The following press release was sent to me from Jim Sugrue, Public Information Officer Raleigh Police Department. I went to Raleigh City Council on June 6, 2005 to ask for a public version of COMPSTAT. Today, I’m happy to get this announcememt from RPD and Raleigh’s IT Department. Crime statistics at the fingertips for Raleigh citizens will go a long way for crime prevention in our communities.
The Raleigh Police Department and the GIS Division of the City of Raleigh’s IT Department have partnered to provide on-line crime mapping to the public. The crime mapping will be provided through the Wake County and City of Raleigh iMAPS site, which is familiar to many people who have used it to find other governmental data.
“We are all pleased to provide this service to the public,” said Interim Chief of Police Kent Sholar. “People often want to know about crimes occurring in and around their neighborhoods and at other locations. The iMAP data will provide them with an easy and convenient way to get that information.”
The iMAP crime mapping will provide 30-days of data on the Part I crimes of arson, motor vehicle thefts, larcenies, burglaries, aggravated assaults, robberies and homicides. Rape reports will not appear to help protect the identities of rape victims. Check boxes allow users to turn on or turn off specific crimes and other data layers.
The crime-mapping link is:
Crime mapping is among the tools used daily by the Raleigh Police Department to monitor incidents and address criminal patterns.
Initially, the crime data will be updated twice weekly, on Mondays and Thursday. After experience is gained with the site, daily updates will be made Mondays through Friday.
The mapping system uses the GIS system to geo-locate reported incidents along the street centerline GIS database by site address. The data contains all the streets in Wake County along with an address block range for each street segment. When incidents are geo-located, the GIS system interpolates the address and mathematically determines where it would fall along a street block range. The crime incidents are then geo-located as icons on the map to approximate locations along a street segment. The icons may not fall exactly on the property of the reported incident.
As users zoom in to areas, case numbers related to individual icons will appear. When zoomed in closely, (a scale of 1″=825′ or less), users can see additional information about the incident by clicking on the identify tool (“i” button) located on the top-left of the page. Then, when icon for an incident is clicked, additional information about the report will appear on the right side of the screen. That information includes:
- Incident number – RPD case number for the incident
- Offense – Crime category description
- Incident date – The date the incident occurred
- Day – The incident date day of the week
- Beat – The RPD Police Beat for the incident
- District – The RPD Police District for the incident
- LCR code description – Full description of the LCR code
- LCR code – Local crime reporting (LCR) code associated with the incident
- LCR Group – Category grouping for the LCR codes
- Contact - RPD District for that incident
A help document found on the iMAPS crime-mapping page provides information about the crime-mapping system and includes telephone numbers for police districts. Residents can call the districts to ask for or provide information about a reported incident. The link to the help document is: http://imaps.co.wake.nc.us/imaps/RPD_imaps.htm
General and helpful information related to the iMAPS site can be found at: http://imaps.co.wake.nc.us/imaps/default.asp