door, park all your cars in the driveway, make sure nothing is visible from the outside, get a higher security lock, call us immediately when you spot suspicious behavior, and so forth.
11:37-
ReplyDeleteYes, I've seen it. That video was taken on Aug. 16, I believe. I have a copy, and it's been on a number of diffent web sites in the past few weeks. I was disturbed by the large number of racist comments in the link you sent me, though, and don't care to give voice to such views.
BTW, all the people in t-shirts with white silk-screened badges are the "security" staff of the concert promoter--not police officers.
This crime map shows just how busy this "little city" really is! Maybe more people will stop calling for nonsense reasons once they see that LPD does have "better things to do."
ReplyDeletejenn
Chief,
ReplyDeleteThe man filming the video is stanford bradley, who is some sort of program director or manager at the Salvation Army youth center just north of 27-Holdrege. At one point in the video he even tells the police of his employment at salvation army. It would be nice if someone who oversees the salvation army programs in Lincoln was made aware of his video and his behavior, since he is in direct contact with our youth on a daily basis....