Ottawa Crime Map
A U.S. company, CrimeReports.com, takes statistics given to it by various police departments and geolocates the instances on a Google map. So far as I can tell, Ottawa is the only Canadian city to enlist the company’s services. The Ottawa crime map sets out markers for various crimes — breaking and entering, theft, etc. — the nature of which can be controlled by a selection panel, so that, for instance, you could look at the location of all thefts from a vehicle. You can, as well, adjust the area, the date and the number of instances you wish to see.
It may be that this is useful for police departments that lack the ability to plot incidents on maps of their own, but it’s clearly aimed at the public — you can sign up to get “free crime reports delivered to your email inbox.” I suppose the notion is that, seeing the map, you are meant to avoid certain areas. All of this seems to me like making money from fear mongering.
[via Science Library Pad]
Yeah, I’ve seen these all over the US, sad to see it come to Canada. Just adds to the sensationalism surrounding crime now…rather than fix the social problems that lead to crime we’d rather watch the police chase on the news. Good tv, that.
Sigh.
***
This is pretty amusing — the big clusterbomb of criminal activity is the Byward Market, the hub of what passes for nightlife hereabouts and a major portion of the entertainment dollar. I’m sure the city doesn’t want to discourage people from visiting the Market, so it’s not clear to me why they’d sign up for this anti-marketing service.
Besides, it’s clearly flawed. The map ignores the site with the most criminal activity in the whole country — Parliament Hill!!! (That’s your angry paranoiac fix for the day.)