Crime information wiki

Anyone thought about setting up a crime information wiki? That way we could basically have the benefit of each other's research and observations...



...also more people than just us would hopefully contribute to something like that.

that sounds like a sweet idea

I like it but I think if it were directed more towards the general field of criminal justice rather than just RLSH, there would be potential for far more, possibly better information. Yes we'd then have to translate it to rlsh activity to best suit our needs, but I think you'd get better info.

I wasn't thinking of any RLSH directed angle at all, actually, except that it would be useful to RLSHs.

The way I pictured it is mostly college kids interested in law enforcement would contribute to it, with a scattered amount of other users involved for various reasons.

I'm also not sure how much of an improvement it would/could be over just the crime-related articles on regular Wikipedia.

Kind of a tossup. If you got it really going though, it certainly could be.

Most of the local Sheriff's dept maintain a free public database (in larger cities) that you can access to see what sort of people your neighbors are. They have issues with the interfaces being somewhat counter intuitive, but they have a wealth of data once you figure out how to use them.

It would be a good source to start pulling info from if you were to set something up like that. Those systems have the names, addresses and violations of all the persons in an area. You can put in the street and it will basically tell you how many felons, dui's, sex predators, etc., live in the area. It becomes pretty easy to color code a map based on known bad guys in the area. Although I can see it getting quite time consuming.

Yeah... ideally I think we'd have something like 50 people doing analysis for every single person actually hitting the streets (in a "crimefighter" capacity)...

But I don't see it ever happening. The government can't even manage a ratio like that.

I've been looking at the potential of "crowdsourcing," which is actually how some of the Iron-Rad designs came into being. It could help with analysis a little (or a lot), I think, as long as it's applied well.

More importantly, how reliable would the info on the site be?
Seriously, with a number of people contributing on their own with no verification of any kind of expertise or study........well you know.

I suppose it would be useful to have one central site to wade through and try to find what's real and what's crap instead of hopping all over the web. Maybe.

You couldn't get it to the point of identifying individual criminals and giving you actionable info on their activities.

With enough people involved you could probably get it to the point that if you went to a major city you could access summaries of crime information for that area, browse outstanding alerts by categories (i.e. missing children), map data that showed you what gangs were active in a particular area and recent crimes that took place... maybe some other stuff I'm not thinking of. That's all basically stuff you can do now, but you have to sit down and do the analytical work yourself every time.

It'd be reliable to a degree... that's all analysis ever is, though.

And with some technies doing automated data sorting, sending out web crawlers to collect stories, etc etc and other stuff I'm not personally able to do... well, it could be "something."

If enough Oracles were willing to help with the create of a pooled crime database like this I'd throw my hat into the crowd. I don't know if I'd link it with Wikipedia or not (just for the sake of keeping random people from being able to change the information), but a crime database would be a good thing.

A good start to it would be by doing a poll of the RLSH, finding out which city has them, and getting information for those cities first, then for the cities around those cities, and then spreading out from there (as well as doing all of the major cities in the US, since that just seems common sense to me at least).

If you are serious about this project, then I would be more than willing to assist in its development. It could become an invaluable resource to our community, and to several other people as well.

Not to mention that it would demonstrate to the general public just how dedicated we are to adhering to the law.

Perhaps a plan for creating one on a local level could be drafted. Something like a checklist presented to help get things started. It would allow ANYONE the opportunity to create an ORACLE DATABASE for their area with the benefit of everyone else's experience. Im sure the process of setting things up would be basically the same from area to area up to a point. What would those points be? How would someone start? What advice would you give Hero-X as he maps out his area?

Lunar Veil wrote:

If you are serious about this project, then I would be more than willing to assist in its development. It could become an invaluable resource to our community, and to several other people as well.

Not to mention that it would demonstrate to the general public just how dedicated we are to adhering to the law.

Lunar, since you're more informed on the laws I would very willingly pass that responsibility over to you since I don't want to accidentally misinform anyone on legal matters. I can collect crime statistics, gang information, population information, and etc on local communities and add that to the bunch.

I'll look into what free web service would be best to hosting this information and create a draft for it as Crossfire suggested. From then how the structure is set up could be argued and we could proceed from there.

