Cops use Google Maps to track local crime

Following on from recent news that UK police forces have begun using portable fingerprint scanners to reference potential criminals on the national biometric database, police officials in Canada have integrated a Google Maps service to help locals track criminal activity.

Specifically, the online crime-tracking tool has been posted to the official OttawaPolice.ca Web site and uses colour-coded squares to show the street and block locations of recent crimes in any given area.

Built by referencing the records of incoming emergency phone calls, the new service certainly appears to have been a hit thus far, which has resulted in a posted apology to the site outlining that high traffic has temporarily affected performance.

According to the Ottawa Citizen, the flexible mapping tool is still pretty quick, is easy to use, and can also be customised to show criminal activity by timeframe, neighbourhood and type of crime.

Beyond its core mapping abilities, the online tracker also provides visitors with chart and graph-based analysis detailing the localised frequency of different crimes, and even offers users the opportunity to sign-up for free e-mail alerts whenever a new crime takes place in their neighbourhood.

While the service could well be labelled as being guilty of fuelling paranoia, Vern White, Ottawa’s chief of police, believes the online tracker will give visitors a better understanding of crime while also providing an informed view of the work undertaken by the city’s police officers.

Standing as the first major Canadian police force to adopt the Google-powered tool, Chief White added that: “Our goal in the past couple of years is to interact more and more with the community.”

Unveiled during an Ottawa Police Services Board meeting on October 27, police officials have said they hope to evolve and improve the tracker as it gathers user feedback from its online audience.

Covering everything from break-ins, robberies and sexual offences to stolen vehicles and traffic complaints, visitors can search through specific areas and selected time frames ranging from the day before and the prior seven days, through to a month, 60 days, or even more than six months.