Ann Arbor PD Offers Online Crime Maps
The Ann Arbor Police Department has gone live with online crime maps from CrimeMapping.com, a service of the Omega Group of San Diego, Calif.
The city joins seven other agencies in Michigan who report their crime data through this crime mapping service. Pittsfield Township and the Washtenaw County Sheriff's Office also will be joining soon.
The CrimeMapping Web site allows residents to map out reported, verified criminal activity near any address, select crime types, date ranges and generate reports. Users also are able to subscribe to Crime Alerts and receive updates when new crimes occur via e-mail.
"Providing easy access to current, verified Ann Arbor crime data and giving citizens the ability to view current crime maps online and on-demand will help us to strengthen community-oriented policing by improving collaboration, trust and transparency with our citizens," said Police Chief Barnett Jones. "I hope every citizen will use this resource to stay better informed of incidences of crime in our community and ultimately have the information they need to be safer."
CrimeMapping.com pulls incident data every 24 hours from the Ann Arbor police records management system, however, only crimes that have completed a review and approval process are displayed. Cases under review are excluded from the daily updates. The site uses ESRI technology to locate each event before posting it, to ensure data integrity and accuracy. Ann Arbor crime data will be available to map on this site from the previous six months.
For more information, visit www.Crimemapping.com/map/mi/annarbor. Citizens also can learn more about the site and its resources and tools by viewing a brief four-minute training video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XSurKJGpt0. Sign up to receive free Crime Alerts via e-mail by visiting http://www.crimemapping.com/subscriptions/subscribe.aspx.
Police said they would also continue to use their Gov Delivery email subscription service for Neighborhood Watch communications.