I suppose the basic information for every town and state that would be universal when starting out on creating this sort of database would be:

1) Crime statistics in the area
2) Gang information in the area
.....What gangs are there, what are their operating rules, what areas of the town do they occupy
3) Homeless statistics in the area
4) Drug statistics for the area
.....What drugs are most used in the city
5) Gun/concealed weapon/ weapon laws in the state
6) "armor" laws for the area
.....Is it legal to own a bullet proof vest? Does it need a permit?
7) What places of worship and non-profit organizations work within the city?
.....These places will have personal experiences with the worst part of town and can provide information on the troubles in the area.
8 ) Contact information and addresses for the local police/sheriff/state trooper/courthouses/jail houses in the area


Feel free to add anything else if you think that something should be added to this list.

Lunar Veil wrote:

If you are serious about this project, then I would be more than willing to assist in its development. It could become an invaluable resource to our community, and to several other people as well.

Not to mention that it would demonstrate to the general public just how dedicated we are to adhering to the law.

I'm serious that I think it's worth considering. My qualifications are about at the level of just contributing content, though. I would do what I could on that score. I'd especially try to work on the LA part with the hopes that someday if I had to visit Chicago I could find something comparable there rather than having to do my own basic research.

And I would like to see it open enough that people studying crime felt it appropriate to contribute. Students probably have the most time and directed focus on the topic of any possible contributers I can think of.

I would add in knowing where the lower income houseing and cheap motels are. Often you will encounter someone in need of a place to stay and having info on hotels/motels with cheap weekly rates can help them get off the streets AND a lot of crime will center around lower rate apartment complexes and motels due to the element they attract if security is not kept tight.

Also find out if there is a pastoral alliance or charitable groups in the areas that will help with financial and other needs.

One thing I do when I move to a new city is look up the non-emergency numbers for the police, ambulance, and other services and program those into my cell phone. I usually put an A or a Z in front of the name to keep it easily accessible. These numbers can come in handy when on the street and help you avoid issues with calling 911 from a cell. (Sometimes the call doesnt go through correctly)

Google Earth can also provide you with some great street views of the areas to help identify buildings where problems are more likely to occur.

Those are good points Crusader, thanks for sharing.

Get her started.
I'll volunteer to throw some content down once you get a format set so I can see where it's going and purpose.

Alright, I'll try to get a draft done hopefully this weekend, but it might take me through the end of next week depending on what festivities I'm invited to this 4th of July weekend.

Take your time.
Enjoy the holidays with family and friends.

Krystalline wrote:

Alright, I'll try to get a draft done hopefully this weekend, but it might take me through the end of next week depending on what festivities I'm invited to this 4th of July weekend.

Awesome.

I have a ridiculous amount of information on Chattanooga begining to be compiled, but I honestly cannot decide on what website to host the information on. I'd rather that people be able to email whomever is dubbed to be an "information broker/information compiler" (terminology?) for a region with a request for the information on cities until we get a large majority of information compiled rather than a wiki-type where anyone can change the information.

However I just can't decide on what free web browser would be best to handle it. Any ideas?

I'm also not that fantastic at HTML and other scripts, so my question on that would be if the web browser to handle it should be one that gives templates or would someone be willing to make a script to use? Or should I just go ahead and get the sample up on a site that allows templates and we can decide on the minute details later?

Anything would be appreciated, but if it's not a Wiki you lose some of the value of the concept of information flowing in from all over the place (in theory, anyway). I think Wiki's are usually run by one or a few people who revert inappropriate changes.

There's free wiki sites we could use that wouldn't need web building skills.

My concern is that there doesn't seem to be enough information pooling to support this. Outside the NYI I only get a few requests for research or information. I'd like to see this community become more facts-based than whatever it's based on now.

I know what you mean Zimmer. I've gotten a few requests through facebook, and some requests for information from here, but ultimately not a lot of people have asked me to look for information for them.

I'll find one of the free wiki sites and set up the information there and see where it goes. Since I'm in the area I'll do my web research in the Bible belt. So... that'll leave me with Kentucky, West Virginia, North & South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida. Major cities first, working my way from north to south, then the larger but not major cities north to south again, and so on and so forth.

Who else is willing to claim a region?