Greenwood residents and businesses now have the ability to to see what petty crimes are happening in their neighborhoods or nearby.
The Greenwood Police Department has launched a crime mapping software that has been years in the making. It allows anyone who is interested to track crime data by type of crime, date and location, or create specific boundaries for themselves to see all crimes within a certain time frame in a particular area near their home or business, and allows police to better monitor crime.
Searchable crimes include theft, criminal mischief and burglary. Other, more serious crimes will not be included in the public version of the map, Greenwood Police Chief John Laut said.
"That’s based on what I’ve learned about what people are interested in looking for," Laut said. "You can pretty easily overload a map. So we tried to populate it with things we thought residents and businesses would be interested in."
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But that doesn’t mean they won’t make more types of crimes visible on the map in the future, he said. They’re treating this as a sort of trial run.
The map will auto-populate every Wednesday, pulling all crimes in those categories that have occurred in the last week. For now, only crimes dating back to Jan. 1 are available, but the department plans to add crimes from past years in the near future.
Only basic information will be provided for each crime that is highlighted on the map, including type of crime, date and location. The public can request full reports from the police department, which would include more detailed information. Those reports cost 10 cents per page, and are usually two pages, said Carol Beck, a records clerk at the police department.
Behind the scenes, the new software gives the department more streamlined information, and allows police to see all crimes on a map and set up their own perimeters — areas to keep an eye on.
"There’s the external version, and then there’s also internal data that allows us to see hot spots and do targeted patrols," Laut said.
They can plot burglaries and auto thefts on the map to help officers see where strings of crime are happening by connecting the dots, literally and figuratively.
"So instead of an officer just saying something’s an issue in this area, now it’s actually data-driven," he said.
Increased knowledge of such crimes can lead to greater awareness, communication and ultimately, prevention, according to a Greenwood Police Department news release.
The department’s hope is that residents and businesses will use the available information to take extra precautions if necessary, such as locking doors, removing valuables from plain sight and confirming the authenticity of solicitors, the news release said.
City officials said they did not spend any money on the mapping software because it was developed using the GIS system the city already uses, and they did not hire anyone to build it. They pulled a staff member with data skills from the department’s records division to do the job, which took nearly a year, Laut said.
Laut said he saw crime mapping systems being used in other cities, and has long wanted to implement something similar in Greenwood.
The mapping software comes on the heels of a proposed city ordinance that would more strictly regulate hotels, specifically those on Greenwood’s near east-side, in what council member and deputy prosecutor Drew Foster has labeled a "nuisance area," where a significant amount of the city’s crimes are occurring.
Greenwood’s near east-side is one of the areas where police are called to most frequently for reported crimes, according to a crime map provided by the police department.
This new crime map has nothing to do with the measure the city council is considering, city officials said. They have been working on this software for years. But it does give concerned residents of nearby neighborhoods more information than they had previously about when and where certain crimes are occurring.
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Here is a step-by-step guide to using the Greenwood Police Department’s new crime map at home:
- Visit https://bit.ly/2Z812g6.
- Click OK.
- In the top right corner, click on the Incident Perimeter icon (an exclamation point in a triangle).
- Use the icons in the bottom left corner to build your personalized perimeter.Â
- Use the tool to the right of those icons to create a buffer, which allows you to also see crimes within up to 1,000 feet of your personalized perimeter.
- Select "Crime Data 2019" in the bottom left corner.
- Crimes will appear numbered on the map. Users will see generic details about each crime by scrolling right and left at the bottom of the map. The crime’s exact location will appear on the map.
- For more details, click DOWNLOAD CSV in the bottom left corner. That will produce an Excel spreadsheet of crimes that have occurred in your personalized perimeter.
- For more information, visit the police department, 186 Surina Way, to request a full report for 10 cents per page.
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