8-24-2007 North Carolina
The Raleigh Police Department is now providing online crime mapping to the public, but some residents are concerned about how much information is being released.
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. This GIS could not be used to determine a distance as is required by residency laws.
What Else Can Be Found
On the surface, it appears to be a great tool for anyone in Wake County to track crime in their neighborhood. But Eyewitness News has discovered it also exposes a lot of your personal information.
You can find all kinds of resources at the iMaps (GIS) site - from garbage pick-up to schools and libraries. The latest feature to be added are crime stats.
But if you dig deeper into the site, much of your personal information can be found. Rob Snopkowski noticed just now much information he could find on himself.
No matter what brings you to the iMaps site, you might be surprised to know that you can search for home ownership information on anyone in Wake County.
When Snopkowski entered his name he not only got a picture of his Northwest Raleigh house, the listing also provided his address, his wife's name, the date he bought the house and how much he paid for it.
"You can get a lot of information based on that and take it further. It's kind of scary," Snopkowski said.
Snopkowski says with construction going on just up the street there are a lot of strangers in his neighborhood these days - strangers who Snopkowski feels can check him out online. "A lot of information that anyone can find if you have a name or even an address. Just surprised they don't have pictures inside your house too."
How Crime Mapping Helps
Crime mapping has been used since 1994. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the tool allows law enforcement agencies to understand where crime is occurring and to determine if there is a pattern.
The Raleigh Police Department will use the iMAP crime mapping will provide 30-days of data on 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.
Crime Mapping and Your Personal Information
The Vacaville Police Department in Vacaville, California was the first law enforcement agency to put crime maps on the web in 1995. Now 12 years the Raleigh Police Department has joined the many agencies that publish their crime data online.
With such information available at your fingertips, real estate developers and agents feel that public crime data in high crime data will lower housing prices.
As with most debates about web publishing of GIS data, right-to-privacy advocates worry about backlashes towards former felons especially convicted sex offenders and domestic violence criminals. Raleigh Police spokesperson Jim Sughrue stresses unless the average web visitor knows specifics about the crime such a parcel number, detailed information is not released. (What about folks reading the daily newspaper, this is a joke.)
The reality is, according Raleigh Police and the online publication, GIS Lounge, most of this information is public information (check the crime blotter section of your local newspaper) although the ease of crime mapping makes this information more readily available. ..more.. by Eyewitness News
The crime-mapping link is:
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