How to Start Crime Mapping

So, I'm still relatively new to Oracle work, and I'm certainly new to the idea of crime mapping. My question is: where should we start on setting up long-term crime mapping for the cities that we're in (or in my case, asked to make a crime map for)?

I know the obvious answers such as:

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the Oracle Project
news reports in the area

I guess what I'm asking is how one narrows down the sheer flood of information to make an accurate map. Should you start with one crime, map where those happen and then go from crime to crime? OR should you start by googling the areas and working off of the crime information that shows up for each neighborhood in the area you're trying to map?

Also, if you're in the area, how should you take into account the information you can get from the locals? I've noticed over time that the best way to learn about what's going on in a community is to start where the older men hang out and gossip (in the South, at least in smaller cities, I've noticed that to be the local Hardees), or to check in on the older men's wives/partners hang out and gossip. How should this be taken into account considering that they're more likely to have information on crimes and local neighborhoods that the newspapers often don't have (or leave out)?

I guess most of this is directed at Zimmer since he seems to be the most comfortable with crime mapping, but I figured someone should ask this question so that we can all start work on marking the patterns in our neighborhoods and communities so we all know the places to start.

You should cross-reference with law-enforcement and community watch group endeavors. Check out the steps they take to crime-mapping. Law-enforcement is likely more statistical while watch groups might tend to get more "intimate" with their sources.

Just a shot in the dark.

What data do you currently have to build from, and what are your contacts/data sources?

@Gauge: I'm pretty much trying to figure out a "where do you start when crime-mapping from scratch" type check-list. I want to be able to make a formula or a how-to guide on crime-mapping so that I can grab this list and use it as a reference for whatever city or area someone asks me to map.

Well, I've never made a crime map, but I'd start by prioritizing the crimes rlsh would be most likely to come across. Start with the most public crimes (street assaults, robberies, etc.) and work down to the most private crimes (premeditated murder, rape, etc.). The reason pm-murders are low priority is because they will rarely happen where anyone can see them, so the odds are very slim that an rlsh would be around to stop one. The FBI has the CITUS report, and the new one should be out for 2010 within a month or so. But I would go for the local police websites. They'll have up to date information on crime, and may offer release dates for certain offenders as well. If you want a hard copy, see about getting aerial maps of the cities you plan to crime map. They also help to plan routes, as long as you stay current on construction projects and other such things that affect where crime happens and where teams can patrol. That's my two cents for now.

City Data, local news, gang news sites, sex offender sites, SpotCrime and other mapping technologies, local PD websites, anything you can find. Start with the most basic sites, open a lot of tabs in your browser. If you find something interesting, put it through other search engines to see if there's more there. Brain storm. Look for a general pattern, and more importantly, anything that DOESN'T fit that pattern.

I posted this report to TOP a few months ago, detailing a straight forward and "average" crime research project for Salem, Oregon.

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It provides the links I used to justify my findings.

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It doesn't cover every where, but all the major cities are covered, data going back months, selectable incidents and reports, sex offenders. This is propbably the best tool I've seen to plot and predict where the next bad thing is going to happen.

You can be given time of day, incident types, partial circumstances of each incident.

Me personaly, I'm looking at everything West of I-4 from Pine Hills to Metrowest on John Young Pkwy and West Colonial between 2pm and 3am to find the most trouble.

Apparently, in this neighborhood, you'd just have to stand around for five seconds and you'll catch something (like a stray bullet or an STD)

When I first moved here to Ocala I started with watching the newspaper and started generating an idea of what was happening and where. Then I learned that not everything makes it into the paper and started checking out the local papers website as often as I could under local news. Learned a lot more about the crimes happening and where and when they happen.

Check with the local police and sheriff office websites to.

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